Entrance to the beach

I'm lucky enough to live in an area of Okinawa surrounded by resort hotels. Although I don't get to stay at these hotels, I do sometimes like to take advantage of their facilities. The resort hotel closest to me is Moon Beach. Recently they opened a new lagoon pool and it is absolutely gorgeous! Usually I prefer going to the beach (salt water! snorkelling!), but every now and again I get persuaded by little G to go to the pool.

A couple of weekends ago, the weather was amazing, so we headed up to road to the Moon Beach pool. Because we were not guests at the hotel, we had to pay for parking and pool entry (500yen each) but it's worth it. There are 2 pools and the beach. The semi-indoor pool is good on a rainy day, and has a childrens pool as well. The outdoor lagoon pool is the nicer and newer of the two, but is more laid back, and you kind of need to keep more control of your children. Both pools are surrounded by sun lounges, and during the morning there was a nice bit of shade covering the lagoon pool if you are worried about getting sunburned. One other thing I really liked was the free kids arm floaties you could just borrow, which was handy because we forgot ours.

As for the beach, there are sun lounges and umbrellas but I think you need to pay for these, as well as floating rings for rent. There are also lifeguards at all the pools/beach. I noticed a beach bar near the lagoon pool, but it wasn't open when I was there (before midday), however, nothing is more resorty/relaxing than a cocktail by the pool! One last thing that I think is the icing on the cake is the relaxing hawaiian music playing near the pool. Perfect!

If you are coming to Okinawa, but can't afford the expensive resort hotel prices, you can always stay somewhere cheaper and just pay to use the facilities at the resorts. Moon Beach is definitely cheaper than some of the others (expect upwards of 2000yen per person at other places), but it's still lovely!

Lagoon pool

Vines growing inside from the roof

Pin it for later:

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to see the Eisa festival in my neighbourhood! Usually my neighbourhood is very sleepy and quiet. You don't see too many people about except first thing in the morning and the afternoon when all the old people are out doing their Rajio Taiso (radio calisthenics) and playing gate ball (kind of like croquet).

Finally back to your regular scheduled Okinawa programming.

The bloggers! Left to right: Ashley, Elizabeth, myself and Laura. Photo credit to Elizabeth.

Cute little interior

Fresh made tagliatelle with ragu

Torta Nonna - the most delectable custard tart!

Once again it was great to catch up and chat and i'm looking forward to the next one!

If you are looking to read other views on life in Okinawa you can find Laura blogging at Little Island Takara, Elizabeth over at Cheers, Elizabeth and Ashley writes at Forever Fernweh.

The last couple of weekends for us have been pretty quiet. We've been been doing chores, rearranging some house stuff and hanging out watching Netflix and reading. Sunday was much of the same, although we did make it out of the house for some nice family time. The weather was perfect, so we headed to Iha park in the morning so G could run out some energy before he had to trudge through the supermarket with us.

Iha park

First time i've seen swings like this

During nap time I popped over to the beach and sat and read under a shady tree while H stayed home during G's nap. I'm loving how the humidity has really disappeared compared to summer, so being outside is actually pleasant, instead of reminiscent of sitting in an oven. I re-read Lena Dunham's Not that Kind of Girl and now for some easy trash, i'm reading Dark Places  by Gillian Flynn, which i'm flying through!

Perfect weather

Perfect water

In the afternoon we decided to take a walk/bike ride down to the market to pick up some bread and just get out of the house one last time. It was so lovely. G is getting really confident on his new bike, and H picked up a couple of tasty beverages of the alcoholic variety for us so we stopped in at the beach on the way home and had a beer, while G got right in the water for a dip. It was a nice reminder for me that we really do have it well over here. I've been missing Melbourne a lot recently, and the lifestyle we had there (occasional child-free date nights, the ability to walk to numerous amazing restaurants,bars,cafes), but it was nice to remember that we now have the opportunity to just walk over to the beach, have a drink and watch the sunset on a Sunday afternoon instead.

Taking the new bike for a spin

Afternoon dip

Summer in Japan is filled with hanabi (fireworks), however for numerous reasons, we seemed to miss all the fireworks near our place this summer. Either they didn't start until way past G's bedtime and were far away, or we were not in town. Luckily, a couple of weekends ago they have a fireqorks festival at a hotel right near our house, starting at a reasonable time and we were home to see them! It was G's first experience seeing real fireworks (not the kind you buy from the convenience store and do on the beach) and he LOVED it.

Their green salad is huge and delicious

This gnocchi is made with Okinawan purple sweet potato. I've also had just regular potato gnocchi as well.

The margherita pizza - perfection.

On crazy hot days (like today) they have mist in the air because all the seating is outside for food

So many tasty summer treats

Dragon Fruits!

I'm hoping this sign means that the eggs I bought are from happy chickens

Souvenirs galore!