Pineapple Park and Then Some

Last Saturday I had to work the evening shift, but we didn't let that slow us down. After work we all walked down to the local pachinko parlor. It's a huge place with slot machines. For all the lights and noise it really wasn't that much fun. There's loud music, which Sharon loved, and you could smoke, which I did not love. I think we were only there about 30 minutes before we decided we had enough fun and made our way home. For all you folks living on Okinawa, are we missing something? Is there more to Pachinko that we just weren't getting? Here are the shots I took on the sly since I was told there are no cameras allowed in pachinko:

This is my favorite pachinko shot because it captured Sharon dancing her way down the aisle.

The next day we got up and watched the Gators scrape by LSU. We're definitely going to have to pick it up a little if we want to get back to back championships. After the game we loaded up and headed to Pineapple Park. This place was fun and also quite the bargain! You start off in the pineapple cart.

These self-driving carts give you a tour of the park and when you get in the cart the attendant sets your radio tour guide to English. It was great. Our favorite part was " Do you know what pineapple means?" Pause, thinking. No? "It means pine and apple". Clever, huh?

There were beautiful lanes of palm trees and fields of pineapples. Yummy!
After the cart ride you are let out at a shell gallery (I don't know what this has to do with pineapple either, so don't ask). They have beautiful displays of dozens of different seashells. These were my favorite. I don't know how they stay intact - they seem so feathery and fragile.

After the shells comes my favorite part, the tasting area! They have everything pineapple you can imagine - from wine to chocolate to cake!

Here's how they make their wine. Remember, it's Japanese so read (or at least look at the pictures) from right to left!

Pineapple chocolate (they also had white):

This was my absolute favorite - Pineapple Wine Cake! You couldn't taste the wine, but it was moist and sweet like a pound cake. Yummy!

We didn't buy the cake because I knew I'd eat the whole thing, but we did get a bottle of fresh pineapple juice. It has no added sugar or water, just pure juice and it is pure heaven.
They even have pineapple charcoal, but they remind you that it's not edible.

They also have Habu Sake. Habu is the venomous snake here on Okinawa. I recently learned that to make the Habu sake the snake is dropped into the alcohol alive. I haven't tried it, but it is supposed to give you strength and vitality. Yuck.

While at Pineapple Park we ran into Magda who told us about a glass blowing factory down the road. It fit into our schedule perfectly so we headed to Ryukyu Glass Factory (Ryukyu is the chain of islands that includes Okinawa).

We got there too late to actually blow glass ourselves, but we got to see it being blown.

The glass blowing was pretty cool, but we really liked the photo opportunities. The entire thing that our heads are through are made of glass. They were beautiful!

I'm an angry Shisa dog:

After the glass factory we headed up to Pizza in the Sky. We've been meaning to get to this restaurant since we moved here a year ago, but never quite made it. It's known for its views just as much as for its pizza.

The view probably would have been better, but we were dealing with overcast conditions most of their stay.

Here's the establishment:

All of the doors open up to let fresh air in and of course in typical Japanese fashion no shoes are allowed inside.

I loved the menu. Not for its wide selection, but for its simplicity.

That fan is it! That's the whole menu,including drinks. You can have a small or a large pizza. They also have salad. You have no say in what the toppings are. As my nephew Andrew would say "you get what you get and don't throw a fit".

The pizza was delicious and came with peppers, onions, hotdog/sausage, corn, and some other stuff I'm probably forgetting. It was wonderful and the salad was fantastic too!

Alrighty, I'll be back soon with posts about Okinawa World, Forest Adventure, and Cocok's Nails.