Wandering & Wondering at the Okinawa Zoo

A few weekends ago we woke up wondering what the weather was going to do. It was hard to tell if we were going to be in for a rainy day or if we might be able to spend some time outdoors. Hedging our bets, we headed to the Okinawa Zoo & Wonder Museum. This provided options for indoor or outdoor play. Maddox had gone with the afterschool program on a field trip program to the Wonder Museum the previous week, and was excited to show Zoe around.

We started in the zoo portion of the campus. The zoo is old-school, meaning the habitats are not ideal and expansive the way they are in most places in the US. That said, it provided us some up-close looks of the animals . My favorite were the hippos who were enjoying a hose-down. I thought about jumping in the cage and enjoying one myself.

They also had a small petting zoo area, mostly to pick up chicks (no, not like that) and turtles. Zoe is pretty skeptical of most animals in the world, so she just watched while Maddox checked it out.

After lunch at the snack bar, we headed to the Wonder Museum for the air-conditioning and the wonder, of course. This is a hands-on children's museum. Many things either had English explanations or were self-explanatory. The girls bounced around from place to place and enjoyed themselves. Dress-up was of course a popular spot.

This girl still loves to draw ... anytime, anywhere.

 

Butterfly Princesses

I think this costime was made for a toddler. She cracks herself (and us) up.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (ba dum bum)

In her own little imaginary world

One area of ​​the Wonder Museum that I really liked involved a large area to create large patterns or pictures with felt shapes. I am not sure what the girls were creating, but I think it involved a path to stay away from hot lava.  

The best part of this area were the directions for clean-up. There were templates and a request to please place shapes back where they belonged in neat stacks.

 My thoughts were:

1) I want to be BFF with the person who thought of this and

2) I do not think this would work in the US Am I underestimating Americans here?

Later that evening we landed in Yomitan at the Okinawa Brewing Company, a place with great wood-fired pizzas, free popcorn, and good beer on tap. They can not sell their own beer yet, but are working on their licensing. I wondered if John was thinking about picking up a part-time job standing over the outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens just to make it feel more like home.

This particular day marked our one-month anniversary in Okinawa. We have enjoyed so much of the island already and are grateful that we still have a few more months to explore -- and visitors to entertain soon!