Back in September, my family was here to visit and we tried to go to Hiro Coffee Farm. We'd stayed at Okuma for a few nights and I was really looking forward to doing some exploring up north! The drive through the rolling hills and mountains was beautiful. What wasn't so great was that the coffee farm was closed the day we got there and the mean guy in the photo ran me off like a guard dog!
Those little red "berries" are coffee beans!
Kacey convinced me that, although we had no way to know if they were open, it was worth the drive to check it out. We were happy to find out that they were, in fact, open that day and they had a brand new puppy to keep us company! The roosters kept us company, too, but they aren't nearly as warm and inviting as a tiny puppy.
Hiro Coffee Farm is bright, playful, and fun! The owners are SO nice and were happy to tell us as much about the farm as they could, considering the language barrier. They are still recovering from typhoon damage from a few years ago, but import the same beans that their trees are beginning to produce.
Funny little note: I don't like coffee. I love the smell of it, but don't drink it. So, I enjoyed a fruit juice and a small piece of pound cake. Kacey got a coffee and reported that it was good with a bitter, strong taste to it. I really loved that all of their dessert items were made from eggs that their chickens produce. It was a nice touch to a very cool spot!
We didn't have a plan after the coffee farm. This isn't our normal game plan for Oki Fun Days, but we rolled with it and it worked out. We were heading towards a restaurant that I'd been wanting to try, Canaan Slow Farm, and passed a sign for a waterfall! Well, twist our arms...
Tachigawa Waterfall sits on private property and there's a restaurant at the top. There's a beautiful lookout where you can see the ocean and the path is paved to get to the waterfall. We were both surprised and grateful that the restaurant requires nothing of you to visit the waterfall. I highly recommend asking permission to keep everyone in good graces with the owners.
We had lunch at the Slow Farm and really enjoyed the environment. It's is a home stay that gets a lot of international visitors and everything is farm-to-table. They showcase their pork and even have a pig for you to pet (it was made clear that they will not be eating him - haha!).
The food was good... Kacey loved it. I made the ridiculous decision to let my eyes lead the way and chose the sampler platter. It looked delicious (and Kacey thought it was), but I was quickly reminded that I was in Japan and that means a lot of tofu-based dishes. It wasn't my favorite, but I recovered by ordering the benimo cake!
After a quick stop at Okuma for some firewood (Can you say, RANDOM?!), we headed to the new Kouri Ocean Tower. The day Kacey and I met we biked all around Kouri so I made jokes about "where it all began" and it was fun to reminisce about that day.
The observatory has one of those golf cart tracks, like Pineapple Park, and we thought it was very fancy! Haha! Apparently, it doesn't take much to impress us. We both really loved going through the shell museum, too. It was cool to point out shells that we've seen throughout our diving adventures and talk about which ones we had or what we wished we had in our collection.
As we were headed off the island, I saw THE food truck. The one that was on my Oki Bucket List but I had no idea where it was! I was so excited and it was a must stop. I quickly pulled over after yelling, "SHRIMP WAGON," and we were set to eat... again. Kacey pointed out that it was okay because I'd barely eaten my lunch.
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