Part 2: Okinawa, Iriomote Island

so to catch you and I both up, i am finishing off the photos here from when i visited okinawa awhile back with my friends from Goto (the islands where I live.)  we left off in the beautiful garden in Naha, on the main island.

Naha is quite a touristy place and so there is a the gammet of people bouncing around the city and quite an array of things to see and do as well.  none of the folks i traveled with or i really call that kind of city our cup of tea when it comes to traveling, but we had to spend a day there in order to move onto the next island so we made the most of it!

a glorious little shop selling every kind of okinawan souvineir you could want.  this is japanese pink explosion. 

just your average liquor store in okinawa...

 unless you count the fact that they are selling barrels of snake shou chou.  thats right folks, a real snake inside the most obnoxious liquor that you have ever tried.  this is a big seller here and the popular thing to drink if you are in okinawa and looking for a real traditional experience.  i am happy to say that i avoided it entirely.  it is really expensive (about 100 or so US dollars for a jug of this) and it has a dead snake in it.  oh, and my dad always told me to stay away from snake oil.  thanks dad.

main tourist street in Naha.  touristy, eh?

another wall of snake spirits in another liquor store.

here we have one excellent example of japanese weirdness.  this is my friend brittany beside an ad for chocolate in the ishigaki airport.  right?!?

and here is a double rainbow welcoming us to iromote island.  this was the beginning of a lot of beautiful things to come.

iriomote island main harbor.  was really fantastic, but really made me think of how lucky i am to live in goto, where life is strangely similar to this.

the manegrove forest in iriomote that visitors frequent.  you can ride a ways back into it and then hike up to this gorgeous waterfall.  most people were not prepared for the hike and it was hilarious to see them hiking out in high heels and such. 

this is the water past the falls...on our way there.

one of the small falls on the way to the main event!

the falls look tiny in this picture, but when we finally got to them they were fantastical! 

some kanjis past visitors have carved into the stones you must climb over in order to get to the falls.

this is me and robin chan.

there are gaijin swimming in that water there!!!!  lets get in and freak out all of the japanese people!

okay...more in the next post!