We chose to return to Okinawa because when we visited 6
years ago during our last trip to Japan we fell in love with the place. Okinawa is actually a series of many tropical
islands which make up the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan (a prefecture is like a
state). The main island, Okinawa Island,
is about 400 miles south of the main islands of Japan. They are all tropical islands; we think they
are very much like Hawaii in terms of scenery and climate. So as we see it, it is like going to Hawaii
but with a Japanese twist.
Our first night in Okinawa was spent in downtown Naha (the
capital city) only a few miles from the airport. Our other days were in the northern part of
the island, maybe 40 miles north and a world away. Before driving north we
decided to check out some of southern part of the island. Okinawa is home to several US military
installations including two major bases, which meant there are far more
westerners on the island and a lot more English speaking. The southern part of the main island, where
the airport, capital city, and most of the military activity is located, is
much busier and built up, than the northern part. The northern part of the island is more
relaxed, rural, and scenic. Being a
tropical island, there are resorts all over, but we liked the ones in the north
better mostly because of the scenery and smaller crowds.
We did not leave the hotel until around 10:30. This was good because by that time morning
traffic was not an issue and we would have to get used to driving with everything
on the wrong side once again. We were
pleased to see that our GPS spoke English, the last time we were here we
learned very quickly how to say “pretty soon…” in Japanese. Not this time. We first travelled to the Ryukyu glass studio
and factory where they make glass products.
From what we learned, glass making in Okinawa started after WWII. At
that time, because of shortage in glass materials, craftsmen used varieties of
waste glasses like bottles of Coca-Cola thrown out from U.S. bases, and produced
colorful products. Today Ryukyu glass
seems to be a popular souvenir from Okinawa.
They have them in all shapes and sizes from cheap ones to very expensive
works of art. We explored their museum,
gift shop and watched them make glass.
They make the process seem so simple but we think that is just because
they are so good at it.
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| Outside of the glass place...all of the walls are covered in pieces of colored glass |
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| The picture may look like everyone is moving slowly but in reality they were practically running around |
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| Some of the finished product |
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| You can make a glass in 7 easy steps. |
We slowly started
our drive north after leaving Ryukyu. In
Okinawa, just about every house, business, and everything else, has a Shisa out
front, or a pair of Shisa. A Shisa is a
traditional decoration resembling a cross between a dog and a lion. They are said to protect people from evil,
and like we said, they are everywhere.
We even noticed as we were passing through a construction site, the
construction barriers were Shisa!
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| Our ride |
Our next stop was
a place called Okinawa World. What drew
us here was the possibility of a brewery on site. We opted to not try any beer because Japan
has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to drinking and driving. Sure, a small sample at the end of a brewery
tour would not get us impaired but it didn’t seem worth the potential
risk. We ended up skipping the brewery
portion of Okinawa World, but we really enjoyed the rest of what they had to
offer. Okinawa World is a touristy type
place detailing Okinawan culture. They
have a craft village, a snake museum (more on this in a minute) and they had
some really cool traditional performances which we watched. They also had a tour through a garden which
was growing some of the traditional flowers and fruits you would find in
Okinawa. We enjoyed a coconut drink straight
from a real coconut and some sweet potato ice cream after touring the
garden.
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| Some of the Shisa outside Okinawa World |
While we were walking through Okinawa World we saw something that Chris just had to have: Habushu. Just about everyone has seen or heard of a bottle of tequila with the worm in the bottom. Habushu is similar. A habu is a type of snake native to the larger islands of the Southeast Asia region. It is posionous if it bites you but they only bite when they are alive, not when they are sitting dead in the bottom of your bottle of liquor. In Okinawa this habushu seems to be a popular item. Chris didn’t even try the stuff, he just knew he had to take a bottle home but he was absolutely sure that he would have some kind of delay at customs if he tried. With only a two hour layover on the way home in Chicago where we entered the US, any kind of delay would be bad because in that two hours you need to clear customs, retrieve your luggage, clear immigration, re-check your luggage, take a train to the domestic terminal, go through security again, and find your gate, which is most likely the last one at the end of the terminal. We would probably need every minute of those two hours, assuming our plane was even on time arriving! On top of that the habushu is not cheap. The price for a 700ml bottle was about 12,000 yen, or around $130. Having that confiscated would hurt. We decided to try and find out if it was even legal before buying a bottle. The company issued phone that Chris had with us on this trip was not smart by any stretch of the imagination. It was a plain old flip phone that made calls. It had limited internet which was very useful if you could read and type in Japanese. We decided we would call the US Embassy in Tokyo where we were certain there would be someone who first knew what habushu is, and second, knew if it was legal to import into the US for personal consumption. The woman who answered the phone knew exactly what it was but she couldn’t help us except for transferring our call to a specialist on site. The specialist was not in his office at the time so the receptionist who answered the phone took our phone number and we left him a message.
Now backtrack to
the traditional Okinawa show that we were watching. They did a performance only once an hour,
maybe less frequently, and it was loud.
As luck would have it the phone rang right in the middle of the
performance. From our seats near the top row Chris jumped over several rows,
nearly knocked down a couple of children and ran to get away from the
performance so he could answer the phone.
It was important that we answer the phone because we had no idea how to
retrieve messages on our phone. He
missed the call. Turns out on this
particular flip phone you have to flip it open and then hit the speak
button. It isn’t enough to flip it open
and start talking. So while he was there
saying hello, hello, the phone kept ringing.
Chris didn’t realize this because the phone was in silent mode and the
show was very loud, even from a distance.
We had to call Chris’s office back in Nagoya and speak to one of the
ladies who works there to talk us through retrieving our message. We heard the message, it was left to us
completely in Japanese, probably because the voice mail greeting was likely in
Japanese, so we did the only thing we could do, we called the embassy back and
asked to speak to Dr. Suzuki (we understood that much from the voice
mail). We explained what we were looking
to find out and he told us that the importation of habushu would fall under the
Fish and Game dept, not customs. He took down our email address and ended up
sending us a link to the Fish and Game’s website, which we would end up reading
that night from our hotel. When we finally
did read the email it explained that yes, habushu can be imported into the US
but wherever we entered the country a fish & game specialist would have to
inspect the bottle to ensure the (dead) snake was not endangered. If a fish and game specialist happened to not
be on duty at the time they would confiscate the liquor and inspect it at their
convenience and we would be responsible for paying for its shipment to our
final destination. We figured we would
lose both ways. If a specialist was on
duty when we entered the US we didn’t think there would be any way they would
be able to inspect it and have enough time for us to get to our gate with the 2
hour layover. We figured if they
confiscated it for a later inspection they would surely determine that the
snake was endangered, not because the snake was in fact endangered (we were
pretty certain it was not just from reading up on it on the web), but because a
bottle of liquor with a snake in it is some pretty cool shit and they’d want it
for themselves.
We pretty much
decided at that time that we were not going to be buying a bottle but we did
make one last call to the Fish & Game Dept in Washington, DC to ask if we
could request that an expert be on hand when we land in Chicago. We were transferred to a lady who we were
assured was the person we needed to be talking to and that lady was more than
extremely rude, almost as if we were bothering her (after all it was a Friday
morning in Washington and she did have a government job so we probably were bothering
her). She snapped at us and asked why we
would be calling her with such a question and she told us that we’d have to
call Chicago and ask them and she further reminded us that Chicago was an hour
behind Washington so “they wouldn’t be answering the phone for several more
hours at least”. After this we decided
to just drop it and leave the habushu in Japan. We figured if we really wanted
it when we got home that is what the internet is for.
After leaving
Okinawa World we entered the phone number of the hotel into the GPS and started
making our way to our hotel. We really
liked the GPS we had in the car. Back
home we still use real maps so we didn’t know if the features on the GPS were
unique to Japan or if every GPS has these but we especially liked how you could
enter a phone number in the GPS and it would get you to the address where that
phone number is located; once on the expressway it also told us how far to the
next 3 exits; if a rest area was approaching it told you what kind of
facilities were located at that rest area; and since the road was a toll road
and our ticket that we picked up when we entered the highway did not have
prices on it the GPS announced to us as we were exiting how much we owed. These cool features are probably not enough
for us to buy one back home but we did enjoy using it while we were over there.
We arrived at our
hotel a little before 7 and to our surprise it wasn’t dark out yet! That was a nice change from the short days we
had been experiencing for the last month.
Our platinum status at Marriott allowed us to pay a small price for a
nicer room on the concierge floor. We
also were able to check in on the concierge floor and enjoy breakfast in the
morning and cocktails at night free of charge.
Our room was pretty big with a marbled bathroom and two balconies
overlooking the bay, one enclosed and one outside.
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| View from the room |
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| Our enclosed balcony taken from out outside balcony |
The next day we
were kind of tired so we slept in a little bit.
Once we got moving we took a ride along the coast. We first went to a place called the Nago
Pineapple Park to buy some pineapple wine which we enjoyed the last time we had
visited. Rather than pay the 1000 yen
admission fee, Chris snuck in through the exit.
We figured this was ok for several reasons: first, we were foreigners
and we did not understand that the door that everyone was leaving through and
no one was entering was an exit, not an entrance. We played our gaijin card (gaijin is Japanese
for foreigner) on that one. Second, we
didn’t want to see the exhibits, we only wanted to buy wine. Third, we knew no one would stop us. They were not about to put themselves in an
awkward position and try to speak English to us and we took advantage of it. We bought several souvenirs and had them
shipped back to our hotel in Nagoya. The
place had some kind of deal worked out with the post office that no matter what
you bought you could ship it to anywhere in Japan for only 1000 yen, or about
$11. We were glad to pay $11 to not have
to carry that stuff on the plane and train with us. While at the pineapple park we decided to
look for a geocache. While we were
looking a couple of women with a child approached us (they were American) and
asked if we had found the cache. They
too were geocachers and while the kid searched for the cache, Chris found out
that they were in the service but more importantly, they told Chris where on
the island the cherry blossoms would be in bloom. Cherry blossom viewing is a BIG event in
Japan. Often times the Japanese will
take days off from work, set up a blanket or tarp and just sit under the cherry
blossoms drinking and eating all day long.
It is so popular that in the spring the parks in Tokyo get so crowded
that you cannot even find an empty spot on the ground to sit there are so many
tarps and blankets set up. And these are
not small parks, they are parks possible a quarter the size of NYC’s Central
Park. Back on the main island cherry
blossom season would not happen until late March/early April but if cherry
blossom season was taking place now we wanted to see it, if not for the
partying, at least for the scenery.
Before heading for the cherry blossoms we wanted to hit the beach. We found a very secluded beach and we walked
up and down it for an hour or so. In one
direction there were caves and interesting rock formations carved out from
coral and in the other direction there was nothing but empty beach. We did not swim but we did enjoy our walk
along the beach checking out the caves and looking at the crystal clear water.
After leaving the
beach we headed for the cherry blossoms.
We were surprised to not find people partying under the cherry blossoms
but the scenery was very nice. The trees
were probably a little past peak but they were still beautiful nonetheless.
We started making
our way back to our hotel, just in time for the final hour or so of happy hour
in the lounge.
The next day
would be the day we checked out and flew back to Nagoya. Our flight was not until 8:30 PM so we had
the whole day to explore some more of the island. Rather than head further north and run the
risk of seeing something really cool that we would not have time to fully
enjoy, we started heading south.
We stopped at a
few really cool viewpoints where we stood on top of high cliffs watching the
waves crash against the rocks below. One
really cool spot was called Manzamo, which translated to “grassland where a
thousand people can sit”. At this spot
was a really nice grassy area high atop the cliffs which made for some nice
scenery and a great place to just hang out and relax. We also visited a lighthouse and took in some
more amazing scenery. None of the places
we visited were especially crowded which is one reason we would love to return.
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| We have no idea what this was but we found it in the middle of the rocks on top of the cliff. |
We finally made our way back to the airport
but not before stopping to fill up the car with gas on the way back. Never again will we complain about high gas
prices in the US when we were paying about $1.75 per liter in Japan, which is
about the equivalent to $7 per gallon.
We made it to the airport with far more time to spare than we needed and
arrived back at the airport in Tokyo around 10.
We were back in our hotel room just after 11.
