I'm in ur tomb, steelin ur pottery.

Okay, this is a combo blog from a previous trip to the beach and our wanderings from today. I was too lazy to upload the pics from the other trip until now. But...here they are.

First, a trip to the beach at Camp Courtney, which is the Marine base not far from our apartment. And there, we found this sign:
So naturally, we continued past it...and found this:
I know. Exciting, right? Actually, it is pretty cool. That looks like benign grass or something, but it's not. The fuzzy feathery things you see actually contain a potent chemical called Kodoshi. It can be a deadly toxin (it was once employed by ninjas, but even they found it too dangerous at times) or an aphrodisiac, depending upon how it's prepared and used. We are emphatically warned not to even touch this plant, and never to buy the aphrodisiac version except directly from the Kodoshi masters. It's that deadly if prepared incorrectly. Pretty cool, huh?*

Now, onto pics of the beach:
And some obligatory wave porn:
And the footprints of some very busy birdies:
Today we pointed the car in a somewhat northerly direction, intending to go up to Cape Hedo, but it was an arctic 65 degrees, so we settled on turning around a few miles north of Nago.

We stopped at a little rest stop/breakwater thingy, where Eddie decided to ruin one of my pictures:
So I shoved him off the breakwater and was free to take pics of this lovely Shi Shi dog:
Then we wandered down a little side street and found this closed-off tunnel. We probably shouldn't be there, so naturally, we went there...
In spite of its security cameras and otherwise sekrit swkirrel appearance, it was rather dull and boring. So we went back to the parking lot, where we found this creative excuse for an ashtray:
We also found a cool little beach next to a bridge. Here's the bridge:
Exciting, isn't it? That's a 15th century bridge built under the orders of one of the emperors. The one who was ultimately shoved to his death from the top of Katsuren Castle, if I recall. It has since been retrofitted with street lights and other such modernizations, but otherwise, it is exactly as it was centuries ago**.

Look! A tiny little island:
Now, as with many places on Okinawa, the bushes surrounding this lovely beach had quite a few tombs and shrines in them. Such as this one:
That's as close as I was going to get to said tomb. It is considered highly disrespectful for us to enter or disturb them, so we always keep our distance. So, instead of molesting the tombs, we wandered closer to the water.

And on the tidal flat, I found this:
Upon closer inspection, not only was it intact, it was actually pretty neat:
So I rinsed out all the silt and took it home. Knowing my luck, this was a vase placed in one of the nearby tombs, and was knocked out into the mud by wind, rain, ghosts, or David Hasselhoff. Taking it with me will probably anger the spirits and I will find myself haunted by creatures reminiscient of The Ring, The Grudge, and Barney until I bring this little vase back to this hidden beach and leave it half-buried for the next stupid tourist to find.

But, for the time being, I have a nifty little vase on my dining room table, and it didn't cost me nearly as much as the pair of tri-colored jade Shi Shi dogs I bought during one of our stops (pics to come...forgot to photograph them).

Next week, God only knows which way we'll point the car, what kind of mischief we'll cause, and how we'll tempt the spirits. Stay tuned.

* Everything in that paragraph is complete and utter bullshit.
** This one too.