A Little Meeting, Farming and Shopping!

 Our last full day in Japan started off with an exhibition of the Japanese products that used EM-1.  There were a lot of neat things to look at and a lot of strange things too.  We had a meeting with the partners in South Korea about possibly carrying one of our products in their market.  That was kind of cool.

The Americans are pretty easy to spot!

 

After the short 2 hrs of meetings and networking we all got ready to go out for a little more sight seeing and a lot of shopping!  This is our TeraGanix group plus our new friend, William from Belize.

I had a chance to run across the street to say Hi/Goodbye to our good friend Shuichi.  He is such a fun guy!  

While Mom waited for me to get back from visiting Shuichi, she found a snail crawling up the hotel sign.  It deserved it's own picture.  :)

Our first stop was to visit the EM Farm, AKA Sunshine Farm.  They grew lettuce, papaya, celery and had some chickens and pigs.  The cool thing about the animals was that they did not stink at all and there were no flies.  

And of coarse I would notice the head growers boots.  They were kind of like the five finger shoes but only for the big toe.  

Here's a better picture of the the grower.  He was a really nice man.  He was explaining that they fed the chickens fermented food scraps from the hotel where we stayed.  They mixed the food scraps with bokashi.  This is also what they would feed the pigs.

Mom and Dad at the Sunshine Farm

Our next stop was an old Okinawan house.  It had a really neat history.  The family who built the house worked for a Lord.  The Lord was summoned by the King (whose castle we visited the second day) to move his castle and family over to this location.  The owners of this house worked for the Lord as a teacher.  When the Lord was overtaken, this family lost their standing in society until one of the men was appointed to a governor like position.  While this house reflects the style of homes for the Okinawans over many centuries it does not reflect the average living standard.  This would be considered a very upper class family.

The Pig sty - which was located less than 25 feet from the kitchen.

 The picture to the right is of the kitchen, which opened to look directly into the horse and cow stalls.  They must have had little horses back in the day! 

 

After our bit of history and lunch at a famous Okinawan Noodle Restaurant, we were off to find some souvenirs.  I think Keith's most prized find of the day was Dr. Pepper.  We all agreed it tasted pretty good!

Keith described the shopping center we spent four hours in as the Okinawan version of Canton.  There were ally ways, lots of ppl and a lot of crap.  Ha!  But we did find some really awesome stuff that was not crap.  I am pretty excited to show the girls what we got them.

 

We ended our day at a Japanese Steakhouse.  I was a bit skeptical of any of the restaurants we had been too but this one was by for the best.  The food was awesome and the chef was amazing to watch.  We were glad we decided to go and not bail out to sleep!  It was by far the best food we had had all week.

Our last full day in Okinawa has come to an end.  It has been a lot of fun and we are glad we stepped out of our comfort zone to come experience a new culture.  We are anxious to get back home to see our girls!  One 2 plane rides and 15+ hrs in the sky!