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Okinawa
Okinawa...my new favorite place.So I think I have found paradise...and it's
OKINAWA!
I went there for 5 days with Leilani for the Golden Week holiday, and it was the most amazing trip ever! I was really needing a vacation...and I mean a
real vacation, not a crazy week of sightseeing and trying to do as many things as possible. I just wanted to go somewhere and relax and enjoy myself, especially since April was such a long and tiring month. So going to Okinawa was a good way to start off May! We left Friday morning, since it's an hour and a half bus ride from Hirakata to the airport, and went to KIX for our 2:30 PM flight. The flight was only about an hour and 40 minutes long, so I was surprised that we were on such a big plane (the same kind I was on coming to Japan). But the flight wasn't bad and I just slept most of the time...
Then we finally arrived in Okinawa at about 4:15 and took the monorail to our hotel. And yes, we stayed in a real HOTEL this time...not a hostel, which made me really happy. Luckily our hotel was right
McFlurry
My macha (green tea) flavored McFlurry at the airport...only in Japan! outside the station and was easy to find because while we were on the plane I realized I had forgotten to print out the directions to the hotel. But everything worked out alright and we checked in to the hotel, which was really very nice considering what we payed for it.
So let me tell you a few reasons why I love Okinawa so much:
1. Gorgeous beaches.
2. Great shopping...they had such cute clothes.
3. Free snacks and sake in almost every store.
4. The people are more laid-back and friendly.
5. It was just such a cute place in general!
One of my favorite things about Okinawa, or at least Naha, is Kokusai-dori, the main shopping street. This street is lined with souvenir shops and clothing stores, restaurants, bars, izukayas, public markets, etc. It has just about everything you could want! And our hotel was just a few blocks from Kokusai-dori, so me and Lani actually went there
every single day. The best part about Kokusai-dori was that they had free samples of Okinawan snacks and sake in nearly every store! So we would walk down the entire street sampling every single thing we could
Ticket
My ticket to Okinawa find...we tried Okinawan biscuits (all 10 different flavors, as well as chocolate-covered ones), dried fruit (pineapple, papaya, mango), the special purple sweet potato called murasaki-imo. We also tried the Okinawan kurosato, which is a dark sugar cane candy...basically pure sugar! And we tried the Okinawan doughnut snacks, both the light and dark kinds which were totemo oishii! And of course Okinawa is famous for the Goya, which is a bitter melon. However, I didn't really like anything goya-flavored that I tried. I had goya-flavored ice cream from Blue Seal, the popular ice cream brand in Okinawa, and was chotto disappointed because it didn't have much flavor! And then I tried a goya juice or tea, I can't decide which one it was, at one of the stores and that tasted pretty bad...so I'm not a goya fan. But overall, Okinawa has some amazing snacks!
And what could be better than free snacks??...
FREE SAKE of course!
So I think Okinawa turned me into an alcoholic lol...not really. But they really do like sake there. In every store, in addition to the free snacks, they would have free samples of sake. In one store there were cups placed throughout the
Naha
Walking in Naha towards Kokusai-dori shelves and you could basically go through and sample whatever sake you wanted. And nearly every bottle was open for sampling! So me and Lani sampled a couple, and we didn't realize that you are supposed to sip them...so instead we did shots! Only a little later did I realize that was probably why people in the store were giving us strange looks. But it's ok, we're foreigners so we can get away with it. The special sake in Okinawa is called awamori, which is a "notoriously strong" rice liquor brewed from imported Thai Jasmine rice. And it is really good. Okinawa also has some nice fruity cocktail drinks that I liked, and also a special pineapple wine. It was really good too! Okinawa even has its own special brand of beer called Orion. We all bought a can one night and tried it back at the hotel. It wasn't bad, but I don't like beer so it wasn't my favorite. Yeah so we sampled a lot of drinks in Okinawa, although I don't think I had 30 shots like Lani claims lol. It was nice, though, to be able to try all the different kinds of sake for free!
Almost There
Just about the reach the shopping area... But the most interesting sake in Okinawa is its famous Habu Sake. Habu is the extremely poisonous snake found on the island, and they put them inside the bottles of sake. So in all the stores there would be huge containers of sake with these huge snakes coiled up at the bottom. For someone who doesn't like snakes, I didn't really enjoy seeing them! It kind of scared me to look around and see all of the snakes. I don't know how that could possibly taste good...apparently they mix awamori with extract from the snake and some other Okinawan herbs. I didn't try the Habu Sake, I didn't see any samples of it. Probably because it's so expensive. But I wouldn't have tried it anyway! One of my friends told me she tried it, though, and it was really bad.
Oh and like I said, the whole city is a really cute place. Yes, it is a bit kitchy...like the goya benches and the various characters standing along the sidewalk. But I don't know, I thought it was cute...not too overdone. I didn't feel like I was in a theme park or anything. And the clothes there were
Kokusai-dori
At the intersection waiting to cross over to Kokusai-dori also really kawaii! There was even an OPA store, like the one in Kyoto...my favorite store in Japan (not
CPA as we originally thought it was called)! And I shopped too much...again. One thing I noticed was all of the shisa in Okinawa! Shisa are these mythological, Chinese-influenced dog-like figures that are found just about everywhere you look! They are usually in pairs and are supposed to bring good fortune. These things were
everywhere...in souvenir shops, on the street, in front of houses. I thought they were really cute (just like everything else in Okinawa lol) and very unique to the island.
And aside from the snacks, Okinawa also has some famous dishes. They have a special kind of soba there that we tried one night, and it was really good. I actually liked it better than the other soba I have tried! And surprisingly, another famous Okinawan dish is taco rice. Yeah, tacos...in Japan. One night we went to this place called LeQuio Tacos, where we tried their 3 different kinds of tacos: tuna, taco rice, and regular. I didn't like the tuna one, and the regular taco was pretty good. The only strange thing is that they
Huge Kitty
The huge kitty over the shop is really famous! deep fry the shell so it's a lot thicker, but I actually liked it better than regular taco shells. But the strangest one was definitely the taco rice. It was a shell with rice on top, cheese and lettuce, and then half the taco had tuna and the other half had regular meat. It was an interesting combination, but it was really good! So I guess Okinawan tacos aren't too bad after all!
Well, the first day we arrived in Okinawa we only went to Kokusai-dori since it was already evening by the time we had checked in to the hotel. But the next day we decided to go find a beach to spend the day at, since the beaches are really the main reason we came to Okinawa. We woke up really early and took a taxi to the ferry port to see if we could get tickets to an island. Unfortunately they were all sold out, and we learned that you have to make reservations a day ahead if you want any chance of getting tickets. So instead we decided to find a nice beach somewhere along the coast. We took a taxi, and the driver was
Okinawa
One of my favorite pics...I love Okinawa! really pushy. He kept asking us where we wanted to go, and we told him Chatan, since the travel agency and someone at work had told us it was nice. He would tell us that the beach there was dirty and not good at all...but he knew of a really pretty beach about 30 minutes farther. Of course it would cost more money, but according to him it was worth it. We had already decided on Chatan, though, so we weren't going to change our minds and it was kind of annoying how he kept trying to get us to pay more.
Eventually we did arrive in Chatan at Sunset Beach. It wasn't a big beach, but it was still nice. The water didn't look very good but it didn't matter because all we planned to do that day was lay out on the beach. So me and Lani rented chairs for the day and just layed there. Yeah that's pretty much all we did for 6 hours, only stopping occasionally to snack! When it was about 4 PM we both decided we should leave before we had a heat stroke. Plus it was starting to get cloudy. So
Ganbatte!
Haha this guy looked a little down so I tried to console him. we packed up our stuff and walked to find a taxi. We walked through this place called the American Village, since the beach was near one of the U.S. bases. There were lots of American military guys walking around the street and the whole village was made to look really American. There was even a huge Coca-Cola ferris wheel! But we didn't stay to look around because some dark clouds were moving in, so we found a taxi (with a far less annoying driver this time) and went back to our hotel. After dinner, we finished the day up with our usual trip to Kokusai-dori where, well...you already know what we do there!
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DantheMan
Dan
Hi Xamena
I love your blog.