We woke up this morning to sunny skies, heat and humidity.
Uncle Koji and Auntie Masumi bought us some breakfast so we went to their room
and ate some onigiri and croquettes. Uncle Koji had turned the temperature down
so much that the outside of their main door was wet with condensation. After
breakfast we all walked over to another hotel about a block away to meet the
bus for our tour. We had to make a few stops at other hotels to pick up more
tourists and the last hotel we stopped at was the ANA Intercontinental, which
was right on the coast and it had some pretty spectacular views.
Once all the passengers had been picked up we made our way
up the western coast through the city of Nago to the Ryugujo Butterfly Garden.
Pretty much the entire drive was along the coastline and the waters surrounding
Okinawa were a beautiful sapphire color.
Before we got to see any of the butterflies we were able to
have lunch, which was included in our tour. We all had warm Okinawan soba
noodle soup. The soba noodles were kind of like ramen noodles but thicker and
they weren’t made out of buckwheat like the typical soba noodles I’m used to.
The broth was a nice light broth that wasn’t too salty, so I actually drank
more of that than I usually do.
When we finished lunch we went in to the butterfly garden
and looked at a ton of different butterflies. The most popular butterfly in
Okinawa was the Paper Kite butterfly and at the butterfly garden they had all
three life stages on display. The caterpillar looked pretty ordinary, it was
black with some white stripes and a few red dots. The pupa was pretty amazing.
It was literally a shiny gold cocoon hanging on the tree branches.
The butterfly itself had a black and white pattern and it
was one of the larger butterflies that we saw flying around. The garden had
some red hats sitting around that people could put on and the butterflies would
come and land on them because they were drawn to the red.
After we finished at the butterfly garden the bus drove us
to Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. The aquarium is most known for housing three
whale sharks in an enormous tank. I think the tank used to be the largest in
the world until Dubai had one built that was larger and the acrylic that was
used for the viewing window was 603 millimeters thick. Right when we got to the
aquarium we made a beeline to the whale sharks and somehow Uncle Koji was able
to get us a table right up against a window in the restaurant adjacent to the
viewing area. We all sat there and watched the whale sharks, as well as all the
other fish (tuna, mahi mahi, trevally, multiple rays, and multiple sharks) and
dolphins in the tank, for at least half an hour before we split up into smaller
groups and explored the aquarium.
Christal and I had watched a documentary about a dolphin
that lost its tail and the aquarium made it a prosthetic tail so I wanted to go
and see Fuji and since it was next door we looked at the turtle lagoon and the
manatee exhibit. When we finished with those we went back into the aquarium and
looked around at all the other exhibits we had skipped when we first arrived.
When we finished we met up with everyone and walked back up to the bus.
Our next stop on the tour was a pineapple farm about five
minutes away. We got a quick tour that was about 300 yards total, but we did
get to sample some of the local pineapple, which was really sweet, and some in
our group probably almost ate a whole pineapple. You can probably guess at
least one of them. When the five minute tour ended we went directly into the
shop and sampled a ton of products, some with pineapple and some without. Most
had pineapple like pineapple cake, pineapple chinsuko (Okinawan cookies),
pineapple wine, etc., but one item that wasn’t pineapple was this seaweed that
they called sea grapes. It was salty and crunchy, yet pleasantly slimy at the
same time.
When we finally left the shopping area we got some
pineapple soft serve ice cream that was really good and refreshing. It was so
hot and humid outside that as soon as it was served the ice cream was starting
to melt, but man, did it hit the spot.
After the pineapple farm we had a quick stop at a glass
blowing factory, which was basically a bathroom stop for our group. Then we
headed back to Naha to get dropped off by one of the malls so we could shop at
a Uniqlo. When we walked by the mall there was a takoyaki truck, so of course
we had to get some.
We finished the takoyaki while walking to Uniqlo,
which was in another mall about a mile away. When we finished shopping we ended
up eating at a restaurant across the street called Uotami. We had a bunch of
dishes including grilled hokke, grilled shishamo (similar to smelt or grunion),
goya champuru (bitter melon stirfry), Okinawan deep-fried tofu, sautéed green
onions with dried fish, beef filet with foie gras and truffles, yam and seaweed
fritters, chicken wings, and soy bean “spring rolls.” Everything was really
tasty and it all came out to just 10 bucks a person. When we finished we
stopped at a Toys-R-Us real quick and then caught some taxis back to the hotel
and went to sleep.
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| Goya Champuru (Bittermelon Stirfry) |
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