Tourist Tuesday

Tourist Tuesday is going to be my next structured blog. While I technically "live" in Japan I do still consider myself a tourist. Each Tuesday I will talk about something unique to Japan.

Today I'm going to talk about Forest Adventure Park.
http://www.okinawahai.com/my_weblog/2008/10/okinawa-hai-rea.html

My husband and I did this together last weekend for our anniversary. We had a blast!! The cost is 3,500 yen (roughly 35 US dollars) per person. You can go in groups or by yourself. I highly suggest making reservations. We went on a Saturday and made reservations despite there only being 2 of us.

When we got there at around 11:30 we were promplty greeted by the staff. They made sure I was tall enough (i had about a half an inch to an inch of grace per THEIR height chart...despite the fact their website says 4'6" so please be aware you could get there and not be able to make it since i'm 4'9" so i easily should have passed but yet i was very close to not passing). We gave them our money and they made sure we all had the proper shoes on. Once that was done we drove and parked in the designated areas for their park. A shuttle bus was waiting for us in the parking lot to take us over to the course.

Once we reached the course we had to walk 200m to the main cabin. *this is the last bathroom available so be sure and go try* While there we got a locker for 100 yen deposit (which you got back) to put all our belongings in. You can keep your phones/cameras/sunglasses/etc. on you but if you lose them or break them it's at your discretion. Since hubs had never done ziplines before and I had no pockets we opted to miss out on the awesome pictures (this time because we plan on going back) and just enjoy the course and each other.

They then put your harnesses on you and show you how to attach them to the ziplines correctly. You go through a mock course that has a rope you walk across followed by a very short zipline. A staff member assures you are doing everything correctly and then you're off.

You're free to go as fast as you please or as slow as you please through the course. (please be aware of other groups though) I think we saw staff member maybe twice throughout the whole course. Hubs and I had a blast. We did at least 10 ziplines with fun obstacle courses in between.

About halfway through they have a section of "free drinks". You're allowed to have one. The downfall, it's all soda. (at least when we went through) so you may want to bring some water!!

The best part is at the end where they have a number of different obstacle courses to go through and what's called the "Tarzan" swing. They attach you to a rope and you jump (freefall) for approximately 2-3 seconds before the zipline catches you and then you fly into a rope net that you then climb up. A lot of peope were hesitant to do this but i saw children, women & marines doing it. It's easily the best part of the whole course.

We then turned in all our gear and got our belongings and headed down the 200m to find a shuttle bus waiting for us to take us to our parking spot. The saturday we went was a tad bit busy so we didn't get to our car until 2pm but I have heard others say that they've made it through in an hr and a half.

If you live on Okinawa (or ever come to visit) I highly suggest going here. It's only about 20 minutes north of Camp Foster on the 58 and is a great adventure for single marines, couples, families with older kids, etc.

I cannot wait to go back. Like i posted above, we don't have any pictures of *this* trip but next time we will definitely be taking some photos.