Valentine's Day + Tree house Restaurant

 Valentine's day was pretty quite at our house.  The kids had both received oodles of gifts from family and friends back home, so I set everything out on the table for them to dig into after Reagan got home from school.   Thanks again to everyone who sent them Valentines!

 In Japan, the tradition is for the women to give gifts to the men...sucks, I know!  Anyway, the stores were filled with lots of fun chocolates to give, and they were broken into different categories.  Apparently there are "love" chocolates, which are higher quality, and then "obligation" chocolates, which female workers give to their male counterparts.  Reagan is still all about Pokemon, so I was happy to fine a couple of Pokemon chocolates for her...I imagine these fall into the Obligation category, as I'm sure they aren't high quality chocolate.  Although, I'm giving them in love, not obligation :).  

Notice that Reagan is wearing a tank top - it was that warm!  The necklace below is a gift from my mom and dad.  The funny thing is that my clever mom was able to thread it onto a gift card holder card, which displayed the necklace perfectly.  However, the gift card holder had a Christmas theme.  Reagan had just called my mom out for wrapping her birthday presents in Christmas paper. My mom thought she was wrapping the birthday presents in Disney princess paper, but she didn't notice that they had on holiday outfits, which Reagan spotted instantly.   Not sure if you did that on purpose or not mom, but it was a good joke to Reagan.  

So last weekend we went to a new restaurant in Naha that is built into a tree.  We've seen it may times driving on 58, but haven't tried it yet.  We had read the reviews, and they weren't great, but we figured this was one of those "must do" things while in Okinawa, so we set out not expecting a lot.  When we got there, we had a hour wait, which was odd since the restaurant was only about 1/4 full. 

This is the back side of the restaurant.  

Here's a view of the front with Brandon, Brock and Reagan in front.  

While we waited, we wondered over to a park that was next door.   

Believe it or not, these were the first set of steps that Brock has attempted.  We live in a single story house, so he hasn't had a chance to try them yet. 

Onto the meal... We had grabbed a quick snack to take to the park with us since it was going on 1:30 and we still had that hour wait.  Reagan and I decided to share the chicken dinner, plus we got an order of gyoza (potstickers/dumplings) to share.   Salad was included and was pretty good.  

 Here's a shot of our meal.  I'm picky about meat, I'll admit it.  That's been one of the hardest adjustments I've had since we've moved here.  I really haven't embraced the food yet.  We keep trying restaurants, but keep leaving slightly disappointed.  The Japanese use all parts of the chicken and pig in their cooking, and that goes against my normal, boneless, skinless chicken breast eating.  This particular chicken was deep fried, which usually means yummy.  I couldn't even venture a guess at what part of the chicken it was.  It was super fatty and just not my kind of chicken.  No one ate it, including Brandon.  The rest consisted of miso soup, rice and edamame.  

Brandon had the pork cutlet, which is usually one of the better dishes we've discovered.  This one was just OK.    He also chose Black rice instead of white rice.  It didn't taste much different from the white rice though.  

We were all glad that we had our family mart appetizers before dinner.  PS- Family marts are everywhere here.  They are like the store part of gas stations, but without the gas part.  Plus, they usually have hot food offerings that are tasty. 

We'll keep trying new places to eat, have no fear.  We really want to like the food.