Lily Festival

Toward the end of April each year on IE Island, there is a Festival celebrating the beauty of Lily's.  You start out by taking a half hour ferry ride to the island. You can choose to walk on and then catch a cab, rent bikes to bike around or drive your car on the ferry to have once you get over to the next island. A couple friends and I took my little blue car and headed off. It turned out to be a gorgeous day. The lily's were out in full bloom and to my lack of knowledge they had lily's of all different colors.

At any festival or 'fair' if you will, on any part of the island they run about the same with consistent types of food that will be served. Similar to our fairs they do actually have ears of corn, buttered with sugar, not salt, corn dogs you only hope have kosher hot dogs inside, and then the traditional yakisoba, sushi, octopus, and chicken (or you hope is chicken) on a stick. Then you have the ice cream vendors, which serves the common, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, and of course the sweet potato (which is delicious), and green tea options. While walking around taking in all of the beauty, I knew I was getting a few passing looks because of my belly. There was one gentlemen who I could tell wanted to say something to me so I politely said 'hi' and he gestures to touch my belly. I said it was o.k. With a big smile he touched my belly and began to try and tell me about how he has 5 children and what a blessing they all are. In the Okinawa culture they see pregnancy with such joy and honor and when the women reach about 7-9 months they stop working, put their feet up and are pampered by their husbands and family....I know, what are we doing wrong?? I received a lot of smiles and nods from many local people which was such a fun thing to experience.

After our little island tour we headed back to Okinawa and stopped off at one of the local eateries called Pizza in the sky. This is a nice little restaurant up North that sits high on a hill overlooking the ocean. It has a fun local style pizza that comes in either large or small and the menu is written out on a traditional folding fan....very neat. What a great way to end the fun day!

Check out more pictures at our link to the right!