Travel

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go on a family trip in the northern part of Okinawa, to the beautiful Tadake falls. I had heard a lot about this place, and how reaching the waterfall required a trek through the river that it fed.

People love to laugh all over the world, and people in Japan are no different, whether they're locals, resident expats or visitors from overseas.

“Hey, I just realized this doesn’t have auto-correct,” my husband, Jeff, said as he was scribbling on the first page of the journal we had just purchased at Los Angeles International Airport.
Our adventure without smart- phones, tablets and computers was going to take some getting used to.

On a recent United Airlines flight, my seatmate didn't acknowledge my existence with so much as a nod or a wan smile, but he did manage to nod off on my shoulder for 30 or so minutes before he woke up. I didn't have the heart to shake him awake. It was kind of funny.

Video game amusement centers in Japan aren't too far departed from arcades found in America, but they are full of delightful surprises that are uniquely Japanese. I recently revisited the Namco Land in the Ryukyu Aeon Gushikawa Shopping Center in Uruma City with a pocket bull of unused tokens from a previous visit.

In a phenomenon dubbed the "sharing economy" or "peer-to-peer marketplace," Americans are traveling in ways that were virtually unheard of a decade ago. They're vacationing at the homes of strangers, driving (and being driven) around cities in other people's cars and exploring destinations with the people who live there.