On our second day in Okinawa, we woke up really early to grab breakfast in the dining hall before starting off our day. I seem to find myself reaching for Japanese curry and cold green tea a lot during this trip because these were the "safe" items I knew wouldn't go wrong. The rest of the food were a bit... weird. I'm quite a picky eater so if I don't like the taste of something, most of the time I won't even try to swallow it so you can imagine how much Japanese curry I had just to fill myself up.
My mum is definitely the most adventurous of us all so she basically took a bit of everything to try. In Okinawa they have this tray with little compartments every where that serves food buffet style so you can pick a bit of everything to try, or fill a few compartments with the same food if you so wish to do so.
Our first tourist attraction that we went to was Okinawa World. Okinawa world is a touristy theme park showcasing Okinawan culture. The main attractions of the park is a massive natural cave (Gyokusendo Cave), a craft village and a snake museum.
With a total length of 5km, Gyokusendo Cave is the longest of the many caves in the south of Okinawa and it is the second longest cave in Japan. 850m of the cave is open to public and features spectacular stalactites and stalagmites.
The Kingdom Village is a nice replica of a traditional Ryukyu village with workshops introducing the various traditional Okinawan crafts, such as weaving, dyeing, paper making, pottery, sugar cone processing, the making of music instruments and the more recently introduced glass blowing. Hands-on experiences are offered at many of the workshops.
We had a buffet lunch inside the park and the food wasn't to my taste as well so I pretty much took pictures of the desserts only. The desserts were pretty good!
After lunch, we made a stop at the Ryuku Glass Craft which is the largest glass factory in Okinawa. We caught a glimpse of these glass crafters as they made actual glass bottles and cups from scratch. I remember seeing something like this when I was really younger on an European trip with my family but it was fascinating nonetheless to see how a little glowing blob at the end of a stick can become a legit glass bottle.
After that, we found ourselves at Naminoue Shrine which is the primary shrine of Okinawa. We were fortunate to come when we did because it was New Years Eve and apparently most of the festivities took place at the shrine so although we only reached there in time to see the preparations being made and not the actual festivities themselves, we can only imagine just how grand the whole event would be.
I'm a huge fan of all things water. Put me beside a waterfall, beach, river, ocean or sea and I'm one happy girl. Water has a calming influence on me and I really love being near water. So I was really excited to catch a glimpse of the sea from the back of the shrine! One thing I really appreciate about Okinawa is definitely the fact that the sea can be seen from most touristy attractions that we went to.
After visiting the shrine, we were brought to a large shopping street near our dinner place and was given about 1.5 hours to explore and shop to our heart's desire (although none of us did any actual shopping). It was interesting to see the different items and fashion available in the island.
Dinner was a buffet BBQ so we loaded up on the meats and vegetables. The meat was really good here! There were a lot of selections available for the types of meat and their salad bar was substantial as well. And they even had the odeng looking thing here (I definitely filled myself up with the delicious items there)!
With this, we ended our second day in Okinawa because we basically went back to our hotel room after that. I vlogged this day down as well and you can view my vlog right below :>
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