Okinawa-rama

One of my favorite things to do in a foreign land is to ingratiate myself with local barmen and women. Call me a lush, but what better place way to gain a little insight to the local language and culture, than by consuming an alcoholic beverage or two and chatting up the poor captive bar staff? For me, the quality of food or beverage I'm paying for isn't of primary importance. What I appreciate is friendliness and hospitality. In fact, it's not beyond me to buy stuff I don't even like or need, just to get some good quality local folk time.

In Yomitan, there are just two places where I might consider myself to have earned the right to call myself a regular. One is actually a hair cutting joint called, "Tarm Powder". The other one is the bar. It's called www.sobeichuan.com
I love it!

Why do I love sobe.com? Because the people are just so freakin' friendly there! It's run by a young couple just moved from Tokyo. Their names are Ami and I remember their names because Ami left a note on the car windshield (after leaving it at the bar to take a cab home)thanking us for our visit and asking us to come again! Now, if that's not going above and beyond, I don't know what is. Ami also ordered me one of the Don't Worry Be Happy t-shirts she wears as a uniform after I told her I liked it (after just one visit there, mind you!). It's really cute. I wear it all the time.

And www. seems to attract customers who are just as kind. On Friday I went and talked with an older bike shop owner/taxi driver, who after only about 15 minutes of chit-chatting picked up my whole tab. Not in a sleazy, "I'm trying to make a move on you" way either. In a "I'm an unbelievably nice and generous person" kind of way. A couple of weeks ago, a hip 60 year old lady transplanted from Tokyo, invited me to join her and some companions to a traditional dinner theater. Wow!

Anyway, I always seem to leave www.sobe full of feelings of wellbeing and rightness with the world, having invariably being treated with warmth and kindness, having eaten well and spoken with friendly and interesting people. And that's the kind of experience I seek, not just here, but anywhere. I hope that I can return the kindness.

I thought it was about time I post some pictures of the house. Joe will probably kill me when he sees this, 'cause the house is a total mess (note Jiff Peanut Butter tub, and stick of deodorant...right on end table where it belongs). But oh well, I figure you should see the real Garcias. Plus, Joe's in Thailand where he can't do anything about it, for now.

Anyway, this picture is of our living room:





Here's our dining room/living room. Can you see that table under the window? Joe made it! All the other stuff Uncle Sam made (sofa, dining table, china cabinet, etc.)and will be returned to him upon move back to U.S.



We got this table about a week ago at one of the bazaars on base. It's supposed to be an antique. I'm starting to fall for the whole "Asian look", I admit.





Hold on! That's not a table. It's a desk!

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Sorry the pictures are blurry. Flash isn't working on the camera.

Last night I went to my first ever belly dancing class. It was on the third floor above the bento restaurant in Chatan. I went with my friend and workout partner, Kay, who had found the place on-line. Tired of working out in a gym, and in an attempt to forge bonds with actual Japanese people, we figured Japanese belly dancing class was the way to go.

We were late, of course, and the 1.5 hour long class was already well underway when we arrived. Ladies were on the floor stetching out, toe to toe. The place was packed! Fortunately, they were all very friendly and accomodating. Someone appeared with a couple of mats for us and we scooted into position on the floor joining the group for "hip opening" stretches.

I learned a couple of things in my belly dancing lesson.

1. While I may have been flexible in the fifth grade, or even the tenth. Now, I am not. I guess I should have hopped on the yoga bandwagon long ago.

2. There's nothing like gyrating your body in skintight pants with shirt tucked under bra, in a room of 20 similarly dressed Japanese women to make one feel...how shall I put this - overnourished.

I had never seem my belly fat move with such vitality. In fact, I was under the mistaken notion that my belly was somewhat lean, at least compared to the butt, thighs, and hips. These problem spots, I realized, had allowed me to conveniently overlook my belly jelly.

Had I been dancing in a room of American women, I might have been able to blissfully continue the self deception. Here, however, that was absolutely not possible. I quickly untucked my shirt and pulled it back over my stomache, and there it stayed for the remainder of the class.


Despite the whole jelly belly business, belly dancing was awesome! I totally dug it and plan to go again as often as possible. My respect for Shakira has grown a thousand fold. Wow! It's hard stuff.

On Monday, I went on another field trip with the frame gang. We went with Danielle, my underwater dive photographer friend and honorary frame gang member. (She mats and frames a lot of her work at the shop, a lot of the time.) Danielle is also a fellow ESL teacher. She did some translating and stuff for a student of hers and as thanks got 10 free passes to this stone spa place. She invited us to use them up with her.

I'd heard of the Japanese bath houses before - places where you need to bathe in order bathe. Where you shield your private bits from view with some tiny washcloth thing. Where tattoos are forbidden so as to keep out Japanese mafia. They seem like "real Japan" to me, some secret world that I haven't had the guts yet to enter. I didn't know if this stone spa place was considered a bath house or not, but I hoped so.

We got there, all 6 of us, and entered the small building. We took off our shoes and put them in numbered lockers before approaching the front desk. The lady at the counter smiled and extended hand her hand to take the keys. In return, she handed us metal baskets containing three neatly folded towels and a set of pajamas. Pajamas? What were they for? I thought we were supposed to be naked. Did we wear the pajamas and then remove them? Hmmm...

We all hung around the desk wondering what to do. We did have two Japanese speakers with us, but they had never been to such a place either. They were just as clueless as the rest of us.

Somehow, we managed to find the locker room. I took off all my clothes and put on my pajamas. Sue, Danielle, Rachel and Erica more modestly decided to put bathing suits under their PJs. "At least the bottoms", they agreed. I was kind of proud then of my bravery at deciding I'd go in the buck, like I figured all Japanese did. I figured, what the hell, I had seen naked 80 year olds on a regular basis in my gym locker room in Vermont. If they can prance around naked, so can I! (I must qualify all this by saying that I was under the assumption that the sauna room as NOT co-ed!)

After we changed, we picked up our baskets of towels and wondered, (very loudly and obnoxiously - I felt sorry for the other patrons!) what we were supposed to do next. Fortunately, there was a cartoon picture on the locker room wall with what looked like instructions. I noticed in that the cartoon girl in the picture was fully dressed. Sue translated.

You lay on your front for five minutes, then flip over on your back for ten minutes, then go outside to take a break, then go back in and do it all over again. Okay, easy enough. Purpose: to rid body of nasty toxins and impurities.

Tentatively, we entered the door into the room that we were supposed to do the laying and flipping in, still unsure of the state of undress we were supposed to do it in.

The room was hot. F*ckin' hot. It was small and hot with no furniture or windows, with little concrete dividers set in the floor, separating the "heating booths", if you will. There were two ladies already in the room laying silently on the floor of their stalls. They were fully clothed. I felt relief, I admit, but also disappointment. I had wanted to put my bravery to the test.

Following one another's lead, we all spread our towels on the stall floors and laid, face down, on top of them. Our heads rested on these surprisingly comfortable wicker pillows. I looked at the clock. Five minutes.

I was already sweating before I even got on the floor. I could feel the stickiness of my hair against my scalp. My pajamas clinging to me. It was hot.

I like the heat. I like saunas. But this was hot one some excrutiating level. The tiled floor radiated heat through the towel. It felt like being locked up in an unmoving summertime car. With no air conditioning. (The stones of the "stone spa", were in the floor tiles, I guess. There were no warm stones placed on your back, or anything like that. It was just like a really really hot sauna.)

I flipped over before my five minutes was up. The sweat began to soak through my pjs in unlikely places; like my shins and forearms. I saw that there was some kind of laminated pamphlet in the corner of my stall. I reached for it. Thank Godness, I thought, a distraction.

It was a cartoon, in Japanese of a family, going to a spa. I think. A mom, dad, grandpa and little boy. The family seemed to be telling the boy that they were off to the bath house. The boy exclaimed something with glee. Then he got reprimanded. I guess he was too joyful. I flipped through trying to make my own little English language story for them...but I just...couldn't...concentrate.

I looked up. Five more minutes. I wondered if this was some kind of awful device to cook foreigners.

Okay...we had all had enough at about the same time and got the hell out of there. We were soaked. It was break time. We sat in the cafe-style break room comparing notes about how hot we were. Sue got up and came back with a tiny scoop full of salt and distributed a little to each of us. "We're supposed to eat it" she said. The salt was strong and weird tasting. We sat in the break room for a long time, chatting, watching the rain and reading Japanese magazines.

We went back in for round two.

Ahhhh. It still sucked. But, we endured. Although, none of us felt able enough to do the recommended third round. We just hung out for "break", basking in the toxin-free-ness that we were supposed to have gained from the sweat bath, and decided to call it a day.

Would I go back? Well, sure. The sense of relief you got upon exiting the hot room, made it almost worth it. And who knows...maybe I dropped a pound or two in the process?

Today I dropped off Joe for yet another exciting work expedition in a foreign land. It’s such a downer, driving to the airport, mecca of travel adventure possibilities, depositing loved one to go and have them (without you) and exiting the airport for continuation of mundane life routine.

But, this particular day was a Sunday and I didn’t have anything to do. And Sundays are the days that I like to hop in the car and just drive and see where I’ll end up, and what I’ll end up doing.

So, I left Joe at the airport and headed to Kokusai Street.

I’ve been to Kokusai Street several times before. It’s kind of the “Broadway” of Okinawa. Although, having moved from New York City to Okinawa, I have to admit that it’s somewhat of a stretch. It does have a Starbucks on it, but that, and that it’s a street are pretty much where the similarities end.

But, having lived in Okinawa for over a year now, Kokusai Street does, indeed, seem the happenin’ place to be. I decided to park my car and check out the little seedy side streets shooting off from Kokusai.

Being just a little bit before 10am (on Sunday remember), Kokusai Street had that slow morning after Saturday night drunken feel, where the only people up are hearty tourists, the odd shop owner, drunks, and people like me in search of … well, some kind of experience.

I checked my little Japanese change purse. I only had 1100 yen. (about $10) I’d need a couple hundred at least to pay for parking. My experience would have to be cheap.

I passed the Starbuck’s and I admit, half longed to go in. Nothing like a jolt of caffeine to jump-start adventure. But, I’d already had my “Coffee of the Day, Tall, Hot-o, Onegeishimasu”, at the Drive-thru Starbucks, so I moved on.

I decided to cross the street and stroll (with purpose mind you) up one of those seedy Sunday morning back alleys. It would bring me back to those good ole days of stumbling home through early morning developing country side streets in full go-out gear while people are going to church. Only it was about 10 am, and I wasn’t in a developing country, and I hadn’t been out all night (I got home at about 7:30pm last night… whew!) and the people weren’t going to church.

But, it kind of had that feel anyway. I remember it was on a vacation in Costa Rica (walking downtown on a Sunday morning on the “Broadway” of San Jose) that I began to draw comparisons between the developing nations of the world. There was that same kind of dirt and grime of the city streets, litter in the gutter. There was the morning sunshine, the awakening of the city. The sound of metal storefronts being lifted up. The self absorbed silence of people preparing to embark on a busy day: business women in still full makeup, uniformed schoolkids heading to school, shop owners sweeping their storefronts. The start of the hustle.

Okay, so maybe it’s not a developing nation thing. Maybe it’s a city thing. It’s the same in New York City as it is in Busan, Korea as it is in San Jose, Costa Rica, as it is in Naha, Okinawa, Japan. It’s gritty and grimy and somehow I like it. It reminds me of good times and being alive. And that’s how I felt this morning, exploring my little city.

I moved up the side street eager to see new things, curious eyes hidden behind my enormous sunglasses. Almost everything was closed and the odd bicyclist slid on past. I kept walking and the alley deposited me into a covered street market. I had been there before. Row upon row of shop selling almost the exact same thing, ceramic shisa lions, seaglass jewelry, weird Okinawan candies or bottles of awamori with habu snakes embalmed inside, pottery and hand-blown Okinawan glass. And of course the inevitable array of Chinese Cheap Stuff: plastic clocks, polyester old lady shirts, small uncomfortable-looking slippers and faux running waterfalls.

Anyhow, most of the shops were closed, so I kept on walking. This covered street market thing (just alleys covered with plastic roofing like you’d find on a shed) - I had thought it was just two long streets running parallel to one another. But today, I discovered it was a gigantic, incomprehensible maze. Alley after alley tumbling into one another, and they all looked the same. Eventually, I didn’t care what I saw, I just wanted out of the gloom and into the natural sunlight.

Finally, I made it out blinking into the light and was excited ’causeI’d ended up in a spot that I had never been to before…and I saw food! Trying out local foods is an essential part of any adventure, in my mind. I stopped at the nearest street-food stand. It had a lot of fried stuff in it, and I like fried stuff. I got the most familiar looking item. I was hungry and didn’t feel too adventurous, well at least when it came to satisfying my stomach. It was an Okinawan doughnut, only 30yen (like a quarter). It was greasy and good and the lady gave me a whole packet of tissues to clean my greasy fingers with. I crossed the street, doughnut in hand, to what looked to me like really old-timey, run down Asian buildings. You know, the kind with tiled sloped roofs. There were clothes drying between them, a little canal, people emptying crates of God-knows-what. Although the area looked old and foreign and therefore interesting, I began to feel really out of place, ’cause there were no apartments, or stores or any reason whatsoever for a sober gaijin like me to be wondering through there. So I just to continued to gnaw on my doughnut, cool-like, and moved on.

The next street led me to a park. Yes, a park! The most, sketchy, adventuresome of places…where random people approach you and propose any number of sordid and vile things. I decided to walk though. It was daylight, how terrible could it be? (I told myself, knowing just how terrible a day-lit park could be, especially a rundown one like this one.) I walked up a windy path to the peak of the hill and looked down.

Yes, the usual suspects. Woman reading newspaper…or is she? Man staring into space. Other man with bad shoes, doing something… I moved down the slope, there was some interesting activity below and I walked towards it. A cafe, perhaps?…No, it’s a glass blowing studio. But of course.

It was hot as hell there, and I was just on the periphery of the studio. Three or four people were inside, silently heating glass, blowing glass, shaping it and cutting it. I sat on a bench out front and watched, sweating, dear lord, I wanted to pull my shirt off.

An old man across the plaza where I sat gestured. I ignored. Who, me? He stood up and shuffled towards me, belt somewhat asunder. Yes, of course to me (magnet that I am for oddballs in parks.) He pointed to the glass blowers and beckoned me to stand up and look, really look at what they were doing. So, okay, I did. He mimed blowing glass. He flicked his hand to the blowers. Yes, indeed, they were blowing glass. He said, “okay…okay”, gestured, and shuffled back to his bench. I looked at the glass blowers, watching keenly (as instructed), looked toward the old man and smiled appreciatively, “arigato gozaimasu” and sat again. The glass was very pretty, I admit. The man stood up again, approached me and the glass blowers, did some more gesturing. He was helping me out, sharing his knowledge. A glass blower turned around a wooden sign in Japanese. What did it say? “Finish”, the old man muttered and motioned to me to check out some other studio where they were making shisas.

But I didn’t go. I was hot. I felt fulfilled. I had had a cheap oily doughnut, walked through a sketchy park, had some strange old dude approach me, and witnessed some glass making.

Ahh…a perfect foreign country Sunday morning. (And I didn’t even have to step on an airplane.)

NPR informs me that today is National High Five Day. So, I wikipediad it. Here's an amusing article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-five

This Sunday was a rainy, dreary day. But, Joe and I decided to take a trip to the Southeast Botanical Gardens regardless. Low and behold right when we got there the sun came out. Here are some pictures:


Entering the Gardens the maps confused me:


This purty flower is called a Jade Vine:



Oh my gosh! The vines are attacking Joe!



We fed some fish. They were HUNGRY! Check out that big sucker in the middle!



We fed some goats too! It was a nice little trip.

So, we have Geckos in our house and apparently they're multiplying. I personally enjoy having the Geckos around the house. The Okinawans consider it a sign of good luck and besides they eat the bugs. Kelly insists we don't have any bugs and I tell her; "Of course we don't have any bugs, the Geckos ate them all."

So here's a picture of the newest addition to our household.

Geckos RULE!

Funny show from England. The Militant Black Guy. If your offended by foul language, you might want to skip this.

"Stay off the Grass...Do I look stoned to you!"


Balls Of Steel Militant Black Guy - Click Here for more great videos and pictures!