ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

My father-in-law's pride and joy is his garden. He has carefully crafted a plant paradise in his own backyard. Every time I would visit he would proudly show off his colorful assortment of fruit trees. He would pick a peach or blueberry right off the tree and have me taste it. His love of gardening inspired me to one day grow my own fruit trees! I haven't had the home space to grow fruit trees yet but one day I will! Anything worth having is worth waiting for!   

I am a relatively new wanna-be vegan (about two years plus). I am 98% whole foods plant based, known in the twitterverse as WFPB. However, living in Japan makes it almost impossible to be fully vegan. Why did I go full-on boho granola-fest? For ethical reasons? Unlike most on this path - nope. Now I am not a monster - factory farms and the inhumane conditions of animals I do NOT support at all - but it's not my primary reason for switching over from being keto (which I was hardcore a proponent of for about a year) to what I am now.

I didn't need a movie like The Game Changers (Really great! Now on Netflix) to persuade me to make the switch - I honestly saw the benefits in how my body felt. Keto is great for weight loss, but it doesn't make you feel good after a while. When you are deep into keto, you do everything with fats in mind. To the point of adding butter or coconut oil in your coffee an blending it up thinking it is gonna benefit your livelihood, uhhh, no.

So, spring and summer were also rolling around. And as a keto-er at that time, 98% of fruit is evil! Haha I can't believe I used to think this way for a whole year! At the end of my keto journey, I took a bite into an apple..it was game over after that! So as I started to eat more food that needs refrigeration and not stocked in a box (now THAT is evil!) it all started to make sense and my body thanked me, still does. Anyway this all ended up in me becoming what I am now. A flexi-vegan I dubbed it. So as I eat my 98% of veggies tonight and 2% shrimp, I am happy with my resolve. Japan, thank you for putting fish in juuuust about everything. I wouldn't be where I am today without you.  

We paid for a tour bus to take us around Okinawa. It took us around the cliffside, castle ruins, aquarium park, and Pinapple park.

The cliffside was where I first got a look at that blue water. It looked soooo nice! I wanted to find a beach and get in the water. The castle ruins were quite interesting. I actually found myself trying to imagine what the castle looked like. It was so old. The aquarium was nice, but we went through it too fast. I got some wonderful pictures of the whale sharks. My best one is overhead, in a tunnel.

I think I like the Osaka aquarium more, because they have more exhibits. But the whale shark exhibit IS breathtaking.

We didn't have time to see the rest of the area where the aquarium is. That was a shame, because there was a planetarium, food and dancing, and a BEACH! I was quickly becoming obsessed with the water.