We had a nice ferry ride to Okinawa. I didn't get sick, which I was really worried about, since I remember one awful endless night on a ferry from Amami to the mainland, heaving over the railing all night. But I took a pill this time and was perfectly fine, slept well with the boat rocking me to sleep. The sleep was short lived however, as the harsh cabin lights came on at 4:30 am to awaken us for disembarking. We had planned to wait around in a coffee shop until our guest house opened at 9am, but there was nothing open in the deserted ferry terminal and nothing around that area. (It was the new ferry terminal, not the old one conveniently located near our guest house.) So after about an hour of waiting and realizing it was going to be a long, boring, 4 hour wait, we decided to take a taxi to our guest house to see if we could get in early. I had a map, and the taxi driver took us to the place where it should have been, but we still couldn't find it, which was not a good sign. We couldn't call until 9, so Theo and Masami just sat around on this abandoned city street while I walked around the streets looking for the place. We finally found a coffee shop that was open at 7, had breakfast and waited until 9. The guest house turned out to be where it should have been; they just took the sign in at night, to avoid people like us wandering in at 6 am, no doubt.
The Okinawa guest house was a funky gaijin house, cheap but serviceable. Our room was completely stuccoed with a big trowel, including all the walls, ceiling, sink, and bar. It gave the place a drippy, surrealist look. The important thing was that it had AC, as it was HOT.
We rented a car and drove around the south of the island to see the WWII monuments, of which there are a lot. There is a huge American military base on Okinawa (that covers 12 % of the island), and they have a checkered history with America, being invaded, then ruled by America until 1973. The battle of Okinawa is a pretty famous one, 82 days of slaughter as the Japanese military fought to the death or committed mass suicides. But the thing that struck me about the war monuments was the perspective that the Okinawans took of being victims not so much of the Americans, but of the Japanese military, who were brutal to the Okinawans. The people of Okinawa, as most of the smaller islanders, were seen as second class citizens, or worse, by Japanese mainlanders.
Paper cranes for the dead nurses.
We went to the cave hospital site where the military forced student nurses to work in terrible conditions taking care of the soldiers, then kicked them out of the cave into the line of fire when the Americans overtook them. There is a cave where thousands of soldiers committed suicide. And there's a large peace museum and park, where you can learn more about the atrocities and read first hand stories, like forced suicides of civilians and worse. It was all pretty gruesome, but Masami wanted to see it. I guess the lesson is the horrible things that militarization produces, but not really a lesson I needed. One day of all that and the heat were enough.
Suicide cliff where Okinawans jumped at the encouragement of the Japanese military.
After all the death and brutality, we were ready for some beach time. Okinawa really surprised me. I had been expecting some kind of laid back beach community, and maybe it was, for Japan, but compared to Amami Oshima, it was really urban, with over a million people, and a third of that in the main city, Naha. We drove for an hour in heavy traffic from our lodging until we got out of town. We stopped at a beach that looked promising on the map, but turned out to be artificial, and what's more, closed. Coming from Amami, where you can't close the beach, this was a shock to us. We definitely weren't in Amami anymore.
The nice thing about staying in gaijin houses is that you meet a lot of other travelers and Japanese who want to meet other travelers. We invited a Japanese college student to go with us to the aquarium the next day. Masami had some work to do, so we didn't get started until 11am. It was a long 2 hour+ drive through traffic, past the American military base, then past megaresort after megaresort with their private beaches. Not only are there hardly any public beaches, but the few there are charge entrance fees and keep regular business hours.
It was blazing hot again as we arrived at the aquarium at about 1:30. We took in the outside dolphin and false killer whale show, then retreated to the safety of the air conditioning. It was an impressive aquarium, with the largest tank in the world, which housed 3 whale sharks, among other things. We got to see them feed these huge animals (krill), opening their massive gaping mouths to filter the shrimp from the water.
There was a park around the aquarium with an traditional Okinawan village, and a botanical garden along the ocean front. We walked through the gardens and watched the sun set. We saw two of the little Ryukyu Scops Owls, who just sat there looking at us. We also flushed some massive bats, which must have been Ryukyu Flying Foxes. They looked huge, but I looked them up and found that their fat bodies are only seven inches long. Still, pretty big bats.
Megalodon shark jaw.
On the way back to Naha, we stopped for dinner at a low key resort, which meant we finally had beach access! Theo and I went for a little swim in the dark.
Okinawa was the seat of a kingdom once upon a time, and they have a castle there called Shijo. We visited that on our last day, walking along the stone streets in the area. I have seen alot of castles in Japan, but this one was interesting as it was more Chinese influenced. I had the Okinawan champluzu with bitter melon, which I can't really recommend. The Amami dish using the same bitter warty cucumber is better, if still puzzling as a food item.
Since it was so hot, Theo and I decided to try out the nearby (free!) city beach. There was a homeless village in the adjoining park, with tatami mats, tarps and junk art made out of old tvs and furniture. The homeless in Japan are as polite and well organized as you'd expect. The beach is described in tourist brochures as a good place to watch the sunset. I don't know how that would be possible, as the swimming area was sandwiched between the beach and a bridge, so that you couldn't even see the ocean. They were actually building another bridge, so there was all this rusty scaffolding in the ocean next to the tiny roped off swimming area. It was pretty disgusting, the water not least.
On our last night we got a taste of the nightlife of the island, on Naha's main strip, Kokusai dori. It was a bright stretch of neon, souvenir shops and restaurants. Masami wanted to go back to a particular pottery shop that she had gone to 15 or so years earlier. She had tried to buy something, but they didn't take credit cards, so she tried to get some money form a cash machine, but wasn't able to. The woman who owned the shop ended up giving her a small piece for free. So Masami wanted to go back to thank her and buy something. We found the shop and the woman, and Masami told her story, which the woman remembered. She gave us tea and sweets. Masami bought some things, then the woman gave us a bag of sweets for free. That's what you get in Japan when you try to repay someone for a kindness, you become more indebted.
We walked along the bright, garish street, looking at all of the plastic souvenirs, Okinawan lions in every size and color, and deadly habu snakes in alcohol (they have them there, too). We had a good time in Okinawa, but it was a bit of a disappointment for me. Okinawa seemed a little like a pale imitation of other places in Japan. I could think of other places with better (or more interesting) food, beaches, castles, even war memorials. The heat didn't help either. Anyway, I can say I've been there, to Okinawa, which means, in Japanese, the big nawa.
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