June 24: Okinawa - Day 3

My mom convinced my dad to join Uncle Vic, Uncle Jim and Auntie Shirley for the breakfast buffet at Aiju, the hotels restaurant, so of course Christal and I joined them. It was another great breakfast buffet with a ton of variety. They had Okinawan fresh tofu soup, Okinawan mozuku (vinegared seaweed salad), almond tofu with fruit coulis, peanut “tofu” with teriyaki sauce, goya champuru (bitter melon stirfry), as well as most of the other dishes we had tried before.

After breakfast Auntie Masumi’s sister, Tokimi, came and picked up Christal, Uncle Koji, Auntie Masumi and I to go and see their mother who was in the hospital. Unfortunately, she was kind of out of it and needed some sleep, so we only stayed for a short time and took a taxi back to the hotel to meet up with the others. From the hotel we took the monorail out to the Shurijo Castle. It was the seat of the Okinawan kingdom since 1406. It had a large courtyard with a main building at the end of the courtyard and two buildings flanking the main building. The two buildings were used as foreign embassies for the Chinese and Japanese diplomatic parties that would visit. Both the embassies were built and decorated in the styles of the countries they housed.

When we finished walking through the castle we walked back to the monorail station and headed to Heiwadori to do some shopping. We walked through the main shops to go to the fish market, which was located toward the back. When we first walked in there was a few meat stalls that were selling a lot of pork products and we sampled a few braised pork belly dishes that were awesome.

Then we made our way to the fish section where they had all kinds fish, a lot of which I didn’t even know was edible/good. The size of the prawns they were selling was larger than any I had seen and were larger than some lobsters I’ve seen.

While the rest of the group made their way upstairs to the restaurants, Christal and I went to the tsukemono/pickled section of the market and sampled a few things. We ended up buying some sweet and salty dried baby fish. Then we headed upstairs to meet everyone else. They had found a table and ordered a few different things and Christal took me to the andagi (Okinawan donuts) stand that was her favorite so we bought some of those for everyone. We also ended up having some assorted sashimi, fried gurukun (black-tip fusilier?) with sliced onions and some shave ice.

After we were done eating we all kind of split up and Christal, Auntie Masumi and I went to buy some omiyage (gifts) to take home. Christal also wanted to find a Mont Blanc dessert to have me taste so we ended up walking to a few places and after going on the monorail past our hotel we found some. The dessert is basically like a chestnut tart and it was really good.

After having the Mont Blanc we met everyone back at the hotel and headed out to meet Auntie Masumi’s Dad and step-mother and her sister to celebrate Auntie Tokimi & her step-mother’s birthdays. We had dinner at a buffet that served traditional Okinawan food like the goya (bitter melon) champuru and Okinawan soba.

After dinner Auntie Masumi, Christal and I headed back to the hospital with Auntie Tokimi her daughter Manami. When we got to the hospital Christal’s grandmother was much more alert and very interactive. After visiting for a little while it was getting late so we caught a taxi back to the hotel and called it a night.