This is a traditional Okinawan family tomb, though this one seems to belong to a rather well to do family. Most tomb faces are built smaller and are built into naturally occurring small caves.

Sugar cane Fields surrounded by sharp vegetation covered hills, in the northern agricultural area.

This is probably my favorite picture taken in Okinawa, and one of my Favorite Beaches. It is also along the Pacific Ocean.

Shortly before I was given new orders for Ft. Huachuca Arizona I went on a 4 day trip with several friends and coworkers to Yoron Island. Its a remote island off the northern tip of Okinawa and is traveled to by ferry. The Island is fairly small, small enough that the resort we were staying at rents bicycles to its patrons for a leisurely way to go sightseeing. Shortly after we had arrived several of us decided to rent some of the bicycles and go find what there was to see. we rode around for a while, and ended up peddling our way up to the top of this hill you see here to have a look at these old ruins and to climb a tower that offered a view of the entire island. When we were finished looking around we decided to head back down the hill and go back to the resort. Well as everyone knows going downhill on a bike is much faster than uphill, I was costing along just fine and was moving a little faster than some of the others and as this is Okinawa everyone is on the left side of the road. As I am coming up behind someone I move over to the left to go around him because he is in the middle of the lane, seems like a normal thing to do right? well as I am up to his back tire he decides that he wants to come over and does so before I can react to slow down. The side of his back tire collides with my front tire and we both go down. He gets flung down the middle of the road, and I get flipped head over heals and land with by back against a concrete curb. He gets a mean case of road-rash on his forearms and I get a broken left clavicle. Now at the time I don't know that its broken but I'm pretty suspicious, I huts like the dickens, Is misshaped, and I get stabs of pain anytime I try to move my shoulder. There isn't but one way back to the resort and that is still by bicycle so I climb back on the bike and with one arm steer the bicycle back to the resort. By the next day the pain hadn't subsided and I knew I wouldn't be able to ride a bike effectively so I asked one of my friends if he waned to rent one of the scooter/moped things I'd split it with him and we could get around the island faster. So that is how I got around the second day, while undoubtedly less painful than trying to ride a bicycle it still caused a great deal of pain with every little bump, but even so this was a four day pass and I was not about to sit around and do nothing at the resort all day. The third and fourth days that we were there we were supposed to go scuba diving, I tried putting my equipment on but just couldn't bear the weight and pressure it put on my shoulder so I had to sit the diving trips out and find other things to do. The forth day was a short day as we were taking the ferry back in the early afternoon so I spent that day mostly laying around the beach and swimming one arm-idly. Unfortunately I didn't get many pictures of the island because I also broke my camera lens which made me angrier than anything else about the fall; camera lenses wont heal themselves. After the ferry had taken us back to the Island of Okinawa, I had the friend I was riding with swing me by the emergency room just to check and see if I had broken anything and to pick up some pain killers. Well sure enough I had and when they asked when I had done it and how, I had to relate to him that it was 3 days before and riding a bicycle and that I hadn't come in before because I was not about to come in off my 4 day pass just because I might have broken something. The doctor didn't give me any pain killers.

Yoron Island. One of the things that caught my eye about these houses is that they are western style.

Yoron Island

End of 1999, year 2000 celebration at the Ocean Expo Park.

Hedo Point, the northern most point of the Island of Okinawa, the Pacific Ocean, and East China Sea meet here.

Ft. Bukner, The communication station I worked at for two years while in Okinawa.