Okinawa 2008 Day 1

From Hong Kong to Okinawa

There are basically 3 options to fly from Hong Kong to Okinawa:-

1. Direct flight from HK to Okinawa via Hong Kong Express - a scheduled flight which however will only operate when the number of passenger meets the target, i.e. will not confirm your seat until 2 days before your flight. We did not want to risk our trip in this way so it's refused.

2. Transfer at Taipei. You can take whatever flight to Taipei and then change to China Airline (華航) from Taipei to Okinawa. We took CI from HK to Taipei, then CI from Taipei to Okinawa. We arrived at Okinawa at around 630, which is only one hour later than taking the direct flight. We picked this option.

3. Transfer at Tokyo / Osaka via ANA. The good thing is that ANA has mid-night flight from Hong Kong so you can fly from Hong Kong at mid-night, take the earliest flight from Tokyo / Osaka (930 a.m.) and then go to Okinawa at about 10 a.m. Too harsh for us to sleep on the plane. This is also rejected.

See how beautiful the clouds are...

The snacks for the flight from Taipei to Okinawa was good!

We then took the mono-rail (Yu-rail) from the Airport to our hotel. It costs us 230 Yen each. Mono-rail is the only railway transport in Okinawa.

Our hotel, Toyoko-inn at Naha Asahi-bashi Ekimae, is just 3 mins walk from the mono-rail station. It was 8,190 Yen for a double room per night. We strongly recommend this hotel if you are staying in Naha city.

We had our first dinner at a restaurant next to our hotel. It serves bbq meats and some local Okinawa cuisine.

Very delicious and cheap bbq food. Around 300 Yen for 2 sticks.

This is the famous Okinawa Cuisine, fry bitter melon with luncheon meat, bean curd and egg! We have to stress that the bitter melon in Okinawa is not bitter at all. We had this dish for 4 nights out of 6!

The whole menu is in Japanese and we just ordered those they claimed to be the best selling ones. We are so delighted when one of the dishes we ordered was this "pig hand"! It's very delicious. It's spongy and juicy inside but crispy outside!!

It was almost 10:00 pm after dinner but we still had a little walk to "International Avenue" (國際通). We were both in red because each of us had half a liter of beer during dinner. I seldom have beer in Hong Kong but I just could not resist those in Okinawa. They are so fresh and easy to drink...and is the cheapest drinks there. Perhaps it's because the Orion Beer Factory is located in Okinawa...

That marked the end of Day 1 of our trip. My first impression is that Okinawa is created to be a paradise for vacation, and the vacation we are going to have will be fantastic!

More from my album: www.fotop.net/tamwaikay/okinawa08