Preston's Flat Stanley Traveled to Okinawa

Hi Friends at Eastern Wayne Elementary School,

I am in Okinawa Japan having a great visit with Barbi Knowles and her family.  We have been busy and I have seen many things.   I’m soooooo tired!  After all, Okinawa is 13 hours ahead of you in North Carolina.  Okinawa has the second largest aquarium in the world and it is amazing but I missed it because I arrived a day after my host family visited it.  Here is a picture of it:

Okinawa is a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean.  It is 67 miles long and between 2 and 17 miles wide.  It is beautiful here and warm most of the year.

 Here I am sun bathing on a huge leaf.    


 Below I am in a sugar cane field.  It is the beginning of the growing season for sugar cane so it is not very big right now.  Okinawan sugar cane is delicious—or “oishi” as they say here.

 

I didn’t stick around the sugar cane too long as it is known to be the home of poisonous snakes!

As we traveled around the island, I saw many interesting things.  It is an Okinawan tradition to place two “shishi” dog statues at the gate of homes to protect them.  Here I am posing with one:

 There is another Shishi dog here...

Kids take Bento boxes to school as lunch boxes.  Bento boxes always contain cold rice and sometimes have bite-sized pieces of meat, fish, eggs, tofu, fruit or vegetables.  Adults eat these also when they take a lunch with them or they can stop at small shops and buy them.  Here is a picture of a bento box.

 I had the best fun on a trip we took across the island.  Here I am climbing a banana tree.

 

Also I noticed that there are a lot of vending machines here.  You can buy a lot of different things in the vending machines like lemon tea, melon soda, sports drinks, cold or hot coffee, and more. Some of the machines play music after you put your money in.  Some vending machines have snacks, comic books, ice cream, and even music CDs!

 

Eeeeeeeek!!!  Okinawa has some very big spiders!!!  Here is a picture of one (its dead) and you can see how big he is.  If his legs were straightened out he would be almost 6 inches across! 

Here is a walking stick we found on the door.  They also have centipedes, cockroaches, and geckos here.  

 

But the best critter I met was a furry black dog named Coco.  We became fast friends.

Here is a picture of one of the beautiful beaches on Okinawa.

 

I miss you all and can’t wait to get back to E.W.E. to see all my friends.

                        Love, Stanley