Okinawa Islands

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Wordup my friends,

I have recently returned from a 1 week Cargo Ship Cruise of the southern Okinawa islands of Japan. By cargo ship, I mean a giant slow-moving metal boat whose primary function is to provide outlying islands with supplies and　haul away trash. You might be wondering　what the appeal of such a journey is (or how I convinced Kristi to get on board with this plan)...well, a flight is pricey and would only allow access to 1 specific island. The cargo cruise option significantly　reduces cost and allows a whirlwind tour of potentially 6 different islands. Our port of departure,　Kagoshima, was filled with forklifts, hardhats and warehouses. How romantic! Most of the other passengers seemed to be locals going back to their home island, boat crew, school children or business men. Yet again, Kristi and I stick out as the only non-japanese in site. Our luxurious sleeping quarters were shared by around 100 other coughing, crying and cell-phoning new friends on a sea of thin mats. Somehow I felt like I was on a Japanese Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria. The boat had lots of quirks like only serving a super limited amount of food for 3 periods of 30 minutes each. This is rather significant when you are on a 25 hour ferry ride with only snacks and food times are announced amid an endless number of other japanese-only announcements. We finally learned the system by our last ride back to the mainland to discover the food was pretty yucky anyway!

But the destination is the journey right? Well the destination is also the destination and we had some lovely times on 3 different islands. The first stop was Amami-oshima. As usual, we had no real plan as there is not much helpful information in English available and most hostel/guesthouse staff speak only barebones English so getting recommendations is quite difficult. Lucky for us, there were actually 2 other non-Japanese English speaking travelers from Switzerland who got off the boat with us. After a bit of stumbling around our new confusing island, we split a rental car with our new swiss friends and set off to find the beaches. Sure enough the they were gorgeous and completely empty. Not a soul to be seen. Finally a place to relax and enjoy the sun. So just as a I am beginning to ooze into a perfect beach snooze...a thoroughly tattooed Japanese man begins to haul a full on beach bonanza onto the beach just a few steps away from us. Coolers, chairs, umbrellas, wake boards, banana boats, jetskis and in his words 'many beautiful japanese women'. He insists we drink his beer and suddenly the fun begins. Although we can barely speak any japanese and they can barely speak any english, we manage to talk for hours about music, food, travel and local fun spots. Eventually they rev up the jet ski and start dragging us around on a 4-seater banana boat until we are sent flying for a highspeed drink of ocean water. The afternoon comes to an end with our master of ceremonies and his array of ladies by insisting that he has made a reservation for us at his favorite restaurant and then for us to meet him for drinks at a certain bar. Uh, Ok!

The restaurant is of course obscure and intimidating. It is a tiny little place full of a bustling japanese family that all seem to work and live there and are sitting down to eat with their kids. Is this the right place? They say a bunch of things in Japanese and we stare back confused. They smile and ask if we are hungry. Yes! No need for menus or prices as the food avalance begins immediately. There were easily 20 plates and bowls of strange looking and smelling food set down in front of us. The more leary we looked, the more giggly and persuasive the on-looking family became. "Should we peel this largy crispy leggy shrimp thing?" Nonono...as one of the ladies demonstrates by shoving a fully adorned sea creature into her mouth. "Is there even anything to eat in this shell-looking thing", we ask with our faces. Like this! another lady demonstrates by　poking the shell with a toothpic and pulling out a slimey slug looking thing. "Oh man, I am stuffed", we plead by sitting back in our chairs. No your not!, a hostess replies by slogging another food mystery on the table. I mostly have no idea what we ate that night except for lots of fishy squidy things and a new one for me....beef intestines. Yum! As if that weren't enough of an experience, one of the men appears with a thin 3-stringed banjo looking thing called a shamisen and began plucking out some very asian sounds. Then the previously quiet grandmother doing dishes in the back lets out a passionate burst of traditional singing. Eventually a few more family members add some drumming and singing for full-on Japanese Island concert. Amazing! We are crowded around a few tables in a small japanese house with a family eating their strange delicious food and participating in their sweeping beautiful music. What a cultural experience! Before it was all over we played some Taiko drum, did some island dancing and had a chance to pluck the Shamisen. He even gave us a tip where we might be able to pick up one these for ourselves. Later that night we met up with our beach buddy for some sake,　BillaBowl (where you use a cue stick to shoot a pool ball down a short lane at 10 pins like bowling). It was loads of fun. We also sang some Kareoke songs. I did Nirvanas Smalls like teen spirit and it was super loud in a mostly empty bar...but our Japanese friend sang the chorus with me. Nice! What a nice guy. He totally hooked up our time on that island.

Sooooo, the very next day we set our sites on investigating the Shamisen scene of Amami-Oshima. The 1st store we found had a stern looking old man leaning back in his rocking chair as we scanned his expensive fine instruments. He seemed to be scolding our inability to speak Japanese and our obvious inexperience with the Shamisen. So we promptly exited and headed towards another music shop. The guy running this shop ruled. I knew that right away as he was wearing a scuba diving shirt. He immediately put some shamisens in our hands so we could start to get a feel for them. He was genuinely impressed when we knew how to hold the pick-like thing from the night before. We spent a solid hour exploring all the differences between the high end and entry level shamisens before settling on a nice medium. The real kicker was he ended up giving us a lesson right there on the spot! He taught us some scales and playing techniques with the patience and enthusiasm of any of my favorite teachers from Berklee. One of the coolest parts of this exchange was that we could barely communicate with spoken language (again!) but actually found lots of common ground with the universal language of music! Even though we were total beginners, we found a way to relate on some of the basics of music likes octaves, alternate tunings and improvisation. So cool!

A handful of ferry hours later and we arrive on Okinawa-Honto. This is the main island of the set and holds Naha, the main tourist destination and an active American Military base. The highlight of this section was escaping the main tourist area to a yet even smaller island called Takashiki. Here we went exploring around an exquisite rocky beach where we found one of my new favoite creatures. While poking at some crabs and sponges we noticed a rock covered in what appeared to be some dying fish out of the water. When we moved closer for inspection this little critters zipped across the water to another rock to maintain a safe distance. Whoa! This time with a slower approach we see that they look like sluggy salamander type things with 2 front fins. It turns out these are Mudskippers. We spent quite awhile watching their strange behaviors like periodically taking an ultra brief dip in the water to stay wet, momentarilly　flipping on their back for some kind of breath and awkwardly scooching around the rock with their front fins. So strange!

Finally we end up on our last island called Okinoerabu. This is the smallest of the islands and proably least visited by tourists. This time we almost expected to have no transportation and had no real hope of seeing anything away from the ferry terminal (which is usually pretty gross). But the whimsical ghosts of travel wouldn't have it and we were approached by an older japanese man while eating who asked if we were from America.　Here we go! Turns out he is a local spear fisherman who likes showing travelers around his home island. Maybe this sounds a bit sketchy by USA big city standards but somehow this is pretty normal while traveling. Lots of friendly people just like to have some refreshing company to mix up their routine. It was a good thing he showed us around as we would have not been able to do anything without a car and local knowledge. There were no cabs, buses, english speaking people or other travelers and the island was decidedly unwalkable. He showed us beautiful secret beaches, vast vistas with chilling stories of their wartime history, his favorite food and best of all...he set us up to go snorkeling and diving. Score! Although the dive was not mind-blowing, it was neat to dive with a local japanese guy. Kristi actually got a cooler experience as she snorkeled with our guide while he shot a 150 lb tuna with a speargun and watched him get dragged underwater where he nearly lost all of his gear and drowned. Exciting!

Overall this section of the trip has been a nice departure from the general hussle and bussle of mainland Japan. It has also been neat to stumble upon so many nice and welcoming people willing to share their time with complete strangeers. This has given me a chance to interact and hopefully understand the japanese culture a bit better. The contrast between cities and islands has also definitely reinforced my unending desire for glorious adventure and pristine beaches.

Now we have less than a week to blitz back to Tokyo with a more intense historical stop in Hiroshima.

See yall soon!

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Comments

[jlo]

Epic! Truly Epic!
Your travel adventures rule! you should have your own show on the travel channel... continue to rock ---

[Donnie]

Greetings from the land of the setting sun! Sounds like your openness and fearlessness is paying off. Thanks for sharing- I enjoy your real time travel journal greatly.

[Barbara Fotsch]

Great Stories
As usual, you raise the bar for the rest of us travelers. It sounds amazing, as you glance at the world from another new lense. Awesome.... Love Mommeee