Ryukyu Village at Ocean Expo Park

One of my (and Joe's) favorite parts of Colleen & TJ's visit was the time we spent at Ocean Expo Park. You've seen pictures of part of the park before -- when we visited the Aquarium. However, Ocean Expo Park is more than (just) a fantastic Aquarium!

With Colleen & TJ we decided to explore a bit more -- which is how we ended up at the Ryukyu Village. Here you can see some of the traditional Ryukyu housing:
We were allowed to enter the homes, but had to take our shoes off. The floor inside was tatami.

I think this was for green tea brewing.

Of course, Joe became easily distracted by this set of sanshin. The sanshin is a traditional Ryukyu instrument. It's a little like a guitar, but only has 3 strings.

When the women in the house noticed us pointing and looking at the sanshin, they invited all of us to lesson! Joe was quite taken!

We were even served green tea during the lesson.

I don't even recall this woman's name, but she was wonderful! She taught us Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and two Okinawan songs (those were my favorite!)

As you can tell, someone had to take some pictures of this cool sanshin lesson! Not only that, but here's a portion of the lesson on video.

Next, the women invited us to learn a Ryukyu dance! Colleen & I participated in this (TJ a little too) while Joe took the video.

I thought it was great! As you can probably guess -- we both want to bring a sanshin home with us!