After a rainy week we took our friends Masayo, Sayaka (visiting Okinawa from her Kansai home) & her young son Haruto to Toma-san's stables in Onna-son (where we volunteered with the weekly hippotherapy program run by EDIS) to have some fun playing with the horses. We were not surprised to find & clean up some very dirty (with dried mud) equines & stalls. But after quite a bit of brushing & currying of Luca & Karen, we enjoyed some fun riding!
Photos of the equestrians:
Ana & Tito joined us for a much anticipated kayaking adventure that began at the Kadena sea wall steps at "Mizugama Beach" & proceeded over the ocean's surface to the mouth of the Hija-gawa (Hija River), which forms the boundary between Yomitan-son & Kadena-cho. We paddled up the river past the fishing boat docks & under the "red bridge" (that you come to if you were to proceed directly out of Kadena Air Base's Gate 4, which is permanently closed). We only stopped when we could go no further, at the first dam rising out of the water (near the Hwy 58 bridge). So after a light snack to replenish our strength (or at least trick our bodies into thinking we had), we turned around & fought the incoming tide. It was quite hot (we went during the heat of the day, for some reason) & more than one of us got pretty sun-burned (especially the dork that decided a sleeve-less shirt would be a good idea), but it was fun!
We spotted some mudskippers (fish that spend a lot of time out of, but still near, water) hopping about on the muddy banks:
We also spotted a heron milling about on the shore:
Betsy finally found time to deliver Josh's 31st birthday present (only 3 months late). We went flying over the southern half of Okinawa in a small aircraft, provided by Kadena's Aero Club. The 45-minute flight turned into about an hour & included Okinawa from Moon Beach in Onna-son down to the southern tip (both coasts). Josh got to sit up front with the pilot, Brian (who was great!) of the little 4-seater Cessna, which meant that Josh got to take over the controls (up/down & left/right) for about 5-10 min (over the Pacific near Tsuken & Kudaka Islands): Our friend Ana's brother Tito came along (visiting Okinawa & Asia for the first time). The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Aero Club pilot Brian touched the plane down as smoothly as silk on Kadena's runway just after an AV-8B Harrier did so on an adjacent runway: It was so nice we just might go again before we leave & check out the north!
Since we had to return some SCUBA rental gear to Torii Scuba Locker in Yomitan, we decided to find a new & hopefully delicious place to have lunch near there. And we succeeded! After reading some very good things in comments to a question posted on another Okinawa blog, OkinawaHai.com, I chose Shimauma (which means Zebra) Curry Shokudou Indian Food Restaurant on Hwy 6, directly across from Kanehide (grocery store with green sign & 2 orange birds - we used to call it Ni-Bird as an homage to San-A). Use Kanehide's parking lot, if you drive there. It's a small place with a small sign, so you might not know it exists even if you drive past it often, but it's right next to a bakery (that has fabulous baguettes & flaky pastries, both have a yellowish awning over their doorways). Shimauma is small (2-3 tables plus a counter, which is where we sat) run by Japanese owners that apparently have learned the Indian style of preparing curries, among a few other dishes. Friends have told us it's not quite authentic Indian, but it's tasty & a great deal. We had the Sampler Set that allowed us to try 3 kinds of curry along with saffron rice, a tomato/onion salad, & chapati bread for about 840 yen. And for our other meal we ordered the VERY tasty Chicken Coconut Curry that also came with saffron rice & the salad for about 740 yen. Both meals were tasty & satisfying. Had we been quite hungry, we probably would have ordered a side of Naan bread for only 150 yen. The restaurant serves lunch from 11:30 until 14:30 & dinner from 18:30 until 21:30, but they're closed on Monday & Sunday night (only serve lunch on Sunday). Hope others enjoy!
Labels:
Yomitan
Betsy & I have begun volunteering with a hippotherapy program provided on here Okinawa by a group consisting primarily of Betsy's therapist coworkers at EDIS. Betsy provides her expertise with pediatric physical therapy & Josh helps make sure the young folks do not fall to their death (on the rare occasion that they do lose their balance) as well as helping out with care & handling of the horses (that means he knows how to shovel horse manure now - nice resume builder, huh?). Here are some photos that we have snapped with our phones when out at the stables:
The rest:
Occasionally one of us gets the opportunity to actually get up on a horse which is quite fun. It reminds Josh of his adolescent days spending too much allowance money & odd-job earnings on the horses at Ashari's Ranch in Curacao (especially his favorite, "Flaco y Feo," who lived up to the name but was favored for his eagerness to gallop for any or no reason at all). Here is a cell phone video of Betsy getting lead around the yard atop of often feisty mare Pepper:
Labels:
Yomitan
What a lovely way to spend a Monday morning! Inspecting the views from & around the lighthouse at Zanpa-misaki on Yomitan Peninsula. I was pleased to be able to chauffeur & guide visiting relatives (Laura & Susan) of our friend & neighbor Jason. It was a grand excuse to see the sights of Okinawa for myself!
After we'd hiked & photographed our way around Zanpa, we set out to locate a couple of caves on the peninsula. The guidebook that Linda & Susan had brought along with them had these on a high-level map, although I'd never heard of them nor did any English signage on the roads. However, with relatively little searching, we found Chibichiri Gama (west of Hwy 6). It wasn't overly large, but did have dedicated restroom facilities adjacent to the stairway leading down to its mouth. And there were fresh flowers & hanging garlands of brightly colored paper/origami cranes (often made by school children as an homage to honored deceased) placed in front of the cave's mouth, adjacent to an elaborate stone shrine. Inside the cave (which we could only inspect in very limited fashion, since we had no flashlights) was another shrine, which our camera flashes illuminated for us. It's hard to say how deep the cave might extend. We'll have to re-inspect one day with flashlights! We next attempted to find Shimuku Gama on the east side of Hwy 6 (& south of Hwy 12) but to no avail (not for a lack of looking though). We were tempted to call some cave-like wells (as in water sources) the cave that was in the guidebook. Instead, we settled for finding the fresh produce market on Hwy 6 (across from the Max Value hardware store) & buying a papaya that sure wasn't like any papaya we'd ever tasted.
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