Food, Travelling & Living: Food And Fun Of Okinawa -- Day 3

Hot chicken pot
Image from Locky's English Playground

Cold early Okinawa morning with a hot Japanese style breakfast was simply wonderful! After having the cold western style yesterday, this one is an official redemption.

Lovely Japanese breakfast
Image from Locky's English Playground

The set looks fabulus, comes with rice, hot soup, and a number of side dishes.

Tofu
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Tofu was ... well, tofu-like.

Grapefruit with green tea jelly
Image from Locky's English Playground

Grapefruit is fine. Green tea jelly was not everyone's favourite but I am fine with that.

Marinated fish, seaweed, fried chicken, sour plum
Image from Locky's English Playground

Appetizer-like sides including marinated fish, seaweed, fried chicken were all lovely! Sour plum I mixed it with the hot rice, and it tasted funny in a good way.

Onsen egg
Image from Locky's English Playground

Onsen egg was pretty raw, but I devoured the whole egg anyway.

Pork and seaweed roll
Image from Locky's English Playground

Pork and seaweed roll were nice. Nothing spectacular about them.

Pan fried salmon
Image from Locky's English Playground

This was the best! It was nicely pan-fried, the salmon meat was just the right temperature in the mouth, and it comes with a pinch of sea salt that brought up the flavour! Yummy!

Rice and miso soup
Image from Locky's English Playground

Sweetened dried noodle fish
Image from Locky's English Playground

And this sweetened dried noodle fish was everyone's favourite, serves best with hot rice or congee.

View from the dining hall
Image from Locky's English Playground

After breakfast, a little wait at the dining hall and then back to the room we prepare to check out.

Magnetic signs on the room door
Image from Locky's English Playground

It was only this day that we discovered that the room door has a metal layer which allowed magnetic signs to be placed anywhere on the room door.

Driving towards aquarium
Image from Locky's English Playground

First destination was the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. Yeah, I know I should not have gone and support the idea of animal captivity, but I must see the situation with my own eyes.

Arrived at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium
Image from Locky's English Playground

So my wife's friend Alky who shared our room the night before, my wife and I drove the crappy Toyota there.

Panoramic view of the plaza
Image from Locky's English Playground

View from the entrance
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The view was again, amazing! The question is, we should look beyond all these scenic beauty.

Whale shark statue
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Okinawa is all about whale sharks, as the three whale sharks in captivity has brought fame and cash to the city.

Inside the aquarium
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I was excited by the fact that I would be seeing live whale sharks for the first time and feeling upset these sharks are imprisoned for display.

3 young whale sharks!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

And there I was, mesmerized by the gentle giants, all three of them.

View from below, a female whale shark
Image from Locky's English Playground

Though judging by their sizes, they are still youngsters, and they are capable of growing twice as large. This worries me, as the aquarium is in fact way too small to fit even 3 youngster whale sharks. And things got worst when I saw the following...

Dolphins are natural enemies of sharks, though these whale sharks did not seem to fear these dolphins, there is no way that they are being put together. Dolphins are fun loving mammals, for them trying to grab a bite out of the wire gauze protected tail fin of the sharks may just be a joke, but for the sharks, it could lead to bacterial infections that could kill them. Close observation the tails of the whale sharks revealed bite marks and scratches, and these fresh marks were not present when we look at older videos of the same sharks on the internet before the dolphins had been introduced into the same tank.

View from above
Image from Locky's English Playground

Taking a better look at the aquarium from above and we realised that the tank in reality, is much smaller than we saw through the glass.

A whale shark from the above
Image from Locky's English Playground

It was painful to see these gigantic fish doing rounds in such a small tank.

Glass wall sample of the aquarium
Image from Locky's English Playground

Process of catching the whale sharks
Image from Locky's English Playground

On the wall, there are photos and illustrations of the whale shark capturing, and of course, they were captured as babies.

Whale shark baby
Image from Locky's English Playground

How many died before their successful attempt? After visiting, I went to the write down my angry comments on a questionnaire.

Angry feedback!

These people must be out of their minds!!!

Tempura
Image from Locky's English Playground

Exhausted and hungry, we did not visit other aquariums and left the park for AEON, where food could be found.

Sanuki Udon Hanamaru @ AEON
Image from Locky's English Playground

We settled for this Sanuki Udon Hanamaru, which offers udon sets with tempura of your own choice.

Cold udon with selected tempura
Image from Locky's English Playground

I can't say they are delicious, but they were really not bad. Not knowing what tempura we were ordering was the only inconvenience.

Solar panels for sale!!!
Image from Locky's English Playground

This AEON is very much unlike the ones in Hong Kong, for one thing, they do not sell solar panels in Hong Kong.

These are rice in boxes
Image from Locky's English Playground

For another, they do not sell rice in box sets.

Route to Naha
Image from Locky's English Playground

Moving on to our gathering place for dinner, we drove all the way back to Naha.

Heading to restaurant for dinner
Image from Locky's English Playground

The sun set was great, the GPS showed we were driving in the middle of some forests.

At the Okonomiyaki restaurant
Image from Locky's English Playground

We met up with the rest of the 14+ people gang at an okonomiyaki restaurant called Ichigen Ya at American Village.

Okonomiyaki
Image from Locky's English Playground

And yes, the okonomiyaki were gorgeous!

Egg omelette
Image from Locky's English Playground

So was the omelette.

Big turner and small turner
Image from Locky's English Playground

Raw material
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Semi-product
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Not so much for this one though, as it took more than 45 mins to even become slightly solid.

Still not fulling cooked
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Everyone had finished their food, and we were still trying to cook this.

Food served while waiting
Image from Locky's English Playground

The beef was nice, but was nothing like the beef I had on day 1.

That's all we paid for our 5-person table
Image from Locky's English Playground

Well, but if you look at the price, there is not much I can complain about. For 5 people it only cost HK$188!!!

Back to car park to get the dumb car
Image from Locky's English Playground

Time for the drive back to our new mini hotel, where I immediately connected to the WiFi and uploaded that dolphin biting whale sharks tail video onto YouTube.


Resources:

Food, Travelling & Living: Food And Fun Of Okinawa -- Day 2 @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2014/12/food-travelling-living-food-and-fun-of_15.html


Food, Travelling & Living: Food And Fun Of Okinawa -- Day 1 @ Locky's English Playground
http://lockyep.blogspot.hk/2014/12/food-travelling-living-food-and-fun-of.html