Travelog for: Tipu

I have just come out of my egg and I've been told that I was born to become a ToyVoyager.


I was given this really small notebook with me. I'm hoping to collect some nice stickers, photos and drawings in it. My mentor Katja has already started with some.

And guess what? I'm going to spend a year in Okinawa, Japan! How cool is that! I've heard that my host family is a very nice family with two kids so I'm sure I'll be taken very good care of. Tomorrow my mentor Katja will send me on my way, unfortunately I won't get a chance to have any easter eggs before I go as Katja hasn't had time to buy any

Dear Mommy,
Whew! We have been very, very busy. Jayme's grandfather finally left a few days ago and I'm very behind on my journal entries! I hope you weren't too worried...
We'll start with our trip to Shurijo Castle. Here I am at the outside gate to Shuri Castle. Isn't it pretty?

This is the inner gate.

Inside here is the inner courtyard. Unfortunately we didn't go in because Jayme's didn't have anyone to help with the children and she didn't want them getting out of hand and getting ahold of some artifacts... so we waited outside.

After that we headed to Kokusai Dori to do a little shopping. Jayme got a new hat and also some food for dinner that night.

Once we got home we saw what food she had purchased. We had some steak, but we also had some purple sweet potatos! They were very neat. They're called Okinawan Sweet Potatoes and they really are that purple. She made them into some sweet mashed potatoes and they were very yummy.

We also had some cake. Since Jayme's grandfather was visiting when there were no birthdays or holidays, we had an un-birthday party cake just for fun! Have you ever seen Alice in Wonderland?

The next day we headed up north, I'll write more about the northern part of the island soon!
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
Today we headed up north! It takes quite awhile to drive there, so we'll be staying over night for a few nights. Our first stop was at the Pineapple Park in Nago. Here we got to go on a ride in a pineapple cart. Here I am sitting in the cart.

Here you can see another cart.

They took us around the gardens. First we went by some palm trees.

Then we got to see some very small pineapples growing!

They had lots of plants.

And some very funny looking flowers.

After the cart ride we got to walk through an area where they had wine tasting. They had lots and lots of pineapple wine.

After you got past the wine area there was an area where you could try snacks and candies. They were very good! You could buy the ones you liked.

Jayme was very tempted to get us a pineapple friend to take home, but figured she had enough toys to worry about They had lots of stuffed pineapples, shisas, and other things.

More soon,
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
After our fun at the Pineapple Park we finally made it to our campsite. We were staying at some cabins on one of the US military recreational facilities. Here we are by the cabin.


Here's what the inside of the cabin looks like, it also had a pair of bunkbeds.

Here's the yard area, the kids had lots of fun simply playing in the dirt. They were very silly.

That night we put some small pieces of potatoes, a sausage, and some egg into some aluminum foil and cooked it on the fire.

Mmm. It came out very yummy!

However, Jayme says she only does roughing it so far (well, we are staying in a cabin afterall) so we had breakfast at the restraunt nearby. We ordered off the menu.

The hot chocolate was very yummy.

And then oops! We were so hungry we forgot to take a picture of the food! But it was very good. I'll tell you more about our travels up north soon.
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
Since we were so far to the north, we decided to go to the far northern point of the island. This area is called Hedo Point, and it is the north tip. It was a very neat area. Here you can see some of the coastline.



They also had some nice statues around, I liked this bird one.

It was a very beautiful place to go visit, more soon.
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
Our days up north were gone, it was time to head home. But on the way we stopped by one of the neatest attractions on Okinawa, the aquarium! There is much more to see here than we saw in the 4-5 hours we spent here, but we did have a good time. We started out going into the aquarium itself.  Here I am at the entrance, it looked like a beautiful day that day.

The first tank inside is the largest tank with live coral that's lit by natural light in the world. It was very neat. Here are a few different views of it, they had about 5 windows you could look through.




We proceeded on until we made it to the whale shark tank. This tank is the second largest in the world, but this view window is the largest in the world. So much better to see the whale sharks so clearly! Aren't they beautiful?

There is a cafe area near the whale shark tank where you can sit and have snacks while you watch the sharks. Tipu and I had some icecream.

From there we went into the deep sea exhibit. We couldn't take many photos here because there was no flash allowed and it was very dark to keep the animals comfortable, but it was very neat.

We exited the aquarium itself and went to the maritime museum, here I am outside it. Oh! Do you see the beetle made of flowers?

I turned around to find more creatures made of flowers, very neat!

Finally we went on it. They had a whale shark statue here.

They also had a traditional Ryukyan Vessel.

There were a variety of ships from different Asian traditions here to see, we really enjoyed it.



This small one was used for burial when the body could not be found.

They also had a neat home, but Jayme forgot where it was from.

When we went outside the weather had turned on us, it was almost as if it was signaling the end of our trip... Do you see how dark the water and sky are?

That ends our travels to the north! Now all we had was to say goodbye to Jayme's grandfather, but that was quite fun really. I'll write more updates soon,
Tipu

Since today is the last day of Jayme's grandfather's visit we went out for a nice dinner at a steak house called Sam's.

As you can see, it has a ship theme.

We all looked over the menu, and decided on the steak meal, Jayme doesn't like sea food

Here I am at the table. The white dish behind me is the sauce dish, and then just beyond that you can see the grill they will cook our food on in front of us. Its very neat!

First they served some delicious navy bean soup

Then a nice salad

Next came the potatoes

And then the main dish. Steak and bean sprouts. Yum!

This is the woman who cooked our dinner, she did some neat tricks but unfortunately we couldn't get those on camera.
More updates soon!
Tipu

It was time to say goodbye to Jayme's grandpa.  Here we are with Jayme's son looking down at the inside of the airport.

We went down the stairs then so that Jayme's children could ride on some toys, the train was lots of fun.

They also had lots of stores here in case you'd forgotten any souveniers to take home.

Finally we went outside to see some planes. It was very neat. We got to watch a few take off and Jayme's children had fun running around pretending to be airplanes.

On the way home we stopped by one of the playgrounds. We found another train!

Here is the playground, it was lots of fun.

I'm sorry it took so long to update, we've been helping Jayme a lot as she was sick, but we have another update coming soon and then hopefully we can get out (or stay in!) and do something fun!
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
Its been very, very rainy. And a bit hectic as Jayme's boys keep wanting to play! Today the weather cleared up for a few minutes, so we headed to the pool for awhile! Here I am next to the pool. See that slide in the background? Jayme's 2 year old went down it and came out head first, it was really funny.

Me and the other toys rested for awhile on the towel. Next to us is Jayme's husband being silly.

And here we are by the baby pools. They're small ones for the toddlers, very nice.

Hopefully we'll go do more fun stuff soon! The weather forcast says rainy, but we're all crossing our fingers it will be wrong
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
We've had no end to bad luck here! First it was rainy, rainy, rainy. The sun came out and Jayme thought it was very lucky as she and her husband had a date scheduled that day to go ziplining, but then Jayme hurt her back while she was ziplining and has been trying to lay down and give it rest since.  She's still hurting a bit, but can get up and move around much more easily now.  Then the rain started again. Agh! Would we never escape the house? We did get out to go watch Night at the Museum 2, which was a very funny movie!  Unfortunately pictures don't work well in a movie theatre And then finally we woke up one day... and we could almost see the sun through the clouds! Jayme said it was as close to a sunny day as we were going to get, and the kids needed some exercise so out we went.
We ended up at Kurashiki Dam. Here you can see it from the top.

We went on down to get a closer look. The children liked playing in the water here, its only about knee deep on an adult so they can splash and play and its not very dangerous. They also like climbing up and down the little rock waterfall. Its a very popular place in the summer to cool down. Here we are sitting on some rocks in the water.

After awhile we retreated back to the shore. Usually Jayme says they'd sit here and have a picnic, but unfortunately the clouds came back.

We're all hoping the sun comes out to play for a longer time this weekend so we can do something fun!
More updates soon,
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
Jayme was feeling a bit better so off to the pool we went... when she said pool I figured we were going back to the other one we'd gone to, but this one is apparently at a resort here on Okinawa. The resorts will allow you to come in and use their facilities for a day if you buy a day pass. I wondered how nice it could really be, but then when we arrived I was surprised! Of course our first stop was the locker room.

From there off we went to the outdoor pool. It was lots of fun watching the kids splash and have fun.

Then a surprise... there's another pool?! This one was inside, and had two water slides to boot! It was very shallow at the bottom of the slides, so mostly young kids went down. It was very funny to watch their faces when they hit the water.

We went back to the outside pool and took a small break.

At this point Jayme said the kids were getting hungry and it was sadly time to leave so we started making our way toward the exit. We did get to see the beach on the way, though we didn't stop there. Maybe next time?

We also got to see some neat Shisas near the exit. Shisa's are the guardians of Okinawa and you can find them on most homes and businesses. In fact, even Jayme's apartment has some. This one was very neat since it was playing an eisa drum.

More updates soon,
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
We were so excited! We woke up and finally there was some sun, so off we went to the playground near Jayme's house. All this rain has at least been good for the flowers, aren't they pretty?

We had lots of fun at the playground.


We were so worn out we got home and went to rest for awhile. We were going to go back out that afternoon, but oh no... this is what we woke up to.

Its really getting a bit ridiculous. All this rain! Jayme says she wishes we'd just have a typhoon or two and get the rain over with. We were all just sitting around wondering what to do when all of a sudden we heard some barking. We went to investigate and found this very loud little pup over on the DVD shelf near the X-Files dvds. Hm...

He was very insistent asking what the date was and how long he'd been gone and where the aliens were. Huh?! He said he'd gone to find the aliens at Roswell, NM and been abducted and wound up on some strange planet called eBay, tagless and lost. Then a few minutes ago he'd woken up and found himself here. Silly little pup, must be hallucinating.

Maybe we can have some fun around the house since there's not much to do out of it..
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
This rain just won't let up! Yesh. We decided to have some fun inside the house, since we couldn't really go out. We started calmly enough reading a book

But that wasn't really energetic enough, too much energy! We need to get out soon. So we decided to go for a drive.

After we ran over the 3rd little people we gave up on that though and decided another nice calm activity would be better. So we sat in and decided to try to do a puzzle. Geez these pieces are tiny.

No luck... so we went investigating to find another example of a puzzle and found this finished one waiting to be hung up

Much more interesting than the halfway completed one we tried.
I sure hope the rain lets up soon so we can go have some fun,
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
We were very busy for a few days. First our host's husband had to prepare for some special training and we all were helping him pack. He had to pack up all his gear and put it into water tight packing, including extra clothes and what not.


First he had to do swim qualifying with all of his gear on, that's a lot to carry while swimming!  Then he had to go into a contraption that's like the inside of a helicopter and escape blindfolded. We weren't able to go and get pictures, but our host showed us this so we knew what he was up to.

Then of course he had to get out and call Jayme and tell her he was okay because she was quite worried! Since Jayme wanted a bit of a distraction we went off to the zoo for a bit. Its a very small zoo without too many animals, but it was nice to get out a bit and the weather behaved!

They had a viewer here we went to check out

Then we realized we didn't need one. They were having a dodgeball tournament at the zoo. How interesting!

We also got to check out a few statues of animals, and I was beginning to wonder if we'd get to see any animals!

Finally we got to the animals exhibits. They were very anxious, it must've been about feeding time.



We got home to a surprise, Jayme's husband was home safe and sound and just a little wetter for his training. He also had a surprise. He had stopped by the mail on the way home.. and come home with a gift he'd ordered awhile ago for Jayme. Isn't it neat? Its a e-reader made by amazon. Jayme loves reading, and now she can download books whenever she wants. We had some fun checking it out.

Finally, since it was Father's Day in the US we had a bit of a celebration. We had some cake

And the children gave their daddy a nice little poem with their handprints and footprints.

More soon,
Tipu

Dear Mommy,
CoCo Bunny has arrived! He brought some candy to share


Jayme had a babysitter for a day so she told us we were going to have a special outing...hm... We got in the car, and arrived at a place called Sports 1. When we first walked in the entrance there was an electric bull you could try to ride. It was very funny to watch Jayme on it.

After Jayme and her husband fell off a few times we headed up to the top floor, there were tons of sports things here! We started with basketball.

Then we did some archery.

There was soccer too

And a small putting area.

Whew! We got worn out outside so we decided to head in for a bit. It was getting quite hot. We started inside with some darts, it was really fun.

Then we went to a small skating rink.

After that we decided to get a drink from the machine

Then we took a break in one of the lounge massage chairs.

After that it was back for more playing! We headed to the arcade.


We also tried some indoor golf. They had lots of indoor sports games.

Whew! After that we were all worn out and it was time to head home, but we had lots of fun!
More adventures soon,
Tipu