Nago Pineapple Park

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Nago Pineapple Park

In between my morning and evening church services this past Sunday I went to Nago Pineapple Park with a few of my friends. Unfortunately, we had to drive about 2 hours north of Kadena Air Force Base so it took a while to get there; however, the drive was along the coast most of the way so we were about to look out onto the water. I expected the park to be rather large with lots of trees but the opposite of what I expected happened. The park was rather small with a a few paths that could be walked along or a a pineapple golf cart could be ridden through the park. My friends and I decided to walk to save ourselves a bit of money.

Everywhere we went in the park there were these huge statues of pineapple men. Most looked happy but at the enterance to the park there were a few mean looking ones. If I had been a little kid, I think they would have creaped me out.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to actually walk in the feild of pineapples, just look at them. The processing plant wasn't working either so I wasn't able to see the pineapples being canned, juiced, etc. It was kind of a bust. Oh yeah...and all the little signs with info were in Japanese so I didn't learn to much about the different kinds of pineapples being grown or anything. Just my luck...haha...

The one good part about the park was the souvenir shop. They had tastings of about anything having to do with pineapples: cakes, tartes, wine, candy, canned pineapple, pineapple juice, pineapple cookies, bath and body products featuring pineapple, etc. I went around tasting just about everything, and eventually filled up two shopping bags of things to send back home to my family. No doubt I was totally ripped off because I bought all the items in the park, but I figured it'd be something fun to share with everyone back home.

Here's some information I was able to find online at http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e7112.html:
Pineapples have been cultivated on Okinawa as an agricultural product for around a century. However, due to lower priced, imported pineapples, the industry has suffered in recent decades, while the fruit has been promoted as a tourist attraction, instead. The Nago Pineapple Park, a small, enjoyable theme park about pineapples, is a result of such promotion efforts.

Visit Nago Pineapple Park on the web by going to: http://www.nagopain.com/english/index.html

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