April 17: Tokyo to Okinawa

Luke finally slept until a normal hour this morning, waking up at about 7:15. Once he ate some of the food we bought him last night we packed up and checked out of our room. We had about an hour before we were supposed to meet Ojiichan in the lobby so we went across the street to grab a quick breakfast. The only restaurant open where we went was Sukiya, which is a gyudon restaurant. I ordered the negi gyudon and egg and it was covered in negi.

Negi Gyudon w Egg

Christal got the karaage and curry plate. Surprising, to me at least, Luke actually enjoyed the curry. The curries in Japan seem like they have a deeper flavor than the golden curries I've had in the states.

Karaage & Curry

When we finished our food we headed back across the street to meet Ojiichan in the lobby of the hotel. After he checked out we caught the Limousine Bus to Haneda airport. Once we checked in for our flight we had several hours to kill so we wandered around the terminal a bit.

Terminal 2 - Haneda Airport

After wandering around and seeing what all there was I chose a restaurant to have lunch at. I had been craving tonkatsu for a while and there was a tonkatsu restaurant that looked good so we went there. I got a tokatsu lunch set that included the tonkatsu, rice, miso soup with clams, sliced cabbage, and tsukemono. Christal ordered the shrimp lunch set that had the panko fried shrimp and all the same accompaniments as mine. The cabbage, rice and miso soup were all-you-can eat so I had seconds on the cabbage, which I liked dressing with a ponzu dressing and a sesame dressing. The tonkatsu was excellent. The panko coating was very light, extremely crispy and not a hint of greasiness at all. The pork was juicy and very clean tasting and it definitely satisfied my tonkatsu craving.

Tonkatsu Lunch Set

When we finished eating we walked around for a few more minutes and then went through security to our gate. Our flight was pretty good until we got close to Okinawa. Apparently there were a lot of planes lined up to land so we had to circle for about half an hour. Luke did pretty well, but that's probably because he had his markers to entertain himself. Once we landed we got our luggage and took a Limousine Bus to our hotel, the Hilton Okinawa Chatan Resort.

After we settled in we headed out for dinner since it had been about six hours since lunch. We walked around and checked out a few places before we found a ramen place that looked good. It was called Hayatemaru and it had Hokkaido style ramen. Christal and Ojiichan both ordered the white miso ramen and Ojiichan also ordered gyoza.

Gyoza

I ordered the shio ramen and gyoza. The gyoza were good, but not great. The caramelized part of it wasn't as crunchy as I was hoping or expecting it to be. The ramen was very good though. The noodles had a nice chew to them and the broth had a clean porky flavor that wasn't too heavy. Mine was also garnished with shiso in addition to the green onions and that gave it an added freshness to keep everything light.

Shio Ramen

From there we walked over to Blue Seal, the Okinawan ice cream shop, and had some dessert. I got the Blue Seal sundae, which for me was a scoop of chinsuko (Okinawan salt cookie) ice cream with salty milk soft serve over the top. Christal got the Okinawan brown sugar ice cream and for some reason Luke would only eat hers, no matter how much Ojiichan and I offered ours to him. Once we finished we walked back to the hotel and went to bed for the night.

Thanks for Only Eating Mom's!