Okinawa: 8 Day RV Road Trip (pt. 2)

November 1 – 8, 2020

This post is a continuation of my Okinawa RV road trip recap. If you haven’t read part one, click here to get caught up!

Day 4: Yagachi Beach –> Cape Hedo –> Daisekirinzan –> Nago Pineapple Park –> Ada

Another sleepless night in the books, we woke up bright and early and snacked on some conbini breads and vending machine coffee. We had to wait until 8am to use the showers. But, since we were the only people who decided to camp on the windiest beach ever, we had the locker room style showers to ourselves. Allegedly there is a fee to use the hot showers, but no attendant was present and there was no place to leave money so we may have stolen the shower time. Shoganai.

Feeling “fresh” and “rejuvenated” from the showers, we drove to Cape Hedo, the northernmost point of the main island. There’s not actually much to do at Cape Hedo. There’s a small building with a few maps, a couple short walking trails, and a little restaurant. However, the views are incredible and absolutely worth seeing. The weather hovered between sunny and stormy when we walked out to the lookout area at the cliff. The churning sea, clouds, cliffs, and wind made this place look incredible. Oh yeah, we were still coping with big winds. Every few minutes a large set of waves crashed against the cliffs, causing mist to spray up over the lookout area and drench anyone who happened to be standing there (us). It was incredible.

From Cape Hedo, we drove to Daisekirinzan, a national park with some interesting rock formations and massive banyan trees. To be honest, my favorite part of this hike was that the trees and rocks dampened a lot of the wind we had been fighting up to this point. My least favorite part of this hike was the giant spiders. We had lunch at the café here before backtracking south to Nago City to visit Nago Pineapple Park.

Nago Pineapple Park has to be owned by the same people as Kouri Ocean Tower. After parking and purchasing tickets, a pineapple train blasting the pineapple park theme song dropped us off at a cart stand where we boarded… self-driving golf carts. The self-driving golf carts took us on a tour of the gardens where we stopped periodically at random photo spots. Does this sound familiar at all? If these attractions aren’t related, I don’t want to know. Of course, we purchased the souvenir photos. How could we resist?

From the golf cart drop off, we walked through the indoor section of the Pineapple Park. I really don’t know how to summarize the indoor section of the park… There are dinosaurs, wine, vinegar, gift shops, a confectionary factory… And throughout, the Pineapple Park theme song. I don’t want to ruin your life, so I won’t recommend looking up “Nago Pineapple Park Song” on YouTube.

Earlier in the day, I spotted a local hole-in-the-wall fish restaurant on the coast that I wanted to try for dinner. I’ll be honest, this restaurant seemed like the kind of place that has a separate menu for foreigners with higher prices. Like, I don’t think they see many “round eyes” there. But wow, the fish was good. Andrew ordered a grilled whole “local fish” and I ordered a fried “local fish” set meal. Couldn’t tell you what kind of fish it was. I could eat that fish every day, even if they charge a foreigner tax.

After two nights of bad sleep braving the wind in the camping car, I decided that a little break would serve our vacation and our marriage well. For roughly ~$50, I booked a room at the Ada Garden Hotel. Reviewers on Google promised it would be a “creepy Vietnam style hotel” but like, breakfast came with the room so it was a really good deal.

Day 5: Ada –> Kouri Island –> Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium –> Ginoza Michi no Eki

A free hot shower, heavy sleep on a comfortable bed, and tasty breakfast put me in a GOOD MOOD. Crazy how that works. After breakfast, we took the scenic route south out of the mountains. The weather app predicted, yeah, more wind. And rain. So, the plan was to spend the majority of the day at the world-renowned Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.

Cutting across the island to get to the aquarium, I remembered the nearby garlic shrimp on Kouri Island. We had some time, so we decided to detour back to Kouri for shrimp. Closed! You win some, you lose some — never make plans! So, we grabbed some cheap lunch at one of the snack stands on the island before heading to the aquarium.

If you’ve been to or are planning to go to Okinawa at any point, you have likely heard of Churaumi Aquarium. This is one of the only aquariums in the world that has a successful whale shark breeding program. We saw whale sharks at the aquarium in Osaka, but it has been a long-time dream of mine to swim near whale sharks. So, I was hyped to come here. Plus, I. Love. Aquariums. Just, in general. They’re awesome.

One cool feature of the aquarium in Okinawa is the café. Set next to the largest aquarium tank, you can enjoy snacks while viewing the largest fish on planet Earth. By chance, there weren’t many guests while we were there. So, we snagged a seat in front of the tank to enjoy aquarium-themed pineapple soft-serve cones.

We killed time in and around the aquarium until we felt hungry enough to grab dinner at Ufuya, a nearby shabu shabu restaurant that focuses on Okinawan pork products. I saw this restaurant on a YouTube video in my research phase, and I didn’t really even care about the food – this restaurant is all about the ambiance. Enjoying the light drizzle of rain, we sat in a covered outdoor dining area overlooking a Japanese garden with several waterfalls and lush plants. Very cool vibes, really edible food. Nothing mind-blowing, but certainly tasty. They even have Okinawa’s famous habu snake wine available if you’d like to drink some snake with your meal.

From dinner, we wanted to sleep somewhere closer to the southern half of the island so we’d be well-positioned to visit some of the WWII memorial sites and museums the next day. Andrew found a michi-no-eki that was not particularly inconvenient. So, we prepared to bunker down in the van once more.

Day 6: Naha –> Former WWII Navy HQ Tunnels –> Okinawa Prefectural Peace Museum –> Café Makabechina –> Mr Kinjo

The michi-no-eki we camped at was conveniently located next to a brand new 7-11 store. So brand new, that they happened to be hosting a grand opening event when we arrived. So, we stopped in and purchased a 7-11 lucky bag. If you’re not in the loop, lucky bags are retail mystery bags commonly sold around new years and on special occasions. They can range in price and typically contain either an assortment of overstock items the store had on hand or limited-edition specialty items. The idea is that you get more than you pay for, but with an added element of mystery so you might not even like what you get!!I paid 1000 yen (about $10) for our lucky bag. Stuffed to bursting with 7-11 branded snack items, this bag was definitely lucky. Road trip snacks for the rest of trip and beyond: check.

From the rest stop, we drove south to the site of the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters. Along the way, we stopped for more American pancakes in Naha. I’ll be honest, the Navy tunnels were grim to visit. As I planned this day, I expected visiting WWII history museums in Japan to be heavy. The entrance to the tunnels is decorated with thousands of paper cranes in tribute to the more than 200,000 victims of the battle of Okinawa. About 2,400 bodies were recovered from this site. The tunnels have been completely preserved, damage from grenades is clearly visible on the walls. It is a truly dark and deeply interesting place to visit.

From the Underground Headquarters, we drove further south to the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Museum. To be completely honest, I can’t comment on the quality of this museum. We happened to visit at the same time as a very, very large group of high school students on their class trip from another part of Japan. Like, hundreds of high schoolers. Just an observation, but they did NOT seem to have a deep interest in the war history of Okinawa. Many of the displays are missing English translations, but there is a free audio guide in multiple languages. We opted not to consult the audio due to the crowd inside, but reviews online say it is very good.

Sufficiently bummed from war museums, we made our way to Café Makabechina for lunch. Built in 1884, the café is one of the oldest remaining buildings on the main island of Okinawa. After our morning, we had a new appreciation for how amazing it is that the café survived the war. We opted for the specialty, Okinawa soba. Highly recommend stopping at this cute café if you’re in the area. They also have a small gift section featuring local handmade crafts. We picked up a set of clay Okinawan lion figures to protect our home.

After lunch, we spent the rest of the day stopping at random beaches on the southern coast of the island. The weather was FINALLY turning in our favor, so it was sunshine and low wind for us to splash around a bit. Checking the forecast, it seemed like maaaayyyybe we would be able to make our trip out to the Kerama Islands happen the next day. So, Andrew went through the online booking process for ferry tickets again and we made a tentative plan to enjoy some sun, sea, sand.

Sensing that we may need a good night of sleep before trekking out to the islands, we once again hunted for a hotel to shelter us. We landed on Mr Kinjo, a chain of surprisingly nice budget hotels. For about $25, we had a double room with a private bathroom, washer and dryer, and a kitchenette. Why didn’t we just stay at Mr Kinjos our whole trip? I was pretty sick of our stinky van at this point.

Day 7: Onoyama Park –> Tomari Port –> Zamami Island –> Mr Kinjo

This part is easy to summarize. We repeated all the steps at the beginning of Day 3, except this time our ferry wasn’t canceled! We got to board our ferry and make the hour-long trek out to Zamami Island. Wary of getting our hopes up, we did not make a plan for what to do upon arriving on Zamami Island. We had our choice of either bicycle rental to explore the island or the one rental car spot on the island.

Andrew is a “car guy,” so we rented a car. I’m pretty sure the residents of Zamami Island who own cars all pool together to form this rental car agency. Like, any time someone rents a car, they just call whoever is next on the list and borrow their car for the day. After signing the rental agreement, the clerk sprinted off around the corner to grab our ride. I was not particularly impressed with the run down kei-car presented. But, Andrew LOVED IT and it had air conditioning so what else really matters? It even came with moldy bento boxes in the trunk! Hard to beat that.

We spent the day zooming around from beach to beach. Snorkeling, lounging, swimming, exploring. We even facetimed Andrew’s family at one point to rub in how stunning this island is. It was absolutely the highlight of our entire trip. Even factoring in the fight Andrew and I got into about the lack of prescription-level snorkel masks available for rental on the island, this was the highlight. If I could do our whole trip over again, I would just come to Zamami and not leave. Ever. I live on Zamami now.

Yet, at the end of the day we still had to board the ferry and leave. We liked our stay at Mr Kinjo so much we found one of his cousin Kinjos to stay in for our final night. After a full day in the ocean, we both needed hot showers. The washing machine was another bonus. We cleaned all of our laundry and packed to head home.

Day 8: Naha –> Ibaraki Airport –> Utsunomiya

Our flight out of Naha left around 3pm, so we had most of the day to spend in Naha. We returned the (terrible, no good) camping car in the morning and stored our luggage near the airport. A&W restaurants have a surprisingly large presence on the island. I’m not sure what the history is there. Andrew’s grandma worked at an A&W as a youth, so we decided to have lunch at an A&W to send pictures to the family group chat. And, like, they have chili cheese fries there so I wasn’t mad about it.

We did some souvenir and omiyage shopping before heading back to the airport to make our way home. As luck would have it, we got to share the airport with the school group from the Peace Museum. So. Many. Teens. This called for an airport draft beer, for sure. So I grabbed a couple for us to enjoy before heading back to reality.