Pineapples and Sea Shells... Whatever!

Again, in Nago one of the things they grow is pineapples. Delicious ones, I must say. There is a place you can go to visit to see how they do it. I'm sure they are explaining how they do it and the ins-and-outs of pineapple growing while you're in the little car, but who knows. They could be saying anything as far as we are concerned. It was a pretty cool place. When you first get there you get a ride through the farms on the pineapple car. Pretty sweet ride!!!

 

Obviously, this isn't us. I couldn't get out of a self driving, gps guided vehicle to take a picture of us, now could I? But you get the drift from how cool these people look cruising around in their pineapple mobile!

 

 

There were baby pineapples everywhere. They were so cute!

 



Not nearly as cute as our driver, though. Seriously? Could he be any cuter?!

There were also other plants inside the covered greenhouses. There were bromiliads and wisteria and all sorts of cool things. Look at this little place covered in flowers. Ooooo, they smelled soooo good!

After our little cruise we let off inside a building. There was about 4 rooms just randomly filled with sea shells... I don't know how or why pineapples and seashells go together, but apparently in japan - anything goes. It was unexpected and I like that in my schedule ridden life ;)

After the sea shells there were a few tables set up with different types of pineapples to taste. All you can eat. We ate. It was delicious and juicy. Yum. Sorta like any pineapple you've had anywhere. Nothing too note worthy. A pineapple is a pineapple. There is one thing that I've never seen anywhere but here, though. Pineapple Wine. Yum! There were also tasting of this. Pineapple wine, pineapple champagne, pineapple mixed with other fruit wine. ALL sorts of things. As some you know, Jason is not allowed to drink out in town unless it is between the hours of  6-10pm during dinner. So, needless to say I did the tasting. Yum! So many to choose from. Also, there were so many other things. Cakes made out of pineapple, doughnuts made out of pineapple. T-shirts with pineapples printed on them. Just basically everything pineapple. And then that room filled with sea shells... hm...

As you can imagine we bought quite a few bottles of wine as this is one of the only places on island to buy it. We wanted to buy some for all of you people too, but they said they can't ship it to the states. I guess its just one more reason to come and visit us! Pineapple Wine (and a ride on the Pineapple Mobile). They were also selling Pineapple cream puffs. Jason loves cream puffs. So does Colton.

 

Another Japanese Park conquered. Now, let's get home and open up those bottles!

Neo Park

Neo Park is advertised online as if it is a zoo (which I guess it sort of is - you'll see). We asked our friends if they had ever been there before (they went to high school on this island) and they had! From what they remembered it was not very fun and more like a petting zoo. We read the reviews online and they said it had been revamped and decided to try it out. Our friends thought they would like to as well. So, it was a date.

We recently purchased the iPhone on our cellular plan to avoid getting into arguments about, "Where should I go now?" and "YOU told me to turn here, now what should I do?" Best investment ever! We just plugged the address in to the GPS and we were set. Neo Park is in the city of Nago, about 30 minutes on the expressway (with Jason driving) from our house. We had to drive through these amazingly long tunnels that basically went through a mountain side. It was scary under there. Claustrophobic. I wanted to get through them as quickly as possible. They were just digging through mountains all over the place up there. No biggie. This mountain might not collapse on me or anything while I'm operating this large tractor INSIDE a mountain. That is not the job for me, let me tell you!

Anyway - we arrived 15 minutes after they opened and about 10 minutes before our friends arrived so we had some time to check out the grounds before actually going in.

 

This is the entrance way. Who knows what it says in kanji. I'm guessing, "Neo Park." Pretty good, huh?

This was a little bit of the water way that loops inside the zoo. We didn't know it then, but it was foreshadowing of what was to come.

We bought our tickets at the front desk. Jason paid for us first. After Ben and Taylor got their tickets they bought 3 bags of bird food. We thought they were crazy. Taylor informed us that she had done some research and it was worth the investment! So, we bought 3 bags too. Good thing because this happened...

 

By the way, this picture does not do it justice. We were the first ones there I think and these birds were HUNGRY. They followed us everywhere. Good thing we got all that bird food! There were all different kinds of birds. I would name them, but I can't read any of the signs. All I know is there were birds everywhere and it lasted FOREVER!

After the birds there was this weird fish tunnel. It was really murky and gross and only one side of it was filled up. It looked like big, nasty carp to me. Oh and a huge giant catfish. Pretty weird.

Next we were on our way to the petting zoo area. Again, we didn't know what to expect, but I don't think anyone would expect this.

That's right! Dogs. The top picture is of some small dogs that you could actually go into the enclosure. So weird. These dogs didn't seem as pathetic as the larger dogs. I took a picture of the best looking one. There were 4-5 dogs tied up to hitching posts out in the sun. There was a Shiba-Inu that its teeth were so messed up it looked like a weird Halloween mask or a cruel joke. There was a Beagle with weird tumor/skin tags hanging all over its body. It was happy though. I guess it doesn't have a mirror to see its weird growths so why should he care? there was a Dalmation that was pretty normal looking and this guy. He was cute. You could take the dogs for a walk if you wanted. I'm not sure if it cost more money or not, but here's one Asian rocking it out.

I wonder if it poops while you're walking it, if you have to pick it up.

There were all sorts of things to pet here. Rabbits, turtles, a Shetland Pony. Llamas, capybara, goats, etc. Here is a picture of the jerk goat who head-butted my baby!

 

 

Colton got to sit on a turtle and feed a capybara. Capybaras are these huge rodent like creatures. I don't know if I've ever seen one before. Jason was obsessed with this thing. For those of you who don't know, Jason REALLY wants to get a pet out here for Colton. Colton does love animals, but he has a dog. His name is Chump and we love him soooo much! Love you Chumpy! Needless to say, we will not be getting any pets. Jason wanted to know if people keep these as pets. He thought they seemed pretty calm and when we were leaving we noticed one was doing his business in a litter box. Capybara 1, me 0.

 

 



 

Next we were off to another enclosure. This one was pretty cool. It had peacocks and Emu. All the normal birds we had been seeing all over this land, but this enclosure also had these cool little wallaby guys. The peacocks were being mean to him whenever we tried to toss him some food. Jason handled that.

 



He was doing the Cesar Milan move. You know the one. Where you push your tongue up against the back of your top teeth and hiss like a snake. Yep, this is my big brave Marine, scaring peacocks.

We saw some wild boars too. This is funny because of the expressway there are signs like we have in Wisconsin with a picture of  a deer jumping, only here they are pictures of cartoonish looking boar with the bold phrase "ANIMAL" written beneath it. They were pretty cute. Look at this little noses!

This is the sign outside the Lemur area. Funny translations. I'm just glad they attempt it. Then I have some idea of what is going on. Sometimes the translation is so bad, you still don't know.

There was monkey island in the middle of the lake. It was sort of sad. There was just this one little house and a bunch of monkeys. Seemed sort of like Alcatraz. The boys liked the monkeys. Colton loves his plastic bottles by the way.

I don't know if you can tell in this picture but on the far left hand side there is a separate tank. On our way out of the "gift shop" to get on the train there was  a lady. I'm not sure how it came about, but all of a sudden we were all out on the balcony looking into the tank and she was banging incessantly on the metal railings. I thought she was crazy. She was doing it for quite some time and pointing into the water. There was nothing there that I could see. Nevertheless she continued banging on the rails. Sure enough, a HUGE black and red fish surfaced for a few seconds and then plunged again to the bottom.
Some rare fish from somewhere. Again, who knows. I don't know what she was saying. She was nice though. We smiled, bowed and were on our way. We had a train to catch!

Before boarding the train we had some time to kill until the next engine came around. There was a little area for the boys to play and some food vendors. Jason was starving and went to get some food. He came back with a hot dog with some animal's bone sticking out of it. He came over by me and said, "Look at this! Try it!" Pass. Needless to say he said it was gross and didn't finish it, which is saying something because Jason eats almost everything he pays for. He also bought delicious Okinawan donuts with pineapple chunks in the batter. Hot out of the grease and just cool enough in time to keep the boys occupied on the train ride.

The train took us all through the park. Mostly everything we had already seen, but it was a nice way to wind down the day. Over all - I think we will be back to Neo Park in the future.

Hiji Falls Hike and Okuma Beach

It was a long Thanksgiving weekend and the weather here has finally begun to feel like fall. Seriously! I thought we were doomed to sweaty, stinky, stickiness for the duration of the next 3 years. It was a brisk morning and we were taking Colton on his first hike. I packed a lunch and planned on a picnic at some point - either during the hike or after depending on Colton's mood. Last time we made the drive up to Nago, it ended badly because we didn't have much planned. We wanted to "wing-it" and realized very early on that you can't just "wing-it" with a baby. This time we were prepared. We packed our little mini "milk" cooler, sandwiches, baby snacks and chips for us and were on our way. It was a beautiful day for a hike!

This was the first time we've put Colton on our backs and weren't sure how he would do. He thought it was a blast and giggled for the first 15 minutes, then abruptly fell asleep.

This was ok with us as he giggled to himself in the back seat almost the entire 90 minute drive to get there (this is when I planned on him napping). He's a man of mystery, though. Always keeping me on my toes. Either way - he slept the entire way to the falls - about a 40 minute hike. This is what he missed... (Luckily he got to see it on the way back).

A lot of stairs but also a lot of beautiful views. The entire time we lived in San Diego, Jason and I would go on hikes with Chump or bike rides and I would always say, "We need to find some woods, this is too hot." Jason would always tell me, "This is the desert - there aren't any woods here. We have hike(ride) in the desert." That was not my idea of fun. This is my idea of fun!

About half way through the hike there was a huge suspension bridge that crossed the huge canyon that falls ran through. It was quite the site to behold. The suspension bridge took a little getting used to at first. It moved a lot - even with just once person's gait.

We saw a really cool rock wall that had water dripping down it constantly. Little plants had anchored themselves in and were thriving. I've seen this replicated in "living pictures" and next to fountains and things, but to see it made by nature was really a sight to see.

Maybe this is just the plant nerd in me - but I just can't help but think that these plants are amazing! How did they get their little roots into those little crevices in that rock in the first place? How much soil can there really be anchoring them in? Where are they getting their nutrients? Oh how I love these little green creatures! Note to self: Make a beautiful rock/plant wall that looks exactly like this one when I buy my Barbie Dream Home!

There were creatures along the way too.

I'm not sure if you can make it out, but that is a daddy-long legged spiderish guy, but the cool thing about him was the markings on his back looked like a giant smiley face! A yellow one. Can you see it? He was a happy spider.
The caterpillar was not that out of the ordinary except that they were EVERYWHERE. Even in the bathroom stall well out of the forest. I think they are of the monarch species but these had bring yellow hairs all over there. You can almost see the ones on his tail end in the picture. Creepy crawlies! I'm glad I don't have any pictures of Habu snakes to post. I hate snakes.

Colton woke up just in time for the falls. He couldn't stop looking at them!

I believe this is the first waterfall I've ever seen! It was beautiful and loud and so fun to be there with my family!

Even if my husband is a COMPLETE dork!

Colton stayed awake the entire hike back just quietly taking in the serenity. Plus, he loves looking at trees - even if its just outside a car window. He's weird. He must take after his mom with his love of trees.

When we got back to entrance of the park we were famished. We unbuckled the Ergo and peeled Colton off of Dad. I say "peeled" because there was a "Colton" shaped sweat mark on Dad's back. Colton was glad to be rid of him, but thankful for the ride. We sat down and had our picnic lunch. Colton loves picnics.

I didn't short my husband a sandwich... I made him one too. He just couldn't pass up the Okinawa Soba they were serving in the café. Only in Japan will they allow you to carry your tray out into the field and eat your soup. They may just not have understood what he was asking I suppose as they watched him walk away with his tray. Either way. he returned everything in good condition so all was ok in the end. Colton loves Okinawa Soba too, so he had some too.

After lunch Colton helped hold up the sign.

He needed to stretch his legs after sitting in the car for 90 minutes and then being stuck in the Ergo for another 80 minutes. He was a real trooper, though. I would recommend this hike to anyone with children light enough to go in an baby carrier.

We were on our way when we decided we wanted to find a beach to sit around at for a little while before we started the drive home when we saw signs for Okuma. We followed the road blindly where we came across a sign that said "Okuma Military Facility." I said, "Sweet! Let's go in!" We pulled out our ID's and were welcomed to paradise!

I still can't believe I took this picture with MY camera! I was here and it was beautiful. Words can't describe the way this place made my whole mind relax. Suddenly, we were on a tropical vacation on an exotic island. Oh wait - we live here!

 

This beautiful wonderland has a variety of different cabins, campsites, luxury homes, bicycles, jet-skis, and on and on and on for rent! There were two young men riding a covered double bicycle drinking beers with American Flags on the side and as I stared longingly with my mind at peace I said, "I want to come back here." Jason said, "Me too!" As soon as we got home I messaged my girlfriends and we are as good as booked.

 

Good-bye for now Okuma. See you again the weekend after Christmas!