Green Leaf Cafe Yomitan

Okinawa
As i've mentioned before, i've been dieting to try and get back to my "normal" weight. And by normal, I mean the weight i've been for most of my adult life up until 2 years ago, when I piled on the love weight. Anyway, the diet is working and i've almost reached my goal. Unfortunately, dieting has also meant much less frequent eating out, which is one of my favourite things to do! Luckily, this weekend we decided to finally try out the new Green Leaf cafe in Yomitan. It is joined to the Green Leaf organic grocery store and it's fantastic!

One of the main reasons we wanted to go there was because it is pet friendly. Yep, you can take your dog and sit in the lovely outdoor area. Unfortunately it was a bit windy when we went, but we still had a lovely time.


Really lovely inside

Outdoor seating



Dogs are welcome outside
They have a range of food options, from build your own salads, curry, bagels, quiche and taco rice. A lot of the food is vegan and vegetarian. 
Helen and I shared the vegetable curry and the soy meat taco rice. Both were really wholesome, tasty and healthy! Little G chose the prosciutto bagel, and pretty much just ate the bagel and cream cheese and none of the filling.
They have a great selection of organic wines and beers too, so I tried one of the organic beers, which was delish! All the beers are under ¥500 each too, which is good.

I definitely recommend making the effort to try out the Green Leaf Cafe. 

Vegetarian curry

Soy meat taco rice

Fresh prosciutto and quinoa bagel

Organic beer

Chocolate gateau

little visitor

Summer leave date day

Okinawa
The leave policy at my work is awesome. Every year during summer, we get 7 additional days of leave to take (but they must be used during July, August or September - you don't use, you lose). Anyway, H and I used one of these leave days on Monday to give ourselves a long weekend and have a child free date day.
The original plan was to do some snorkelling, but the weather was rainy and we were enjoying some quiet time too much. We did eventually get out of the house and decided to try a Thai place in Yomitan, that we hadn't been to before. Shirokuma is super cute! It's open everyday for lunch and dinner except Wednesdays. The interior is really lovely and quirky and the staff were really nice. They were happy to adjust the dishes to vegetarian for H.

Inside Shirokuma
H chose the curry sampler, which had all three curry options in little serves ( red, yellow and green) and even though it was a Thai restaurant, I couldn't resist trying the pho. Pho is one of my all time favourite foods, and I had never seen it on a menu in Japan, let alone Okinawa (I'm sure you can get it, i've just never seen it). Anyway, the curries were delicious, and the pho was also really good.  We will definitely be going back there.


The lunch curry sampler

Beef Pho
After lunch we stopped in at Onna no Eki for dessert and got this amazing shaved ice tropical dessert. These are really the best during summer! The colour of the dragon fruit was crazy vibrant.

Kakigori dessert

All in all, even though the weather kind of sucked, we had a lovely day.

Yomitan and Manzamo

Dechibica
This weekend was what I've been after since I moved here 6 weeks ago. Even though I've been sick (again) with some sort of hacking cough, I made an effort to make the most of the weekend and play tourist in my new home.

Friday night we went to dinner at a new izakaya that has opened up about 2 minutes walk from our place in Nakadomari and it was delicious! The drink driving limit in Okinawa is basically zero so this was the first time we got to go out for a meal and both have a drink. They had a decent amount of vegetarian options for Helen and some "super melt in my mouth" tuna sashimi for me. I envision many a night eating out at this local in the future.

Tuna Sashimi


Saturday we ventured to Yomitan, the next town south of Onna to check out the pottery village and Cape Zanpa. The pottery village was cute, but not the best with a toddler if you want to relax and check out all the shops and galleries. Still, I bought a pair of mugs and a cute little vase.
Yomitan pottery village - Yachimun no Sato

The building was full of kilns

Cape Zanpa was much more Griffin friendly, considering there was a lighthouse that we could climb to the top of for only 200 yen! Griffin loves lighthouses and he loved actually getting to climb to the top of one. The weather was windy and a little rainy, but we made it to the top and got to see the amazing, almost black water surrounding the Cape. The water was so dark compared to what we see from our house it was almost scary. I felt like, if you fell in there, it would swallow you and you would never escape. We will definitely go back though in warmer weather because we drove past a gorgeous looking beach on the way there.
Zanpa lighthouse

View of the black water from the top of the lighthouse


After the lighthouse we were starving and finally got to try Dechibica, a little cafe I had read about on numerous sites and it didn't disappoint. It's mostly vegetarian and vegan (apart from a couple of chicken curries) and delicious. We will be back.
Curry set from Dechibica

Sunday the weather showed signs of sun for the first time in what seems like forever, so we ventured out in search of a playground in Onna that a colleague had told me about and it was fantastic. It was huge and Griff loved it! It also had a little grass field next to it for our puppy to run around in. It was the first time our dog has had a good run on grass since we got here and he LOVED it. I can see us spending a lot of time there. 
Onna playground

Ollie enjoying the grass

After the playground we wanted to make a quick stop at Cape Manzamo as it was right there. It was very crowded, but the weather and the view was beautiful. I think it's probably best to get there early in the morning to avoid the wait for a car park, but at 11am it only took about 10 minutes for us to get a park and it was worth it.

Manzamo

Amazing blue waters

It felt great to spend our first weekend being tourists in Okinawa rather than constantly at shopping malls trying to find much needed supplies. I look forward to many more weekends like this one.