Jackie's visit to Okinawa.

This summer, several days after she finished her first year as a medical student, our friend Jackie flew out to Okinawa to spend time with us. We were super grateful that she came to see us. It isn't a short flight nor are the tickets inexpensive.

We tried to show Jackie a lot of Okinawa; we brought her to places where we have brought our other visitors -- the aquarium and the glass bottom boat tour. We also brought her a couple other places that our other guests did not get to see -- the Ryukyu glass factory, the mini-zoo / egg farm, and Kokusai street.

We all really enjoyed having her here with us but Evelyn really had a good time with her. She was sad for days after we dropped Jackie off at the airport and she still calls the guest room "Jackie's room". When Evelyn was going through her phase of giving us names from Monsters Inc, Jackie was her partner in crime. Evelyn was Mike, Jackie was Sully, and I was...Randall. You can read more about my nickname here, if you are unfamiliar with the story.

Jackie was visiting over Independence day but unfortunately Dan had duty that day so he wasn't able to spend the day with us. On the way up to the aquarium, we stopped by to say "hi" to him. After the aquarium, we were debating what to do for supper when Evelyn fell asleep in the car (she missed her much needed nap time). We drove to Yoshihachi's, and ordered out. We drove back to our house, ate the sushi, and then started on our way to Torii Station for fireworks. We were able to get pretty close to the show but Evelyn was afraid so we started walking back to the car as the show continued.

Let's see, what else did we do...We took her to one of our favorite sushi places, Kami Sushi, in American Village. She also tried Japanese curry for the first time at Coco's Curry. Coco Ichibanya ("Coco's") is a chain restaurant on Okinawa but also on mainland. Apparently there is even a Coco's in California! We got ice cream at Blue Seal, and she was able to experience a Japanese rollerslide. We spent a couple hours at Araha beach and also showed her a sunset at the Sunabe seawall. I took her to one of my favorite yen stores (like a dollar store but so much better) and we also took her to FamilyMart (convenience store) to try some different Japanese candies.

I took over one hundred pictures while Jackie was here and she took quite a few, too. I realized after we dropped her off at the airport that we hadn't taken a single picture where she and I were both in the frame. Oops! Getting many cute photos of Jackie and Evelyn makes up for the photos we didn't get together.