Adventures in Japan

I'm on vacation so I don't need to think of witty titles

It took a couple of hours to find our hostel. Turns out it was a two minute walk from the station we started from. Luckily the weather was fine. It has been a few months since I have been able to wander around outside wearing only a T-shirt.

So we found the place, Carla popped her head in and I stayed outside. I heard a question, "Schwartz?" and an answer, "Yes" and then I heard a whole mess of people loudly say, "Hello!" I went in to see what was going on. I entered the common room and people started talking to me. Carla was already in conversation with others. We were the only white people there. But everyone was super duper friendly. When we mentioned that we were a little hungry, two people (Jun and Rieko) stood up and escorted us to a cheap and tasty noodle shop. An Okinawan noodle shop. It served SoKi SoBa, which was quite nummy IMHO. The noodles were different than any I've had thus far and the meat in the soup was rib meat. I love ribs. Rib meat that has been simmering in soup stock? I highly recommend it. And there was a lot of meat for the price. I added a few dashes of Okinawan hot sauce and was nearly in heaven.

After supper, Jun and Rieko (who I introduced in a parenthetical aside so referring to them in the actual text is kind of a no-no. Whatever. Or, as the Japanese say Ma E Wa) took us to a cherry blossom festival. Cherry blossoms are kind of a big deal in Japan. They haven't started to bloom yet on the main island but they seem to be doing alright down here. So we looked at some cherry blossoms, chatted some more and met up with Rieko' sister, Mieko. We wandered back to the CamCam (the name of the hostel) and were included in a whole lot of drinking. People just kept pouring us AwaMori, an Okinawan liquor. We also had a big can of Orion, the Okinawan beer. Jun challenged me to a fighting game on the PS2 that they had in the lounge. He did a masterful job of making me think that I was holding my own when in reality he could have slaughtered me at any time. It wasn't until I saw him have a match against someone else who actually knew what they were doing that I realized just how big, thick and wooly the kid gloves he was wearing for me were. I can respect that.

Also, free internet. That's how I'm sending these words out to y'all.