4 November 2018
Taco rice everywhere
The main street in Naha is a tourist paradise
Its a good thing I like taco rice, because if you come to Naha in Okinawa, its the main thing to do see eat and discuss. So I will do all of those things. Many years ago, I was poor, and lived in a city without food options, back then I used to enjoy making my own taco rice. Well now I dont need to make it myself to feel poor again, instead I can come to Okinawa and find it everywhere!
I will talk more about taco rice in my pictures.
My first impressions of Naha, at night, in the tourist area are very good. It is very bright, clean, vibrant and interesting. It is Japan, but like Hawaii (disclaimer: I have not been to Hawaii). There are lots of tourist shops, beachwear shops, but also many nice cheap eating options and palm trees. Apparently the city only has 300,000 residents but due to the huge number of tourists the whole place is set up for people who are out and about doing stuff, just like me, who is also a tourist. I checked the flight arrivals website, other than internal Japan tourism which is massive, the next biggest group by far is Korea, there are 20 flights a day from Seoul. I dont know if thats relevant or interesting but I have typed it now so it stays, NO EDITING.
The main street extends very far, so far that I didnt even walk its full length. There are long covered shopping streets running off the side, and the part I did not investigate appears to have bigger malls and department stores. So plenty to keep me entertained for the 4 nights that I am here. Now I need to work out what to do in the day time, there are no mountains!
It gets darker later here due to Naha being significantly west of Tokyo, this means I was out before it was dark. I should do that more often because I like this photo.
This is parking garage. The cars are triple stacked. How does it work? How do you get your car down from the top? I went in and examined it and still cant work it out.
I like this photo also, you can see the monorail going past on the left.
Here is the main street. My first glimpse of the main street, not a particularly special part of it, but the light here makes for a nice photo to my aging eyes.
This is one of the covered shopping streets running off the side of the main street. I counted 4 of them so far.
Other than the aforementioned taco rice, steak houses are also popular. Advertising Okinawa beef with little Australian or NZ flags shoved into the plastificated versions. I just invented the word plastificated.
Okinawa even has great guitar stores. Better than any in Melbourne. Impressive for this 'small' town on an island far from the main islands of Japan.
Very dark here, but still a nice photo. There is a river of sorts running through and under the city, it looks like you can walk along it at night, probably catch a few eels.
They have spent a lot on street furniture. This long boat with little seats doesnt seem to belong to any store, its just there for anyone to use. I sat here for a while.
Snoop dogg-e-dogg. I refuse to call him snoop anything else, because I am OG.
For dinner I went to a bar. Gimme a whatever of jack and a jager bomb highball aperol spritz.
At my bar I had.... Taco rice, FUSED with omurice. Under the egg is rice, taco meat, lettuce, tomato. It was cheap and delicious. They made their own salsa fresh, it came in a cocktail shaker thing. That was also delicious.
Another delicacy of Okinawa is purple sweet potato. I want one. They also use them in a dessert tart. I also want one of those.
Did you ever wonder what baby pineapples look like? These are real! They fit inside a shot glass.
There are hundreds of similar shops selling general tourist gifts like this, but the stores have gone to a lot of effort to make themselves stand out from each other.
Stopping at the family mart on the way back to my hotel, what did I see? More taco rice of course!