Day Eighteen

Today I woke up late, and for a moment, wondered where I was.

Was there a life before this trip? I don't really remember.

The jet lag plus the diving, plus the late night, plus the heat had caught up with me. We got up at almost noon. I didn't feel too bad about it, we'd found out the night before that I wouldn't be able to dive today, so catching up on some sleep seemed viable. The boat Jan uses was full, so instead I had plans to dive tomorrow instead on a site with the exciting name of "Dreamhole". Today we thought would be good to have a look around Naha city.

Having Lindsay along is really interesting - she's lived in Japan for the past year, but has never been to Okinawa - so while everything about this place is new to me, she's able to be the tour guide/cultural instructor even though she's never been here either. Pretty unique situation. Most of the people i've visited/stayed with/met up with over the course of this trip have lived where I met them. Catherine lives in Saskatoon, Alex lives in Vancouver, Michelle doesn't live in Lund but she's been there several times before, so she knows it like she lives there (the Tilberg lands, at least). This is different.

There's a lot to remember here. I thought myself reasonably well-versed in Japanese culture. I'd watched Anime and Japanese films since I was a young kid, I'd taken classes in school to learn the language, and I'd read excessively about the place. But that never prepares you for living day-to-day. And even though it is a culture of 'respect', that doesn't always translate the way you imagine it would.

For example: Money is almost never exchanged hand to hand. At every cash register, there's a small rubber tray in which to put your payment. The cashier will then immediately pick it up, count it aloud, and hand you your change directly. Apparently, this is because hand to hand would imply that your money is being taken, which would be rude. Of course, your money is being taken...but that's not the issue. The customer is always right is a gross understatement of how retail's treated here. The customer must be absolutely catered to and have everything offered to them. However, in restaurants it's a little different.

If you want service in restaurant, you have to do something. If you simply sit, or close your menu as is common in North America, you'll be sitting a long time. You instead need to loudly shout "Sumimasen!" (pardon me) across the place, and then you'll be attended. You're approached only when you ask for the approach, which doesn't seem to fit in with the service culture we know and love - where more attention means better service. This however, is what a lot of us I feel would love to have! I know personally a number of people that have raved about when there's a "service button" (something pretty common here) in a North American restaurant, where you press it and the server comes by. This is a lot like that, so you're not bothered at your meal unless you'd like to be. The hinge here, is tipping.

In North America, it's expected of you to tip, regardless of how bad the service. Better service, better tips, and it's difficult to discern degrees of 'betterness' when all the service is relegated to call-button responses. I can just imagine if it were a report card: "Server came every time button was pressed, but came without notebook once. A minus." How do you reward excellence in that situation? You can't. But in Japan - you don't tip. So it's a moot point, and how often you're served is up to you.

The bowing, the formality, the excessive submission and politeness, these are things you learn about in books. Paying for things, calling the server...these are things you learn as you go.

• • •

After a quick visit to the Family Mart (Japan's 7-11), we headed for the car to check out the Shikinaen Royal Garden, a beautiful traditional 18th century Japanese royal home, formally used to receive important foreign dignitaries, royal family members, and distinguished guests.


We first had to pass the guard at the gates.

I've been so tired since being here, and had chalked it up to the time change at first, but it's the heat that takes it out of you - and it's not just humans that get the brunt of it. I don't think I saw very many animals on their feet, everyone's lazing about trying their best to beat the heat. 

Then began our tour of the Royal Residence, or as it's colloquially known, the Imperial Palace of Terrifying Spiders. 

There aren't many birds on Okinawa - the insects rule here. Cicadas (not small bugs) are so ubiquitous that everything else feels the need to keep up. If the cats and dogs can't keep their feet I can only imagine how hard it must be to take wing, there's no shade in the sky after all. The few birds that you do see are just the right size for food for a lot of these insects and arachnids.  

I'm not sure the species of this particular spider, but there were dozens of them all over the gardens. Massive things, the smallest being about the size of my palm, the largest the size of my entire hand, fingers outstretched. Most of them were...eating...

They just look sinister. It's one thing to be afraid of spiders - arachnophobia is largely unfounded in experiences...usually is induced by Hollywood movies. Most spiders we have in Canada however, not only are pretty benign, but they look harmless. Little brown house spiders, golden orbs, even the slightly more menacing wolf spider are all pretty average-looking. These things looked designed to inspire fear. Sickle-pointed black legs, with fluorescent yellow joints to emphasize the segmentation, a bright yellow and black abdomen that elongates to a tapered point, and needlepoint mandibles - the better to eat you with. You could throw them like a shuriken and they wouldn't even have to bite you...these things were eight-legged weapons. Or at least, they looked it. It sort of threw an ominous feel into the otherwise beautiful calm of the Royal Gardens...you really had to watch that you were on the path.

On the human-scale of the world though, things were beautiful and calm. The grounds are meticulously maintained, looking just like the photo of the grounds from the early 1800's in the pamphlet. Large koi meander through the ponds, and in and about the drainage all built of stone. Water striders dash hither and yon, trusting in fluid dynamics to keep them dry. Cicadas sing and sing, and flit about between the trees as they sing. The sound of Cicadas is the archetypal sound of summer in Japan. Anyone who's seen any Anime that takes place in summer would immediately recognize their trademark buzz/chirp. If the sound of rainfall invokes spring, so do the Cicadas invoke summer. It's amazingly iconic, and really immerses you in the sense of "Yes, you are in Japan.".

The meticulousness is on display everywhere, as umbrellas are provided to shade yourself on a sunny day. Polite signs exhibit unobtrusive engrish instructions, asking that you remove your shoes before entering any of the homes. The floors are pristine, since no one disobeys. The umbrellas aren't stolen, despite being unguarded and easily available. And the architecture is beautifully preserved.  It's like stepping back in time. 

Tiled roofs give way to wooden posts, some still in the shape of the trees they were cut from. Manicured wooden floors feel smooth underfoot, and tatami mats adorn the floor of every room. The gardens are beautiful too, full of palm trees, blossoms, and strange little climbing snails that live in the trees. Stone footbridges (my favourite part) allow crossing of the small estuaries that drain the pond, and provide drainage and in some cases, tiny artificial brooks that babble about the grounds. It really is beautiful, and very illustrative not just of the history, but of the practice of respect. 

We dabbled in some sweet-potato ice cream and then cruised off, hoping to visit one more destination we'd had in mind. En route, we noticed an excess of little shrines, the sort of thing built in place of a gravestone to honour a families relatives as they pass on.

An entire hilltop was given over to hundreds of shrines, all individual, all beautiful, and mostly cut from expensive stone like marble. None looked to have been visited in the last little while, and the path up to the top of the hill haphazardly zigged and zagged, as though each shrine had been built without really considering where the next would go. The view from the top was definitely worth it.

It looked almost like Greece, where all the houses are stone or adobe, and fit in wherever the hill or mountain could be flattened enough to accommodate them. Beautiful. 

We drove back toward Naha along the coast via the 58 (our lifeline for getting around Okinawa) and stopped to check out something we'd seen in passing the day before...

Picture little Italy. Now picture it if it was a theme park. Swap the iconography for American...and interpret it through a Japanese mind. Stick it on the coast across from the main entrance to a US Navy base, and voila! You've got American Village. 

It's...really really weird. I'd just left Vancouver, and this was the closest thing to North America I was likely to see. Mostly built for the marines, it was highly populated by Japanese, doing the 'cool' westerner stuff, buying the 'cool' clothes, eating 'real American food'. If you're into Asian culture at all, and you've visited Pacific Mall - this is like that on a way, way larger scale - and in reverse. 

Two blond girls walk into a Starbucks by the multiplex - what country was this photo taken in??? The Japanese mentality is what gives it the most charm though, so although you can drink a Starbucks or eat at Red Lobster, you can also buy clothes at "Respect", "Body Body", or "Life store". So very matter-of-fact. We ate some tacorice (think a taco without the shell) which it turns out is a very Okinawan thing, not an attempt at American food, and strolled about the half-outdoor market.

At night, all the neon lights get happening and it starts to feel like Disneyland. The souped-up cars start rolling in, and the Marines are out in force. There's bowling, movies, an arcade, and anything else you could think of. It's really weird - and had me homesick for the Japan I'd imagined. Lindsay however, having been in Japan for 7 months straight, and 12 altogether, was absolutely delighted at seeing even remotely familiar stuff. It's amazing how where you've been changes you, and I constantly had to remind myself that even though we're traveling together, we're coming from totally different places. She gushed at seeing foreigners, and it was amazing to see the familiarity light up her face. She's fairly isolated in her small town of Tsuno, and surrounded constantly by Japanese everything. Even the chance to speak English freely and consistently for longer than a few moments seemed to come as a relief - and so American Village was a welcome step on the journey, as bizarre as it was. 

We dropped the car in a lot we'd learned was inexpensive, and stopped for a quick coffee at a machine on the walk back to our hostel. Coffee Boss is a pretty ubiquitous brand in these machines, and boasts being "The Boss of them all."

Tommy Lee Jones, incidentally, is the coffee boss. His coffee is actually pretty good. 

Western celebrities have a practice of coming to Japan to do extremely bizarre and often unrelated advertising (see Cage, Nicolas) and it was funny to see the first of what I'm sure will be many familiar faces hocking coffee, and who knows what else. 

On our first night on the island we'd met the owner of our hostel, an American who'd married a girl from Okinawa and realized he was here to stay. Upon finding out that we were Canadian, he told us that we just had to check out a bar nearby called "The Eager Beaver" - a Canadian-theme bar that served, of all things, poutine. 

On our second night, sadly, we'd tried to find this place, and failed. We'd been given instructions by an enthusiastic New Zealander, who'd told us to follow Kokusai street to the monorail, and then turn down Mikishi until we see the giant beaver on the sign. Unfortunately, we guessed wrongly which street was Kokusai, but ran into the monorail after more or less the right amount of time (gave us a nice burst of false hope)...and discovered upon returning home that we'd gone in the opposite direction that we needed to. I guess you can't win 'em all. When you can't read the street signs though, it can be difficult. 

On our third night however, we finally found it! The unfortunate thing about it was that we'd found it on a Sunday night...and it was completely empty. Apparently, on weekends the place is a mosh pit, but we'd missed the boat whilst walking in the wrong direction. Too bad! I wanted to speak to the owner, but he wasn't in, so we spoke to the Australian guy working the bar about the weirdness of seeing all this Canadiana here in Okinawa. I commented that they needed to get a Jets flag to add to their collection.

Knowing that the bar was built and operated by a Canadian made it that much more interesting to review his choices on what constituted "Canadiana". Hockey gear, a taxidermied bear leaping out of the wall, loads of Canadian flags, some First Nations art (painted on the walls around the time of the Vancouver Olympics) and a few photographs of snow. It was odd, and quite contemplative sitting in this empty Canadian bar, barren of people, chatting with the bartender about what it was like normally, imagining seats filled, billiards clacking, the air buzzing with conversation in two languages, Orion beer flowing from the taps. Oddly, they didn't serve Canadian. Orion is the beer of Okinawa, and it's pretty good. It had been a long, full day - and somewhat anticlimactic - but we'd seen Japan's take on Japan, America, and Canada all in the space of one day. Pretty interesting way to weigh it all and see how we are seen.

I've just noticed how much i've rambled...if these posts keep ending up this long i'll be at this for the rest of my life. I'll do my best to abbreviate in the coming days. Okinawa's a strange island, and an odd way to meet Japan. It's like...being introduced to someone while they're on vacation. On Okinawa, Japan's halfway through a beer, wearing sunglasses and trying to remedy a serious farmer's tan.  It'll be interesting to see how he/she behaves when we see him/her back at the office.


-Jeff