No Stoppin' Now | USA's 2008 Paralympic Silver Medalist

(Also see Part I.)

One interesting place we went to while in Okinawa was the island aquarium. There were so many creatures and creepy-crawly things in the tanks. Many of the people on our team were picking up some of the creatures like the star fish and the sea cucumber. I didn’t want to hold any of these things at first, but I gave in. The star fish was huge. It was probably the size of a medium sized nerf football. The texture was rough feeling. As for the sea cucumber, it was slimy feeling. It seemed as though it didn’t have any stability; it just lay helpless in my hand. There was another tank with whale sharks in it. The whale sharks were huge.

There’s one reptile that you don’t want to encounter and that’s the habu snake. These snakes are deadly, and supposedly, if you get bitten by one and you don’t die, they’ll send you away from the island for good. That sounds brutal. All in all, there are a good number of animals that you don’t want to meet up with.

When I think of Japan, though, I actually think of deadly animals that can strike once and kill any human. Let’s be glad that I’m staying on the base and these creatures are not prominent on the base. That’s the end of my National Geographic episode.

Okay, this is going to sound odd, but the McDonald’s over here are better than the ones at home. The food is made to order so it’s always hot and it’s not as greasy. It truly tastes like a clean burger. That’s still not an excuse to eat it all of the time, but it’s funny that theirs is better than ours. This is all my opinion though. Others may think that I’m crazy, but I love to eat so my opinion stands strong!

Yesterday was our last night in Japan. We had a banquet to send us off. The food was very good as usual. The attendees were the track & field and swimming teams and everyone’s sponsor so it was a pretty big crowd. I had a chance to experience some true Japanese song and dance. There were young children who put on a little routine where they played their drums to Japanese music. It was a different experience, but they did well. I liked it a lot. After the banquet, we all left and went back to our rooms to get ready for the most important part of our trip, heading to Beijing!

If you have any questions about Japan or anything, leave a comment on my blog and I’ll respond to them all. Keep looking out for any new information and posts too.