Adventures in Japan

More Soggy Wanderings

The weather has turned towards the 'less good' side these last few days. Not bad weather, the temperatures are still in the double digits, but there is rain now and wind. I'm not so much complaining as setting the scene.

We got another early start today, yay us! We ate at another quasi-hidden coffee house and read old Japanese comic magazines as we ate our breakfasts. It's a nice way to start the day. Beats the hell out of instant curry. After the most important meal of the day we caught a monorail (have we mentioned the monorails yet? They are so cute!) that took us to the bus station where we caught a bus that drove past the station where we caught the monorail (thanks for nothing Lonely Planet). The bus eventually deposited us 2.8 kilometers from our destination. Our travel books said that there was a connecting bus we had to catch, but no such bus exists. We warmed our bellies with some food from a restaurant called Chaplin, in honour of some guy named Charlie. Just because.

Then we walked to our first destination, Nakamura Ke/House. The walk took us past a U.S. military base and we saw lots of guys with short hair and women and children with big butts. Somewhere along the way it began to rain. That mean kind of rain that circumvents any attempt to umbrella it by being blown around in every direction. Stupid jerk rain. Today is the day that I learned that my left shoe has a leak in it somewhere. But the walk was nice in spite of the weather and the fact that the bulk of it was uphill. The island of Okinawa is fairly different from the rest of Japan. Much more tropical, much more green. And the area we were walking through was fairly hilly. Long ago people, important people, used to bury their relatives in neat looking tombs in the sides of these hills. The tombs are still there. But right next to a half century old tomb is a new condo, or a freeway. Kind of jarring.


We made it to Nakamura House, paid the lowish entrance fee and poked around. Nakamura House is basically just an old house. About 500 years old. It's built in the traditional Okinawan style, which is a distinctive blend of Chinese and Japanese architecture. The other problem with the weather today is that it made all our pictures look kind of dull and blah. But the house was neither blah nor dull. It was big, breezy and beautiful.


From there we walked to the Nakagusuku castle ruins. The castle ruins are older than the house. And they are in slightly less good shape. But still about as interesting as collections of rocks can be. Basically all that remains of the castle are the distinctive curvy walls. Which were in the process of being pulled apart brick by brick for reasons beyond our ken. It was interesting to see the walls disassembled. Made me appreciate even more just how much planning and effort went into making these things. Plus the views were quite nice. On a clear day, I daresay they'd be spectacular.


We thought about heading to Okinawa city, but my foot was soaking in its own soakings and we both reckoned Okinawa would just be a smaller Naha with more white people. So we went back home.

A word about tacos. They eat a lot of tacos down here on Okinawa island. Sometimes they put it on rice. Sometimes they use tuna instead of beef. Most times they deep fry the shell before they make the taco. I like it. Mexican food was too healthy. Deep fried tacos are right up there with crisp meat burritos in my books.

We went to another steak house for dinner because it was our last night in Okinawa. A lot like our other Okinawan steak dinner but with a less impressive cook and more Spam. They really like their Spam over here. I seriously thought about getting someone some Turkey Spam as a souvenir but then decided against it. I also decided against getting James a dried frog change purse to go with his kangaroo scrotum change purse from Australia.

We bought some alcohol to share with the rest of the gang back at Cam Cam and had us a good time. The Japanese seemed to really like their introduction to the Wyoming Stetson. There was a reggae party going on somewhere nearby but it didn't start until two in the morning and everyone kind of powdered out at around one. Oh well.