Monday, December 31, 2018

Trip to Okinawa in 2015 - Day 4






Happy New Year! It's been a super busy year for me in 2018, but I haven't forgotten about my trip three years ago. Let's continue on …

























In the morning of November 25, 2015, we enjoyed our last breakfast in Rizzan Sea-Park Hotel. I believe it was a Japanese/ Western style breakfast buffet in Seaside Restaurant Tancha Bay. It was a huge restaurant with 50% of the tables occupied. I love the hotel very much since it never got crowded due to its tremendous size.



I recall there was a chef preparing eggs (?) for guests so my brother and I got one each. We tried to use the pepper and salt but we couldn't figure out how to use the pepper. With little knowledge of English, the chef used body language to show us how to use it. We looked like bumpkins 大鄉里, very embarrassed 😐 When we returned to our seats, we saw pepper and salt on our table...haha!



My mom met a woman while she was watching an entertainment show in the hotel the other day. During the breakfast, the woman and her family sat beside us. What a coincidence! She was originally from Shanghai and currently resides in Tokyo, a very sweet and friendly lady 🙂

Later on just before we left the hotel, we saw her again in the lobby so we exchanged contact information. Now I only know her name is 上野新子. In case she will see my blog, I would like to tell her: thank you for your warm and friendly greeting to my family 😊





After we finished breakfast, we left the restaurant  and passed by a supermarket/ souvenir store with a sharp red male underwear by the window. I decided to buy it for my uncle 三舅父 hoping to bring him luck 😃 He passed away the year after but I still wish him luck in his next life!





We stayed three nights and at least two mornings we put a green sign on the door which means the staff didn't have to clean the room. As a result, we gained 2,000 yen tokens to use in the hotel 😉



I was addicted to the hot spring every time when I had a chance to stay in a hotel in Japan where the facilities existed. Just before the departure, I went to the hotel's hot spring by myself.  There was a charge of 400 yen (around  $5 CAD) which was reasonable. As the description on the hotel's English website, it was really a "bath with panoramic view of the aquamarine sea",  very soothing and relaxing.
Time to go after the relaxing bath. Remember the driver who drove us around on November 24? He kindly offered to give us a ride to our next destination Naha. But then he received a call from another customer so he asked his Japanese friend (also a taxi driver) to give us a ride instead.  
As promised, his friend drove us to Lazor Garden,the most beautiful crystal church I have ever seen! Thank you to both drivers 😊 I know Okinawa has many beautiful churches for weddings. Without the drivers, I don't think we could see it in person.




There is a hotel right by the church, must be very expensive. 


After about 1 hour and 35 minutes, we arrived at our destination Villa Coast Nishimachi guesthouse (apartment hotel). Although the driver could not speak English, he was polite and provided good customer service. For 48 km of ride, we paid 4000 yen (around $50 CAD).
We checked in at our guesthouse two hours earlier than expected. The manager there was a young man who could speak English since he studied in Canada (I believe in Ontario) before. Yeah! Friends from Canada! He was super friendly and let us go to our guestrooms right away since they were vacant 😃
I reserved two guestrooms on Booking.com - one for my brother and me, one for my mom and my auntie. Each room had 2 twin beds and cost $80 per night. The rooms we stayed were on the 7th floor, units 703 and 705.



Let's go to unit 703! Needed to remove shoes and wear slippers before getting on the laminate floor. Right side was the kitchen with microwave, small fridge, sink, stovetop and a kettle.





Bathroom on the left side. There were mirror, sink, washer (National brand) and bathtub.



Let's take a closer look at the kitchen. The microware model was Sharp RE-T13 and 2 cups were provided. Fridge brand was Sanyo. Are we heading to the bedroom now? Not yet, don't forget there's a toilet on the left side after the bathroom, it was separated from the bathroom though. 


As a typical Japanese toilet, it had a control panel to wash your butt (spray or bidet), adjust the water pressure (front or back, weak or strong), it also had a button for deodorizer, etc.
Have you noticed a water tap on top of the tank? How it works? We flushed first, then washed our hands there, the used water would be collected into the tank for the next flush. What a brilliant idea to save water 😄❗
The cons is the room was very narrow, like a toilet in the plane so my elbows kept hitting the walls when I moved around.







Finally is the bedroom: got a small table with 2 chairs for dining, a desk with computer desktop plus another office chair and a closet with some hangers. The last picture is an air conditioner.




Here comes the most important part of the room - nice clean twin beds! The complete floor plan from Villa Coast Nishimachi can be found on Booking.com 🙂



At night we went out and grabbed some food as dinner from a supermarket which was around 10-15 minute walk. There were food samples of dumplings that my mom loved but we were not sure what kind of meat they contain. Because my mom had gout, she could not eat beef. None of the people there could speak English ... BINGO! I found pictures of cow, pig and chicken, let's take a photo of them and show it to the staff. It worked, she pointed to the pig.


After dinner was time for rest and relax. Accidentally found cartoon on the computer. No idea what they were saying (all Japanese) but it was very cute, like back to my childhood time. 

Monday, January 1, 2018

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!