Thanksgiving weekend was an awesome weekend! It started on Wednesday (Bryan got off at noon!!!) and went until Sunday (obviously). It was a glorious 4.5 day weekend and it was spent doing lots of stuff! Besides Thursday being devoted to cooking and dishes, Friday was spent shopping AFTER 2pm, Saturday was spent watching movies and just being together and Sunday in the morning we were able to Skype with my family while they got together for their Thanksgiving dinner and then we went on an All Day tour with our base's ITT office. It was a great weekend and we are sad that it is over and that Bryan is back to work for the week.
The tour we went on was the Explore the North tour. It was fantastic! It started bright and early Sunday morning at 9am (okay maybe that is just early for me lol), and we didn't get home til after 5pm. We got to see lots of the North part of the island that we haven't seen yet, so just the drive was great! Who knew that we could go from flat land to mountainous land with jungles?!?! It was great!
We started the tour at the Nakijin-jo Castle Ruins, and even though the original castle is long gone the walls are still in tact, and there are some smaller buildings still standing. I myself love history and all things that have to do with long ago times. So this was a favorite on the trip for me. I love seeing where people once lived and see what still remains today! Plus the views were breathtaking!
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| This was a little hut outside the gates to the ruins, and they sold lots of little treats to eat. |
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| Bryan being impatient because I was trying to figure out the settings on my 'good, fancy' camera lol |
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| It was breathtaking views on the top of the ruins! |
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And a self timer shot! With our little point and shoot camera resting on the top of a very unstable rock lol
After we left the castle ruins we were off to Okinawa Fruits Land, which is where we had lunch! It was a very yummy lunch. We partook in a Yakiniku BBQ lunch, which is where each table has their own grill and you grill your own food! This was a first for Bryan and I, and we had so much fun doing this!!! And the food was awesome! We are already talking about finding another restaurant that has this! (The pictures (except for the first 2) from this stop were taken with our Canon point and shoot because it was too crowded and I was too hungry to mess with our DSLR lol) |
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| Okinawa Fruits Land! |
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| Bryan sitting at our little table, all the tables were connected! The rest of the people you see were on our tour bus, there were 37 people total. |
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| Cooking our food!! All the meats and veggies were sliced thin so they would cook fast. |
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| Bryan cooking his food! |
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| The restaurant. This place could probably seat close to 200+ people! |
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| My lunch! Yummy, rice, beef, some type of noodle (or veggie not sure but it's in a lot of dishes here) and cabbage. |
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| Bryan's lunch, he wanted the veggies! |
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| Salad, dipping sauce (which is awesome) and our Miso soup that we cooked as well! |
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| Drinking my Miso soup, they don't do spoons here! You drink your soup. |
Our next stop after lunch was the Nago Pineapple Farm. This place was really interesting. I guess I always thought pineapples grew on trees, guess not they grow under the ground. We also got to sample lots of yummy products made with pineapples! Also there is a rare sweet potato that grows here in Okinawa and it's called the Purple Sweet Potato, and when they make things out of it they call the flavor Benimo, and it's actually pretty yummy. They make icecream and chocolates with it!
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| Our self portraits never turn out good, oh well. Us at the Pineapple Farm. |
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| Pineapples growing on Pineapples?!?! |
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| People left their coins in this 'guard dog' at the Farm. Maybe like our tradition of throwing coins in a fountain? |
After the Nago Pineapple Farm, we then went to the Ryukyu Glass Factory. They make lots of handmade glass products all the way from glasses, to little figurines! It was a really interesting stop and we also got to make our own glasses!! The interesting part...it's a Glass BLOWING Factory, so you blow in a long tube to form your glass!
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| Bryan blowing his glass to make his glass! |
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| Learning how to roll the glass into the right form. |
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| Me blowing my glass. |
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| Forming his glass. |
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| Me forming my glass, our glasses will be blue...it is just red because of how hot they heat it up! |
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They had these cute cut outs made from different colored glass!!
After the Glass Factory we headed to the Orion Beer Factory which was our last stop on the tour. The Orion Beer Factory was the first beer factory on the island and started shortly after the war ended here in Japan. It is named after the Orion star which rises in the East and is considered good luck here in Japan. Even though it is named after Orion, here it is pronounced Or-re-on when translated to English. The tour lasted about 30 minutes and we toured the whole factory from start to finish on making beer. It was pretty neat the whole process that it goes through. After the tour we got to either sample the beer or another beverage product that Orion produces.
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| One of the machines to make beer...I have no idea, I was kinda 'lost' on the tour lol |
We got 'play' with the hops that goes in the beer.
Bryan drinking his sample!
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| I tried their tea that they make called Oolong Tea, it was pretty tasty. |
Well that is all our tour! Whew that was a long one! Hopefully you made it to the end, if not I don't blame you! Hopefully next month we get to go another tour, we are trying to see what dates work for us, sadly most tours happen on Sundays, so then we have to miss church which we don't like doing every week. But hopefully something comes up we can do! |
