Wedding in Okinawa

Congratulations to Manho & Sikyi on your wedding!
Best wishes to you both in a new chapter of your life.


Day 1 - Vancouver > Osaka > Okinawa
I traveled to Okinawa on Sept 25 to get there in time to attend my cousin - Manho's wedding. Had to fly over from Vancouver which just so happened to have a direct flight route to Osaka, so I decided to stay on a few days after the wedding and travel throughout Osaka, Nara and Kyoto. I flew on Air Canada Rouge - which wasn't what I imagined it to be... I though it would just be an Air Canada flight, but I think this is their low-fare route/line for long-haul flights..... anyways I was very surprised cuz the flight attendants were not wearing the typical Air Canada uniforms, and the seats all did not have a personal TV! I was looking forward to spending my flight time sleeping and watching movies, but instead they have a wifi entertainment program that you can watch on your smartphones or tablets or laptops (or you can rent an iPad from them for CAD 10). It would have also been nice if they had those shared TV that hang from the ceiling, at least with the flight information, cuz I kept wondering how much longer till we arrived?????!!!!!
photo on left: flight attendant on Air Canada Rouge flight, they wear fedoras as part of their uniform!

seats without personal TVs! :(

After landing in Osaka, I had a couple of hours until my connecting flight to Okinawa so I went to the Rinku Premium Outlets just outside of Kansai International Airport.... this place has A LOT of stores and all of them are brand names ones, seems better than than the ones I've been to in the States and Canada. Usually I don't make trips to outlets, especially when I am traveling, but this time I wanted to get a pair of boots from Aigle in time for Vancouver's rainy winters and they don't have an Aigle store in Vancouver, so it's seemed best to check out stores in Osaka.

The outlets are really easy to get to, there's a shuttle bus from the airport's arrival hall that goes directly to the outlet in 20 mins and for JPY 200 each way. If I had more time, I would have probably gone to Sakai where there's a museum for knives as Japanese knives are really famous - and this city (next to Osaka) is where many of the knives are produced.

Finally arrived at my hotel in Okinawa, and it's really nice and newly decorated as I think they renovated it recently and opened it again in Aug 2015. I stayed at Hotel Estination, the rooms are small, but that's typical of hotels in Japan.

above photos: Hotel Estination

The breakfast/cafe area is open kitchen and modern, the food is western mainly but with local ingredients and looks delicious.

 above: the open kitchen restaurant in the lobby
below: there's an open deck area that leads out from the open kitchen restaurant

My family flew in from Hong Kong mainly and we met up for dinner and then the next day we officially started traveling!


Day 2 - Naha > Nago > Churaumi Aquarium > Dinner of melt-in-your-mouth beef > Chatan
We stayed in Naha for the first night, and then had to pack up everything as we were moving to stay a bit closer to the wedding venue. Naha is in the southern part of Okinawa Island (Okinawa is the prefecture which has a whole bunch of islands, Okinawa Island is the largest of them all... very similar to Hawaii and how it's made up of a lot of islands), we went all the way to the northern city of Nago and then drove all the way back south to the middle for our hotel.

above photo: the places we visited in Okinawa, I wrote down the words for Soba and Sushi so that I can easily identify restaurants with those words in their name or on signs outside their door... just in case. :D

Before leaving Naha, we drove about 5-10 mins from our hotel to the port of Naha where the fishing boats come in each morning and they have an auction for the morning's catch. There you can watch the auction (starts at 6:00am) and then enjoy a breakfast of freshly caught fish, as they have a market there where you can buy sashimi and ready to eat dishes.

 above: at 6:00am when the fishing boats come in, there's a live auction here

below: a store that serves dishes/meals with fresh seafood inside the market

Then we went back to the hotel and waited for everyone to get ready..... of course with a large group we knew we were going to have to wait for people - especially when it comes to moving luggage to another city. Finally we were on our way, and we had to drive about 1.5 hours to get to the northern part, of which the most part is on a toll highway, but it's quite easy to drive here and there are not much cars once you get on the highway. Japanese drivers are all very courteous and rule-obeying, most cars did not go over the speed limit of 80km/h which seemed really slow.... hahaha... (this is coming from me, when I drive at like 80km/h I feel like it's going too fast, but I was just sitting in the passenger seat this time....)

We only had a glimpse of  the sea from time to time.... and didn't make any stops for photos as we couldn't really get off on the highway.... but as we neared Nago we had some nice stretches of beaches and water..... unfortunately the weather that day was a bit gloomy as there was a typhoon in the area but we weren't affected by it too much. However, the temperature there is still really humid and high - it was around 28-30 degrees celsius every day and I would be sweating even while standing in the shade.

We ended up going to Ufuya, a restaurant that's in a remote mountain area that was highly recommended. You can have dishes made with the locally raised pork and fresh tofu. What makes this place really special, is the restaurant is made up of a series of rooms/houses that are built up the side of a hill, so you have to walk through stairs and at random intervals they will branch off into rooms/houses and continue onwards. Also they have beautiful greenery and waterfalls that are right outside the room/house so that it's a really pleasant environment. But it gets busy during lunch time as more and more guests arrive, so we were lucky we arrived just before other people did.

Lunch ordering is quite easy - I think this place is used to lots of tourists, so they've kept their menu to like 10 set lunches. They arrived on a tray with little plates/boxes of food.... yum!

below photo: see the tops of "huts" those are the rooms we went up to for lunch, there's lots more just hidden by the foliage

From Ufuya, it takes only about 30mins to drive to Churaumi Aquarium, which is right on the coast of the island. By the time we finished lunch and arrived there, it was just a bit after 3:00pm (gosh we move slowly...) and entrance into the aquarium is discounted at 4:00pm, so we waited until then to buy tickets. The aquarium is usually opened till 8:00pm on most days.

 

 above right: Ocean Expo Park with Churaumi Aquarium in the background

below: looking out from Churaumi Aquarium, you can see Ie Island, can get there by ferry

 

While you wait, there are some things that you can look at in the Ocean Expo Park, which is an outdoor park with gardens as well. There are dolphin tanks and shows, a sea turtle tank and a manatee tank as well.

 second row left: this fish reminds me of African face painting and patterns

second row right: these are a type of eel that stick out from the sand like worms

We finally went in at 4:00pm and there was a rush of people at 4:00, but quickly they were let into the aquarium and you don't really feel the crowd. There are lots of different tanks of fishes and some really interesting looking fish, but nothing really spectacular. The most amazing thing is when you get to the largest tank, there's one side of glass that has no obstruction, so everyone stops and stare at the 3 huge whale sharks, bunch of giant manta rays and schools of fishes swimming around and around.

 above: these tiny crabs only have one claw, and they didn't lose it in a fight, that's just how they are

below: these fish (very hard to see in this photo) are swimming while they are "standing" vertically in water...

 above: the whale shark feeding while standing up straight

At 5:00pm there's a feeding in the large tank for the whale sharks (above photo) and they have been trained to feed "standing up". At 5:30pm, they open up the area above the large tank for visitors to walk around so you can see the tank from above, like the aquarium employees feeding the whale sharks.

On our way back to Chatan (where we were staying), we stopped at a restaurant that offered barbecue beef, we chose this because it looked like it would fit all of us - we had trouble the previous night where we were refused a table because they said they were full and we could not be on the wait list.... we don't know if it's because we had such a big group.... or because we're Chinese.... hahaha...

We started off with some sets where the beef was good, but not the best.... and then we ordered more beef and got one of the special cuts... and the beef.... look at the sinews and marbling! It was so good! We didn't order a lot, but we were all full and happy, and the bill just came up to about JPY 24,000!

 above & below photos: THE BEST BEEF I've ever had!

Day 3 - Wedding (ANA InterContinental in Onna) - Sept 29, 2015
Morning of the wedding, we were all ready by 9:30am and then started to make our way to the ANA InterContinental for the wedding ceremony. On the way, we stopped at McDonald's for breakfast all fancy-looking.

We drove along the coast but didn't have time to stop, here you can see the crystal clear waters and really enjoy the rural island charm of Okinawa.

video: wedding venue around sunset

we couldn't get this while we were there as the wind was too strong, my cousins went back after lunch and used their helicam (YES They have one!) to record this....

Not much to write about, but we waited for the ceremony to start and took lots of photos.

After the ceremony, we all headed off to have lunch on our own, but the area is not a very popular food spot - no restaurants were opened!!!! there were all opening at 5:00pm.... so we had to drive all the way back to our hotel and look around the area for something to eat..... it was very stressful with cars full of hungry people and no destination in mind.... :D next time I would probably suggest we just eat at the ANA InterContinental (wait... no next time... but for the next cousin's wedding.... )

Day 4 - Murasaki Mura experience village > Naha's International Street & Makishi Market > Shuri (/Shurijo) Castle

Early in the morning, we said to goodbye to my aunt and uncle as they had to catch a flight back to Hong Kong. The rest of us went to nearby Murasaki Mura experience village where you can take part in a lot of workshops such as - glass blowing, pottery making/painting, Karate classes (Karate started in Okinawa), t-shirt screen printing and lots more. There's even the Yomitan Nature School here! I've started noticing Nature Schools/Preschools ever since I started doing the ECE program.... funny...

 above: the karate school

below: glass bead workshop

Yomitan Nature School - the stone wall is typical of Okinawa houses, what a great place it is for the children they have so many cool experiences in the vicinity

 At the entrance of every house in Okinawa you will find these two creatures (called Shisa) to guard the house against spirits. They are a cross of lion and dog, the one with the open mouth is to ward off evil spirits and the one with closed mouth is to keep good spirits.

It's really sunny and hot in Okinawa, so after a while my relatives didn't want to stay out in the sun so much.... I think they aren't used to staying out in the sun so much even though they live in Hong Kong, so they don't remember to stay covered (with a hat) and hydrated (drinking lots of water along the way).

 above & below: some interesting shisas - they all look so happy!

We drove back to Naha because I will be staying the night there as I have a super early flight out the next morning. We went to International Street (Kokusai Dori) where you can do lots of shopping for souvenir snacks. There's also the Makishi market located there which has lots of fresh seafood so you can buy them from the market stalls and then they will take it upstairs to cook/prepare for you.

However, I was a bit disappointed with Makishi market, it wasn't as clean and fresh looking as I expected. I think the fish market we went to by the auction and naha port was better. The seafood look more fresh there. Also the restaurants upstairs reminded me of the cooked food centres in Hong Kong's wet markets..... whereas I liked the ones in Seoul's Noryangji fish market a lot more as the restaurants had their own individual shops.

In the end we selected a sushi/sashimi shop that was just outside of the market and it was small, but the sashimi we had was good and the price was a lot cheaper than in Canada or Hong Kong. The selection of fish was also a lot more varied. LOVE Japan!

Then we passed by a small shop selling Ishigaki beef.... I wanted to visit Ishigaki (another island about an hour by plane south of Okinawa island) but with the typhoon that was close by a few days ago, I didn't get a chance. They raise their own cows there and the beef is just as good as Kobe beef. So we ordered some, but I don't think the guy did a good job cooking them..... he cut the pieces way too small and cooked them way too long until they were well-done.... but they were still juicy and you can definitely taste a strong beef flavour.

The ones we had two nights earlier were much better... :D

Then we went to Shuri Castle (or Shurijo Castle) for a look around. Okinawa used to be a separate kingdom from Japan and it was ruled by the Ryukyu. The castle/palace was almost completed destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa during the Second World War, so now the building in place is a replica.

It was nice to go inside because it was air conditioned.... hahaha... but it's really interesting because some parts of it is open-air and it felt almost like you were going into a heated room/sauna.

We entered when the sun was starting to set, and then by the time we finished looking around it was all dark outside, which made for an eerie photo and a nice view of the City of Naha.