Okinawa World=Epic Fail

I should have known. It's so touristy but everyone says it's so much fun and a great place to take visitors. I thought it was pretty lame.

It's basically everything Okinawan packed into a little area and every exhibit dumps you into a store. An overpriced store where we can't read any of the labels.

Anyway, it wasn't all bad. We paid like $32 to get in (which was insane!) but we had driven all the way there and certainly weren't turning around.

So the first thing you do is walk through a cave. It was "raining" in here and I didn't expect it to be so wet, but I guess it makes sense with 90% humidity. That also made the path pretty slippery but we managed not to fall.






When you got out you took the longest escalator I have ever seen. It was like the escalator to heaven or something.
We literally just got home and I can't really remember what we did. There were a bunch of little craft stations to make souvenirs or paint your own shisa dogs but obviously Thomas wasn't going to sit down for that. There was a drumming/dancing show with a shishi mai. A shishi mai is one of those mascot sort of looking things that looks like a dog/lion. It was the best part of the show, but that's not saying much. No photography was allowed. boo.

After that we ended up in another shop. I tried some dried kumquat which tasted like candied orange peel. That led to the awamori shop. The south has moonshine, Okinawa has awamori. We passed on the habu awamori. Gross. I did get a bottle of hibiscus flavored awamori. It was pink and looks pretty on my counter.


We saw this at one of the many shops when we were looking for something to feed the boy. Gee that cookie looks kind of phallic....hmmm...WHY is this baby surfing naked? Why is he eating penis cookies? I don't understand. I don't know if I want to. We fed Thomas something else. We gave him beni imo wafers. Beni imo is huge here, they make it into anything, from chips to ice cream. It's purple sweet potato.


They had glass blowers. Yay! I did like this part. I loved some of the pieces, there was a huge store where I didn't take pictures because I was afraid of breaking things. Josh played a game and won me a cup. It looks like that light blue one in the middle. My first Ryukyu blown glass.



Here is a little video from when we were in the cave.


All in all I wouldn't mind never coming here again, but it might be nice for visitors if they are here when there aren't any festivals going on. Which by the way, the 10,000 Eisa festival is this weekend. Hopefully we have enough energy to check it out tomorrow.

There is also a festival on base. They're celebrating a new parking lot. Feel free to laugh at how your tax dollars are being spent. And then cry, just one tear.