Wonder x Jungle: Okinawa, Japan (Part 1 of 2)
History lessons and convenience stores
The first flight to Fukuoka was less than an hour, which was expected but still surprising. Again, here was the experience of “everything feels familiar and yet different.” In the airport, the biggest realization was how different the Japanese were from the Koreans in their attitude about the English language. Let’s put it this way: the staff in the check-in counters and in the restaurants in the food court of the airport could barely communicate in English. For the record, I am all for maintaining one’s language — unlike Korea which sometimes acts as if it were America’s 51st state — but I don’t think it unreasonable to expect the staff in international airports to speak passable English… I was eternally grateful for the translation app on my phone.
The food court in the Fukuoka airport — AITA code FUK — and its many traditional Hakata foods such as cakes, cookies, and fish roe looked delightful. Or perhaps we didn’t have any baseline to judge… but they did seem much better than the usual fare one can get in American airports (here’s looking at you, giant bars of Toblerone). For lunch, we had bowls of udon and, for dessert, soft serve ice cream with honey and honeycomb.
While waiting by the gate for our flight to Okinawa, N. kept a close eye on the gate staff. He kept exclaiming, “Wow, look! The staff by the gate appears at the desk from time to time and offers deep bows to the waiting passengers!” Every time he said this, I looked up and missed the respectful bows sent my way. It happened about four times, and I missed each one, to the point where I was wondering if N. was just making it up to annoy me.
For the record: budget airlines in Japan offer passengers coffee or apple juice and dark chocolate kit kats. And credit where credit is due: the flight attendant during this flight came to ask something and when I told her that I did not speak Japanese, she was the first person we encountered who spoke English easily.
Upon arrival in Okinawa, the first surprise was the multiple orchid arrangements throughout the airport. I know how temperamental orchids can be; a master gardener was in charge of these plants.
After taking a taxi to our hotel, we had barely enough energy to find a place for dinner, so we walked around the corner of our hotel to a random izakaya place. Just 15 customers would fill the whole place, but only two were there when we arrived. We were glad: if the place had been crowded with locals, I don’t think we would have mustered the courage to sit down and bother a busy chef.
I had used the translation app to try to decipher the menu, but with many of the items, the app just provided a transliterated term — “Sasami (Wakibi or Rame)” — that was not helpful in letting us know what exactly the menu item was. We decided to be adventurous, ordering the first five items on what looked to be the protein menu and another five from the list of vegetables. We managed to communicate to the chef that we would like a couple of draft beers as well.
Because no other customers were in the shop — there were a couple of “Reserved” signs about and the pair of old friends had left by now — the chef had the time to humor us. He was trying to communicate by pointing this way and that around his shop to the many bottles of rice and sweet potato sake, whiskies, beers.
Our mystery dishes began to reveal themselves: soy sauce braised chicken wings with radish, radish slices pickled with wasabi, grilled shishito peppers with bonito, green onions and mushrooms, grilled chicken neck, beef heart, sand liver (?). We asked the chef to recommend a sake with our meal. He offered us one glass from a very large bottle — and poured generously into a small shot glass inside a small square bowl, overflowing the glass and filling the bowl. He motioned to us that we should drink from the glass and then, for an extra drink, pour the overflow into the glass for a second shot. What a happy tradition!
The chef had decorated his small restaurant with bottles of sake and Japanese whiskey, along with pictures of his golf buddies. I found one in which he appeared wearing black slacks and red shirt. I know absolutely nothing about golf, but I pointed to his picture and blurted, “Tiger Woods!” He grinned sheepishly. We thanked him for a great experience.
For dessert, we stopped by Lawsons, grabbed random snacks and had our “snack nightcap” in the hotel lobby. (I was determined to end the day at a Japanese convenience store every day we were here.)
For the record, our hotel looked like one of those boutique hotels, so I’m not complaining but… the footprint of our room was about 10ft x 15ft. Our bed was up against one wall and both of us at once could not fit into the entrance hall. Bigger than a capsule hotel, I guess. Definitely a Japanese thing.
Not bad for our first day in Okinawa.
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Our day started with a breakfast of Japanese tofu soup for N. and taco rice for me. As is common in many restaurants in Japan, this place had a ticketing machine by the door in which diners placed their orders. We were glad to see that they had a button for “English”, but the sense of relief was short-lived since as soon as we left the main menu, we were shown a page that described each dish… in Japanese! The kind waitress helped us avoid starvation.
The tofu soup was a comforting bowl of blobs of tofu swimming in warm broth; it was served with a bowl of rice with seaweed salad, seasoned carrots, and sweet fermented soybean sauce as mix-ins. Taco rice is exactly what it sounds like: ground beef, lettuce, diced tomatoes on a bed of white Japanese rice. It also tastes exactly as one expects. Supposedly, it was a dish invented by a local chef who wanted to cater to American soldiers in the military bases in Okinawa. I’m guessing it’s a cousin to the Hawaiian Loco Moco — that dish with a beef patty smothered in gravy and served with a fried egg on a bed of rice. Now that I have tried both dishes, I do not feel the need to try them again for the rest of my life (although my children believe that my dislike of these dishes does not reflect well on me).
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Our touristy day began with a long taxi ride to the eastern side of the island, to the Okinawa Prefecture Peace Memorial Museum. On the drive, on this bright sunny day, we got a better glimpse of the island. Matching the impression that we had on the airport yesterday — when we noticed taxis that looked as if they had been frozen in the 1980’s and just recently been defrosted and put on Okinawan roads — we didn’t see any buildings, bridges, or other structures that seemed to have been built within the last 40 years. Most of them showed peeling paint, rusted metal, and in the farms in the outer suburbs of Naha, broken glass in farm hothouses. Weirdly, the Japanese did even such dilapidation in style — everything seemed to be maintained as well as possible. Old but neat.
At the museum, after getting our tickets, I saw that they offered iPods with guided tours in English, so we popped on the earphones, put our cameras away (in respect for the somberness of the place, no photography was allowed), and marched to the permanent exhibit.
Heavens knows that we have been to our share of museums, but this one did an incredible job of conveying the history of Okinawa — from its early connections to China, its colonial rule by the Japanese, its devastation during World War II — in a way that was informative and moving. Although I had had a professional interest in American history in my previous life, I had not been too familiar with military history as related to the significance of what happened in Okinawa during the Pacific theater of the war. The phrase “total war” seems to have applied. By the time we watched a movie about the Allied campaign in Okinawa, the brutality of battle, the fate of civilians, it was hard to contain tears.
As we exited the exhibit on the 2nd floor, we came upon large clear windows that faced the waves of the Pacific. It was easy to imagine what the coast and the sea must have looked like at the end of the war, when bombs and artillery and fire scarred land and killed people. Outside, the area was now beautiful, with a somberness and quiet today punctuated by groups of local schoolchildren for whom I imagine a visit to this museum is compulsory. I said a little prayer that the only war they would experience would be the kind in museums.
On the grounds, the Cornerstone of Peace was comprised of marble slabs engraved with the the names of those who died during WWII — Japanese and Okinawan military and civilian, and foreigner military from the United States, Korea, and others. It reminded me of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
We wandered around Mabuni Hill, where different villages around the islands of Okinawa had erected stones of remembrance for the war dead. From there, we took a series of steps that led us down to a quiet secluded beach.
What comes down (to the beach) must go up (Mabuni Hill). And so we hiked up with plans to go for lunch nearby, plans with where foiled when our ride app simply informed us, “No taxis available”. So we hiked some more — surely taxis would be waiting around the entrance of the most famous museum in Okinawa?
As we made our way to the entrance, we passed large parking lots with a few tour buses. I was surprised to see groups of American young men — obviously soldiers from military bases on the islands — buying ice cream cones after a visit to the museum. There was a weird sense of cognitive dissonance in the US military organizing soldiers to tour a museum dedicated to the idea of peace.
Well, no taxis. We had been wondering if we should walk to the main highway and stick out our thumbs, when the electric golf cart driver — 100 yen for a ride around the grounds of the museum — spoke Japanese words that I guessed were the equivalent of, “Do you want to hop in?” I politely declined but did think to use the translation app to ask him where to get a taxi. He suggested that we go into the information building and ask someone there. The kind lady at the desk called a taxi for us and saved the day.
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We went to the Naha City Hall, a very tall building by Naha standards in a style that evoked what I guessed the future would look like in the imagination of someone from forty years ago (a running theme here, it seems). Its white facade was done up in smooth lines, making the whole structure look like an apartment complex from the Jetsons or just a gigantic while Lego building. I don’t know anything about architecture, but I assume that the greenery in almost every nook and cranny was meant to soften the harsh lines.
N. seemed uncharacteristically uninterested in the building. We popped into an alley nearby, opened the door to a tiny restaurant on the 2nd floor, and inhaled the spicy curry-scented air. An old chef — wearing an aloha shirt and rocking a goatee — quickly brought us a menu in English and took our order: one cutlet curry rice and one shrimp curry rice. By the time we were done with our meal, there was not a spoonful left.
While N. walked back to the hotel, I walked to the Don Quijote Naha Tsubogawa — absolute chaos. The goods, the signs, the madhouse of sounds — I was just shocked, trying to absorb and process the stimulation. I picked up a few things and made my way back to the hotel.
By the time I woke up from my nap — at 8 pm — it was too late to go out; besides, neither N. nor I was very hungry. So we did what we may be able to do only in Japan: get enough snacks for a meal from the nearby 7-11 store — where a worker of South Asian descent at the checkout register spoke perfect Japanese.
No one can sing enough praises to Japanese convenient stores: yes, they have the junk snacks and junk candy, but they also have actual food from which anyone can build a good meal. Triangular rice patties with tuna or salmon or pollack roe; salad kits with greens, tuna, tofu and seaweed; single serving boxes of protein (grilled fatty pork, charcoal grilled gizzards); pickled vegetables; donburi one-bowl meals; dessert cups; infinite varieties of ramen. Beyond food, this 7-11 also offered pet foods, a good selection of toiletries (including packets of single-serving toothpaste), and Japanese manga.
So I have decided that my version of heaven must, at a bare minimum, include our little family dog and Japanese convenience stores.
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The thought occurred to me last night that, if I was beginning to feel a bit frustrated by incomplete understanding of the language while in Korea, I’ve got myself a full blown crisis in Okinawa where the only phrases I know are, “Arigato!”, “Itadakimase!” and “Choto-mate!”
Breakfast was at a coffee shop closeby where the barista made some serious coffee — Okinawan brown sugar coffee and coffee with soy milk — which we ordered with egg sandwiches. The latter arrived with what Americans would call egg salad fillings, but warm instead of cold. It was an interesting enough concept that the chef in me went, “Eureka!” Who would have thought to put egg salad between two pieces of bread and then toast the whole shebang in the oven? Travel and learn. The cafe itself oozed charm: our table was actually the frame of an ancient Singer sewing machine which had been given a new wooden tabletop. On the way out, N. asked for another Okinawan brown sugar coffee to go — it was that good.
We grabbed a taxi for the airport, not to leave Okinawa but to pick up our rental car. This took longer than expected and we could not get the screen in the car to connect to our phones for navigation. The young man from the car rental office bowed repeatedly in apology, so we felt bad that he felt bad and drove off the lot.
Driving in Japan is, like in Britain, on the left side of the road. Internet gods indicate that the reason for this practice lies in Japanese history. In the Edo period (17th-19th centuries), samurai carried swords on their left side, in order to un-sheath them quickly with their right hands. Doing so left the tips overhanging to their left side. (Question: were there no left-handed samurai in imperial Japan?) So imagine two samurai, each walking on the right sides from opposite directions on a path: their swords would hit and clang. So the simple and elegant solution: have the sword-wielding samurai walk on the left side of a two-way street, et voila! No hitting or clanging of swords. As far as I could see, no drivers in Japan carried samurai swords, but the practice of walking/driving on the left side stuck.
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Something that must not be left unmentioned is the fact that it’s hard to ignore how everything in Japan, compared to the size and scale of things in the US, looks shrunken by about 30%: buildings, hotel rooms, cars and trucks, food portions. And lest that sound like a complaint, let me make it clear that we find the sizes of things in Japan perfect, from our diminutive perspective. It’s as if, after having spent a whole lifetime in the land of giants, we suddenly found ourselves in a country where things are designed for our petite sizes.
In my previous life, when particularly tall students walked into my classroom on the first day, I used to mention, completely without evidence, that research showed that 5 foot 4 inches — which just happened to be my height — was perfect for the sustainability of the planet, since anything taller used too much energy and put too much stress on Mother Earth. This information usually led students to crack a smile and, having so broken a bit of the ice, we continued with the more serious business at hand.
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With the independence gained by our wheels, we drove to the Himeyuri Cenotaph and Museum for another dose of World War II history.
Himeyuri was a residential school — entrance exams required — for the girls of the affluent families of Okinawa. But because of bad luck and bad timing and bad leaders, instead of math, tennis lessons, and the arts, girls ages 13 to 19 were conscripted into the war as nurses for the Japanese army during World War II. While basically starving — a single golf-ball of rice a day on ‘good’ days — the girls took care of wounded soldiers while living in underground caves which were constantly under the barrage of gunfire, bombs and flame throwers.
Among the personal belongings of the students on display was a notebook that a student was given with encouraging messages written by classmates and friends upon her leaving the school. This one artifact somehow made this student’s experience closer to me because I had a similar notebook in my elementary school days. In my school, it had been customary for students to have individual notebooks that we gave to our friends to sign and write messages at the end of the school year. This was our version of the end-of-the-year yearbook. And I still have mine.
The most touching part of the museum’s display were the videos of personal testimony from the survivors — of 360 students, only about 100 survived the Battle of Okinawa — recorded when they were 60 to 70 years old. They described horrific conditions, small random turn of events that led to their survival, memories of friends they lost. A few mentioned their hope that such atrocities would never repeat themselves.
As I write this in January of 2024, I fear their hope has yet to materialize.
[In respect for the somber nature of the museum, photography was not allowed, except for pictures of the cenotaph above the cave where the students had been hiding during the war.]
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We enjoyed traditional Okinawan soba at a traditional Okinawan house that had survived the bombing during the war.
The house included a stone wall, tile roof protected by a shisa lion, and an extensive garden. Inside, we took our shoes off before sitting on tatami mats on low tables. The bookcases, wall hangings, and knickknacks made us feel that we had been invited into someone’s home. Okinawan soba seemed actually a cousin of the Korean kalguksu — homemade wheat noodles in a rich meat broth. Our meal set came with rice mixed with veggies and pungent acidic side dishes that contrasted with the richness of the noodles. N.’s favorite, of course, was dessert: shaved ice with milk and red beans with a side of mangoes.
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