The Magic Carpet Ride

This past Saturday we trekked over to nearby Ie Island (pronounced EA, like EA Sports) for their Lily Festival! First we drove our car north to Motobu Port. The farther North you go, the fewer signs are in English. We found the Port just fine, but getting on the boat was just a leap of faith... we just assumed it was going where we wanted to go, as there weren't any signs in English and purely Japanese speaking staff, but figured where else would it be going and just bought our tickets and boarded the boat.  Wyatt was soooo excited!

That early in the morning there were only one or two other American couples on the whole boat, so we certainly stuck out, and everyone took notice of Olivia!  In general, I get stopped a lot by Japanese people wanting to look at her (I think it's the American baby thing), but Saturday everyone was checking her out. I felt a bit like a celebrity! Some people even wanted to take her picture.... weird, but whatever! I allowed the people in front of us to, but then made them take this picture for us! :)

There was also this freaky-weird Japanese clown that kept coming around the boat and Wyatt thought he was a hoot!  I thought he was sort of on the scary side...especially when he was window-stalking us - but whatever! It kept Wyatt entertained.

That morning we had told Wyatt we needed to hurry so we could catch the boat. He told us it was okay if we missed the boat because we could just take a magic carpet ride!  We thought that was pretty funny, and after the 30 minute boat ride I was definitely wishing we could have taken a magic carpet instead thanks to my terrible sea sickness!  It was over soon enough though and then we got on a bus that took us to the Lily Field.

So we walked around, looking at the beautiful lilies, and checked out some Eisa drum performances. These guys were pretty good, but we were even more impressed by the little kids who performed after them. They were belting it out and doing some serious dancing!

Next up was lunch, and we chose some things that were familiar to us like soba noodles and sushi, and some things that we had no idea whatsoever what they were. Wyatt is taste-testing the chicken here, which I would describe as Japanese style friend chicken, and these funny white balls with sauce on them... sorta tasted like heavy marshmallows with syrup? I don't know how to describe those.  We definitely felt like we were at the Iowa State Fair...almost everything was served on a stick!

After lunch we checked out the petting zoo, which consisted of one pen of chicken, one small mule/horse, one grungy looking ostrich, and something else I can't remember... and finished the day off with some yummy homemade ice cream they had there and called it a day!  We started the trek back home and Wyatt fell asleep in the car he was so tired. A fun day!