Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium / 오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

If you wanted a great place to kill a whole day, then the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the place to go. It is located up in the northern area of the island and you can take the express all the way until it ends at the 58, however it will still take about an hour to get up there, depending on the traffic. I have a Google map link that will take you to the parking area number 7, which is the closest covered parking area to the actual aquarium, and it is free to park! It is also free to roam around the park grounds and to see the dolphin show, but you just have to pay to get in the aquarium. There is plenty to see and if you have kids, they should be exhausted by the time you leave. The place is stroller friendly and I highly recommend you bring one to cart kids and stuff around. Oh, and don’t forget the sunscreen, since most of the park is out in the open. I have the English and Korean park guides here for reference, which has all the fees, show details, and maps. One more thing, you can save a few bucks by buy the tickets at places like Family Mart. Just look at the signs at the stores you frequent, chances are you will see a picture of the aquarium, which will most likely mean they sell the discounted tickets there. It is pretty common, so just look around or ask someone. Enjoy!

Google Map Link: http://goo.gl/maps/pBi6p

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium 

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

오키나와 츄라 우미 수족관

Okinawa Zoo & Wonder Museum

Are you looking for a good place to kill at least a half-day with your youngsters? Then the Okinawa Zoo & Museum is where you want to go! It is literally about 10 minutes (depending on traffic), out Gate 2 from Kadena AB. This place is totally geared for children, with some kid rides, wide open areas for them to run around, and plenty of kid friendly food. Now that the weather is starting to get nice, we decided to check it out one afternoon, and we felt like it was time well spent, even our 1yr enjoyed it. She actually enjoyed it so much I think, she was out like a light before we even got to close to Gate 2 back on Kadena AB!

Well here are some of the practical stuff…the place is more a less stroller friendly, however I seriously suggest you bring one regardless. There is no place you can’t get to with a stroller, and they do have elevators strategically placed to get by stair access points. I do want to note that this place is actually pretty big, with plenty of HILLS to transverse throughout the park. You will get a pretty good workout carting your kids around, that is for sure! Admission is cheap and much of the food and trinkets are cheap as well. There are plenty of activities that are geared for kids, like a petting zoo, fish feeding areas, and just plain wide-open spaces for them to run around in circles. Even though this time of the year is probably just the beginning of the visiting season for this place, there were a lot of kids there, so I can only imagine it will get more busy from here on out. I did notice they had stations for kids throughout the park, which looked like they had fun games and information for them, but it was all in Japanese though.

As far as the zoo goes, I think all the animal cages have the English names of the animals on them, but everything else will be in Japanese. Like most other “zoos” that we have visited here on the island, the animal cages are not 5-star by any means, but they looked clean and give good vantage points to see most of the animals. We didn't go by the museum, since we figured our 1yr wouldn't get much out of it anyways.

Well getting there is super easy, you can Google “Okinawa zoo” and Google maps should get you there. I also grabbed the English handouts, which has the address and the pricing on it for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Okinawa Zoo & Museum English Flier 

Okinawa Zoo & Museum English Map 

Okinawa Zoo & Museum Japanese

Dependent travel out/in of Okinawa

***UPDATED*** 3-Feb-16

So…if your dependents want to fly out on a commercial flight out of Japan, their better have their SOFA entry/re-entry stamps in their passports before they try to go! We learned this the hard way when they tried get checked in for their flight. But some background first…when we landed on Kadena AB via the Patriot Express, my Korean wife and our little girl got SOFA entry stamps put in their passports right there in the terminal. Cool, press on. Well fast forward a month later, and the wife is off to Korea via JinAir (way cheap by the way!) to show off our little girl to her family, since they haven’t seen her in person yet. In preparation of this trip, I knew they needed their passports and I figured they got their “stamp” when we got here, so they should be good to go. Wrong! They need more stamps in there, in particular the SOFA re-entry stamp. This allows them to come and go from Japan without having to get a visa every time and what not. BUT I didn’t even think to ask someone about any of that, because well…I thought I had it all figured out for their travel! I even read the fine print on her plane ticket purchase, which stated that the credit card used to purchase the ticket online, MUST be presented at check-in(she doesn’t normally carry that card on her). I got you JinAir! But nice try though, because this flight is going to go super smooth because I “prepare” more than most people do, so HA! So as we make our way to the Naha airport, we hit a ton of traffic, and that extra buffer of time I gave us basically was wasted on Hwy 58. Luckily, my “preparedness” basically kept them from missing their flight completely, and was not used to enjoy a relaxed send off like I planned. So we get to the check-in counter of JinAir and I give them their passports and even that credit card before they even asked, and they were impressed (not really)! But then I noticed the clerk fumbling through their passports, like she was looking for something and not finding it. Well I figure she is having an issue finding the “stamp” that is clearly in there, and I point it out to her. Then she tells me that is not the right stamp and I clearly stated that it is indeed the stamp she is looking for, because there are no others in there that we got when we got here. This of course is around the time we were approaching 30 mins from the flight actually leaving, the baby was starting to get fussy because we haven’t moved around for some time, and the wife was starting to give me the look that said, “I am getting on that plane no matter what!” Well, one of the supervisor comes by and presents us a book with a image of what the stamp is supposed to look like, and low and behold, it doesn’t look like anything they got in their passports. And now we are all just staring at each other as the clock is just ticking along, but the other numerous travelers on that flight are checking in easy breezy all around us; well they must have their stamps then! Well, it is super rare for me to be caught in these types of situations, so I started asking what are we going to do. We can’t just stand here staring at each other! So they asked me if I had copies of my PCS orders on me, and if I did, we could get through immigration here and on the flight. Well of course I do, I have stacks of copies, but back in my house on Kadena AB! Now we are back to staring at each other. And then it hit me, I remembered I had emailed them to my sponsor before I got on island and they should be in my email sent folder. So I searched my email folders through my Iphone (god this phone is a life saver!) and, bingo! I found them! I told the clerk that and she told me I needed them on paper, not on a digital screen. Ok, we are in an Airport, there must be some computers I could use to print something up. Wrong! There is NOTHING like that in Naha airport, never mind that Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world to boot! So back to staring at each other…and then hope! The JinAir supervisor was kind enough to let me email the orders to him and he would print them up in his office and give them to me. Success! We did that, got checked in, and off they ran through security to immigration. Hardly the send off I was planning, but they managed to get on that plane and off to Korea by the skin of their teeth!

Lessons learned…

1. Get your dependents passports stamped with the SOFA entry/re-entry stamps BEFORE they leave commercial out of Japan. For us, when they get back I will take their passports to the passenger terminal here on Kadena AB and they will get their stamps. They just need a copy of your orders and military ID and that’s it. The stamp is good for the length of your tour, so once they get it, they can come and go all they want.

2. Military travelers don’t have this problem. We fly on our orders or leave forms and military IDs when we travel in/out of Japan, so that is way easy. I even saw this while we were going though our issue at the check-in counter, with plenty of young military guys on leave flying over to Korea to have some fun.

Finally, I have to give props to JinAir for making it happen. I know my wife would have been PISSED (at me of course) if she missed that flight, since her family made plans for her to be there that day. I also do want to state that my writing tone of these events may come off as way snarky, but I was completely cool, calm, and courteous the whole time, and I am sure that made them more willing to help us out. Plus I think having an adorable baby making all the ladies there swoon had something to do with it as well.

Here is link to more info on the SOFA entry/re-entry process and where you can get it at different bases on the island. I also have the link to JinAir, since they are way cheap for flying to Korea and other Asian destinations.

Exit_Reentry_Stamps_201407.pdf

JinAir