See this fantastic cook.

It was my birthday on valentine day. Our lovely helper made some very delicious food for the occasion and that was much appreciated by myself and the hand full of guests who came to celebrate with me on my 52nd.

Last week was the Super Bowl Sunday.

As a non American it can be hard to understand about the Super Bowl, the rules an the structure of the leagues and how two teams gets there in the end. Maybe this film could give some clarity.

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What do you say to this breakfast?

Back at Tokashiki island and the hamlet at Aharen beach.

This beautiful and quiet place we found last year at Easter and it made such an impression that we just needed to come back. And that we did, so here we are again on the island of Tokashiki west of Okinawa.

It is far out in the East Chinese sea, so the air is fresh and clean and the sky is huge and all surrounding. We are in a wee hamlet on the south west corner of the island, it is winter and not so much is going on. There is people here but not that many. The main attraction here is scuba diving and whale watching and then the beach in summertime. 

Now is in fact whale season and we should be sure to get to see some, if we could just get out on the water in a boat. We tried last year we were here, but I think we were just too late in the season and the humpbacks had all moved along. The two or something hours we spent on a little boat surrounding the islands were for e cat, as we never saw a single whale.

This year it should be different so we decided to go at this time where we are on holiday for Chinese New Year. But will we have any luck this time? So far not. The weather hasn't really been on our side, and so we have not yet been able to go out on the water to have a look.

 Instead we have been strolling up and down the road and the streets in this little place you could call; a "5 minutes walk to everything" place.Literally it only takes about a handful of minutes to get from one point to another here. 

Even it is not overrun by tourists at the moment, there is still plenty of options for lunch or a sneaky pint of beer.

During our last visit, we mostly went to a place we called "Soba Oma's Soba shop" which was a little soup and noodle shop not far from the nice beach here. The food was great and cheap. Only little minus was the army of hungry stray cats, who was around and trying to make us feel sorry for them.

This time we have changed this Soba Oma for another option. The "Soba Shed". It is just two streets away from the Soba Oma, and like her, only open through lunch time at noon an then again some hours around dinner time. And it was a good choice. The was quite busy with locals, which of corse always tends to be a recommendation in it self. 

No Soba Oma today.

No Soba Oma today.

Be risk takers. One of the learner profiles we expect our students to have, and so we should have ourselves. The last time we were here,  we tended to go to just one place for lunch and that was a place we called "the Soba Oma". 

It was ok food, but the ambience was the star, as it was unique.

A fine way to describe it, could be to compare it to a hidden objects game you can get for tablets and iOS devices.

It's like a cave of secret old relicts, randy stowed together over the years. A feature I have found in many places in Okinawa and it's outplaying islands, that us like some kind of gathering stuff and store it randomly among other more random possessions.

Could be that this is a remote island kind of thing, that the stuff has been there so long and you do not know what to do with it. And as it has been there for so long now, it has become kind of ingrained into your view and you don't see it anymore. As it has become how thing just look like.

Man, was that a long explanation. All I wanted to tell was that today we abandoned the "Soba Oma" for the "Soba Shed"!