Well I am back on my island now. I just spent a crazy 5 days on the mainland. Let me give you the details. I arrived in Naha on Thursday late afternoon and met up with Andy and Brett, the two other islanders who I had planned this trip with. We went to the Ryokan which we were staying at, just off Kokusidori (the main street in Naha). It was very nice and the women at reception had my key ready and waiting, I didn’t have to tell her I had a reservation or anything, I guess it was obvious that I was the third gaijin staying. The room was nice and large, and had a bed, awesome. I then went to take a shower and woah! It was a real Japanese shower room, with the little stools and the bath etc. So we all took a lovely communal shower and I won’t lie, there was a little bit of a towel/water fight. We then went out to hit the town, just us three islanders. After some HUGE and juicy steaks (don’t get them on my island) we tried to find some bars. The first bar we went to had a Japanese only sign on the door, grrrrrrrrrrrrr, that made us feel angry, but then the next bar (club really) we hit made up for that. We got given a free bottle of bourbon just because we were gaijin, well I assume that’s the reason, maybe they just liked us, but we were the only gaijin there and no-one else got free drink and I don’t think our dancing was that good. It is somewhat true that Japanese either love or hate gaijin/Americans. Oh yes we also played on arcade machines for sometime, as again they don’t exist on our island, until some very drunk and noisy marines came in, at which point we left.
During Friday we managed to get re-entry permits in our passports so that’s out of the way now. We also went to hand out with Eleanor at her school and she showed us a cool little cigar shop. And now onto Friday night. Things got a little bit crazy. We bought a bottle of habushu and brought that to Paul and mikes with us, were we met up with many other ALTs. Habushu is a drink made of oikamore which has a live Habu snake put in before the bottle is sealed up. The Habu snake is quite poisonous and of course its poison gets into the drink, giving that extra kick. Well not that I remember much of the night but it was certainly crazy and very fun, well I am assuming so by the pictures I took. We all woke up still slightly drunk and after taking our communal shower we went to visit the golden arches, mmmmmmmmmmmm that was the best breakfast ever. We each had two burgers and that first big mac I had tasted of heaven. I normally despise MacDonald’s but right then and there it was perfect.
We spent the rest of Saturday in our Ryokan mostly, although we did venture out and have ourselves some massages, very nice indeed. That night we went to Kerry’s house but unfortunately we missed Elvira’s Mexican food, we were messing about in a Mall, everybody said it was awesome, maybe some other time! We played some drinking games at Kerry’s before heading onto karaoke. We extended out time three times, so there was much singing and fun had. We three islanders decided to head home after karaoke as Brett had to catch his ferry at 9am the following morning. So we set off along the 330, I think, and none of the taxis would stop! They all had their lights out and were finishing work, but then one awesome dude stopped for us and saved out lives (or saved us from a very, very long walk) and he gained a bottle of oiwqmori for his efforts. We got ourselves some curry before heading back to the ryokan for all of 2 hours sleep before we got up and had breakfast together at the golden arches. So then Brett left, me and Andy then hung out until he had to leave for his flight at midday.
That afternoon I went down to Itoman with Chris, Kelly, Julie and Jashimin (I know I spelled that wrong) to see the festival there. We missed the festival but we had a good time and even went skinny dipping, although that was the worst skinny dipping I’ve ever done. The tide was way out and we had to walk for ages before the water was deep enough to swim in and to make it worse we chose a bit were the sea bed was sharp rocks and seaweed not nice soft sand. Regardless, good times!
I spend Sunday mostly on buses, although I did have the company of Kelly for part of my journey so that was nice. I managed to miss my ferry by about 5 minutes, OMG! I should really should stop doing that. Anyway I stayed in Nakijin, the little town right next too Unten port so I could get there for the early morning ferry. The taxi driver was really cool, he found the place for me to stay and sorted out booking the room and even got the owner to drive me to the port in the morning. Luckily I had no English classes that day and none of the teachers seemed bothered I was late.
I found I had more positive energy once I got back to the island; the trip to the main land had re-energised me. I also had forgotten some of the Japanese I had managed to learn so I guess it swung both ways, and for the first time in a while I was frustrated in not being able to talk to people, I guess I used again to being able to talk properly. Ah well, I’ll get round to studying Japanese.