Okinawa

Hey. Yes, I'm still alive and in Japan, as yet unharmed by the various earthquakes, typhoons, and lack of good spaghetti. Sorry for the scarcity of recent postings. It's all about:

1. I have recently moved from the countryside to a larger city. I chose not to re-contract with JET. Though I still think JET is the best way to come to Japan and I loved my school, teachers, students, apartment and salary, the place I was living was simply too remote.

and

2. I'm working on a lot of things at the moment, including a book (not about Japan). However, I will continue this blog as I still have a lot of subjects to cover. Next time, I'll talk about drinking in Japan, but this time I'll update you on Okinawa.



As I mentioned prior, I went to Okinawa with the students on a school trip in Feb. Okinawa is famous for its distinctive style of cooking, especially using go-ya (a kind of bitter gourd or melon). To prepare us for the trip, the students prepared some Okinawa-style cooking for us at school. The other teachers didn't seem to like it so much, but I thought it was pretty tasty. The main thing was mimigaa, a meal made from a pig's ear in vinegar (pork is an important ingredient in Okinawan cooking, and every part of the pig is used), which was much better than I thought it would be. No, really, it was good.

You know where Okinawa is, right? It's one of the southernmost islands of Japan, with great tropical weather. Besides the food and weather, the language(s) is/are different, although sometimes people just call it a dialectical difference. Another thing that's cool is Okinawan music. This music is pretty recognizable, based as it is on the sanshin, similar to the traditional Japanese shamisen. This three-stringed instrument is related to the sanxian from China. A Tokyo band called "The Boom" had a hit in the early 90's with a modern version of a traditional Okinawan song called "Shima Uta'" (Island Song). However, my favorite music from there has to be Diego Musume(Deigo Sisters). Their album "Diego Musume Special" has super- basic, ultra-melodic haunting tunes. "みやらび風" is great. Check it out.

After the first day of visiting a cave and the peace museum, we headed over by ferry to a small island to the south. After we dropped the kids off with their respective homestay families (and some teachers had a drink or two to celebrate this...), some of us took a bike ride around the island. The day had a great vibe about it: sunny, relaxed, etc. We rode by fields and passed by this shisa, a kind of protective dragon/lion creature:



Just as the tanuki is popular in mainland Japan, this guy was around a lot of houses, ostensibly protecting them from danger. Speaking of houses, we passed by this oddly-designed place. If I remember correctly, I think it was a dentist's house (I have another, simpler pic, but threw in the schoolgirls passing to make it more "exotic" for you!).



We then went to a kind of WWII museum. Though there were no cases for the displays and you could thus touch/take anything, there was no guard - or anybody - around. The only "guarding" as such was at the gate: these two huge stone devil faces:





We moved on to the sea. Though it was February, it was plenty hot. Nobody (besides me) wanted to swim and, it being Japan, I went with the flow (pun intended) and just cooled my feet off and, for some reason, thought about Canada over the sea.



By car, we traveled uphill to check out this mountain,



and walked to the top to check out the view.



As I believe there was only about 1000 people on the island, we kept running into quite a few of the students, even passing some on the crazy-tiring path up to the mountaintop.

The next day, we took the ferry back to the mainland. On the ferry were a bunch of American servicefolks, with whom my students wanted me to interact so they could see foreigners talking to each other (after the war, the States established a lot of military bases on the island. This fact became more widely known in 1995 when U.S. marines abducted and raped a 12-year Japanese girl. Though the perps were caught, they were declared immune to local laws due to their status. However, this triggered serious protests in Okinawa, and in '96 they were charged. The outcry led the States to declare that they were pulling bases from Okinawa, but have yet to do so. ) As I'm not a fan of the military "mind"-set and, in addition, had absolutely nothing in common with and thus nothing to say to these guys, I declined.

We headed by bus to Naha, the coastal capital city of Okinawa. I was surprised that our tour guide not only talked (helped by her hand-written, phone-book size notes), but also sang (traditional Okinawa songs). during the few days we were there. I was also kind of surprised that not only the students but also the teachers talked over her singing and tour.

We arrived at Kokusai Dori (international street), which is the main strip in Naha, kind of like Vegas. After some traditional food with some teachers and students, we all broke off into small groups and went shoppin'! You have to admit this pig's face was kinda cool, but I had to ask myself, "Sure, I want this, but do I really need it?".



In a kind of farmers market, we ran across this snake herb ("good for sex!" I was told),



as well as more traditional Viagra, ye olde' snake-in-a-jar.



There was also a lot of so-called "American" motorcycle-related clothes and Hawaiian shirts on sale. I'm not really sure who it is exactly that buys these, however.

The main strip was pretty notable for its collection of promotional figures on benches. There was this forlorn-looking character next to a giant goya,



this cheerier looking cucumber thing by another goya,



an oddly-out of place Marilyn Monroe (sporting her famous catchphrase "No Sit Down!"),



Rotten Ronnie (It says "Don't climb on me").



Further down the road is his twin,



accompanied by a drug-store logo elephant and, to Ronnie's right, yes, that's a hot-dog draped in the American flag who appears to be applying condiments to himself; just as those Buddhist monks doused themselves with gasoline so they might more easily burn, ol' Frank is dousing himself with ketchup so he can more easily be eaten. As my mind is being overloaded with possible jokes and metaphors, I think it's best to end on this note.