Photos from the cherry blossom festivals on mainland Japan are beginning to circulate, and I realized I hadn’t posted pictures of the cherry blossoms on Okinawa. The cherry blossoms bloom here in January and sometimes make it through the beginning of February if wind and rain don’t empty the trees.

We went January 11, the weekend before the festivals began to avoid the traffic and crowds. We had high hopes this year, since last year there were hardly any blooms because of the typhoon damage. We weren’t disappointed. Blooms from Mt. Yaedake:

Afterward we drove over to a pizza place for lunch: Pizza in the Sky. I don’t know how people even find it– the road it’s on winds halfway up a mountain in a rural village. It is notoriously busy. They basically make one kind of pizza (cheese with odd pepperoni-like sausage and corn) until they run out of ingredients and then close for the day. We were seated as soon as we arrived, which beats the hour to ninety minute wait we experienced the last couple times we visited. The pizza is pretty good, but the view is amazing. And as you can see, everyone is always thrilled to be in new places having their picture taken.