Koinobori - Children's Day

May 5th is Children's Day in Okinawa. A holiday celebrating children. Right there during Golden Week. We went to the Hija River, not too far up the road from us, to check out the Koinobori. Koi are carp, "no" is possessive in Japanese, and bori is banner, so it's a carp banner. It USED to be Boy's day, but they changed it to include all children.

Mia asked for it - as recently as Sunday when it was mother's day (mind you, AFTER we celebrated Children's Day with icees and a boat ride!) - "When's kids' day?"
"It just happened, Mia. Not to mention, EVERY day is Mia day!"
The response was pouting. We're hard at work on a plan to get the selfish out of this only child.

Anyway - here's the view as we walked from where we parked toward the small festival.

The koinobori swayed in the breeze.... and Craig and I wondered aloud, "How do they get those things up there?"

We spent a few yen, donned some life jackets, and hopped a quick little boat ride out the river mouth and into the China Sea. Mia is one boat-lovin' sea-farin' kiddo. She was smiling like this the whole time! (Note the still very loose other bottom tooth that hadn't yet been pulled out by yours truly for a rope of licorice. Yes, I know. The irony. I offered licorice if she let me pull out her tooth. And let's have more teeth falling out. Shush.)

This was the view looking up at the flags from the boat.

And this is a zoomed in view from the shoreline. It wasn't really that windy.... sometimes those things were horizontal.
A gorgeous day. I find myself wishing the weather would stay like this. Feels like San Diego out here right now. Alas, I know the scary sub-tropical stickies are headed this way, sooner than I'd like. For now I'm enjoying amazing weather and the last weeks of Mia being in school for 7 hours a day.