Okinawa

(now with pictures!)

I swear, some day, there will be a post written about the Philippines. Before I forget about everything even. Sadly, that day is not today, since what's fresh in my mind right now is the trip I took with some friends this past weekend down to Okinawa.

Okinawa - for some quick basic geography and facts - is a cluster of islands (and a prefecture I guess?) southwest of Kyuushu. From Takamatsu in Kanagawa Prefecture, Shikoku, it takes approximately two hours to fly to the main island of Okinawa and the capital city of Naha. This is further away than Korea is. There are a bunch of islands, and it's often referred to as the Hawaii of Asia (or of Japan).

Indeed, it is kind of like the Hawaii of Japan as far as climate and culture goes, but with a more Japanese twist. The main city is Naha, where most of the flights go into. The airport is ridiculously close to the rest of the city proper, and connected via monorail (called the Yui Rail I think?). From there, you can travel down the line for a fairly decent price; about 290 to Kokusai Dori (one of the main tourist shopping areas) or double that(ish) down to the end of the like where Shuri Castle lies. Either way, it would have been a nice airport to have a layover in, since the domestic security area took a relatively small amount of time to go through (can't say anything about international though). Fly in, pop over to Kokusaidori for an hour or two, pop back in to the airport.

I went with two other JETs - both ladies - so we had a kind of girl's trip. My friend, who's amazing, organized the hostel we were staying at, which was about halfway down the monorail and a short walk from the station. We managed to get a discount through booking through hostel world, so the hostel - called Guest House Kerama - was ridiculously cheap: 1000 yen only (about $11 per night). They had a washing machine and drier available, as well as a bunch of games and a kitchen, refrigerator, and showers. Oh, and probably most importantly, free wifi.

For the price that we paid, we got a pretty sweet deal. The showers were relatively clean (though there was a pervasive kind of moldy smell) and there were always people hanging around. We kind of chalked this up to islander attitude. The staff was friendly and helpful (even if sometimes the places they told us about were closed) and the whole place had this really relaxed attitude. Can't say too much for the quality of sleep though. I'm biased and can sleep almost anywhere, but like, occasionally, despite it being lights out in the rooms the downstairs was still fairly noisy enough to where I almost pulled out my headphones. Oh, and it was really really warm in the room, but no plug for the fans and no air con (though, they did have a unit, it just wasn't warm enough I guess, despite the fact I was sweating). We were really close to the ferry terminal as well, which is where a lot of the day ferries depart from for the Kerama Islands (another archipelago). I guess I'd stay there again, if I was really looking to save money. I think though I'd need a day at least in a nicer place. Call me spoiled but after years of using the public showers at swim meets, I'm willing to pay a little extra for a nice clean shower area.

We landed sometime in the afternoon, and after dropping off our stuff, made our way to visit Shuri Castle (and stopped for some amazing Taco Gratin. That probably took a year or two off my life, since it was potatoes and taco meat and cheese and cream sauce and ohgod heaven. But this was because they didn't have rice {wtf} to make tacorice with).

Shuri castle is very very different than the rest of the castles in Japan. Rather than being built in the typical Japanese style, it was built in the Ryuuku kingdom style, which feels distinctly more... Chinese. Probably because of all the red painted onto the buildings and the dragons. So many dragons. It's like they combined Chinese and Japanese styles into a fusion or something. The Okinawan kingdom was famous for dragons, and used this motif EVERYWHERE. Even the tops of the castle - which, on Japanese castles, often have this kind of fish thing on the edges and corners - are full fledged dragons in the same kind of pose as the fish things on Japanese castles. I wonder if they're better at keeping the birds off the top of the roof.

Sweetest chair ever.

Inside was also pretty amazing, though these castles, due to all the fighting and wars that have gone on in Okinawa, have been rebuilt multiple times. The interior was more Chinese or Korean in design, with a couple of sliding panel doors here and there. There were also lots of pillars (red of course) and small Japanese courtyards with bonsai around it. The castle also has a bunch of people dressed in period wear, which is pretty cool.


Actually, it took us a little bit of time to find the castle at first. There were signs, yes, but they were spaced out just far enough for us to question whether or not we were going the right direction. Such questions led us past a small lake with these wild... I'm not sure if they're ducks or if they're geese. They're as big as geese are, definitely (which honestly, made me slightly paranoid about walking too close to them). But obviously, we eventually found the castle.

The castle, in addition to its multi-language brochures, also turned visiting the sites into a kind of game, presumably for the kids that visited it by encouraging them to collect as many stamps as they could (and alas, only junior high school and younger kids were allowed to win a prize for collecting all the stamps in a given path). Oh Japan. Our own trip slightly transformed into "spot the stamp booth" as well, and we merrily stamped our way through the castle grounds. Quite an interesting way to go about doing that though. Not too expensive either, after the initial setup costs. You basically just need to keep buying ink, assuming the stamps don't get stolen. And man were there a lot of stamps. We didn't even get half of them.

This is what 8 bowls look like. Pretty!

We walked back to the station and decided to hit up Kokusai Dori, a street with a bazillion different shops geared specifically towards tourists and Okinawa souvenier gifts (omiyage). There were several stores that I think had one shop on both ends of the long street, and a dozen places that sold pretty much the same snacks and pretty glass cups. The street is actually really pretty at night though; everything is lit up, giving the street a very different feel than if you walk down it during the day. Also, since it was saturday evening, we saw a lot of foreigners (probably Americans) and marines walking around. Despite the list of food things that one of the girls had on foods to eat in Japan, we ended up at an Indian place with a fairly cheap all you can eat curry special thing. It wasn't too bad, but I had like... so many bowls lol. We also ran into this group whom we saw at the castle, then had separated from, then saw again getting off the monorail, then saw again in the restaurant. Stalkers. lol. They were there first though. But it was like the Philippines all over again.

Oh, and my personal favorite:

We saw two Green Rangers. You know, from the Power Rangers? Tommy the Green Ranger. Two guys (my friend confirmed this with the power of uh... observation) in the green ranger spandex suit, shoulder gear, boots, and helmets. I mean, these were really good cosplays of the green ranger. One of them had a video camera as well. We were kind of like "...wtf?" while some inner part of me (and a little outer bit too) freaked out and was like "OMG OMG OMG GREEN RANGER." Actually, seeing other people's reaction to seeing two Green Rangers walk down the street was kind of priceless... especially because people were usually really loud and vocal in their reactions. I heard two guys across the street flip out about it haha.

Ahhh, the 90's. My childhood. Good times. It makes me kind of sad that a bunch of my students have probably never actually watched the Power Rangers (or at least, seen them in that style/version).

Thank you Japan, for making that day freaking awesome.

Okinawa Part II (coming soon)