Trip to Okinawa in 2015 - Day 3

Happy New Year! Wish everyone a healthy and joyous year in 2018 🙂 Let's continue on with my exciting trip in Okinawa. On the third day we visited 4 different attractions. 

In the morning, we had the complimentary Japanese breakfast buffet first. It was different from the lunch buffet we had yesterday but still very enjoyable with both the ambiance and food.

Then we got ready to meet our taxi driver while my mom was ready to spend her whole day in the hotel (she couldn't walk too much and well so she decided to stay in the hotel, it's worry free for us since we already got her familiar with the hotel the other day). We booked a tour taxi from Okito Taxi Company (http://okinawatravelinfo.com/tour/okito-taxi-chuhokubua/) for 8 hours. I requested for a Cantonese driver, the company told me the name of my driver was Mr. Sakamoto and he could speak Cantonese. Wow ... a Japanese can speak Cantonese. Amazing!!!

Guess what? It's completely different when I met our driver. He has a Japanese name but he is a Chinese who can speak Mandarin only. Never mind at least I can speak some Mandarin. When I showed him our itinerary in English he got no idea at all, good that I also had it written in Chinese so he knew where we planned to visit.

Visiting 4 attractions in 8 hours was a bit intense since some places required more than half an hour drive and we had to skip lunch in order to have enough time for all the attractions. We purchased three admission passes in advance from JAPANiCAN.com
(https://www.japanican.com/en/tour/detail/PAS5J00204OOD/?typecd=TOU&destcd=V09&typegrpcd=TPA)which saved us some money. Imagine one person saved 2000 YEN, then three of us would save 6000 YEN (about 70 CAD) 😁  If you wonder where we picked up our admission passes, it was in Naha airport domestic terminal (remember to show your purchase confirmation since the staff there speak very limited English, easier to provide them with the paper receipt).

Okay! Let's go. The weather was very beautiful. The first one we visited in the refresh morning is Kouri Ocean Tower (古宇利 Ocean Tower 在古宇利島 - 姨媽稱佢為估你唔到). Once arrived, we were asked to take an automatic cart 自動駕駛的自動車 with 5 minute audio-guided in English or Chinese to get to the main entrance.

The first floor in the ocean tower is the shell museum with more than 10,000 shells gathered from every part of the world. The most impressive display I saw was the elegant white heart made by beautiful shells.

Before going up to the second level, we passed by this little cake area. I would love to try their pumpkin roll cake but I was still full from my breakfast.

The second floor provides a panoramic view of the ocean. The bridge in the centre is called Kouri Bridge where our taxi was driving through!

The ocean deck on the rooftop. What a breathtaking view! Someone said there was a long line-up to take photo with the bell on the blog. We didn't see anyone there so we could take as many photos as we wanted, maybe it was in the morning. It was quite windy though!

The other side of the ocean tower has a souvenir shop and an ocean cafe. If I had more time and money $$$, I would love to have a luxurious meal there (https://www.kouri-oceantower.com/en/).

Next we visited Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium 沖繩美麗海水族館 located in the Ocean Expo Park. As one of the largest aquarium in the world, it is the main sightseeing spot in Okinawa and had much more tourists compared to Kouri Ocean Tower. Fortunately the Ocean Expo Park is super spacious so we didn't feel crowded at all. There were funny landscapes along the way to the aquarium.

Get ready to go into the aquarium!

Too many to see!!! Due to our rush schedule. We didn't spend too much time there. Here are the pictures of the most spectacular scenes or their symbol: one of the largest aquarium tanks in the world with whale sharks (鯨鯊) and manta rays (魔鬼魚/鬼蝠魟) inside.

Our next stop was Nago Pineaple Park 名護鳳梨園. Similar to Kouri Ocean Tower, it has automated pineapple cart ride, additional charge though. To save time, we decided to skip the cart ride. For myself, the highlight of Nago Pineapple Park was the huge souvenir shop with free samples to try. Full of pineapple products: fresh pineapple, pineapple juice, pineapple wine, pineapple ice cream, pineapple chocolate, pineapple cookies and their most popular product PINEAPPLE SPONGE CAKE which we decided to buy some for dinner.

Our last attraction was Ryukyu Mura (Ryukyu Village) 琉球村, a theme park about ancient life during the Ryukyu Kingdom. Okinawa used to be an independent kingdom called the Ryukyu Kingdom 琉球王國. Here we saw the historical houses, traditional clothes, weaving/dyeing, folk music and dance, goat, the traditional way of processing brown sugar and Habu snake specimen!

I think this is a display of Chinese emperor fashion. Maybe it's Ryukyu king's garment?

A water buffalo powered a sugar cane crushing machine in the centre of a large ring at the Ryukyu Village. The water buffalo had to walk in a circle repetitively. Suddenly my auntie felt sympathy for the water buffalo being forced to do the same movement for long hours (姨媽生起同情心, 憐憫水牛無自由不停重複工作).

I love snack so the happiest moment for me was the discovery of snacks in souvenir shop! I bought almost all the favours in this photo - lime, salt and purple yam 😙

Our driver was quite talkative but friendly. He knew we would travel from Rizzan Hotel to Naha city on the next day and the taxi normally cost around 9000 - 10000 yen. He kindly offered to give us a ride for 4000 yen plus bring us to see the most beautiful crystal church Lazor Garden. YEAH!

Trip to Okinawa in 2015 - Day 2

Second day we didn't go outside the resort. We decided to stay in the hotel and browse around since it is huge! From one end to another end takes at least 10 minutes to walk. I'd better have my mom to be familiar with the hotel since she would stay there by herself on the third day ... hehe!

Let's take a walk along the beach in the fresh morning, there is a chapel next to the hotel. Although it is not the spectacular crystal church, I found it adorable and a good option for couples who love to have a wedding in an ocean view chapel within budget 🙂

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Now walk back to the other side ... the view of our hotel in the middle of the resort:

When we kept walking along, there is an open-air Japanese pub where guests can see the performance of Okinawan folk songs every night.

Here's the view of the other end:

When we looked out into the ocean, we saw a lighthouse. It looks not too far hey! According to Google map, the distance is 14.6 km which takes 3 hours to walk from Rizzan to the lighthouse!!!

Rizzan has several restaurants including Seaside Restaurant for Western breakfast buffet, Shichifuku for Japanese and Ryukyu (Okinawan) buffet, Blue Lagoon for Western lunch and dinner buffets, Mandarin Court for Cantonese cuisine (that's where we had dinner buffet on the first night!), Churahama for charcoal-grilled yakiniku at the outdoor seats in front of the beach, Prashanti for homemade sweets and Coral View for wine or cocktail.

Guess which one we went to on November 23, the second day? Because we could have either free breakfast or free lunch buffet, we picked the later one. It was in Blue Lagoon, I recall the choices were good, food was decent and the ocean view made the ambiance very relaxing and enjoyable 😊

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Here's the picture of Blue Lagoon lunch buffet from Rizzan website:

After lunch would be a good time for walking to burn calories ... hehe. Even just wandering around inside the hotel was fun! It has convenient store where we purchased our dinner there (less expensive than going to a restaurant plus we got a 10% discount coupon from first night's dinner buffet in Mandarin Court that we could use in the convenient store 😉 ), it has some souvenir shops too. I recall the 10% discount coupon could be applied to both convenient and souvenir stores.

There were chairs that we could sit to watch the ocean through the window glass. Since nobody was there, it was totally quiet and meditated to have a seat facing the endless ocean.

After a while, we went back to our room to have an afternoon nap. Just a very short one but very good sleep 🙂

I also went through their safety guide briefly.

We were looking forward to our sweets buffet in Lounge Prashanti since the mini cakes and desserts looked very attractive and delicious on their website!

Oops ... it was a bit disappointing as we didn't see the ones that matched these fancy pictures. The mini cakes were very limited,most of the desserts were ice cream and chopped fruits. I recalled we could make our own pancakes, which was a bit fun.Their cups were cute, was the buffet more for kids?

Anyway, I enjoyed this place with ocean view more than the sweets. When we checked in, the hotel gave each of us a welcome drink coupon for Coral View. Since we didn't use them for the drinks, we redeemed the coupons at Prashanti as cash value for the buffet.

Trip to Okinawa in 2015 - Day 1

My auntie in Hong Kong was looking forward to travelling abroad with us including my mom, my brother and me. Since my mom was already over 65 and my auntie was over 75. I had to plan a trip that would fit their energy level ... hehe. Finally we decided to let our auntie have a relaxing vacation in the beautiful tropical island Okinawa (有東方夏威夷之稱的沖繩) J

It was from November 22 to 27. Since we travelled there by ourselves (自由行), lots of preparation and research needed to ensure the trip would be running smoothly! First was the flight which we decided to fly with Hong Kong airline (香港航空) instead of Cathy Pacific (國泰航空). Guess how much we could save by choosing Hong Kong airline? Both offered direct flights - Cathy was about $4000 HKD each while Hong Kong airline was $1500 HKD per person. 4 of us would save $10,000 HKD!!! Probably around $1700 CAD ...

On November 22, we departed from Hong Kong around 11:45 am and arrived Naha airport around 3:10 pm. Once we were in Naha airport, we were looking for the station to purchase our bus tickets as we would be taking shuttle bus to Rizzan Sea-Park Hotel. I could not find the station at first cause it was located in the domestic terminal but we were in the international terminal. Finally we were able to buy the tickets and it took us 1 hour 15 minutes to bus to the hotel. We paid 6400 yen (1600 yen per passenger), around $80 CAD.

Our hotel was in the resort in Onna 恩納村 (http://www.rizzan.co.jp/english/index.html). It was the largest and the most economical hotel in Onna although it was not the fanciest one. Staffs were very friendly and some of them especially the front desk people can speak English J

The room we stayed was for 4 guests with ocean view and it was extremely huge (over 530 square feet)! Here is the picture of a 4 person room from its webpage.

Here are the pictures taken by me:

By the time we checked-in and settled everything, it was 7 pm already so we had our first Okinawa dinner in Chinese cuisine Mandarin Court (中國菜自助晚餐). Service was very good since they automatically found a Mandarin speaking lady to serve us.

Since Okinawa has tropical climate, we enjoyed the desserts a lot - almond tofu pudding, mango pudding, jello cups. Overall the buffet was quite nice and cost around $38 CAD per person. After we paid, we received coupons to use in the hotel's convenient stores, like a 10% discount.

After dinner, we passed by a show stage so we watched the traditional Okinawan dance as entertainment!

Just like all standard hotels, Rizzan provided hair brush, tooth brush with toothpaste, shower cap, etc. I always appreciate how hotels provide all the necessities, on the other hand it creates more pollution as the wraps and supplies will be thrown away when guests leave. Alternatively we can bring our own sets for each trip instead of using the toiletries offered by hotels.