Tom We drove quite a bit on day 5 of our travels in Okinawa. From the map, you’ll see our travels taking us south, back towards Okinawa City…
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The drive would cover close to 70km and take us through attractions such as Okinawa Fruits Land, Daiso, Orion Happy Park as well as Cape Manzamo, Cape Maeda and Cape Zanpa! The morning started rather slowly where we soaked in our bath tub and caught Tiger Woods winning his 82nd PGA title live – yup, the man’s on form! After chowing down another beautifully presented bento set at Wisteria Condominium Resort, we left for our first destination for the day – Okinawa Fruits Land!
Okinawa Fruits Land
We arrived at Okinawa Fruits Land at 1030am in the morning. As the admission fee to Okinawa Fruits Land was 1000 yen, we decided to skip it and head straight to its in-house cafe for some fruity desserts. To get there, you’ll make a right turn at the entrance of Okinawa Fruits Land. This will lead you through its souvenir shop (smart move) before eventually arriving at Fruits Cafe. This time, we had the acerola and sweet mango dessert for 720 yen. A little ex but still cheaper than having the both of us enter for 2000 yen. Plus, we’d get the vitamins packed in those acerola cherries!
Right next to Okinawa Fruits Land, there’s also the Nago Pineapple Park. As we’ve visited the Dole Pineapple Plantation in Oahu Hawaii before, we decided to give this pineapple park a miss. If you’ve visited it, do let us know about your experience in the comments section below!
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Free Beer Tasting at Orion Happy Park and Shopping at Daiso
Next we headed to the city of Nago to visit Daiso. Well, not intentionally. The reason we’re in Nago, is because of Orion Happy Park! Did you know that you can enjoy beer tastings for free at Orion Happy Park? Hence, before stopping by, we did some light shopping (100 yen shop!) and had our lunch at どん家 before heading over…
This time, we ordered the Ladies Lunch Set (890 yen) as well as the Pork Tenderloin Cutlet Set (790 yen) at どん家 (1st level of Daiso Nago). The total came up to 1848 yen which included tax. The Ladies Lunch Set had a touch of Autumn and was a culinary feast to the eyes. The pork tenderloin on the other hand, lived up to expectations with tender meat on the inside and crisp batter on the outside. Although, the best pork katsu we’ve had, must still be the Pork Miso Katsu at Yabaton Nagoya. Next up, Orion Happy Park!
As Orion Happy Park offers free beer tasting sessions (2 free draft beers) for all visitors, you’ll find that each session is usually almost fully subscribed. To join one of these tours at Orion Happy Park, you must do so by applying and choosing your session at the Orion Happy Park Website (top right hand corner). Thanks to Kate’s flawless planning, we were able to include this tour into our itinerary!
As we walked towards Orion Happy Park, we actually passed by the Orion Beer Factory itself. Do note that the brewery tour is not at the factory itself. Walk further down to reach Orion Happy Park. Once inside, you’ll be given your badge (colour of which determines your tasting session at the restaurant) as well as 2 tokens in exchange of the beers. Then, we headed upstairs to view some exhibits at the gallery, before our guide came over to bring us on the guided tour. At the gallery, we saw a mock-up of a traditional convenience store where Orion started selling their beers. There’s also a showcase of all the Orion beer cans that have been used throughout the years. Before long, we started our tour through Orion Brewery…
The following are excerpts of the tour:
Ingredients/Milling
The main ingredients of beer are malt, hops and high quality water. When barley is germinated and dried, the result is called “malt”. Malt is an important ingredient that determins the taste of the beer. Malt used at Orion comes from around the world including Europe, Australia and Canada. Hops on the other hand, gives beer its aroma, bitterness and head retention. Hops used by Orion comes from Czech and Germany.
Mashing
When the crushed malt is placed in a mash tun and heated, glycation occurs and a sweet wort (the base material of beer) is produced. This is filtered and transferred to a kettle, where hops are added and the mixture is boiled. It is then cooled and sent to the fermentation tank. The entire process is controlled by computer.
Fermentation
Yeast is added to the cooled wort and is subsequently fermented. Due to the action of the yeast, the sugars in the wort are broken down into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. Over a period of about 7 days, the wort turns into fresh (green) beer.
Maturation
The fresh beer is slowly matured over 10-15 days to produce a beer with a balanced and delicious flavour.
Beer Filtration
This process removes yeast and excess protein from beer matured in he maturation tanks to produce an amber coloured beer. Thereafter, the beers are filled into bottles, cans and kegs before a final inspection prior to shipping.
After seeing all the processes above, it was soon time to visit the Orion Restaurant to have our free beer tasting!
So how did it taste? AMAZING! It was indeed refreshing and brought us to a tropical setting, just like SG! Orion tastes like a close cousin of Tiger Beer. When drank fresh, there’s an added depth to its aroma and flavour. The in-house Orion snack also complemented the beer.
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Cape Manzamo
After leaving Orion Happy Park, we took about 25 minutes before reaching Cape Manzamo…
As renovation was in progress, it was a 4 minutes walk from the carpark to see the cliffs. The walk along the board walk along the coast reminded us of our walk along Jeju’s Jeosangjeolli Cliff. Love the beautiful arches carved out by the impeding waters.
Cape Maeda
After another 25 minutes, we arrived at Cape Maeda…
The carpark cost 100 yen to enter. Again, there was some renovation going on. After we parked, we followed another couple to the edge of the Cape. However, the path became quite dangerous. Hence, we just took the above shot and turned back. Along the way, we stopped to take in the views of the cliffs and breathe the fresh air. Back at the car, Kate realised that she dropped “sunset bearie”, a latest addition to the gang. Fortunately, we backtracked and were able to pick him up 🙂
Cape Zanpa
Our day ended at Cape Zanpa, where we checked into Hotel Sunset Zanpa. As it was still relatively early, we drove out to Cape Zanpa to catch the beautiful sunset…
As there was still a little bit of time before sunset, we dropped by Zanpa Beach. There, we saw that it was like a party beach where music was playing and giant floating slides were available for use. Sunset was amazing with its rays glistening on the waters…
At there weren’t any restaurants in the vicinity of Hotel Sunset Zanpa, we headed to Tokeshi Town. Yup, you’ve guessed it, its convenience store. There, we bought some noodles, chicken, mushroom and Asahi beer (870 yen in total) to cook our own dinner. Back at the hotel, we went up to the roof to see the bright yellow yolk of the sun, setting in the horizon…
Back in our room, we saw the last rays of the sun. It was a beautiful display to end a “fruitful” (in both sense of the word) day…
Thereafter, it was time for Tom to demonstrate his noodles cooking prowess – that is, turning raw food into cooked food. Though it took a while on the electric stove, the food was eventually cooked!
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We hope you have enjoyed our coverage on day 5 of our travels in Okinawa! Stay tuned as we head to downtown Okinawa for the next part of our travels on day 6!
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