Our Okinawan Journey, Phase Alpha

When we decided to take a trip for our birthdays, we narrowed it down to Japan's extremes: it was either going to be Hokkaido or Okinawa. It turns out that Hokkaido is so cold that by late September it would already be too much. Tropical Okinawa it was, then.

Thanks to a neat little Japan Air Lines birthday discount, we got tickets to Okinawa for $120 a leg - Not bad considering they're usually about $400. Yes, travel in Japan is almost never cheap, but sometimes you get lucky and find a bizarro discount, like 15% off if you travel with your grandma on the 3rd friday of a leap year--that kind of stuff.

Our journey began early Saturday morning on the 23rd. Our flight was leaving from the new Nagoya Centrair airport, built on an artificial island in Nagoya Harbor. I left my house in a hurry on my mountain bike at about 5:15, late for my train as per usual. It was an inauspicious beginning for such a large trip, but you've gotta begin somewhere I suppose. I raced down the hill toward the station like I was flying. This was the morning after the office enkai, so I was not in the best of conditions. Hong and I somehow managed to rendezvous in Nagoya and find our way to the airport, where we boarded a spiffy-looking 747 bound for Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture.

I had an embarassing encounter on the plane when I decided to try out some of my newly minted Japanese phrases. I asked the guy sitting next to me, in the politest form, 'Where are you from?' He responded, of course, but I couldn't understand the name of the place (I'd probably never heard of it). It turns out I couldn't understand anything he said after that, so eventually I just sort of faced forward and waited for it to be over. You can't win 'em all, I guess. But still, how embarassing. I tried not to let it get me down.

The first thing that struck me in Okinawa was the stifling heat. It reminded me of how brutal mainland Japan was 2 months ago. All the sweat and frustration came back in full swing. However, this was tempered by the beauty of the place. The ocean is delightfully aquamarine and makes you glad every time you look at it. Naha itself is a pretty bustling city. It looked pretty much like any other Japanese city, except it had a really nifty monorail, which I haven't seen anywhere else. We used it like mad. We walked around and browsed the schlocky souvenir shops for a while, marveled at the amazingly high prices, and then navigated our way to Shuri-jo Castle, the former capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. (A sidenote: before 1879, the Ryukyu Islands--all the islands south of Kyushu and north of Taiwan--were an independent kingdom. But in 1879 the greedy Japanese snatched up the islands for their own, perhaps sensing their future tourism needs. Then from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, Okinawa was controlled by the U.S. It is again part of Japan, though about 20% of the land on the main island is still given over to U.S. bases.

Looking for Shuri-jo was surprisingly difficult, given that it was on the biggest hill in the place. I found what I considered to be a genius shortcut, but due to the castle's, er, extensive fortifications, we walked right up to it, but at such a place as one could not enter. We had to walk all the way back down the hill and walk around to the other side of the whole affair. Let me tell you, it was FAR. The castle itself was fairly cool. Sadly, it was destroyed in World War II, like so much of this country's heritage, but it was lovingly rebuilt in 1992. You would never guess it, let me tell you. It feels old and it feels solid. Inside the building I could really sense the history that had happened there, even though the building was new. Some places have a memory stronger than physical materials.

The next stop on our itinerary was the island of Kume-jima, 90 kilometers to the west of Okinawa. I had high expectations for this place, especially since it would be my birthday and I wanted to have fun. We managed to find the ferry harbor AND purchase ferry tickets (these are small miracles, let me tell you), and boarded for our 4-hour journey into the East China Sea. While we were headed over there, I tried to imagine all the things that had taken place in these waters; envoys and traders from China in junks, American battleships cruising for enemy Japanese, maybe pirates? It was so exciting to be so far from home, out on the open ocean, finding someplace new. I felt very grown-up.

Our relationship with this island turned out to be fairly complex. At first sight, it looked quite beautiful. We caught a bus from the ferry terminal to what our guidebook, Lonely Planet, described as 'the' place to stay on the island, Ifu Beach. Needless to say, when we stepped off the bus, I thought there must be some mistake. We were dropped at the "Eef Beach Hotel," which, judging from the amount of people who got off the bus and went inside, was 'the' only place to stay in Ifu Beach. It looked pretty crappy. We walked around back and asked someone how to find the hotel we were looking for. They drew us a map. It turns out we hardly needed it. Ifu Beach is not a city on the scale which demands maps. It just takes fingers. We walked about 50 feet up the street and found the place.

We walked inside and it looked clean and nice enough. A man stood in the lobby doing something, and when we entered, it took him a while to notice that we might want something. He approached the desk and I took a deep breath and read from my pre-prepared sheet of 'hotel Japanese.' To everything I said, he replied with a terrified stare. Even when I knew it made sense, it was just Stare. He almost looked like it would make his entire year if we would just slowly back up, walk away, and not make him speak English any more. But, persistence paid off and 10 confusing minutes later we had a simple room, directions to the shower, and some peace and quiet. Now at this point I was not super-thrilled, I'm not gonna lie. The beach was quite beautiful, but the town seemed boring at best and really boring at worst. It didn't seem like 'the' place in any sense. It didn't help that I was hot, sweaty, stinky, and that it was my birthday. Hong and I were both a little afraid to admit that we had made a big mistake in coming here. We cursed Lonely Planet for leading us astray and vowed to exact vengeance upon its foolish authors.

We headed out to the beach to see what we could see. Saw some sand, some water, and some clouds. All of it quite lovely, of course. But...we were bored. We decided to head off to tiny O-jima island nearby to see "a natural formation of pentagon-shaped rocks that covers the seashore but can only be seen at low tide." It was exciting enough to get us moving. To get there was surprisingly difficult. To get to the bridge to the island required walking a bit inland and also crossing what turned out to be the bottom of a low-tide zone. We didn't know all this when we started, of course. It looked so close...

As we walked and walked, with each turn discovering anew just how far away the entrance to the bridge was, we became filled with despair and frustration. This reached a fever pitch when we realized we had to walk through the squishy, muddy, nasty bottom of a marina to cross it. As our shoes sunk into the soft dirt and we hopped over puddles, we became increasingly not happy. When we had to cross a small concrete stream to get to the road, I hit my low point when I slipped on moss, dropping my backpack (with $1,000 Nikon) and only shoes into the water, cutting my toe and bruising my foot in the process. I silently cursed this island for being so terrible and Lonely Planet for not being honest with us.

After my shoes became unusable, it was barefoot for me. I don't mean to whine, but man it was painful. Of course this only added to my increasing sense of anger that we were stuck on such an inhospitable, beat-up little berg in the middle of the sea, on my birthday no less! We finally made it to the interesting rock formations, which were okay. I would have liked them a lot more if I hadn't suffered bodily damage to find them. I took my first dip in the East China Sea/western Pacific, relaxed in the warm, shallow water for a while and used my imagination. Sometimes when I'm in the ocean at an island I like to think how far it is to anywhere else. Something about being on an island makes me acutely aware of just where I am. So as I sat in the water I wondered, how far to home, to Japan, to China?
















We headed back to our hotel, cleaned up, and headed out to try and find a little food and excitement for the evening. Much to our surprise, the place was hopping. Cozy, inviting restaurants lined the street and happy-looking people inside seemed to be enjoying themselves. What a change from earlier! We were mildly giddy as we walked down the street, feeling for the first time all day that we weren't the only people on this whole island. We found a nice restaurant, ordered a beer and some Okinawan food, and sat in amazement at our pleasant reversal of fortunes. The food was great, the waitresses were friendly, and the atmosphere was comfortable. I was beginning to like this place.

We began to see that this island had charms that weren't so apparent. Like its people. If the people in Okinawa were more friendly than those in mainland Japan, those on Kume-jima were even more friendly than those in Okinawa. The pace of life was very slow and relaxed. On the way back from O-jima, a bus driver saw us walking and stopped to ask if we wanted a ride, and a group of high school-age boys gave us a warm and hearty "Hello!" when they thought we had said Hi to them (we were actually saying hi to a small, cute little boy who was on the other side of the road...they were just walking by...oops!). Still, I was touched that they turned around and all said hi. It was great. The place was obviously not so well-off, and so the fast-paced lifestyle which in many other parts of Japan is the norm seemed very far away from here. It turned out to be a great birthday.

The next morning it was back to Okinawa for us. Good-bye, Kume-jima! We hardly knew ye! I think out of all the places we visited on this trip, it was hardest to leave this one.
















Back on Okinawa, we rented a Honda Fit hybrid and set out to find some places in the guidebook. I hadn't anticipated that traffic would be as bad as it really was. We couldn't get anywhere. Plus, our on-board navigation system was in Japanese (no real surprise there, even though the employee diligently spent about 7 minutes explaining how to use its myriad functions). We spent hours arguing over directions and schedules and ended up pretty much getting nowhere we wanted to. We decided to cut our losses and just headed straight for the top of Okinawa, so we could say that we had been to the most northern point ("Of course you went to the north tip of Okinawa, right? It's all the rage!"). But it was far, and night fell. Needless to say, some of the magic of Okinawa's beauty is lost at night. Driving there and back seemed remarkably like driving at night anywhere else. It was long, tedious, and boring, but somehow it had a sense of adventure to it, so Hong and I enjoyed ourselves for at least the first part, before it got to be really a slog.

The northernmost point on the island was just that. A point that was the most north. We were a little let down, but what could we really expect? We got out of the car and stared at the stars for several minutes. It was breathtaking, actually, and after seeing those stars I just couldn't be upset.

The next day we headed off to our next destination, Ishigaki, about 400 kilometers away. I will cover that next time. Happy trails till then!

For expanded photos and commentary from our trip, please go to http://community.webshots.com/user/viewfromjapan, my photo-sharing website.