Heading North!

Hello!

Up this morning about 6 am, bathed and to breakfast a bit after 7.  Today is pack-up-and-move-day for us, as we head north to the Motobu peninsula and the Churaumi Aquarium!  We truly hate to leave the lovely Hilton Chatan Resort, as it has been a wonderful place to stay.

Walkway to Zakimi Castle

Castle walls with pine trees

Spectacular scenery!

Second Enclosure of Zakimi

Out about 8:30 am, with a first stop at the hotel we will stay in when we return to the Chatan area.  I just wanted to see where it is.  As it turns out, it is about a mile or so south of the Hilton, facing the water.  While it is called the Beach Front Tower Mahama, it is more of a self-catering arrangement, and we will be there for four nights.  I tried to find a place a bit south of Naha, but wasn’t really able to find something that I really liked, so figured that from the Chatan area, we could easily reach the places south of Naha I wanted to see.  So, no servicing of the small flat that we are renting, but it does come with its own washer and dryer!! 

Me at the castle!

Really like the doorways!

Yippee!!  (Although both of the hotels we will be staying in before we head back to Chatan have coin laundries … now if only they would have some instructions I could read!)

We then turned the car north and started heading for the Cape Zanpa area, to yet another castle I don’t remember from 40 years ago!  This one – Zakimi -  is located at the top of a hill completely surrounded by pine trees, and it’s beautiful!  Again, only walls and a bit of foundation remains, but they are very impressive indeed.  Lovely morning out – sunny and breezy with lots of blue sky. 

Beautiful white sand beach

And LOTS of do not's as well!

I think I should probably take a moment here to indicate that driving here on Okinawa takes time.  It’s not crowded, really, anywhere we’ve been, but the maximum speed limit on almost all roads is 60 kilometers per hour (37 mph) – which isn’t very fast.  As Robert pointed out, he has never known me to drive this slowly – but it’s just the pace of things here, and that’s fine.  (I think the kilometers per hour may be higher on the one expressway, but as we have yet to take it, I don’t know for sure.) 

From Zakimi Castle, we headed to Cape Zanpa, where there is a beautiful white sand beach that we had all to ourselves.  R took a photo of the “do not” on the sign, as it seemed to both of us that there wasn’t much one COULD do, after all the do not do’s!  We did have an interesting time with the pictographs though – some of them were very hard to figure out, but fortunately, there were a few English words on the sign that helped!

View at Maeda Point

Maeda Point

Awfully bitter Goya fruit!

From Cape Zanpa, we went to Maeda Point, which I do remember from the old days.  Now, however, rather than just being a lovely windswept point, it is a major diving center on the island.  Not sure how warm the water is there, but everyone we saw was in wetsuits, which seemed the only smart way to go.  It was fascinating to see from Maeda Point, that the weather was so clear, we could see all up the coast and to the Motobu peninsula, where we are now, as well as Ie Shima Island, a small island off the coast of Okinawa, where the WWII reporter Earnie Pyle lost his life. 

The drive took several hours, but went past some fascinating areas.  There is a luxury hotel area south of Nago near Onna, home to some really HUGE hotel blocks.  We will be spending Tuesday and Wednesday nights near there, and are planning on visiting the Busena Underwater Observatory and hopefully taking one of their glass-bottomed boat cruises.  Very much looking forward to it!  We followed Highway 58 most of the way to the peninsula, where we got off on the 449 to again stay close to the coastline. 

In 1975, Okinawa hosted a world’s fair at their Ocean Expo Park, and it was the only time that I got up to this part of the island in the two years I lived here. 

Buffet hotel "Western" lunch

View from our room!

Ie Shima Island across the bay

Another beautiful white sand beach!

(After all, it is something like 45 miles away from where I lived!)  I really don’t remember much about it, but the Churaumi Aquarium is a hold-over.  It has been developed further, and now is the second largest aquarium in the world, second only to the one in Atlanta, Georgia.  It is Okinawa’s largest tourist attraction, and we will be visiting there tomorrow.  I thought, as today is Sunday, and the parking lots looked rather full, it would be more fun to get an early start in the morning. 

Our hotel, the Centurion Okinawa Hotel Churaumi, is located right next to the Aquarium.  In fact, you can see much of the building from the hotel’s lobby.  We arrived here about 12:30 pm and decided to see if we could check in and get some lunch. 

Well…no problem getting our luggage in, and the hotel was happy to hold it for us, but they weren’t quite ready for check-in yet.  So, we decided to leave things and head to their restaurant.  Talk about strangers in a strange land … that was us!  We wanted to do their lunch buffet, and were shown to a nice table.  However, there was such a crowd around the buffet that we couldn’t even see what was on offer!  Until, after perusing, I came to the realization that there was absolutely NOTHING on any of the tables that I even RECOGNIZED! 

Me and my Sukiyaki dinner!

Close-up of dinner!

R's soup and salad

R's steak with corn and sweet potatoes!

Oh, my!  As it turned out, they had a Japanese/Okinawa buffet, as well as a Western buffet, so we changed sides of the dining room, and that helped somewhat.  So … now a few things we recognized – like spaghetti with Parmesan cheese (in a can!  Haven’t had that in years!)  Cheese croquettes, French fries, fried rice, an omelet with “meat sauce” and a dish of pork that was absolutely delicious!  So, we were able to make a meal for ourselves, which we enjoyed very much!

After that, we thought we would return to the lobby and wait until we could get in our room.  I took advantage of R’s good nature to take a stroll through the gift shop, and they had some lovely and not terribly expensive things!  I got a batik scarf and a necklace that is quite lovely!  May head back there later, that’s for sure!

About 1:30 pm we were told that our room was ready, so R checked us in and away we went.  Turns out the hotel is on three floors, and there is no elevator – for people!  Thankfully, they have an interesting dumb-waiter affair for luggage, which helped tremendously!  First room (302) they showed us, though – no smoking, right?  Not quite.  You couldn’t breathe the air in there!  R took one step in, stopped, turned around and said: “No, sorry!  We need a non-smoking room!”  So, the nice guy went back to the desk and got the key to room 305, which is quite nice and not smelly at all!! 

We have two large twin beds next to each other, and two neatly pressed robes that are purportedly for nighttime wear – although one is NOT to wear them in the lobby or public areas, we have been informed!  Then there are two sofas facing each other next to the windows, through which our view is of lovely Ie Shima Island, across the bay.  There is also a convenient desk arrangement where our computer is set up.

And now a word about electric toilets.  One of the things that I quickly realized is that all of our hotels so far have had these interesting bidet arrangements, as well as heated toilet seats!  Now that is DEFINITELY a great idea!  Nothing like going in to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and wow – warmth!  So … enough of that!

Once in our room, we did find occasion to take naps, which felt really good!  And now I am contemplating our dinner tonight, here at the hotel!  I am hopeful of sukiyaki with raw egg, but we’ll just have to see!

So, Dear Friends, more later!

m

xxx

Footnote: We have been asked about the exchange rate.  It is currently ¥100 = $0.90.  When looking at prices in the store, using ¥100 = $1.00 is an easy approximation, only 10% off the mark.  (Note from M:  When I lived here, it was ¥300 to the $1 !!!)

Back from dinner and settling in for the night!  We ate in the restaurant part of the food service area (where we had had our “Western” lunch this afternoon).  R ordered the “Japanese steak set” which ended up being a thin beef steak, which R said was delicious, along with fresh corn, broccoli and sweet potato, along with corn chowder and a salad.  I had the sukiyaki, which was quite the experience!  I haven’t had sukiyaki since we left Pasadena in 2003, and this one was apparently a “cook your own food” kind of dinner!  I had the hot plate put down in front of me, and turned on – and then I was on my own!  Fortunately, having had some experience, I was fine, and the sukiyaki was delicious – complete with (to R’s disgust) raw egg, which I stirred up and then used as a dipping sauce for my meal!  So!  That’s all for now from Motobu peninsula!

m

xxx