Cape Manzamo and Pineapple Park

This week was a 1-day work week for Matt because of Veteran's Day landing right in the middle of it, so we got to take a day trip further north on the island than we'd been before. We weren't really sure where we were going or what we were planning on doing - we basically just started driving. It was a slightly rainy morning, but seemed to clear up as soon as we started on our trip - that was nice:) Using the Google Map Ap on our Iphones, we knew that we were driving along the west coast of the island toward a town called Nago. You wouldn't think driving around would be much fun, but living in a foreign country, I'm realizing that you will usually always see something new, interesting or beautiful if you do. Just seeing different buildings, stores, beaches, restaurants, bridges, etc. from what we see every day right around our house is fun.

Check out this map of Okinawa - you can see how far we drove to get to Nago compared to the size of the entire island

On our drive

Some neat houses we saw on the drive

We drove along the coast for awhile, seeing a few new Japanese beaches, and large hotels and resorts started to become more frequent as we went further north. From what I gathered, Nago seems to be one of the more "resort-y" areas with some gorgeous looking resorts that we saw along the drive. The Nago area is a mix of tropical ocean views to your left and dense jungle with vegitated mountains to your right - a cool mix! The first place we stopped off at was a cliff overlooking beautiful Cape Manzamo. There were a lot of other visitors there site-seeing as well, but we were the only Americans.



















The furthest we got on our little road trip that day was the central part of Nago, which took us about 1 1/2 hours to reach. This may sound far, but the roads here are small and speed limits are very slow, so we really only went about 30 miles I think. The last place we stopped before we turned around and headed home was a magical land called Pineapple Park... Actually, it was just a little park where they are seriously ALL about pineapples. None of the workers at the park spoke English, so Matt and I wandered around the pinapple patch not knowing where we were going. As it turns out, you aren't really supposed to be walking around the patch as we were. They have pinapple cars that drive themselves and give you a tour. After much wandering around, we eventually found the place where you boarded the cars and started the tour. We also did some Pineapple Wine tasting - not just wine, but Pineapple Champagne, Pineapple Cake, Pineapple Chocolate and fresh pineapple tasting as well. It was a goofy place (best way I can describe it), but we ended up having a fun time!

Me at the entry to Pineapple Park
Baby pineapples



Matt makes snail friends everywhere he goes it seems

This is what our pineapple car looked like

Check out this video of us taking the pineapple patch tour:

Pineapple sampling

Pineapple Wine tasting

We bought some of this Pineapple Chocolate

Again with the pigs... the Japanese love their pigs

Side note: We ended up taking the Okinawa Expressway (for the first time) to get back home. That is our only expressway here (as far as I know), and it only took about 40 minutes to get home from Nago when we used it.

Favorite quote of the day? "Do you know what Pineapple stands for? It stands for pine and apple." (Who knew?!?)

-C

Nakagusuku Castle Ruins

In California, we had a lot of things right outside our doorstep - the local beach, the local mall, the local movie theater, etc. Here in Japan, we have our local castle ruins - Nakagusuku Castle Ruins to be specific. We found these ruins on our way home one day after driving around the island. We were on a winding road we'd never been on before, located directly under a cliff with the ruins located on the top. We decided to follow the road up the cliff to check it out, and it wasn't until leaving that we realized how close we were to our house (about a 5 minute drive)!

While we weren't able to read all of the signs, we did get the gist of things. We also got some great photos and saw some amazing views of Okinawa from that high up. The castle was on high ground (as castles should be), giving us great views of both the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It was also a little workout since we were pretty much hiking through the ruins.

On the walk up to the ruins

A snail friend we found









Looking out over the Pacific Ocean







What's left of some of the walls

-C

Down at the Marina

I was starting to think that the pattern for Okinawa was week=sun & weekend=rain. However, today broke the cycle, and it was sunny and in the mid 80's all day on this gorgeous Saturday! Our plan was to go snorkeling down at Kadena Marina where we keep our Jet-Skis, since it has a tiny, but really nice beach with little islands and rocks that you can swim to and snorkel around. We had explored the marina a couple weeks ago, so we knew it was a must-see for snorkelers wanting to go somewhere local. Below are some photos of us exploring the marina for the first time a couple weeks ago:








We finally just got our snorkel gear today at our local scuba store on Camp Foster called Tsunami Scuba. We each got masks, snorkels, water boots and dive fins (we need these for our upcoming dive certification class as well). After gearing up, we headed down to the Kadena Marina, checked on our Jet-Skis (of course!) and jumped in the water - which was warmer than the air I must say! There were some shallow areas and other areas that got very deep. The deeper areas weren't as clear - you could just see turquoise water, not the bottom. However, when we got near little islands or rocks, it was much shallower (sometimes only a foot or two) and we were able to see everything perfectly! Here is a photo I took of Matt before heading out:



Not having done much snorkeling myself, I can tell you that I was a little nervous about what I'd see under there, and I really didn't know what to expect. I was completely suprised! Once you get out a little further, you come to a coral reef ledge, and it was amazing! We saw so much live coral in all bright greens and purples, TONS of little neon blue fish, large black, yellow and white Angel Fish, Puffer Fish - no, we couldn't get them to puff up:( , giant bright blue starfish, Sea Cucumbers, a black and white sea snake, and we even saw a Lion Fish that was gorgeous, but supposed to be deadly! The reef was amazing - it was super shallow, and then it just dropped off at the ledge, and looking along the drop off is where you see the most fish. It was so neat, and it was an incredible workout as well since the reef was pretty far out. Unfortunately, we are still waiting on our underwater camera case to arrive in the mail (should be in the next couple of days), so we don't have any photos of what we saw today, but will be sure to get some next time!

After our day of snorkelling, we were exhausted and starving! We decided to check out a new restaurant that Matt had pointed out to me last week - called Yakiniku Viking. It has large pictures of vegitables on the exterior, so he thought it might be "my kind of place". Haha... how true that is. Anyway, I'm really glad we tried it, because it turned out to be Matt's type of place too - it was an all-you-can-eat-in-an-hour, grill-it-yourself restaurant that had a plethora (yes, a plethora) of fresh meat and vegitables ready for you to grill! You pick what you want, bring it back to your table, and grill it yourself at the built-in grill in the center of your table. Fun! Okay, I say fun, but, in fact, Matt was the one who cooked all of our food:) They also had soups, salads, rice and deserts. It wasn't a huge place, but it was decently busy and seemed to be a popular place among the other Americans stationed here. About half of the guests at the restaurant were American! Anyway, we found a great new place to eat, and it was a fun end to a fun day:)

Fresh MEET

Make-it-Yourself Udon Soup

I love their happy little sayings!

One of the Shi-Shi Dogs guarding the outside of the restuarant

-C