Traveling up to Motobu

 Today was largely taken up by sitting on boats and buses. We stopped at the tourist center before catching the morning Queen Zamami back to Tomari port. When we arrived, we found this well-mannered gentleman there.

He didn't go in. He just looked in longingly.

Sumi of course couldn't resist petting him. This was his response.

The "feral" cats of Zamami

From there, we boarded a highway bus to take us the 50 miles up to Motobu to the Royal View Chunaumi Resort. It's a fancy name for the hotel we're staying at. In Okinawa, there is no such thing as fast transit. The 50 mile trip was a 2.5 hour bus ride, mostly through urban sprawl. Not the most scenic trip, but it was much better than renting a car. It would have taken even longer unless we also paid for all the tolls along the way, at which point you are just paying 5 times the money for more stress and no real time savings.

So we get to the hotel, and it's quite nice

Open lounge with free soft drinks and popcorn. We spent the better part of an hour looking for where to go eat dinner. It turns out in the off season on a Sunday night up in this mostly tourist area, that's not really an option. I think they must expect you to eat at your hotel. So we tried that. But it turns out that some school had rented out the entire dining hall and many of the common spaces for some school trip. So what we could do was sit in the lounge and smell the food and hear them having a good time.

So for what feels like the 75th time this trip, we found ourselves at a convenience store (a Lawson, this time) searching for something not terribly unhealthy. We ended up with our usual selections of yogurt, bread, ham, cheese, etc. I was sorely tempted when I saw a VERY rare sight in Japan

That, my friends, is peanut butter.

The only thing that stopped me from getting it was the fact that I'm going to be on the road for two weeks as soon as we get back, and will likely be living on PB&J (by choice! Not by necessity), so I passed, but that was the first time I have ever seen it on display.

We ended our day by playing some table tennis in the rec room until the school kids took over for some organized presentation with microphones and slides or something. Either that or the world's most boring karaoke, I couldn't really tell.