Okinawa, part 2

Day 2

Day 2 we walked to Ocean Expo Park. This is the site of the famous Churaumi aquarium. It seems almost everyone who goes to Okinawa goes here. I read somewhere that it's the second-biggest aquarium in the world, but I don't know... I think the one in Hakkeijima is bigger. Anyway, they *do* have the world's biggest aquarium viewing window. It has a couple of jinbei (whale sharks) in it. And the aquarium cleverly located a cafe around it. So I had a cappuccino while watching mantas and sharks and fish swimming around.

It's pretty amazing, actually, that for the price of a cappuccino you can sit and watch such things. It reminded me of Yuzawa where we sat in the cafe with the million-dollar snow-covered mountain views.

Anyway, you can get around Ocean Park by little tour car. It was all very tropical, and such a nice day! We also went to a tropical flower park, and Emerald Beach. Emerald Beach was a corner of the park, and it was, well, a beach.

This beach was very sanitised and well-packaged. The next day we'd go to a normal stretch of beach, with horrible gungy showers and nobody around, but Emerald Beach was part of Ocean Park. Therefore you had the beach divvie'd into three sections - one for playing (beach volleyball etc), one for enjoying the view, and one for swimming. A voice would occasionally come over the loudspeaker (otherwise piping out pop music) reminding us of this. You could leave your belongings in a coin locker and then take the key, wearing the waterproof strap around your wrist.

The whole swimming area was kind of 'fenced in' with nets, and the deepest part was about waist-deep. I think this was to keep out jellyfish. Anyway, it made for a safe area, and there were a number of dads with little kids in inflatable beach toys. No mums, just dads. I don't know why.

Despite this kind of thing, and despite a lot of signs saying things like 'keep out of here', 'don't touch this', 'only swim here', 'be careful of this', 'don't climb', etc, I think Japan is generally a little less over-regulated than Australia. For example, you can drink alcohol in public places, like on the beach or in a park. I think this is *great*. You can buy fireworks - for children!! - in shops. You can ride bicycles without helmets, and generally nobody seems to care if you don't put your seatbelt on.

Of course, we should take care with all these things, but in Australia they solve safety problems with blanket bans on things. (The recent 'we can't give you a doggy bag in case you get food poisoning and we get sued' thing is a classic example.)

Although, I should mention that in the evening we tried to book a snorkelling boat trip for the next day. In the ad it claimed to be safe and fun for the family, and no problem if you couldn't swim, or had young kids, etc etc. The only problem was - we weren't allowed to go on it.

That's right, it's fun and safe, but not for foreigners. The hotel guy explained at length all the potential insurance problems they could get if I, say, touched some dangerous animal in the water. The fact that I work in Japan and have Japanese insurance didn't matter. No snorkelling for foreigners.

The next day we tried again - assuming this guy was just overly strict; after all, it would be ridiculous for an island whose main tourist draw is snorkelling and scuba diving to have a blanket ban on all foreigners participating - and got the same result. The diving shop also told us an unequivocal 'no'. I was pretty peeved, because I was *super* looking forward to snorkelling, not having done it for a number of years. I was pretty disgusted, really.

I still think we must have been unlucky; surely there are places on the island where they don't take this strict approach. But on our part of the island - and we didn't have time to go gallivanting all over to find another place - nobody would help us.

We had dinner at a place called 'Papaiya'. I interpreted this name as 'papa iya' which means 'papa doesn't like it'. But it actually meant 'papaya', the fruit... we ordered goya champloo (this is another local specialty; goya is bitter melon; it's stir-fried with egg and vegetables and spam) and tempura (including goya tempura - not very nice, really, it's *so* bitter), and taco pizza.

This taco pizza was horrifying. It was more like a taco lasagna. It came buried under a huge mound of melted cheese. After two small pieces, I felt kind of sick. Asami agreed.

Anyway, it was a very relaxing day. We finished by watching SMAP x SMAP. ^_^

Day 3

On day 3, we started the day with a Japanese-style set breakfast. This was slightly a surprise, since the day before it'd been a buffet*, and the breakfast had been advertised as such. We concluded that the hotel was not very full, so the buffet was not cost-effective.

(In Japan, a buffet is called a 'viking'. I don't know why. But I always envision a restaurant full of people wearing hats with horns and pushing and shoving each other to get the food.)

In the morning we went to Motobu Genki Mura, where we took a kind of glass window boat ride. We could see the coral reefs and fish through the windows. After, we took a taxi to Shiokawa beach; this was a quiet patch of beach which was unregulated. I could almost understand the snorkelling people's hesitation about letting us snorkel. I'd brought my swimming goggles, so I was able to swim about, and I found a *lot* of sea urchins (which are spiky and dangerous), and sea cucumbers (not so dangerous), plus eels, starfish, and other fish. So it was like a mini-snorkelling trip after all. ^_^

We'd planned to take the bus back to Naha, but our taxi driver offered to take us all the way there for 10,000 yen (about $120). It seems like a lot, but it would've saved us about 4 hours, allowed us to see more tourist spots, and only would've cost an extra $20 per person than taking the bus. Also, the actual taxi fare - if we'd paid the normal, full price - would've been more like $200.

So we took the taxi to Shuri castle, one of Okinawa's most famous draws. I realised that I really am not that interested in seeing castles and temples and shrines and whatnot. Like, it was nice, but I didn't know any of the history, so it wasn't that remarkable for me. I more enjoyed Kokusai-dori in Naha, where we went after.

Anyway, it was a very nice trip, and I'm going to be late for work if I don't wrap this up. I put pictures on Flickr. ^_^