I just wanna cuddle every dang little kitty I see. I think they're the most adorable little critters there are... well... I like baby ducks too...
My daughter took me for my first visit to a cat café. They had a variety of purebred kittens and to feed them treats cost about $11 for 10 minutes. If you buy the day pass, it's about $20. People refreshments were gratis, but no outside food allowed. Instant friendship, as long as the treats held out.
Isn't it fun to see how people on the other side of the planet do things we'd never thought of, but seem like fun.
Oh, boy, howdie! While very different in many ways, Okinawa is small and there are lots of Americans here. You can still find a rare place that serves only Japanese, but most businesses sport signage in English as well as Japanese and many of the people speak enough English to do business with us.
I noticed that almost all the houses have grates or bars on the windows, even several floors up. I was puzzled because Japan is notorious for being relatively crime free, clean, and polite. Daughter told me that those are there to prevent typhoon damage. A lot of buildings look like concrete bunkers and have flat roofs. I'm guessing they don't have to shed a lot of snow?
I have to confess the day you left I went over to the Earthquake page at USGS, and I'm not sure where, but off the coast of one of Japan's remote islands there was a 4.something quake a hundred miles out. I can't bear to look anymore, but sending up a little prayer that all will be well while you're there. When I was active in my quilt business in Wyoming, one of my favorite quilt fabric suppliers had their cotton quilt fabrics spun and printed in the northern areas of Japan, and one day, the entire city was flattened by an earthquake. Think there were close to a million people there, but most made it through. Right on the shoreline, though, people had homes, and about ten thousand got washed out to sea. That's why if I ever went there it would be a short and sweet trip. Their fabrics were so terribly beautiful, I loved it when the Hoffman boxes arrived from CA, where they were sent to. Not only was it beautiful, it was just good fabric, it needled well, and was so totally lovely in every way.. Well, fortunately a small town doesn't sell fabrics very quickly, so in less than 6 months, they recuperated, rebuilt, spun and printed fabrics every bit as beautiful as before. Only one shop has them around here, but it's 50 miles west of here, so I only go there a couple of times a year. Our local shop has a few bolts from time to time, but styles change, and I like the prints that you can still see on a 1" postage stamp sized fabric, because I do a lot of fine work, but all on the machine.
Those folks get right back up, dust themselves off and start all over again. Kudos to a lovely people there in Japan. And I hope you have the time of your life for the duration of your stay there.