The Sunday Snapshot

A special exhibition of Disney animation at the Art Museum. 

The Sunday Snapshot

Matt picked out his new fearsome pet at Petbox...

And brought him into the house. 

The Hydrangeas

While most cafes with a view are found on the coast, this time Matt and I headed into the mountains to find lunch with a view. I found a cafe in my book with a name I could not read but a beautiful view and some easily recognizable roads. We sat at one of two tables outside with a menu all in Japanese without pictures resting on the table. The sweet lady who was the owner and chef pointed to two of the three options and motioned that they were not available, so we both ordered the only lunch option left without knowing what it would be. When it arrived it matched the picture in the book just like I hoped - some sort of crepe! I love crepes and have found many crepe cafes on Okinawa, but not like this one. This crepe was filled with a salty seaweed with a side of tofu salad. I ate as much as I could in order to not appear rude, drank my tea, and admired the truly stunning mountain view.

I made a goal to visit all 100 cafes in my book, but I might amend my goal to simply visit most. I am fairly adventurous with my food, but Okinawan flavors are not my favorite. It was difficult trying to eat a dish that I did NOT like, so I might skip a few places that look overly traditional. We stopped elsewhere to grab a desert to fill us up before we headed to our next stop: the Yohena Aijsai Garden.

Aijsai is japanese for hydrangea, and the private garden is owned and tended by Mrs. Uto Yohena, an Okinawan citizen who is 98 years old! She opens the garden to the public for a small fee (around three dollars) while the flowers are in bloom. Since the garden is in the mountains the flowers cover an entire hillside with rough steps leading up and around the garden. Most of the blooms are a shade of blue, but there are white and pink in little groups as well. They were in full bloom when we went, with the clusters of flowers as large as my head! We spent less than an hour walking though the hydrangeas, but we were very impressed with the garden and took as many pictures as the locals around us.

The Sunday Snapshot

Beetle season is coming...

The Sunday Snapshot

Frogs and hydrangea flowers on my toes by the artists at Cocok's!

The New Mall

This weekend Matt and I went shopping at a brand new mall that was completed just a few weeks ago. Everybody on base was abuzz about this mall because... it has American brands! Gasp! Squeal! This is a HUGE deal because it is the first mall large enough to have so many international brands! Matt needed new shoes, and his feet are hopelessly large in most Japanese stores. Off we went to shop at an American store in our Okinawan mall! Getting parking there was not easy. We hit traffic while several lights away, and once we pulled in the entrance we had to circle the mall's many parking to decks to find a single spot. We spent close to an hour looking for parking. By the time we entered the mall I was STARVING. Fortunately the mall has...

three stories of food court!

We had so many food options! I got Thai, Matt got Japanese, and we both got donuts for dessert. Yum!

If you can tell from the pictures, the mall was gigantic and shiny and new and VERY full of people. They had an "aquarium elevator" that was surrounded by a gigantic tank on the ground floor with sharks and other exotic fish. There was a line for everything, even the elevator, so we did not try it ourselves.

While the brands are familiar, there are some differences. The shoe sizes in  Sports Authority were in centimeters, and Matt could find only three pairs total in his size. I purchased clothing at American Eagle, and the entire store was filled with extra small and extra extra small sizes. Medium was the largest size I saw in the store. We both found what we were shopping for, American brand clothing, but the mall did have its fair share of Japanese stores as well. I was distracted by one store specifically that exclusively sold items of a seal character dressed up as other items. It was cuteness (and strangeness) overload, and I had to take pictures.

This is Sirotan the seal who has a whole mall store dedicated to him. 

Sirotan as sushi.

Sirotan as other animals. 

Sirotan as toast. So kawaii!!!

The Ocean View Cafe

Following the book listing all of the Okinawan cafes with a view Matt and I found a place we would never have found on our own, Ocean View Cafe. It is a restaurant out of a home that looks very unassuming from the front entrance. It is a door in a concrete wall with only a carport for parking. We had to park along the main road and walk through a neighborhood of apartments since the carport was already full. We rang the doorbell and were ushered in where we exchanged our shoes for slippers. We did not see a view until we walked downstairs and met with a wall of windows overlooking the East China Sea. We did not know we needed a reservation, but we were lucky and were seated at one of the two outdoor tables right away. We exchanged our slippers for crocs and ate with an incredible view. 

The house was larger and grander than it appeared from the front. It has three stories of balconies jutting from the hill over the ocean as well as a putting green, swimming pool, and hot tub. The owners must be cat lovers, as cat decor was everywhere and cats were napping in their cat beds in the middle of the cafe.The menu was small as is customary in small cafes, and I simply ordered the cake without knowing what flavor it would be that day! When it arrived I asked what it was, "Nan desu kah? Mango?" The answer was pumpkin! Pumpkin cheesecake! Yum!

This place certainly lived up to its name, and I cannot wait to find more hidden cafe gems on the island.

Cafe with a view #5