Ok, it’s been way too long since our last update, over a month since our last blog and almost a month since we put up any pictures! My apologies. I think Jon was supposed to write the next blog but he’s a time burglar so here I am.
Hmm, where to start? Maybe I’ll go all the way back to March and tell you about our trip to Okinawa. Yes, you’ve seen the pictures but you have yet to hear the stories. And great stories they are! Well, most have to do with a particular “vegetable lasagne” we met while vacationing on the beautiful island of Zamami. I’ll get to that later.
First of all I’d like to point out that Japanese runway workers wave, bow and continue to wave at your plane as it takes off from the runway. Definitely something you have to see for yourself.
Jon and I arrived in Naha about 2 hours 
before Nancy so we headed to the hostel we booked to check it out and check in. Much easier said than done. We had no idea where our hostel was. This sounds like a job for INTERNET CAFÉ!! After a bit of searching we managed to find a cafe and find the hostel map, as a bonus, while Jon was waiting for me outside some dude gave him a flyer for a bar upstairs which happened to be the Canadian owned bar we planned on going to anyway. Upon checking into our room we discovered that it was quite big and could easily sleep 18 people, wall to wall bunk beds are wonderful! We decided that it would be much safer for Nancy and fun for all of us if we had a big sleepover in our room. Now you’re probably wondering why I said it would be safer for Nancy. Well in addition to discovering how huge our room was we also met Nancy’s would-be dorm roomies. One word. Lesbians. It wouldn’t have been so bad had they been cute, but alas they were not; they had no hair and refused to wear bras. Yup, those kind of lesbians.
( I don’t want anyone reading this to get the wrong idea, I have nothing against lesbians these girls were part of an ongoing joke between the three of us. I don’t even know if they were lesbians or not.)
Anyway, we dropped off our bags and went for a short stroll. We made our way to Lawson, bought some beers and waited for Nancy to arrive. It took very little convincing for Nancy to agree to stay in our room especially once we made her aware of her roomies. (This post really sounds like it’s going somewhere sexy doesn’t it?)
Once we were all settled we decided to venture out onto Kokusai Dori, the main street in Naha. So what do three Canadians do while in Naha? Go to Rehab, the Canadian owned bar of course! The bar was kind of posh looking, really nice. There were a few other whiteys and a couple Japanese people sitting at the bar when we arrived. The friendly bartender (obviously the Canadian owner) greeted us and let us know about that nights special. A bottle of Corona and any food item for ¥1000. Nice! To make the deal even sweeter the menu included typical Canadian bar food such as poutine and nachos. 
To all you people living in Canada reading this, DO NOT TAKE YOUR ACCESS TO THESE FOODS FOR GRANTED!! Seeing poutine on a menu in Japan was like seeing a heavenly angel. Of course we all ordered poutine, actually Jon got so excited about the menu that he ordered poutine AND nachos. This poutine was the best poutine I’ve ever had, well, probably not but after not having it for so long it tasted pretty god damn good.
After a couple drinks we decided to go for a walk and get lost. We wondered up a tiny street which claimed to have a “rock bar”, where Jon found the love of his life. We walked for a few minutes, arrived at our destination and opened the door. There were already two people sitting at the bar one of which clearly had been drinking for a few hours. So, we plopped our white asses down at the bar and ordered the famous Okinawan drink, Awamori. If you’ve been paying attention you’ll have figured out that there are now 6 people in this rock bar, including the bartender which (in Japan) means that there is only room for one more person to sit down. Enter, guy from Kyoto. Bar full. It’s a damn good thing that no one else wanted to drink here; they would have had to stand outside. Now back to the Awamori. I’m not really sure to what to compare this alcohol to, maybe tequila. It smells like tequila and has a similar effect when drank in large quantities. One difference I should point out is that instead of the bottle having a worm at the bottom, Awamori comes with a full sized snake. Jon fell head over heels for this drink while Nancy and I giggled until tears streamed down our faces, then we were sober. We paid our bill and decided to find a “convini” and discover what else Naha had to offer.
In very broken Japanese we asked the convenience store workers where the beach was, they replied in Japanese with a map combined with hand movements we thanked them and we on our way. Hoo-ray for legal public drinking (and mating dances with large rubber flowers)
We walked, and walked and walked until we were drunk and reached a dead end. What were we to do now? Well, Nancy did the only sensible thing and had a phone conversation with Lee who was in Europe. Jon took a piss and I decided I wanted to go bowling at the bowling alley we were walking past. We eventually found our way to a main road and to the beach. And what a shitty beach it was. First of all we couldn’t figure out how to get down to it and secondly it was about the size of Kings Place mall. Awesome! Here we were, practically sober with no beach to enjoy. Time to do some more walking and running up walls. Eventually we stumbled across a park which (thank god!) had a bathroom. I’m not one for using random park toilets but we were in Japan how bad could it be? BAD! I felt like I was going to get a disease just from breathing the air in there. I think this bathroom experience put a pretty big damper on our already amazing adventure so we decided to call it a night. Well, once we managed to find our way back to our hostel. I will say that on our way back we managed to stumble across a hostel we had thought about staying at because it was cheap. Once we saw what it looked like from the outside we were pretty happy to have picked the one we did. I’m still not sure if “Base Okinawa” was named that because a) it was once a place where military personnel stayed or b) it is simple a “clever” name due to the fact that there is such a large military presence in Okinawa. 
When planning this trip the three of us expected Okinawa to not only be beautiful and sunny but to also be full of arrogant US military personnel, lucky for us they were on lock down because of 1)the rape of a 14 year old Japanese girl and 2)the recent killing of a 60 year old cab driver near Tokyo with a butter knife. Phew! I really didn’t want to be annoyed by dick hole American military guys while trying to enjoy my vacation. I think they should start screening people before letting them join the military and carry guns. Anyway, I’ll leave that for another time.
Where was I? Oh yes, we were free to roam the streets without western annoyances. Hoo-ray!! The next day we roamed around and ooh’d and aah’d at all the cool things that the city and Okinawa had to offer and decided that we wanted to explore some of the smaller islands as well. There were two islands we could travel to directly without spending half a day on a boat. Option #1 was Zamami and option #2 was an island I can’t remember the name of. Both sounded like great places to see, we couldn’t decide so we left it up to ferry times. The ferry to Zamami was leaving at a more convenient time than the ferry to the other place. So there it was, we were going to Zamami.
Stay tuned for part two of our Okinawan adventures.
A Pocket of Words 