Christmas sunrise over Okinawa City

Merry Christmas! Being 13 hours ahead of the US, I get to experience Christmas "a day early". I was surprised that a lot of the stores in the area have Christmas decorations up and even a few Christmas trees. There's even the occasional Christmas tune playing, mostly instrumental only, and I got to hear a Japanese-language version of "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" in a local supermarket.

This is a snapshot I took from the roof of our hotel here in Okinawa City. The view is mostly a sea of concrete buildings, but you can see the ocean off in the distance. The hotel has a nice roof-top area with picnic tables. Surprisingly, there's no one ever up there.



We're only here for two weeks, so the sensei at the dojo where we are training has offered to teach us every day while we are here - even on the weekends! We do get New Year's day off, though. Given the class schedule, that means I won't likely be posting many photographs from this trip as we won't be doing much site-seeing at all.