Nago, Mars

We rode a bus for 2.5 hours to get to Nago today. The sight of the ocean cheered us, as did the A&W we found for lunch, but our hotel was actually quite a walk from the ocean. Finally around 4pm we found the beach, jumped in and swam until a lifeguard came over seemed to be suggesting we move down to the netted beach area (we found out later that it was jellyfish season), swam some more in the netted beach area, then sat in the park and watched the most amazing sun I have ever seen set over the East China Sea. We met an English speaking guy named Fabrizio and his dog Max from El Salvador, but he seemed to get bored with us after a while (maybe because we wouldn`t ride in his car with him?) and after parting ways we just added him to the long list of things that just seem weird here. The "highly westernized island crawling with Americans" must be some other island, the sparkling resort beach has an awful lot of garbage floating in it, and people either don`t speak English or they don`t want to. Maybe the mysterious island everyone was talking about is Minna-jima. We will look for it tomorrow. Anyway, I enjoyed the sunset and floating in the ocean. The dead pufferfish was interesting, and Max was adorable. It could be worse, we could have been waiting to "go to the island," then found out there was no island and we were really being grown as a source of spare organs for rich people that want to live forever, and then be hunted down by gunmen and evil scientists trying to protect their evil island secret.

I will go to sleep now. One other different thing about Okinawa -- the mosquitos like me here. There were only a few mosquitos in Maebashi that liked American food, but they think I`m great here.