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the marine playground

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Our day began like this. It was the first sunny morning for us.

This was the marine playground at the hotel where we stayed in Okinawa. It doesn't look like much but it was a blast. The trick is that half the stuff you see either spins or is somehow else unstable. You set foot on that, you're going in the water. We spent the morning horsing around on this thing, or just swimming in the enclosed section.

In the afternoon, we went snorkeling from a boat managed by the hotel's staff. The corals were in surprisingly good shape despite the heavy human presence in the area. I would say they were in better shape than the Great Barrier Reef when I saw it 20+ years ago, and certainly better than the Caribbean twenty-five years ago. Right after our hour-long splash, we went with another boat to try parasailing. It was a blast, if terrifying.

For dinner we went for "taco rice", an Okinawan import/specialty. The place we went to told us that they'd make up two tables for two, but after forty minutes we wound up leaving to find something else. It's one of the odd things about Japan is that when they don't want to tell you bad news, they'll just tell you something that's not true.