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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Japan Travelogue // Day 4 & 5

The fourth day of our Okinawa trip was a free and easy day, with an optional tour for those who wanted it. As Okinawa is really expensive to get around by cab and there weren't much public buses available to facilitate transportation around the island, the whole tour group chose to embark on the optional tour. 

The first stop was at T Galleria Okinawa where the whole mall was basically one big duty free shopping mall. Most of the brands in the mall were really expensive brands like Chanel, Dior, Marc Jacobs and so on. The reason for this duty free mall is because Okinawa International Airport is really small in size and the options for duty free shopping there is extremely limited so in order to provide tourists with duty free shopping, tourists are brought to this mall where they can purchase their items and have them sent directly to the airport to be picked up.



Our next stop was Zakimi Castle which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. To be perfectly honest, I would probably describe this place as a wall of Zakimi Castle, not the whole castle itself because all that's left of the castle is a few walls that's all. 

I was honestly expecting something a lot more impressive than just a few walls but the view from the top of the castle walls was definitely a lot nicer than the actual walls themselves.


The Cape Zanpa Lighthouse was the next stop and I was pretty excited because I don't think I've ever seen a lighthouse in real life before! I've definitely seen ones in pictures and on the television but just not with my very own eyes. Sadly, we were not provided with enough time to actually climb the lighthouse so all we did was take pictures of it from afar.


Lunch came with a sea and beach view so I was one happy girl. I think the perfect holiday for me would be a place with scenery, some shopping and loads of beach scenes. Although this holiday definitely did not offer much in terms of shopping, there were a lot of beach scenes and some decent scenery so I guess 2 out of 3 is good enough for me.


Our last stop of the day was shopping at a huge AEON Mall and although we were allocated a good 2.5 hours or so, it definitely wasn't enough because of the sheer size of the mall itself. Also, my whole family has different tastes in the things we wanted to see, and none of us had data on our phones so it was hard to see everything each of us wanted to see.

But my parents, brother and myself went to pick up coffee at this little cafe in the mall because we weren't up for much walking anyway.


As dinner was not provided for the fourth day, all of us bought back some sushi from the supermarket in the mall. I haven't had sushi yet for this whole trip so I was definitely craving some sushi, and also ramen but I had yet to see any ramen around. The sushi in the supermarket was pretty decent so I was pretty glad about that.


On our last day of the trip, they brought us to a legit castle, Shurijo Castle. The whole grounds were pretty big and I was surprised at how well kept the whole castle was considering it was build in the 1300s and was almost completely destroyed in 1945. The whole place was restored amazingly. 



Our tour guide managed to squeeze in a trip to a local Japanese drug store for us to purchase certain Japanese items that were not available overseas as they did not ship these items internationally and my parents definitely were really happy with their purchases.



Lunch was buffet-style again and this is probably one of the meals where there were loads of food that I actually liked. At this point, I was honestly craving Singapore food so badly and I couldn't wait to go back and have all my favourite local food. 

I'm someone who won't be able to survive overseas at all because I love all the local food and I get terribly home sick for Singapore food if I go overseas for too long. 


Our second last stop in Okinawa was to a wine tasting. I'm not a fan of wine, at all, so I basically snapped a few pictures (to show I was there) and then walked out of the place. 


Our last stop was to the Okinawa Outlet Mall but I realised I didn't take any pictures because it was raining the whole of the day and I didn't want to take my camera out to use. 

To be completely honest, I was not a huge fan of Okinawa at all. I mean there were some sights that impressed me a lot, and the dolphin show of course, but Okinawa in general did not inspire me to want to come back again. It also wouldn't be a destination that I would recommend to people to go to as well. It isn't a bad place to go to but it wasn't impressive enough to warrant a recommendation from me. That being said, what I like can be vastly different from what other people like so feel free to visit Okinawa to form your own opinions on the place if it so floats your boat.

The last vlog for Okinawa is linked below!

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