OKINAWA- Golden Week.

Finally the time came for our holiday to Okinawa. Golden week is an annual holiday in Japan which almost everyone has, its either a very long weekend of its during the week. We decided to make the most of Golden week and venture out of Nagasaki to the Japanese Island, Okinawa, which is quite far south near Taiwan, it is here that Karate was originated. I packed my bags after work on tuesday, basically every item i had in my wardrobe i packed because i couldn't decide what to take and what to leave! I had treated myself to lots of summer clothes, crop tops, skirts etc for our trip so i was excited to wear them all!! We set off on wednesday morning on the bus to Fukuoka airport which was about 2 hours away and we arrived at the airport with just enough time to catch some breakfast! Our plane to Naha airport in Okinawa was painted like a shark it was rather cool!

The plane was just under two hours and it was a rather bumpy ride, it was quite a dull, drizzly day when we arrived. By the time we had arrived at our hostel, Hamby Resort, in a town called Chatan-cho, two hours away from the capital Naha it was almost 5pm. The hostel we were staying in was actually really good, it provided free rice, eggs and cooking spices. There was free shampoo and accessories in the bathrooms as well as free bicycle hire and it was only around about £60 for 4 nights! We settled into our room which was rather cute with bunkbeds and we also had another woman staying in our room. She was called Vanessa from Spain and was really lovely. Nearby there was an American village as there is a US military base in the town near. It had lots of good shops and many restuarants, western ones as well as Japanese. The first night we all went out for dinner to this small place which had the most beautiful view of the beach and ocean. It was a good start to the holiday. 

The next day, was warm but rather cloudy but he headed to the beach to sunbathe. The beach is absolutely gorgeous and the water is soo blue! Lucy and i went on a large inflatable sofa which was pulled around by a jet-ski, it was incredibly fun and rather scary at the same time! The sun looking incredibly strange this day, it had a rainbow ring around it, ive never seen it before. Me being silly, thought i wouldnt get burnt because it was rather cloudy and i didnt appear to be in the sun at all- big mistake. As the day went on my sunburn slowly started developing even though we left the beach after an hour. I think it was probably the worst i have ever been burnt, i was in soo much pain i couldnt sleep that night. When i had been lying on the beach my phone was on my stomach, so i had a phone shape on my stomach.. not cool. Unfortunately i could wear any of my lovely crop tops i had bought! Alot of suncream was purchased the next day along with a huge tub of moisturiser( or so i was to discover a week later, it is actually make up remover). 

The next day we headed to the beach this time i was fully clothed and sat with towels covering me, not a good look in 27degree heat. We looked around the american village alot at all the shops and i treated myself to some new leggings and rather ridiculously sized high heels, they are gorgeous though! Lucy and i went on a rubber ring each pulled by a jet-ski , it was even more terrifying than the inflatable sofa. The minute we started i got salt water in my eyes and couldnt open them so i spent the next 15 minutes of the ride absolutely terrified with no idea what was going on just being thrown about covered in water. Later on in the day, the guys who ran the water sports came to find us and asked if we wanted a free ride on the banana boat, mainly because they were bored i think and they wanted to take it out. They told us the aim was to make us fall off into the water and unfortunately it worked. More salt water in the eyes and a large mouthful was consumed, not nice. 

For the next day we had booked para-sailing, i had never done anything like this before so i was pretty scared. We had decided even if we spent all of our money we were going to have a good time. It was incredibly scary, the guy didnt speak english so he just put the safety harness on us and the next thing i know we were half way up in the sky attached to a parachute. The view was absolutely gorgeous, we were up there for about 10 minutes and after a couple of minutes i started to worry about how we were getting down. I was slightly scared that they were just going to dunk us in the water, but we had a safe landing back on the boat without going in the water! It was a good experience. 

Okinawa is an absolutely beautiful island and i hope to visit it again one day too see more of it. By the time our trip had finished i was glad to be back to my own bed as i was extremely grumpy from the lack of sleep i had. The noise from the other people staying in the hostel, combined with my horrible sunburn meant i didnt get more than a couple hours sleep over the 5 days and i cannot deal with no sleep! I took alot more photos but i cannot upload them all to here, again they are all on my facebook page!  https://www.facebook.com/chloe.aaa/photos