Yet another fine day in paradise.

Well, since everyone we know is currently snowed in and otherwise freezing in the less tropical parts of the globe, we decided to go out exploring and, of course, go to the beach. Several beaches, actually. We also hit up one of the local Japanese restaurants, which I will get to in a minute.

First, some pictures from our excursion...

View of part of the island from up on a hill...
Windsurfers - I am SO trying this while we're here...
A map. A map that told me precisely NOTHING, because I am still Japanese-illiterate...
A sign at one of the beaches. I, of course, do not read Japanese, so I can only go by the picture. I assume that this sign is indicating that this particular beach is a good place to find and play with jellyfish:
I still can't believe we freaking LIVE here:
At one of the beaches, the rocks were actually lava flows instead of coral. It was also covered in little tiny snails. All of those little specks on the picture below? Snails.

Told you they were tiny:
I figured that a beach full of itty bitty snails was the perfect place to start playing around with my Macro lens, which I bought eons ago but have barely used. I love it:

We also swung into a hotel parking lot because it had an awesome view of the island. While we were there, we found this guy next to the hotel door, and he was SUCH a little ham:


There are two explanations for this picture:
The photographer in me though it was a badass abstract image of some architecture, interesting perspective, etc.

The third grader in me though it looked like a stack of butt cracks.

After we finished driving around, we went to an incredible restaurant, one whose doorway we will likely be darkening MANY times during our stay here. It's a combination buffet and one of those places where they cook the food in front of you, except you cook it yourself. So we helped ourselves to various slabs of uncooked meat, bowls of soba noodles, and oodles of rice. I loved the place. Freaking awesome. The perfect end to an amazing day except for one tiny little detail...

...my ill-timed glance at my husband, just in time to see him shove half of an octopus into his mouth.

Pass the brain bleach, folks...