Amazing trip to Okinawa part 1

Hey everyone! Thanks for the support of my new series Kawaii Healthy I posted on monday, I will certainly do my best to make it very useful and get it off the ground. I also plan to make more videos for reviews, outfits, etc and I'll make sure to post those here as well! But today I am going to write about something I have wanted to post for a long time - my trip to Okinawa! This is a long time ago now, nearly 2 years so I may not remember everything completely but it was very memorable. And it was the first time I traveled long distance within Japan, so it was a great experience.

My friend offered to bring me on this trip a couple years ago for fun, and it nicely coincided with my birthday (just a couple days after). We had talked about traveling to another country in Asia but ended up going with Okinawa as it was easier but still had a different atmosphere than Tokyo. I'm really thankful I had this chance because I don't think I ever will again haha.

We took a flight to Okinawa, and it's a short one about 1.5 hours I believe, so after suffering through 12 hour flights back and forth to Japan all the time this seemed quite easy. The weird part was the boarding, we had a tiny little gate then we had to board a bus that drove us to the plane. There were hardly any people on the flight, which I loved SO much, if it was the US I'm sure they would've cancelled that flight.

Anyhow we landed in Okinawa and took another bus to the airport, which was small and dated but it served. We picked up at couple of snacks at the on site conbini and boarded a shuttle to the rental car place.  Now I've only been in a car 2x (including this time) in Japan so I was scared to be driven in city traffic haha. We did have a couple issues with the car but it was solved overall.

Decorations in the airport

Sanpen tea, a traditional Okinawa tea

The hotel was small as expected in Japan, really an economy type, but there was a super market in walking distance and we were only a block off of the main drag so it was quite well located. We didn't have any time for sight-seeing that evening, just looking around the city a bit but the next day we got going early on the site seeing.

We visited Okinawa World, which is a conglomerate of touristy Okinawan things to do! It had a recreated traditional village as you may expect, a museum of Okinawan native animals with snake show, a cave system, brewery, craft stations and big gift shops. They also had a show of traditional Okinawa dances. My favorite parts were the cave and dance, unfortunately there were no pictures at the dance, but I'll let the rest of the photos speak for themselves.

After that we went to a beach on another part of the main island (we didn't visit the other smaller islands) and it was so lovely, very clean and tons of washed up coral for me to poke around in. I love collecting shells and rocks. It was close to the American base there so there were some noisy planes overhead. I certainly could've stayed there longer!

I don't want to make this too lengthy cause I really did a lot during my short stay there so this mini-series might be 4-5 parts. I still want to talk about shopping and eating, the Castle, some war memorials and America Village. Boy we packed a lot in haha! Please look forward to reading more about Okinawa, I really enjoy showing more about Japan than just Tokyo! Where have you traveled in Japan??