Kurashiki Dam

“I don’t know . . .”


“Oh come on Elon.”



Kurashiki Dam is located near Gate #3 of Kadena Air Base. To get there you have to pass Western World, Southeast Botanical Gardens, and a fairly big, fairly stinky land-fill of decomposing trash. At first glance, I thought the land-fill was a mountain being mined for coal. When we actually got next to it, it had what looked like plastic bags hanging off of it. In the pictures you can see its black in the inside.

You can see an aerial view of Kurashiki Dam here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Kurashiki_Dam_Japan.jpg

But the place we went to was a little play area. It had a big pond with a bunch of stones and big rocks. You can build your own dam; or it seemed that way with all the rocks. But unfortunately we didn’t take pictures of the little dams other people built or the one we decided to build at the last moment. However, we took pictures of other things this time. There were thousands of snails released by the mini waterfall, created by the damn. We were having soooo much fun. They even have a little museum with some things in English. It tells about the dam and what used to be there. We didn’t have time to take a good look, I did however take a skim through the info corner. Apparently a village was there before they built the dam. I can’t quite remember the name or if it was listed. But next time we go there I’ll blog about the history of the dam.

After a dip in the water, we enjoyed some sweet スイカ (watermelon). That is Japanese Katakana pronounced sue-ee-kah. We cleaned up the suika rinds and walked towards the bridge by the river. They’re were little tunnels under the bridge. Kemet was the one who thought of going under them first, though he was scared. So he told se-se to and se-se--being the bravest of them all--went first. She was praised by mommy, and Kemet coming from her lead, was praised as well. I was too scared, so I held back initially. In the end, I had my shining moment and went under the smallest tunnel first. Though technically speaking, it was the rock I threw across the 2 inch high water that actually went first. I was given a pretend trophy that was a yellow flower. I made my big dramatic speech and was on my way. We started building our dam after that. That was a really fun day. I’ll remember that day for the rest of my life. I’ll remember all my days here in Okinawa for the rest of my life.