Okinawa Part I in case you haven't read it yet. :)
The
second day we got up and hit up the local Family Mart on our way to the
car rental dealer, OTS. Oh my god. Family Mart has these amazing rice
balls that are pretty much like spam musubi - but they were spam rice
sandwiches. Spam and egg (some with miso) sandwiched between rice and
nori. Oh my goooood amazing. Anyways, after our foray into the
convenience store, we headed on over to the rental place and sat down
with the lady, who helped us - with our limited Japanese and the
occasional assist from the lady next to her who spoke a little English -
and managed to get ourselves a car for cheaper than the coupon price.
I'm still not entirely sure how, since they told us that it was high
season so we couldn't actually use the coupon. But I'm not complaining.
Our
car was a bright blue... car. I forget the model. Hyundai? To be honest
I didn't really pay attention to the model. My friend, the lovely Miss
Melody
has a car in Kibichuo (cause it's like, super boonies and puts my
complaining that Takahashi is small to shame) so she, bless her, offered
to drive us around and stuff. The plan that day? Aquarium and the
Pineapple Park, both of which were near the city of Nago, north of Naha.
A
word of advice for anyone who goes to Okinawa: if you intend on leaving
Naha proper (which has pretty good public transportation), rent a car.
Your life will be a billion times easier, since there's a bunch of stuff
around the island that you can't reach easily via bus alone. There's a
bus that goes to the aquarium, but if I remember correctly, it takes
about three hours (by car it took us about two-ish hours), and it
doesn't go to the Pineapple Park, which is on the way back to Naha.
So
anyways. We hopped in our car, stopped at another convenience store,
and were on our way! It's amazing how fast time flies when you're in the
car talking to good company. I'm afraid I wasn't the best navigator,
since we missed our turn a couple times since I was reading the wrong
turn on the iPhone GPS. Sigh. The GPS that came with the car was really
cool though! It had an automatic gas/parking lot/conbini locator.
Couldn't quite figure out how to input places though, since the system
was all in Japanese. Either way, all of us really liked the car -- especially our driver, since she was used to driving a small K-car that
doesn't have much power (and has a top speed of somewhere around 80
km/hr). It was pretty nice.
As
we drove up, we drove along the coast and maaaan I forgot how much I
love living near the ocean! Clear blue the whole way up - gorgeous
colors that made me nostalgic for San Diego. We stopped at a 道の駅 「michi
no eki」Or station of the road, or in just English, road station/rest
stop. They sold a bunch of discount tickets for the places around there,
so we picked up tickets for the pineapple park since the rental car
place had sold out of those.
Then it was off to the
aquarium... after a quick stop for lunch. We passed this crazy spiral
structure along the way (I don't remember what we theorized it was, but
it turned out to be a "dream" house or something and was supposed to
have a field of orchids, though I don't know if they were in bloom) and
right outside of it was a place we thought specialized in vegetarian
food (we also passed a taco rice stand on the way). Though it didn't
actually specialize in vegetarian foods, they were able to make omurice
vegetarian (Okinawa, as it turns out, is much more vegetarian friendly)
and Mel and I crossed our first "Okinawa must haves" off our list:
 |
| Soki soba and papaya tempura |
Soki
soba is an okinawan specialty (though I'm not sure if it's the same as
okinawan soba). The noodles are a bit thicker, the kamaboko was a bit
tougher (and huge) and it was served with delicious pork and soba. It
was alrightish; I much prefer taco rice. I think I could eat that stuff
all day and night! But the papaya tempura was delicious. I think it was
made with a non-sweet kind of papaya or something (didn't know they had
that) because normally I dislike papaya (it reminds me of vomit) but
this was amazing.
Anyways. Bellies full, we went to the
aquarium (where I promptly lost a hair clip I had just purchased. Sigh.
This is why I can't have nice things.) and wandered through it. They had
a touch pool with loads of sea cucumbers and a couple of chocolate chip
starfish. Those were cool. Sea cucumbers are so squishy, which is weird
because they aren't like that at all when you eat them.
 |
| These are my favorite. ^_^ |
The
aquarium at Okinawa, the Churaumi Aquarium, is really really huge. So
freaking awesome. The main attraction is a giant tank that holds not
one, but two whale sharks along with a number of giant manta rays. God I
love giant mantas. They're so graceful and powerful when they swim. ^_^
There
was also a pretty cool exhibit about sharks, and they had a bunch of
shark jaws and stuff, along with preserved sharks and other interesting
tidbits about them. Outside, they had a manatee tank
(manateeeeeeeeeeeees!) and a sea turtle enclosure that also had a
makeshift mini beach for the turtles to occasionally go up on. That was
pretty cool. I got lots of pictures of turtles. They're one of my
favorites to take pictures of.
Right as we were
leaving, it started to rain, lightly at first. As we neared the car, it
started to come down a little harder, until by the time we were out of
the garage in our car, it was downright pouring. Crazy, how good our
timing was.
Our next stop was the pineapple park, a place that grows pineapples and takes you on a tour in these crazy pineapple cars.
The
tours were pretty informative, even if they used very uh... scary
pineapple dolls and had a video of these very unhappy looking/bored
girls doing this pineapple dance. Sadly (or thankfully) there are no
pictures of this frightening scene, because they prohibited cameras past
a certain point since they took your picture there in order to sell you
the creepy pineapple mascot picture later on. It still makes me kind of
shudder.
So the pineapple fields were really
interested and they had a whole bunch of different plants other than
pineapples (plus a bunch of different types - I had no idea there was
more than like... one kind of pineapple...) but what I wasn't expecting
was what we saw after the tour had finished.
A room
full of seashells. All sorts of seashells. Like holy wow, that's a lot
of seashells. There were gorgeous conch shells, and lots of different
colored scallop shells, and abalone shells, and other shells I don't
know the name for. Some would twist and turn, while others shone
brilliantly, and even more had spikes or holes. Personally, I really
enjoyed that room, but it was really random hahaha.
The pineapple park also had an
omiyage
or souvenir area with a wine cellar and sweets (and also vinegar, which
was kinda random). The best part about this part... that while the
restaurant had already closed (wtf) the gift area included about a
billion stations to sample things before you bought them. Like pineapple
wine, both reds and whites as well as dry wine and sweeter wine. The
passion fruit was my personal favorite (and also the most expensive, so I
bought some to ahem, celebrate my parent's anniversary with when they
visit).
Seriously though, that place had more samples
than costco, and the best part was, the people would sometimes encourage
a second or third sample (to help you make up your mind of course...)
The guy who was serving the wine cake (super rich and delicious, btw)
was like "HERE HAVE TWO~" Who am I to refuse that? hahaha.
We finished up the omiyage place and I arranged to have some of
the wine and heavy things sent to my house (very convenient, that. Much
better than having to take it on the plane with us... which I did with
another wine haha) then enjoyed a completely fantastic cream puff with
pineapple chunks.
Man does Japan know cream puffs - or
shuukuriimu (shu cream), from
choux à la crème. They're
a billion times better than the cream puffs we usually have in the
states (you know, those small soft things). In Japan they're quite large
and sometimes have a crunchy almost exterior (at least on the top) and
ohhh they ar delicious. Actually desserts in general, they're really
really good at. Parfaits especially. Mmm. Waffles. I never thought of
waffles as dessert until I came here. Belgian waffles. Oh god, they do
them better than Americans do. But it makes me giggle to think that
every time I have waffles for breakfast, I'm actually having dessert.
Heheheh.
Right. Anyways. We finally left around the time the park was
closing (they closed the shop at the front that sold boba... I wanted to
buy some so I was super sad). After we thought that maybe we'd be able
to get to fruits land and they wouldn't be closed, but alas, they too
had closed. Their shop hadn't though, so we went in and browsed around
(and sampled things) and I picked up an amazing mango soft cream before
we finally left to head back towards Naha.
Before we went back to Naha though, we decided to make a pit stop
like... somewhere along the coast. So instead of taking the express way
all the way back, we got off a bit north of Naha and headed towards a
place that looked like there were a lot of restaurants (at least it said
that on our map). We got a little lost (I pointed the wrong way to
turn... oops), but eventually we saw this giant, brightly lit, colorful
ferris wheel and decided that we were going to head to that place.
Turns out that place was American Village, a place that had as
many lights as the Vegas Strip almost. Everything was brightly lit, and
we quickly parked our car (thankfully the rain had stopped) and walked
over. There were loads of marines there as well (I mean, with a name
like that it should have been a duh) and some of them tried to join our
conversation about how cold it was but we just kind of... ignored them
haha. We stopped first at this store called American Depot, because I
had left my jacket at the hostel and was actually kind of cold (it had
gotten really chilly).
We spent some time in the store, me hunting in the men's section
for a sweater or sweatshirt since even though this was American Village,
this was still Japan, and my friend hunting for something for her
boyfriend :) They had a bunch of like... sweats stuff and like, comfy
loungey sweatshirts that you wear when you're at home alone or having a
crap day or something that I almost bought. The sweatshirts were all
kind of expensive (as sweatshirts/sweaters are wont to be). Thankfully
though, it being Japan, I found this really cute looking polka dot
sweatshirt that zips up super high and is just pretty cool overall.
According to Mel, my style is casual sporty cool? lol. I hadn't thought
of it like that, but I guess that's pretty accurate? I don't really do
girly, since I don't really have the figure for that, and generally it's
been too cold (recently anyways) or too hot (I sweat enough to drown,
which is not the best for things like skirts and dresses. Ugh.). That's
just me kinda complaining though haha.
There were so many
delicious places in American Village (like curly fries and chili fries!
OH MY GOOOOD) but we eventually decided on a Taco Rice place (did I
mention I LOVE taco rice?) and that place did not disappoint. The food
was amazing. Like seriously, I think I could eat Taco rice every day
(and be ridiculously fat).
After feeling like we were
going to explode (yet still wanting more taco rice) we walked around for
a bit before deciding that we were tired and that the hostel seemed
like a rather attractive place (oh and that we'd have to get parking,
which was kind of a pain but there were loads of parking lots all
over).
Day three started with us retrieving and returning
the rental car, which happened to conveniently be located at the ferry
port. Catching a ferry out to one of the local islands was pretty easy
(though slightly more expensive than I had imagined) and we luckily were
there right as the 10 o'clock ferry was taking off. We grabbed a quick
lunch from the conbini (did I mention how awesome the pork sandwiches at
conbinis are? Well they are.) and it was off to the beach we went!
The
island we went to was called Tosomethingshima, and it was a suuuuper
tiny place in the Kerama archipelago. Not so tiny though, that there
wasn't a bus waiting at the docks to take us to a tiny white sandy beach
named Aharen Beach (which also had a small port area). Since it was so
tiny, it basically was also going to come back once - some time around
3, so that we would be back in the port in time for our return ferry.
The weather was kinda cruddy though; cloudy, kind of chilly water, but
occasionally the sun would peek through for a nice treat. There was a
really nice (if slightly pushy) old man who kept trying to sell us hot
showers after we were done with our time on the beach. There were also a
butt-ton of stray cats around the area that kept mewing at us for food.
We passed the other beach - named after the island -
and wow, just wow. It was absolutely gorgeous. Probably should have
picked that beach, but there were also far less shops/potential
kayak/snorkle rental/scuba places around there. I really wanted to go
diving, but I kinda got there too late... so I settled for snorkeling
instead (which turned out to be super fun anyways).
When we first arrived to the beach, there was hardly anyone else
there, so my friends and I lay out our stuff and they prepped for a nice
relaxing sun bathing session while I went up and rented snorkeling
equipment and asked around about kayaks. They said the kayak guy was out
on a tour, so I went down with the snorkel stuff back to where our
things were...
...to find that many people had since returned, including a
really loud group of teenagers who set themselves up literally right in
front of us. The swimming area at this beach wasn't actually that big
(and the water was actually a tad chilly) so I wasn't super comfortable
taking off my swim shorts (I had a two piece on but yeah, my legs could
be used as a source of light in a dark room). Instead I sat with my
friends and enjoyed what sun there was until the kayaking man returned.
It was really funny, because I tried to ask him in Japanese about
renting a kayak and he actually asked me if English was okay and I
breathed a super huge sigh of relief at that point haha.
I kayaked out to the small island in the bay (which was pretty
much the only place I could kayak, since he warned against kayaking to
the eastern part and northern part of the bay as well as behind the
small island) and beached myself there, dragging the kayak up the little
hill of sand well away from the water. It was like a mini pinnensula
and bay there, and I was stupid enough to land near the edge, which
meant that waves were washing up to the beach from behind me AND from my
side. Not helpful in trying to get out of the kayak without completely
flipping. Somehow I managed though. The bay was a much calmer place, so I
stripped down to my bikini (in blissful privacy, since I was the only
one on this small island and I couldn't blind anyone but the fish) and
went out snorkeling into the small bay.
Wow. Just wow. I wish I had bought an underwater camera. There
was an amazing amount of fish in that small bay, and I spent nearly an
hour just swimming around there. It was interesting too, since there
were small pockets of warm water that (thank god) fish tended to be
found around so I was able to watch fish while staying warm. Conversely
there were pockets of ridiculously cold water. Those sucked. There were
decently large fish down there, brightly colored pastel fish (I think
parrot fish?), large ones that looked like the Hawaiian state fish,
small, brilliant bright blue fish that lived in the coral and rocks,
hidden fish, sea cucumbers (oh god so many sea cucumbers) and loads of
other fish.
My favorites though, were: 1. the weird four armed starfish I
saw. It was a periwinkle blue. 2. The angelfish I saw swimming around in
pairs. So very pretty! I was like EEEEEE GILL~~! 3. The clownfish I
saw. They weren't your movie clownfish (they only had two brown stripes)
but they were chilling in this jungle of sea anemone arms that looked
like something out of a postcard/national geographic picture. That was
freaking awesome. 4. The... abalone? Clams? I don't know what they were.
I think I knew but right now I can't remember what they're called.
Giant clams? They were kind of small. But they came in such bright
mottled colors - purples, greens, blues, and I even saw an orange one -
and they would shut any time I tried to get close. Their colors though
were absolutely glorious.
I really love the underwater world. It's so beautiful, and every
time I go diving or snorkeling, I feel like I've entered into a
completely different world than our own, and I'm stunned and awed each
time by places that have preserved this beauty. When I was diving in the
philippines, it felt like I was swimming in a national geographic video
or something. It was beautiful, mysterious, and I don't think words can
sufficiently express how much awe I felt in looking at the coral
shelves from below them. Or well, here's my best approximations:
"Woah.... This is Nature."
Brilliant, I know.
Oh right, I
forgot, I haven't actually typed out the Philippines yet (working on
that...) and that I'm talking about Okinawa! Right. So. The rest of our
day was fairly uneventful though - we got ice cream, went back home,
showered, went out to the Kokusaidori street. Went towards an izakaya we
had heard about from our hostel, but decided to go somewhere else
instead. They had amazing amazing food. We also looked around this book
store with the most amazing English section I've seen in my LIFE. They
had academic books! Like, two giant rows of books with books on English
on both sides! Manga in English! My neuroscience textbook! MATH and
science texts! A used book section! Oh right. So that was kind of
eventful.
We managed to knock everything off our "to
eat" list at this izakaya restaurant. They had avocado pasta for our
vegetarian friend, so that left me and Mel to go through the meat. Oh
god we ordered so much. We got kaarage (Japanese fried chicken, which is
really different than our fried chicken) that was as big as my palm.
They were HUGE. We got agubutu (agu pork) which was my favorite
favorite favorite. Rafute pork, which was super tender and fatty pork.
SOmething else... uh, I don't remember. Really good fries. They tasted
like curly fries! Mm. Curly fries. A tomato and something else al fresco
kind of thing that was also delicious and had tons of avocados. I think
there's a small chance I raised my cholestorol and blood pressure that
night and added to the likelihood that I'll die from a heart attack, but
the food there was soooo good. They also gave us some
goya champuru
which - I found out later - is tofu stir fried with veggies (in this
case goya, or bittermelon. It's really really bitter unless you cook it
the right way) and pork that was probably spam (or some knock off). It
was super tasty. NOMMMMM. I love okinawan food.
After that
night, we did a it more omiyage shopping, and then went back to the
hostel and woke up and did last minute omiyage shopping haha before
heading back to the airport. I grabbed a few more pork sandwiches - and
some taco maki (taco rice in sushi form!) for later that night/as snacks
and found out my friends were going to the conbini for their lunch. I
was super hungry though, and there were loads of awesome looking places,
so we went to check them out. Sadly they didn't have many veggie
friendly things - but there was an A&W (actually, there were a lot
in Okinawa!). And it had CHILI CHEESE FRIES AND CURLY FRIES. OMFFGGGGG.
Yeah. Needless to say, I got that for lunch haha. Dude, A&W is super
tasty. Why don't we have more of them?
Our flight back
to Takamatsu actually got delayed a bit, so we had some time to kill at
the airport (which was fine - none of us were in a rush and we were
still well earlier than our last trains). Other than that, the rest of
our return trip went smoothly and uneventfully (especially since the bus
didn't leave the airport until most of the passengers had gotten their
bags).
Oh, there was giant plastic udon on the conveyor
belt at the airport (since that's what Takamatsu is famous for). That
was... interesting. And different. But kind of a nice quirky touch to
the end of a fantastic trip.
Okinawa was super awesome though. Definitely want to go again!
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
On a
different note, right now is the time when teachers change schools: The
Great Teacher Shuffle. I've yet to find out what my situation is like at
my Niimi schools, but most of the teachers I like (whom I teach with
anyways) are staying at my schools. However, I'm not teaching with the
same lady as last year at my visit school, and we don't know yet at my
base school. Oh also one of my favorite teachers is leaving to
participate in a teacher exchange program with Southern Australia. SUPER
SAD FACE. He was the one I talked to the most probably, and who was the
easiest to talk to since he was super laid back and also his English
was super. Plus I taught with him the first academic year I was here,
and he's constantly explaining things to me about Japanese (and I
explain things about English to him - or at least, try to). So I'm
really sad about that, but I guess I'll be moving on in less than half a
year anyways. As the Japanese say, "しかったがない" or, "it can't be helped."
This
also didn't get posted as soon as I had wanted it to, so I'm sitting
here in a BRAND NEW SPANKIN' DESK. They actually had four extra new
desks (all the third year teachers got new desks) so since I'm now
sitting in the rows that are touching the 3rd year desks.... I got an
upgrade! (Honestly though, I was kind of annoyed that like, I had to
change desks because I liked my old one and I also liked the fact that I
didn't have to empty out all of my drawers!) The teachers were all
really surprised with how much crap is in my drawers... and the funny
thing, is that a lot of it isn't actually mine (really, I should just
chuck them, but I can't help but feel that one day they'll come in handy
or something, or that my successor can use them for ideas or use them
or something).
Also, I swear, my entry about the philippines will probably happen around the time I actually get those pictures uploaded.
