Location: Kadena 嘉手納飛行場, Okinawa 沖縄, Japan (Nippon) 日本
Last day in Okinawa! And I am going to be very sad to go. I’m finding that I may be falling in love with Japan. It wasn’t love at first sight, but this place is definitely growing on me – 90% because of the people. The people here are just amazing. They are so kind and helpful, polite and genuine. Everyone is so happy and it’s really contagious. It’s also one of the safest places I’ve ever been. I really feel like I could leave a baby in a stroller with $100 and my passport and no one would even think about taking it. Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but… you get the picture – it’s safe.
Today is a beautiful day. The sun is shining, it’s nearing 75 degrees and the island is bustling. We spent most of the day today down by the ocean, the East China Sea, rather, and it was quite serene. The sea is beautiful, incredibly clear and pretty calm. There were a dozen or so surfers, a half dozen divers and then a couple fisherman. We all sat on the seawall independently and for completely different purposes, but all reveling at the same amazing force of nature. Large bodies of water will never cease to amaze me.
Amanda and I went to the commissary to grab groceries and booze for our last night cook-in dinner. Alan decided to cook me a very traditional Japanese dinner: Dr. Pepper ribs, Caprese Salad and French Bread. Ok, so maybe it’s not traditional Japanese, but it was welcomed with open arms as this will likely be the last I see of American food for a while. I’m not usually a rib fan, but these things were AMAZING! The marinade was fantastic, they were sweet and a bit spicy and the meat fell off so easy. Coupled with an equally as incredible Lychee martini (much easier to find Lychee juice here than in the states) and I was in a food coma in no time. I can’t believe my stay here in Okinawa is over, but I am so glad I took the time to come. Mandy and Alan have been the most AMAZING hosts and I’m so glad I got to spend time with them, and little Katie, before they move sometime later this year. I love you guys so much and can’t wait to visit you wherever you move next… even if it’s Enid :)
I’m all packed and ready for Tokyo in the morning. I have an early flight and a propensity towards lateness, so hopefully, I make everything alright.
The Japanese culture is incredible. I'm really just in awe of how much it is EXACTLY like the stereotypes we hear about. This is one of the happiest, youngest acting, but most polite bunch of people I have ever run into. I really feel like I'm in a anime cartoon! Everyone is always smiling, bowing, wearing bright (BRIGHT) colors, spiky hair, speaking incredibly fast. All of the advertisements have bright animations and LOTS of smiley faces. All of the signs are dramatic and overdone with so much character to the simplest of signs (see example of a bathroom sign).
Last night, after the babysitter arrived, Alan, Mandy and I head to Yoshi Hachi which is a famous Sushi place down the street. Yoshi is a sushi chef who basically brought sushi to American culture when he moved to California and cooked for many celebrities. He invented the California roll (and we all know how that went) and his restaurant was littered with pictures of him with just about every famous person alive. It was a traditional restaurant with a floor covered in tatami 畳 mats and requiring that we take off our shoes before sitting down to dinner. I ordered an Orion beer, a "Love" roll which was yellowtail, tuna, cream cheese, avocado and masago (MMMM) and a tempura blowfish roll. Yoshi is one of the few chefs who has gone through the rigorous training required to be able to prepare Fugu 河豚 legally because of its lethal poison and I was not about to pass up the opportunity to eat blowfish from a master in the home of sushi. Although, I wasn't sure I was quite prepared to eat it raw. Unfortunately, the tempura blowfish did not numb my lips as promised so Alan and I ventured to eat the real stuff and ordered another batch of sashimi Fugu. At first, when we ate it, nothing really happened. I was actually quite disappointed. I got a little tingle in the roof of my mouth and that was it. But after we drove down to the American Village (an open air mall) to get some yogurt, my lips and even nostrils started to numb up a bit and tingle. Success - poisoned, but not dead.
The American Village was a funny mall with places to eat and shops. We grabbed some yogurt at a topping by weight place (I couldn't stop... ¥800 later and I was stuffed to the gills with everything from Oreos to chocolate syrup to some gummy fruity Japanese something or other. We also walked down to the Dragon Palace, which is basically a grown up video game parlor/casino. It had rules for how old you had to be to get in, but all of the games seemed geared towards young kids. The place was a complete sensory overload. We tried our shot at a drum beating aboriginal rock band kind of game and then headed into a photo booth (one of 20 or so lined up against a wall - each one had a different theme). If you haven't seen it yet, check out the video of Mandy and me boothing it up. That was a enough for one night, so we head back to the house to have a night capper and call it a day.
Today has been equally as packed. This time, we took the whole fam. Alan, Mandy, Katie and I dropped off one of Alan and Mandy's friends, Dustin off at the airport and decided to spend the day in Naha. Naha is the largest city on the main Okinawa island and is home to most of the damage and brunt of the Battle of Okinawa in WWII. I didn't really remember the battle, other than it happened, but there is still a lot of damage to be seen around the area. Read more about it here, if you're interested in that sort of thing - Battle of Okinawa.
First we went to the Shuri castle 首里城 which was this amazing fortress at the top of the hill that was estimated to be constructed during 三山時代 or the Sanzan period (around 1350). We walked through and looked at shrines, tombs, old living quarters and the main banquet hall. The building sustained a lot of damage during the war and the Japanese are still restoring most of it, but it's coming together quite nicely. The coolest part of the castle, for me, was seeing the living rooms, which have been restored and furnished much like they would have been at the time - which basically means no furnishings. The rooms were 90% bare, with the tatami mat floors and scrolls on the walls and that's about it. Sleeping mats would have been rolled out and all meals eaten on the floor. It was quite interesting especially, since this was the house of royalty for a long period of time. Another interesting part was talking to a woman with a booth outside the castle walls who was selling pictures of the area from pre-war and showed us some really neat pictures of Naha-te fighting which is one of the original fighting styles contributing to modern Karate and which began in Naha.
After the castle, we grabbed a snack at McDonalds (they still fry their fries here in the good fatty stuff! YUM!) and then walked down Kokusai-dōri 国際通り which literally translates to "International Avenue" and is the main street and a big shopping area in town. At this point, we decided to head up to the Former Navy Underground Headquarters which is a series of underground tunnels serving as a base for naval officers during the Battle of Okinawa. It's very interesting (including the average height of the tunnel, which, was just comfortable for me, at 5'6" to walk under) and we even saw the room where the Lieutenant General Isamu Chō 長 勇 of the Japanese Navy committed suicide with some of his fellow higher ranking officers rather than surrendering to the US by holding a hand grenade in a small room and blowing it up. The walls are speckled with pieces of shrapnel from the grenade and the walls of the neighboring room's walls covered with the graffiti of their final message to the world.
Upon leaving the museum, Alan and I jumped out of the car at a tomb to take some pictures of the traditional Turleback tomb kameko-baka which are giant tombs shaped like a horseshoe (sort of resembling a turtle shell) which is designed to be the shape of a mother's uterus where the spirit is said to go when we die. Let me just say, the though of having dead people in my uterus doesn't particularly excite me, but... whatever floats your boat.
From here, we headed home, getting quite lost on the way due to the lack of street signs and accurate maps. I didn't mind doing a couple circles though and did some people watching and reading of signs (hilarious translations on some of these signs...) Clearly some Japanese people got a hold of a thesaurus when translating simple words like Hair-do into Hair-make. We grabbed dinner at a cute Indian restaurant with AMAZING garlic Naan bread and some spinach, garlic and cheese curry (MMM!).
Tonight, we laid low and just watched some friends, drank Margaritas and ate girl scout cookies (the bases have their own girl scout troops complete with cookies... LOVE it!) And now, it is time for bed... Big Sunday planned for tomorrow! Ready to get he most out of my last couple of days here.
Holy crap on a cracker (famously quoting the chick on the Big Bang Theory which I watched 7 episodes of in the past 12 hours - funny-ish show... more so when it's your only option for English television... I digress).
I'm in Asia!
And honestly, I'm not NEARLY as overwhelmed as I thought it was going to be.
I got to the airport early; graciously dropped off by Lauren on her way to work (thank you again, love! You're amazing!) I had some breakfast and waited for the counter to open. I ran into the guys from Atreyu who were on my flight and chatted for a bit while we waited. The flight was really quite lovely. Within minutes of taking off, the stewardess' were coming by with my free Kirin. And before I had time to finish it, they were around to offer a second - which I did not turn down. Our lunch was quick behind. For the appetizer, smoked salmon, potato salad, turkey pastrami salad. For the main course grilled eel, rice, Japanese noodles and a roll. Then we got ice cream and green tea... more beer... and that's when I popped a couple Tylenol PMs as well. I started dozing off about half way through the Informant (meh) and then woke up right before... well... dinner! Dinner, wasn't so amazing (some strange mushroom and tofu concoction - i think) so I won't describe, but it was still food, for free. Which rocks.
The second flight was quick and relatively painless. It was me and a whole plane full of marines reporting for duty (which made for an interesting ride, to say the least). Mandy, my cousin, was waiting for me outside the airport when I arrived and I was so excited to see her. I was pretty exhausted, so we came straight home and went to bed (about midnight, it worked out well) and rested up for a big day of sight seeing today.
We started early, and Mandy and I took little Katie to search for some cherry blossom trees. We drove up to Nago where the annual cherry blossom festival is held (next week) and found one (single) tree that was blooming. Only one. So I screamed and made Mandy pull over and took as many pictures as possible. It was a tiny tree.
We drove all around the island plotting out our plans for tomorrow - of which there are many - and we made a stop at the Pineapple theme park where we rode a pineapple golf cart ride through the pineapple grove and then spent a half hour tasting pineapples in every form possible (liquor, wine, dried, fresh, jelly, chocolate and cake). We also took a stop at the blown glass factory and watched people take their turn at glass blowing and looked at a bunch of trinkets (including the cutest penny sized glass panda that I almost bought but realized I have absolutely no reason, nor any place to put it).
Waiting around now, Alan is home from work and we're about to put Katie down. We have a babysitter tonight so we have big plans! Word on the street is Yoshi (the man who owns the sushi place we're going to) serves blowfish and there's something about lips tingling and poisonous fish that makes me a bit excited.
Monday, January 25, 2010 at 12:15AM | 
Location: Kadena 嘉手納飛行場, Okinawa 沖縄, Japan (Nippon) 日本