Captain's Log: Okinawa Two for Two

Since my last trip to Okinawa was a little short and rather rained out, I was really looking forward to some fun in the sun beach time.

Right.

I think I’ll just hit the highlights (as usual, if you click through to the album, you'll find more photos, and some videos too!). One great thing about this trip was, the first half mirrored in many ways the trip I took last year. Then, I was not really involved in the planning at all, but this year I took an active role. The joy of staying in a place you have stayed before is in the comfort. Comfort of knowing what a place looks and feels like, knowing its value, knowing how to find it, how far it is from things, where to get good food nearby, etc.

As I travel more, I’m learning about the balance between the convenience of staying in one place, and the desire to hop around and cover more ground. It’s nice to leave all your stuff somewhere, and not have to find a new place and make a new bed every night, and check out by 10, and be all packed up every morning.

This trip spanned from the 30^th, when we flew from Kobe in the afternoon, to (for me) the 8^th when we flew back. That’s a solid 8 days of vacation (for the price of only two days of work days skipped). Our group was 6 people strong, with three returning on the 5^th (unable to take that second day off, alas!).

The itinerary ended up looking like this (though some of it was made up as we went along):

30^th – Travel from Kobe to Naha

1^st – Naha morning, to Zamami

2^nd – Zamami

3^rd – Zamami morning, to Naha

4^th – Naha environs (Okinawa World Park, as it turned out)

5^th – 3 return super early am, other 3 make their way at some point from Naha to Motobu (Nago)

6^th – Motobu (Aquarium and Ocean Expo Park)

7^th – Nago, last beach chance

8^th – from Nago to Shiso, a full 9 hours travel

Naha is the capital of Okinawa, and is in the south half of Okinawa Honto (main island). We stayed the first night near Kokusai Dori, which I had only visited maybe once on my first trip, but which is apparently the tourist Place To Be, the best place for ridiculousness, foreign food, souvenirs, and shopping.

Froggie bags. Ew..

From Okinawa Take Two

We stayed at a hostel called Kashiwaya, which happened to be above a bar, which happened to have 200yen beer (Orion of course!) happy hour, in which we indulged quickly (we only had like half an hour of it left) while sitting up in a loft seat area. It tasted like the start of a very good vacation. That night, we went out to Kokusai Dori to get silly, ended up singing karoke (seriously, we sang “Picture” duets three full times) with some military guys; I tried the snake sake that you see in lots of sake shops and found it actually really tasty (surprise to me, because I don’t much like the awamori, Okinawa’s other claim to fame). We ate stuff like umi-budou (sea grapes.. actually kinda salty), and I had goya (which made everyone else not want to share with me).

Zamami, of course, you know from last year’s rain-camping adventure, psychic bartender, dog that looks like a teddy bear, snorkel trip, and Star Sand Beach being just out of reach. Our triumphant return to the island had us sleeping not in tents, but in the Okinawa Resort, girls in a cabin and our lone male companion in a separate dorm box. It wasn’t raining too much, really, just lightly. We had Italian for dinner.

Everyone in the back of the mystery van!

From Okinawa Take Two

That night it was just cloudy, so we took a “Mystery Tour” given by the delightful owner of the hotel complex, a man of many hats (cook, baker, whale watcher, diver, etc.) and checked out some fun bioluminescent krill, then we collected creatures for the next morning’s shell soup breakfast (seriously, we were served the stuff the next morning). The breakfasts also had fresh-made bread from our host/leader/cook/owner guy.

Breakfast.

From Okinawa Take Two

The next day was our Zamami beach day! We sampled two of Zamami’s beaches, one next to the old campsite (now full of occupants, poor devils), and the other over the hill in the opposite direction. We all liked Furuzamami a bit better; it was deeper and more interesting. It was here that I made the mistake of not applying enough sunscreen to my legs, and in early-afternoon lying-in-the-sun-reading way, I would later pay for this.

From Okinawa Take Two

That evening, after cleaning up, we stopped for drinks in a delightful little place near our cabinette (okay, nothing is really far away on Zamami, I think?) called Sayby Dee. It was glorious – there were coconut shakes, with rum. We bummed around, attempted to “bar hop” and watched a fire-spinning show, ended up at the swank looking place in the center of town chatting with Brits and people on vacation from Tokyo.

Coconut awesome kampai!

From Okinawa Take Two

The next day, I needed to fulfill my attempt to make it to Star Sand beach, so when the others went back to the nice beach (and I was still “in as much pain as I deserve” for my sunscreen deficiency), I rented a bike after breakfast and went on my way. Star Sand beach, though, isn’t that far from where we were staying, so to make it worth my while, I made a few stops here and there at what looked like trailheads. I wandered around a couple of woodsy areas, getting drenched in sweat and one time totally lost, thus fulfilling my obligation to go and do that by myself at some point on the trip.

Finally found the way out..!

From Okinawa Take Two

 

I finally made it to Star Sand, but there was no star sand to be found, at least not by me. There were lots of interesting creatures, and the beach was overcast and not so nice for idling at. Above it, there was a space of strangely green grassy hills. After I’d poked around a bit, I decided to go back. Just as I got to the bike, it began to rain again, and I rode back through it, much like last year.

From Okinawa Take Two

Not a one.

From Okinawa Take Two

After we all got cleaned up again (this time at borrowed showers, having checked out that morning), we stopped in for more coconut shakes (they just tasted like beach vacation, it was perfect) before our ferry back to the mainland at 5. As we sat, it rained harder, then began to pour. I actually ran back (being the only one endowed with an umbrella, I mean, parasol) to ask the resort people to give us a ride to the port, close though it was, because of all our stuff and the pouring, driving rain.

From Okinawa Take Two

That night, we stayed in Kerama Guest House, where I’d stayed last time, only instead of the private room, we had to stick to dorm-style. We went out to eat at a restaurant shaped like a tree, then back to Kokusai Dori and wandered around, this bar too dim/classy, that one too full, that one in dinner mode, til eventually ending up in a very boyish bar where I played Bomberman on SuperNES with a cute Japanese guy until he and his friends left to go clubbin’ and me and my friends left to go sleep.

From Okinawa Take Two

Wednesday morning, we weren’t really sure what to do; we wanted to rent a car and go tooling around to some shops and a beach and some caves I had some vague notion about. But being dead center of Golden Week, and us with no reservation, no car was available. We eventually settled on Okinawa World, home of the caves (to which we had to take two cabs… we have decided that 4 is the optimal travel group size). I was in a weird state of mind while walking through the surprisingly huge underground trail, kept seeing characters, gnomes, dwarves, nymphs half-turned in all the stalagmites. The caves were pretty awesome, humid and slippery, and when we emerged, we’d walked across the whole park. We wandered back through Okinawa-themed shops and tree groves and stopped for a beer, then to watch the Eisa Dance show, which was also awesome (sort of a display of traditional Okinawan dance… the feel was half-real, sort of like having an “Okinawa World” theme park… in Okinawa). 

Okinawa wooooorld!

From Okinawa Take Two

I found a Shisa Museum, and as you may know, I love the Shisa; those lion-dog guard figures are kickass and special. We had super buffet lunch at about 2:20, and went back to nap and clean up. 

Arty books in Moon Bar

From Okinawa Take Two

The evening was spent out on Kokusai Dori again, stopping at Moon Bar (where I got really engrossed in the books provided) along the way. We had burgers at a little hidden place called Zooton's, but the burgers were laced with heaven.. seriously, the best burger I may have ever eaten, ever. We wandered some more, and eventually turned in.

YUMMY.

From Okinawa Take Two

Thursday morning, in the wee hours, half our group rolled out, leaving the kids behind, as it felt. We had neither guidebook, nor any real plan, so we kicked off the day with going to check out the Dragon Boat races near the port. They were fun to watch, but the rain picked up, and it became no longer fun to stand in gross puddles watching strangers strive for victory, so we left to get lunch and catch our bus north (we’d gotten advised on what bus to take, and had found the stop and everything!).

From Okinawa Take Two

Unable to find any open restaurants, we opted to get out of Naha right on the spot, and get a late lunch in Nago. The bus ride was long and uneventful, though we did roll by Kadena, which Kameron sort of remembers from living there about the first ten years of his life.

From Okinawa Take Two

We grabbed a quick lunch, and almost missed the bus to our condo (it left early! But then saw our forlorn faces at the crosswalk and stopped for us). The condo itself (On The Beach Lue) was bright and lovely, if a bit old-smelling. Paying for all three nights up front exhausted most of our funds, though, and our local bank was not going to be funding us through any ATM on a HOLIDAY (seriously, this is one thing I will never understand).

The Condo.

From Okinawa Take Two

The View from The Condo

From Okinawa Take Two

Of our group, Kam had 6 yen, Adina had like 9, and I had about 9000, total (including the emergency 100,000 I had busted out already). We also did not have a car, or bikes (the place had TWO to rent.. but there were three of us). The nearest ATM was 4km away. So, because we’re stubborn, or troopers, or idiots, we walked 4km toward “town” and came first upon a MaxValu. Hallelujah. We wanted to supply our kitchen for a sweet breakfast Friday and Saturday. We stocked up and headed back, dreaming of the yakiniku place we’d stopped to ask about on the way to the store.

Who needs money when you got legs?

From Okinawa Take Two

When we got back, it was full, the empty tables reserved. We were so mad, but grateful when a km later, the Hawaiian restaurant we’d seen (and thought would be closed by 8) was open. We gratefully tucked in to some awesome taco rice. Then went home to watch TV and hang out until bed.

Friday was to be the Aquarium day, since Adina was super excited about that, and part of the attraction of Motobu was that. I woke up feeling nauseous, got sick, and hoped it was over with that, though I sadly did not want any part of the grand breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, etc. we’d all planned the night before.

Sadly, this day had some of the best weather we saw all trip.

From Okinawa Take Two

I tried to be able to go with them, I really did. I went so far as to sit at the bus stop, but it was just not happening. I knew if I went, I would just be miserable the whole time. I had thought maybe the problem was being in the condo, that I was allergic to something there, but even being outside by the beach before the bus came by (oh, and it was sunny.. maaan!) didn’t really fix anything. I stayed home all day, sleeping, getting sick, and lying there miserably.

I hear that Ocean Expo Park is awesome, and that the aquarium is too (though Georgia’s is better, word), so I’ll have to check that out someday.

Brewery of the Beer of Beers

From Okinawa Take Two

Saturday, our last day, we thought we’d go into Nago (the main city up there in Motobu) and get souvenirs, have “real Mexican tacos,” and also eat at A&W (roooooootbeeeeeeerfloats!)… but it turns out, Nago doesn’t have a central shopping district, or if it does, we never found it. We walked to the Orion brewery, which was closed, then wandered around until we got omiyage (treats for people back home) at a different MaxValu (we avoided buying them earlier so we wouldn’t have to carry them to Motobu and back.. hah!).

From Okinawa Take Two

The tacos were divine, and although I only was able to have 5 tiny tacos (Kam had like 16, Adina 9), they were the most authentic I’ve had in Japan. The owner, it turned out, had studied in Mexico, along with one of the guys there that day.

We returned to decompress and beach it, because it was actually sunny(!) and rather warm. It had clouded a bit by the time we got back, but we did some beach-lyin (me) and beach-combin (Adina), and some beach-rock-climbin (Kameron). Dinner was a beachside BBQ at our hotel restaurant porch, way too much food, but really good. Then we played with sparklers on the beach, and never drank a single beer from the 6 pack we’d bought that first night in.

Expelliarmus! (When I later performed the same charm, I almost set Kameron on fire)

From Okinawa Take Two

The next morning, I felt kinda sick again, but I kept it together by only eating a piece of toast for breakfast, and a glass of root beer for lunch at the airport. By the time I got home, I had moved up to soup!

Needless to say, by the end of the trip, we were pretty done, and glad to get back home to our little houses and routines. Shiso, on return, smelled fresh and cool and clean, and the humidity was blissfully low. The conclusions we drew from our experiences were the following:

Hokkaido (post coming soon!) was lower-stress because we all had our own rooms for basically the whole time (this also, unfortunately, cost two arms and a leg).

The ideal travel group size is 4. The ideal trip length is about 5 days. It is better to stay in fewer places, maybe two.

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post.. it’s more of a memory piece for myself than anything. Hope you enjoy the photos, though!

Look forward to the Monday adventure which followed immediately!

Travel OK

Copying this straight from the US Embassy email I just got:
U.S. citizens should defer non-essential travel to the following regions:  Tokyo (Tokyo Capital Region), Yokohama (Kanagawa Prefecture), and the prefectures of Akita, Aomori, Chiba, Fukushima, Gunma, Ibaraki, Iwate, Miyagi, Nagano, Niigata, Saitama, Shizuoka, Tochigi, Yamagata, and Yamanashi.

Areas of Japan outside these above regions of concern include:  the islands of Hokkaido, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa, and the prefectures Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Hiroshima, Hyogo, Ishikawa, Kyoto, Mie, Nara, Okayama, Osaka, Shiga, Shimane, Tottori, Toyama, Wakayama, and Yamaguchi on the island of Honshu.  Travelers to these prefectures should bear in mind that transit through Narita (Chiba) and Haneda (Tokyo) airports may be required.

This means many systems are go.

In the meantime, it's the last day of the official school year. The office smells strongly of bubblegum.. I think it must be cleaning products. I spend the morning booking Okinawa (dragging those participating Shiso-ites kicking and screaming into the world of planned Golden Week travel) while the tickets are still within our price range, because we've thrown around hypotheticals for at least a month, ohh, Korea? hmm.. Okinawa? The Philippines? Hmm.. But so-and-so has already been there. And someone doesn't have enough money and someone doesn't have enough vacation days, but it's important to me for us to make this trip together because it's the end of the JET year nearly, by then, but it's impossible for anyone to commit to or settle on anything. Fuck that! We're nearly out of time.
I try to look at websites about Kagoshima and fail. I will need to look at a guidebook instead. I consider ordering one on Amazon and decide to just borrow someone else's for this weekend.

I spend the morning in renraku form, playing little miss travel agent for myself and others, e-mailing and messaging in different people's various (idiotic.. no it's not her fault she can't access e-mail at work and uses facebook instead) messages. Lunch I sit and watch the sun on the river. It really is starting to feel like spring. After lunch I get back and have had enough of people who just don't listen.. and I don't mean 'people who just don't agree,' I mean who don't listen to things like facts. I tell them the time, the price. Then they ask again in another e-mail fifteen minutes later. Who can be bothered to scroll up, anyway? I have my fill of it and flee the bubblegum scented stuffy office for the flowerbeds because

I walk up that driveway every day and back down again in the afternoon to catch the bus, and there is one pansy bed among the many that is choked with weeds. The big powerful weeds wrap their coils (and roots, too) around the pitiful flowers, choking the life from them slowly...

So I grab my gloves (which VP gave to me some random day when he asked me to join him in his random job-doing around school) and go down to weeds who do not argue, and do not ask questions, and I rip them out and beat the roots against the rocks to loosen the dirt therein tangled. And the weeds resist, and the flowers do not thank me, still there's satisfaction in the sunshine of it, the dirt, and the warming wind. I think I found my new favorite spring-break-at-work sunny day pastime.

But of course, at some point I really will have to look into what I'm going to hope to do in Kagoshima this weekend. And I really shouldn't slack off on my Japanese studyin'. Maybe I'll do it on the train.

Star Sand Beach Just Out of Reach

First of all, I’d like to link to this entry. I wrote it a long time ago, but for whatever reason, did not publish it to the blog. So there is that. And here are the rest of the photos from that whole trip.

I think the reason I never published it might have something to do with a rewrite I was planning to do with it, a sort of reflection on the nature of a few turns of phrase I used to run through my head. One of them is “Star sand beach, just out of reach,” and the other is “Always more of Shosha to see."

The first time I visited Mount Shosha, I made it there with barely enough daylight to see anything at all. The second time, I had a little bit more, but still not enough to explore the whole temple complex. This was frustrating, because it seemed like I could never get my shit together enough to arrive with any kind of time. But it is also encouraging to think of always having a reason to go back.

I have a tendency to do things to death, because I have a hard time letting go.

So it legitimizes my hope to return to a place.. I’m more likely to actually return to a place if it’s not left me with a been-there, done-that sort of feel.

Even if one had been to Okinawa and done that, I’d want to go again. But I never did get to see the star sand beach I had hoped to find. And that’s reason enough for me to take another trip.

If there were a kilter, we’d be a bit off it.

This is the new story of my life: I keep thinking I’ll do things, and then I never do them. Mostly I have good reasons for it, but it’s still lame as an overall experience.

Things have been outside of normal for, oh around a month now.. ever since graduation, mostly, things at work have been changing, and being on vacations, and having visitors (not me personally, but our ShisoJETparty-all-the-time has been lately, well, a party all the time)… and there isn’t anything wrong with a party all the time provided of course that you are not trying to have work alongside it. I got some new furniture, so my apartment is completely different than it ever was (so if I refer to my “new apartment,” I did not move, I just rearranged out of necessity to accommodate the new couch and the kotatsu, aka The Biggest Flat Surface In The House). I’m still going to write about Kyoto, Tokyo, and Okinawa, and also the Himeji bike ride I helped to captain. Or I might not, since I think the photo sets are like photojournals in a way, and the visual might be the most interesting part!

Suffice to say I’ve had a lot of stress lately.. both good stress and bad stress, unexpected incidents and things I should have anticipated but somehow miraculously failed to.. I thought I would have a whole day Wednesday at my desk (because I had one class scheduled.. ONE), and I mostly did, but it was interrupted by the fact that, oh man! I have to make elementary lesson plans! And now I make them bilingual, so it takes about four times as long. THEN I was interrupted by the destructive antics of our Most Disruptive Student, who is usually such a good-natured little delinquint, I was totally not bothered when he came raging into the staff room Wednesday after lunch (someone had spray painted his bike with pink) because he and I are cool. He doesn’t participate in my class, but he always says hello to me in the hall. For example:

Kid: Hello!

Me: Hi! What’s up?

Kid: I .. am.. CHAMPION!

Me: Of what?

Kid: eh?

Me: (in Japanese) What kind of “CHAMPION”?

Kid: …………… Champion of WORLD.

Me: hahahaha, awesome. Okay be careful, don’t climb on the roof today.

So anyway, it startled the bloody freaking hell out of me when he kicked a plastic bucket and made it explode into shards. I began to pay attention to his words, which included “important thing” and “break/ruin”… he and his circle of big male teachers orbited near my (now conveniently at the center of the room) desk and the VP and other female teachers were like, Emily, come here.

And I was like, no, man, I don’t want to leave my desk, first of all this kid should not be allowed to disrupt me (not as in ‘they should physically subdue him,’ but as in ‘I am not scared of this kid and I do not believe he would lay a hand on me and if he did, I could probably take it.’), but second of all, I couldn’t tell if he was griping about his own PERSONAL “important thing” that had been “ruined” or if he was planning to ruin some other important thing. I realized right then that NOT standing between this kid and my precious little computer, lifeline of all I do, was not what I wanted. I mournfully looked at it and considered taking it off the desk with me into the hall, but I didn’t want to be THAT GIRL so I followed the other teachers out and sulked around. It was a beautiful day, that day.

Which is a comparative RARITY which is another problem: Spring has been cancelled due to lack of hustle? There are notable exceptions. Wednesday is one. The Himeji bike ride weekend is another. On the whole, the weekdays are shitty (rainy, grey, cold… right now it’s 10C. TEN.) and the weekends are a bit warmer with more sun, which is not too bad a deal I guess.. five for two. But the overall sluggishness of spring’s arrival is really annoying.

Anyway, that was a tangent. What I am trying to talk about is how Wednesday I guess I must have gotten a lot done, but it was none of the blogging/photoworking/recon I had hoped to do. I actually did not have time. When I am at work, basically, I do work stuff.

Which is how it should be, I guess, and I am getting used to that. But it’s still an expectation shift from doing all sorts of things for myself in those brief days of spring holiday.

My new teachers are pretty cool. I have mixed feelings about Miss Piggy-sensei. She is sweet enough, but I swear she has not yet HAD a good day. Every single time I see her she is suffering from something. Trouble is, she whines and sits there while the teacher on the other side of her (Hot Band Teacher) sneezes into her handkerchief, then glares at the handkerchief like she is SO NOT OKAY with having a cold because, man, she just has SHIT TO DO. I can really identify with not having patience with colds. It’s a far better mental place to be than the moany-complainy place, anyway. But oh, MP-sensei has a cold, or oh, a sore throat, or oh, her stomach hurts.

I mean maybe she’s just having a bad… three and a half weeks, right?

Miraculously, somehow, the classes I’ve had with her (three so far) and the first years have been more or less Wonderful. I won’t ask you to identify with the thrill of standing in front of fourteen Japanese children all grunting the “short u” sound in unison, but anyone who ever tried to get their kids to say “BIRD” instead of “BAADO” will feel me here. The last two weeks we’ve had what I guess I can call “phonics Friday” where we tackled vowels, first short, today long, and wrestled them to the ground.

Seriously, today I did a listening quiz that was brutal. I gave them a handout with squares, and letter sets like “P __ N” and “N ___T” four times each. Then I had them write the vowel in while I chanted “PIN” then “PEN” then “PUN” then “PAN” at them. Meccha muzukashii, since in Japanese, the short A, short O, and short U are all just “a”.. but I’ll be darned if they weren’t volunteering to put letters in the giant squares on the board, getting it right and making mistakes and generally just being awesome all over the place.

Partly this is thanks to Miss Piggy-sensei, because she asked me if we could do phonics for the whole lesson. Somehow between her suggestions and my materials and lack of accent (see: some Americans pronounce PIN and PEN the same) and coffee induced enthusiasm, we are hot to go. Partly the kids are just awesome. The first-year group (frogs, I’ve called them) is, I think..? made up of a lot of oxen (by the Chinese zodiac system), which happens to be my animal too. The mice class is actually made up of a lot of rats/mice by that calendar, so I find that kind of fun. (But that class is starting to come out of its shell a bit under the tutelage of Sweetie-sensei, my 22-year-old team teacher)

Those are anecdotes.. there is, of course, more. Elementary with its triumphs, challenges, and changes. The BOE being more bullheaded than even me (well, we’ll see about that). The Himeji ride (along with seeing my graduated dog-class boys biking all the way to the HS in the town where I live all the way from the town where I work) has made me think seriously about biking as a mode of transportation. I am hoping to buy a decent bike very soon. My closet unit collapsed, so my clothes are everywhere (but I am getting a much cooler clothes thing from George since he is moving out this weekend)…  Making new friends, seeing old ones, seeing old ones change, seeing people get closer to you and others further away… Losing chances for shit, gaining chances for other shit. The long and short of it is I have a lot of (mostly good) stress going on!

Now we (I) am gearing up for Golden Week, too. This is a string of Japanese holidays which basically makes the first week of May vacay. I am going to Hong Kong, and I am excited about it. It’s one more, perhaps the capstone disruption to the long string of disruptions since graduation…

Sometimes I think I am wrong to imagine that there is such a thing as “normal life” here… but I know there was a time when I had a schedule and I understood it. It’s not that I don’t want to do the stuff I get to go.. just that there’s a balance. Costs to things. Lots of thoughts on that lately (good things and their costs).. I think I’ll perhaps distill a more coherent entry on that later, as well.

If I have a moment. In which to do so.

Okinawa: Day two (Zamami Island, and camping)

Day two dawned cloudy, drizzly, but still warm relative to the frozen north we'd left behind in Honshu Japan. We boarded a ferry to the island of Zamami, not far from Naha (about an hour by fast ferry, two by slow). Both Zamami and Tokashiki were on our itinerary, both part of the Kerama islands.

BigBrother, Chi and I took the fast boat, and Cat and Adina had to go back for forgotten cell phones, consigning them to slow.

It turned out not to be a big deal whether you got there at ten or at noon, though, because nothing was open until 11 anyway!

View Larger Map
We wandered around the main town for a while, because luckily it had stopped raining for the time being. We stumbled upon a few things that would become significant later in our quest. We had goya (bitter gourd) champuru and Orion beer.


We found the school on the island and the accompanying koi pond.

Schoolyard koi.

We met a dog with a face like a teddybear. We inquired about kayaking and snorkeling, but the winds were too strong that day.

Dinosaur!

Once the others arrived, we hauled all our stuff along the road for a while until we reached the Ama area, where we were going to camp that night, breaking only to do a little beachcombing. And yeah I said camp. Wind and rain be damned. Although I kept having flashbacks to this time when I was a little kid and we were camping in a storm. I insisted that tents actually can blow away even when there are people in them. We had rented both tents and sleeping bags, and arranged ourselves in such a way as to fit all five of us (even Brother) in one tent, plus all our crap. It was kind of miraculous, but it was pretty big tent.

With that all set up, we rented bikes and rode back to town, stopping to visit our dog (later learned her name was Hana), then took the bikes to another beach. After that, the others declined climbing the rest of the mountain we could see, but I always gotta know what's around the bend, so I took it on. By the time they called me for dinner, it was raining and I couldn't see through my glasses; biking that hill was not the smartest choice of my life. But I really wanted to reach star-sand beach! Apparently, on the north side of Zamami there is a beach with little creatures that produce star-shaped tiny bits of.. whatever. It's only on Zamami and Taketomi that you can find this stuff, but I never did make it there.

We had dinner at a place we'd been trying to access all day (Deigo, next door to the kayak place, also next to the dog); we'd also been talking about trying Awamori, but hadn't found any yet. We asked at dinner at Deigo and they said they sold it by the bottle only. We were planning to go to a nearby drinking spot anyway, so we declined.

We wanted to spend as little time outside as possible by that point. It was dark and a little chilly, and raining for real. We made our bike-pack way across the street to Shisa, hoping to taste that Awamori.

When we sat down, we weren't totally sure of how to order. Something on a sign said something about 1000 yen per person, which confused me at first. We didn't see menus on the table for snacks or drinks... then the old deaf man set a bottle of awamori, a bottle of water, and five glasses down and we all just kind of looked at each other, bewildered at this mindreader of a man. After trying the strong stuff, we asked him if we could order fries, but that only confused him because they were already in the fryer. He later produced, unasked, a plate full of Fried Things. It was Awesome.

At ten, we had to return the bikes (six hour rental, though I doubt the dude was going to check in all that rainy dark), so we struggled back across our part of the island, a little drunk and a lot unable to see. Our ability to see did not increase once we got back to the campsite since we had not brought flashlights. Fail! We used cellphones and did our best to brush our teeth in the woods without running water (thank goodness for vending machines every 18ft selling water bottles). Then we all just crashed, I personally still in my clothes. If you saw what I saw of the showers, you might do the same.

At some point it began to really rain again in the night, and the edges of the tent got very wet. We all had to squish toward the middle with the effect mostly being that we kicked CatJET a lot. No one slept much, or very well. It was a bonding experience, I guess, pretty unforgettable at the least. In the morning we all crawled from our hovel and wrung out the things that had been near the edges, and packed up the tent and said good riddance to that.

Random things about Okinawa (an interjection)

One: Okinawans are supposed to be the longest-lived people in the world. There are tons of people over a hundred. AND I didn't see any of the super-bent shrimp-shaped old women there, either. They're doing something right. Maybe it's all that pork.

Two: Because of internationality and American influence, Okinawan vending machines (which seemed to appear every thirty feet) are sometimes stocked with stuff you don't see anywhere else. (The same reason you can get taco rice there)

DOCTOR PEPPER.


CREAM SODA.

Aaaand of course, the A&W restaurant. I had more rootbeer floats on this trip than I've had in the last year.

Three: Shisa, called shishi in China, are guardian lion-dog creatures that are often seen in pairs at the entrances to homes or other gate-structures. Usually, one has its mouth open and one closed. I have read different explanations but my favorite is that the open mouth is the "a" and the closed is the "m" representing the first and last sounds of the universe.. in English generally written as the "om" which is mantra-tastic. Also, sometimes one has a ball (the male?), and one has a cub (the female). I find it significant that they are protectors, but apparently they are known to be really rough on the cubs (squishing them with their paws, throwing them off cliffs, etc. to test their strength) as well. I love them because about ten years ago I had a dream about a creature strongly resembling a lion/dog which played with me in an enclosed courtyard. It threw me against the stone wall, and when I was really put-out about that, it assured me it was "just fucking with me," turned into a young woman, and promised to be my protector for ever.

Shisa are just everywhere in Okinawa, in all forms of fierce and comical.

At Naminoue Shrine.

At the Sanrio store: A

and, M

And, as the name of a bar.

Four: The local beer is Orion. The local sake is Awamori, and it's special because it's brewed from Thai jasmine rice instead of mainland Japan rice. It's strong, but I did buy a bottle of a mix of it and umeshu (plum wine) that is excellent.

Awamori! (Inside that Shisa bar)

Two of the other varieties of Orion: Rich and Southern Star. Mugi is still in my fridge because I tucked it into my carry on before getting on the plane..! Also featured, special pineapple-shiquasa chu-hi, not to be confused with hi-chu, which is also sold in these flavors and only in Okinawa.

Five: Famous foods include goya, a bitter gourd melon thingy, and the champuru style of cooking in which you kind of just throw everything together at once. Which is so my style of cooking. So it's probably more involved than I just said.

Goya champuru. And Orion beer. OKINAWA LUNCH number two.

Six: There are MONGEESE. Mongooses? Someone said a must-see thing would be a mongoose fighting a snake. Word. Apparently, Okinawa has a couple poisonous snakes. Or rather, apparently, mainland Japan doesn't really.

OMG WEASEL!

Okinawa: Day one (the sunny day) and first impressions

When I signed on to go to Okinawa, it was simply because I was in the mood to sign up for any and all group adventures anyone amongst the ALT group was planning. Kyoto? Hell yes. Tokyo? Sure! Okinawa? Why not?! I had the time (which is what really became the limiting factor amongst some of my fellows-- vacation days have become scarce here at the end of the winter), and the resources, and I like to travel and go on adventures.

So it started out as nothing more than that. But after Tokyo, I realized I would enjoy Okinawa a lot more if I knew something about it, what there might be to do there, and what I might care about down there in Japan's Hawaii. Fortunately, I had spring breeeaaaaak, which here just means you go to work and there is no work for you to do (even overachievers can't do much because we have no schedule.. having no schedule prevents you from planning, yes, a semester ahead). So I got to dedicate some time to wiki-fying my life and reading all about Okinawa.

To be brief, Okinawa is a set of islands, Japan's southernmost prefecture (and, I hear, the poorest?). It's located down there close to Taiwan, so historically it has strong ties to China, Korea, as well as Japan. It was called the Ryukyu Kingdom before it got annexed, and once payed tribute to China, then to both China and Japan, and finally was claimed by Japan. The restored castle on the main island, though, is distinctly totally different from any other Japanese castles you will see (I say, having seen only Himeji-jo and Osaka-jo firsthand, heh..), being bright red and covered with dragon motifs.

Anyway, it's an island and it's in the south, which is reason enough to spend spring break there, especially if your home city is experiencing freak snowshowers on March 29th. It was mostly CatJET's field trip, because she had been there before, and she wanted to spend some time on islands other than just the main biggest island of Okinawa.

Our itinerary was to arrive Thursday (the 1st of April), Adina and myself around noon, and CatJET, Big BrotherJET, and Chi around 9:30 (Adina and I took one more day of vacation than the others and took off early). We flew from Kobe airport, a tiny, new, and totally reasonable place which all went very smoothly. There's a direct bus from Yamasaki station to Sannomiya, and from Sannomiya it's super easy to hop on the Port Liner and ride it to the end of the line on the manmade Port Island off Kobe. I have to give it to domestic travel in Japan.. they didn't even seize my water bottle, just opened it up and smelled it to make sure it was just water. Adina and I had a lovely cup of ginger tea in the pretty and modern-looking place before getting on a plane headed south. (Even the plane was pretty awesome... we were flying ANA, and they had cameras down under the plane to show what was going on outside to all of us unfortunate enough not to have window seats)

We boarded a plane in drizzly, chill-swept Kobe and disembarked into sunny humid paradise. Seriously, we were almost giddy as we traipsed off that plane into a corridor filled with orchids of various types and colors. Look at the orchids, I exclaimed, those aren't easy to grow..! Well, maybe if you live somewhere not subtropical...

Ohmigod you guys, it's the airport!

And there are shisa guarding our baggage..!

We took the monorail to its midway station (Miebashi) and picked our way to the Guest House Kerama from there. I was immediately pleased that we were staying there when I saw the open common room and met the staff; we were renting a tatami room for the five of us, and staying there on Thursday and Sunday nights at about 1200 yen per person per night. That is meccha cheap, in other words. When they asked for 12,000 I thought it was just for the first night. The people were really friendly and laid back and welcoming, and the other guests seemed decent too. The place has two tatami rooms (of which E01 is nicer because it has more windows, unless you don't want that stupid sun waking you in the morning) downstairs, and a bunch of 'capsules' which were more like a cross between a tent and a bunk bed. Upstairs there is a female-only dorm room.

I had forgotten to bring a towel (curses! NEVER forget to bring a towel..!) but they lent me one with a smile and no charge; there was soap in the shower area, although I'm not sure if I was supposed to bring my own (I did but never used it). They also had hairdryers. All in all, it was a little like forgetful or too-light packer's heaven. I totally recommend it to the Okinawa-bound traveler and I intend to stay there again when I return to Okinawa.

Adina and I immediately changed into bathing suits, sundresses, and flip-flops, and spent Thursday afternoon wandering around with a dude we met at the monorail station and with whom we found the hostel. We found our way to Overpass Beach, visited Naminoue Shrine where I pleaded for good weather to defy the forecast of rain for the rest of our stay. I tried some shiquasa soda from a vending machine, and we had okisoba for lunch at a red-painted 'soba shack' that we spotted just down the road from the shrine.

Freedom.

Overpass beach is not, I think, it's real name. But it is how I remember it.

Still, an overpass beach is a beach. And freedom? Is freedom.

Naminoue Shrine, just above Overpass Beach.

That's a sweet shrine, you might say.

On the way out of Naminoue Shrine, I spotted these red flowers against the blue sky and was like, where are we?!

Okisoba is one of the must-try Okinawa foods. Okinawans eat pigs. Like, every part of the pig. So there is pork in basically everything you order. Okisoba is just soba [buckwheat noodles] (only, the noodles are not as brown or thin as the soba I know elsewhere) with a different soup and with squares of delicious fatty pork on it. Shiquasa (or shikuwasa) is some kind of citrus that is green and gives the impression of a like.. lime-grapefruit or something.

Tuck in!

We walked down along the river later, in a park which was labeled on the map as "Manko Mangrove Park," which still confuses me because manko is not a nice word, in Japanese so please try to be clear when you say mango, or that you love to eat mango and find them delicious if messy.

The park was really nice. We spent a lot of time taking photos of tropical flowers while we watched kids play soccer with adults, and old people walking on painful rock paths as a mental exercise.

This, like walking on fire, is all in your head.

There were flowers everywhere. It was awesome.

Slow children at play.

See?

There were also lots of stray cats. In all out wanderings though, both here and when searching for overpass beach, all the people we passed were exceedingly friendly and even helpful. Which is not particularly new to me in Japan, except for the super-friendly/open part. Normally when I walk by a group of old people sitting in a parklike place playing games or just shooting the shit, they ignore me. This is perfectly acceptable. That day, they would smile, wave, and shout greetings in barely comprehensible Japanese (Okinawa, of course, has its own dialect!). When people are so direct with me it often makes me uncomfortable because I become sure they want to sell me something. But actually, they were just nice. Also, we saw a bunch of what must have been bum-shacks, which were elaborately constructed and even decorated and looked pretty homey and inviting. One was made of umbrellas. I formed my opinion of Okinawa quickly: warm, laid-back, friendly, and awesome.

Well, okay...

We returned to the hostel to shower and plan the next step; our friends were delayed, so we decided to have dinner without them.

Adina and I stumbled upon Kokusai Dori which is the major souvenir shop road, and got caught up in browsing until we forced ourselves to go back for Taco Rice, another Okinawa specialty which exists because of the cultural exchange and probably sheer numbers of Americans hanging around the area. We also tried the Okinawa nama-biiru, Orion, which tastes superior to our local draft beer (but who am I kidding, maybe everything tastes better on a smaller island?), at least to me.

The others then joined us. We discussed going back out to one of the cute bars Adina and I had discovered and hoped to patronize at some point during the trip (one of them right next to the Richmond Hotel, the other along the water right under the monorail, called Moon Bow).. but then we all unfolded our futons and just sort of passed out.

We would wake.. to cloudy skies.