November 2022 recap - Okinawa trip, wedding in HI, in-laws visit

Unfortunately another late post due to an event stratling the end of the month/beginning of the next! But, as always, I'm grateful to have things going on and staying busy. Here's what was up in November :)

Okinawa friend trip

We went to Okinawa at the beginning of the month (/end of October). The full Okinawa trip is blogged here in a separate post. I was intending to just include it here in the recap at first since I didn't feel like I did a good job of taking photos for blog posts, but we did a lot of different activities that deserved to be fully mentioned, so I wanted the opportunity to share a bit more.

We visited Shuri Castle, Urasoe Park/Hacksaw Ridge, visit Kokusai-dori for shopping and the Taikai parade, did a bingata workshop, went to a Round 1 SportCha, the Okinawa Aquarium, painted a pair of shisa, went to the beach and ate a lot of soba and other great food! 

 

It rained heavily for half of the days we were there, but we still had some great experience with the indoor activities we chose and a good time with our friends! More here.

Back in HI for the weekend

My cousin got married to her long time boyfriend during the Veterans Day weekend on the Big Island. My husband and I weren't sure if we were going to make it since flights home have gotten a bit more expensive as Japan has opened up to tourism and having a bit more limited leave at work. However, with some gifted miles and just a short stay, we were able to make it work. 

We left Japan on Thursday evening, arrived in Honolulu on Thursday morning (due to the time difference), spent some time with family and running errands, flew to the Big Island on Friday morning with my family including grandparents, stayed for the ceremony and then flew back to Oahu on a nighttime flight that same day. The next day (Saturday), we flew back to Japan and arrived Sunday night in time to be somewhat rested for work on Monday. 

It was a lot of flying over those few days (we were on an airplane at least once every day over the weekend) but we managed to not have to take any time off of work! Unfortunately, due to the flight schedule and some other logistics, we weren't able to stay for the wedding reception, but I'm still so happy we were able to all get together as family for the first time in years. 

My MIL and GMIL visit for 2 weeks

We host our second guests! My husband's mother and grandmother joined us for the last two weeks of November including Thanksgiving and Gma's 86th birthday. Like my parents, they stayed in our house and explored our local area but we also took off from work for a few days to do a bit more traveling via car. We spent 2 days/1 night at DisneySea, including a Mira Costa stay (DisneySea recap post published!) and then also spent the weekend in Hakone (Hakone weekend recap post published!) and did a bunch of exploring and shopping throughout! 

Days were not quite jampacked, so we were able to do things at a slightly more relaxed pace and we learned a lot about moving around with a walker/wheelchair in Japan. 

What we ate

We started out with some crossover Okinawa trip meals and then some in Hawaii before finishing it off with what we ate with my in-laws during their trip! In between, we tried to eat in/cook as much as possible.

Aji fry and Yurinchi from お食事処 ｉＮＵＢｉ (Motobu, Okinawa)

Assorted izakaya & Okinawan food from 北谷殿内 (American Village, Okinawa)

Vanilla & cookies ice cream from Blue Seal (Okinawa)

20th anniversary whale shark an buns from Churami Aquarium (Okinawa)

Jaagaru soba & Mix soba from 謝苅そば (Chatan, Okinawa)

My Boo (Umikaji Terrace, Okinawa)

Hayama beef lasagna, cream chowder, cheese & potato bun, weiner roll and coffee beer (Yokosuka Port Market)

Curry tsukeudon, kaki fry, fried chicken curry udon & mushroom tempura from Udonkoubu Sanuki

Chicken wings from Toriyoshi Shoten

Assari shoyu ramen and tonkotsu ramen from Ramen Hasegawa

Hirekatsu teishoku and crab croquette teishoku from Tontetsu

Spam musubi, spicy ahi on sushi rice and garlic chicken from Taniokas (Oahu)

Artizen by MW (Oahu)

Broke Da Mouth (Kona)

Nice Day (Oahu)

BAQET

Mendokoro Shinya

Dominos Pizza

Ramen Hasegawa

AYCE at Yakiniku King

DisneySea snacks

Oceano buffet at DisneySea

Horizon Bay at DisneySea

breakfast buffet at Hakone Kowakien TenYu

Chokoku-no-mori dining (Hakone Open Air Museum)

Shofuku Ramen (Gotemba)

Yaki tarako, tarako-konbu and benizuke onigiri (Mentaiko Park)

Shack Shack (Gotemba)

Pizza-la

串家物語 Kushikatsu

牛鍋処 荒井屋

Ralph's Coffee chocolate cake

Itari-an course dinner

Chateraise strawberry split chocolate/vanilla cake

Personal life/miscellaneous

We met up with friends to go check out the lunar eclipse at the beginning of the month. There's a higher spot in our neighborhood that had a decent clear view. I brought the waveboard out while we were waiting. 

I was a little lacking in the outfit photos this month because I haven't been able to take them in the morning before work! The sun rises a lot later in the winter months, and it's really cramping my outfit snap routine. Unfortunately, we don't have any installed articificial lighting in that area either, so I'm trying to find another solution since it seems it'll be this way for at least a couple more months!

Check out what I did manage to capture in November's OOTD post here.

We finished Pandemic Legacy season 1 and started Pandemic Legacy season 2! It's much different that the original game and we're definitely still learning. With all that we had going on this month, we didn't manage to get very far, but it's nice to have a board game to come back to. 

We're already almost halfway through December as I'm publishing this post and even publishing it is feeling a bit rushed, but it's never too late to celebrate November! Hope to have the follow up blog posts from my in-laws visit up in the next week too because we had so much fun :) [In-laws visit blog posts published HERE (Disney) and HERE (Hakone)!]