Yesterday afternoon, Shannon, Jon, Felicia, Cullin, Kailyn and myself all left for Okuma, Japan. We made a stop at Kadena Marina so I could get my two air cylinders filled and pickup two additonal tanks. Once my tanks were topped off we headed off onto the open road. What we originally thought was going to be an open road, actually turned out to be a traffic nightmare! I hopped out of the Toyota Town Ace and smoked a cigarette while walking. To my suprise, my slow stroll with a cigarette was more than five times the pace the van was originally moving at. Traffic was nearly entirely stopped.

Once we arrived in Okuma I suited up and decided to go on a solo dive on the North end of the resort near some cliffs. I was astonished and very disappointed to find out that there was nothing there to see. The water was murky and far from clear, the current had picked up tremendously since our last visit and the fish were no where to be found. Most of the reasons for the horrible dive was because of T.C.C.O.R. which is a typhoon warning system here on the island. The waves however were enormous!

After packing my gear back up and walking back to the suite, we ate dinner. After dinner, we visited the resort bar and had drinks. I ordered a Vodka and tonic and it was only $1.90 or something similar. I couldn’t believe how affordable the drinks were in this place, I am used to paying $5.50 back home and up to 1,000Y or more here in Japan. I will definately say that the prices were a huge perk.

After drinks, Jon and I strolled down the beach and jumped in the wicked waves. We played in the waves for a bit before we decided to go get more to drink, hah.

This afternoon after we ate breakfast and got dressed, we left for Hiji Falls. Hiji falls are pretty large waterfalls that feed into the Hiji river on Okinawa. The falls are tucked deep within the super humid jungle like environment around the island. It took Felicia and myself almost a hour to hike our way through the wilderness to the falls. The trail to the falls is well maintained, however, there are nearly 10,000 steps I assure! We were constantly climbing 10 flights of stars straight up, super steep, just to climb back down on the other side.

Once we arrived at the waterfalls we took some photographs, ducked into the water and rested. It was an interesting hike, the most physical activity we have performed since we’ve been on this rock. I thoroughly enjoyed it, however, I was definiately now dressed or suited to go hiking, but we made do with what we had.

I’m going to go ahead and let everyone in on some current weather news here.  We are in TCCOR-2, which means we can expect a typhoon within the next 24 hours.  It just went TC2 so that means tomorrow I am going to be stuck, doing nothing.  The current expectations from the Japanese weather center on the web is winds in excess of 100knots.  That is about 130mph I think.  The winds are absolutely crazy in typhoons, moreless a hurricane, just on the opposite side of the country.  But don’t you worry — I’m excited about it!

That is all (had to add that blockquote in, after I wrote the original article, added: GMT+8:00 @ 5:49PM)