Hi!



So yeah, I'm back!
And first of all we need to celebrate because now I've officially been to
ALL 47 JAPANESE PREFECTURES!!!!!!!!




Unfortunately I was EXTREMELY unlucky with the weather (again).
Almost all 16 days were quite bad. My first days in Saga Prefecture I spent out in the cold snowstorm and from there it was strong winds and rain the whole time.


Remember how much I was hoping to get at least 1 or 2 sunny days on Okinawa?? :( ...
Well, I didn't.
What's more is that everything went wrong. Because of the strong winds the ferry we wanted to take got canceled. (we = asahifirsa and me)
We spent the whole day at the airport running from one airline to another, calling hotels, rental car companies etc. ....
There were no flights to that island available anymore as it was the end of the year. We had such a hard time rescheduling everything and it ended up to cost much more money than planned as we had to cancel / change all the hotels, some flights, the rental car(s) and so on.
It was really pretty bad. ......

I doubt that there are any good photos. I didn't take that many photos anyways!
I think you've seen some on Instagram already and because I didn't have time to look through my photos yet, I'm just gonna share a few of my Instagram photos instead for now. I apologize for that.





Once we arrived on the small islands the weather was still bad .... and nothing much you could do in bad weather there.
I guess if I were alone at that time, I would have gone crazy!!! Luckily I wasn't! ^^; .....






Yet Okinawa was GREAT!!!!!!!
I really fell in love with Okinawa although I've only been to three islands. I definitely want to go again and explore some more (hopefully next time with better weather!).

Especially on the main island there were a lot of Americans (of course) and Chinese tourists. I didn't meet any European tourists at all.
I got to eat a lot of delicious food!
And it was great to see how many plants and animals there were that you can't find anywhere else in Japan!









New Year's Eve was nice, too.
We spent the evening in the famous Kokusaidori in Naha, shopping, ate Okinawa food while watching Kohaku and were surprised when the sound of the temple bells suddenly faded as there were fireworks! It was a nice surprise! ^-^

On Kumejima - a really small island in Okinawa - we met another blogger who has been living in Okinawa for quite a few years now.
It was a pleasure to meet him! He even cooked delicious food for us!
Check out his blog about Japan and Kumejima: MoreThingsJapanese
He has also published a book called "Samurai Awakening".

I also got to see a lot of castle ruins so I might have 100 castles on my list now, but I really don't know until I sit down and actually count! ^-^; ....















Well, that's it for now!
Actually there's so much more to tell you, but I really have TONS of other things to do.
My blog is almost dying. I haven't had time to post anything in ages. I have millions and millions of photos to look through since last summer vacation. I need to renew my work visa this month.
I just bought a car navi, so hopefully I can explore the prefecture I'm living in now a bit more by car (after my "travel hiatus" until March).

It was really a crazy, busy year. Can't remember that I've ever been so busy before!
Especially since November when my family came to visit, I barely had any breaks at all. I need to make sure my body gets some good rest, but I also need to get back into blogging!

Hope you're all doing fine out there!
Bye~chuu!~