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In early February we sat down with a calendar and Jesse has submitted his vacation for the remainder of the time we are here. First up: Okinawa! Let's go down south to the tropics!
March 1
Tokyo Paperwork
First up on our destinations was Tokyo for paperwork. See, depending on what country you are from, the working holiday visas are a little different. For most Europeans, they get a year with their initial visa, but Canadians get 6 months and then have to apply for an extension. Jesse and I have our extensions, but we didn't realize that our health cards expired with our old visas. To get new ones we needed to pay a visit to the Koto City office (our permanent residence is in that neighbourhood in Tokyo so we don't have to do a stack of new paperwork every 3 months when we move).
Thankfully it was super smooth to get a new one! The office does a lot of different things, so they have a small group of women roaming around the waiting room answering questions, getting folks a number for the correct line, and even looking over forms to be sure you haven't missed anything before you speak to a clerk. It's super helpful! So once our number was called we just pointed at our health cards and said "atarashii" which means "new". The guy working was like "yup, all good, passport?" and I swear only a couple minutes later we were all set with new cards.
(The drawer I have pulled out here is from the Canadian section, and there is an entire extra hallway you can't see)
Postal Museum
After that Jesse headed off to get some work done, while I went to visit the Japanese Postal Museum. It was a small but fun museum! And it had the most English of nearly all the museums we have visited which is always a nice bonus.
The Japanese postal service has existed since at least the 1860s (I didn't write down the exact date) and impressively their logo hasn't changed in all that time. There was a section with old clocks since the post office was one of the earliest places to have a clock, as well as many old post boxes and uniforms, and there were a couple of the old machines for selling stamps which were neat. I also liked the historic illustrations showing all the steps in receiving and processing the mail to get it to the correct destination.
My favourite fact is that in Tokyo during the Meiji period (1868-1912), mail was collected every 15 minutes, and it was delivered 19 times a day. With that volume of mail, I wonder what the average number of letters delivered to each address would be.
Oh! And they have an enormous stamp collection with stamps from all around the world. I accidentally started in the European section and was confused when I pulled out a drawer of British stamps commemorating Princess Diana, and then the next 4 drawers I opened were stamps from even more countries remembering her. I wondered why the Japanese Postal Museum has so many stamps of Diana. And then I turned the corner and saw hallway after hallway full of drawers and realized they just have a lot of stamps for lots of occasions from all around the world!
March 2
Arriving in Okinawa
We stayed at a hotel near Narita airport and flew to Naha, the capital of Okinawa, first thing Saturday morning. After dropping our bags off at the hotel we had lunch at A&W (review: overall tasty, and while the burgers are quite different, the root beer is the same as back home!) and then we went to visit a small butterfly sanctuary. It was a chilly day so they were not flying around much, but with translation software we talked a bit with the older gentleman running the place. He showed us the full life cycle, from the eggs he gathers on a particular plant in the center of the room, to the caterpillars and chrysalises which he raises in a protected section at the back, and then of course the adult butterflies in the main room.
We also walked along the main tourist/restaurant street in the evening and goodness was it ever busy! I can't imagine what it is like during the peak season.
March 3
Coral Dying
To start our morning Jesse found a really neat dying workshop. Rather than tie-dying, it was more like a wax crayon rubbing. You chose your fabric, (he chose a towel, I have a t-shirt) and then you chose pieces of coral to go under the fabric. Once you had secured it with an elastic, you took a pouch that was rubbed on the ink pad, and then rubbed it over the fabric, transferring the texture to your item.
I wanted to take photos of each step, but we were really tight on time, so here is a photo of our supplies (left) and our final products (right)! Below from left to right: The largest piece of coral (much wider than my shirt), the room, and a large display piece.
Okinawa World
For the afternoon we visited Okinawa world. It's a touristy theme park but it provided a nice and accessible introduction to the island's geology and history. First you walked the length of a limestone cave. Over the years as water runs through the stones, it dissolves the softest parts of the rocks leaving stalactites, stalagmites, and fascinating caves behind.
The route back to the entrance was above ground and featured a number of sections with traditional houses that had been relocated to the site, and various artisans working in each one, or spaces for quick hands-on workshops. We didn't end up doing any of the workshops, but it was fun to watch the glass blowing production happening, and I was able to get the answer to a weaving question which was nice. It was a little bit like Upper Canada Village, but a bit more modern and commercial.
Do you remember the snake sake that Jesse tried in November with Adnan when our friends were visiting? Well the snakes are very common in Okinawa, and nearly everywhere that had alcohol on display also had a bottle of snake sake. The brewery at Okinawa world had some brewing as well. I still feel no desire to give it a try!
March 4
(above) Jesse surfing! (top right) Marlena cruising along on her knees (bottom right) our group of 3 walking into the water with our boards (our instructors are behind the camera)
Surfing
After picking up our rental car the night before, and an early morning drive we were ready to try surfing! We got suited up in wetsuits, had a quick introduction to popping up, and then we climbed into a van and headed out to where the waves were.
Because of the currents, tides, wind, etc., we ended up going to a place where the waves were breaking at the edge of the reef quite far away from the shore. Jesse looked it up on Google maps later, we ended up paddling about 700+ m one way to get out to the waves. It was so hard to make it back in against the wind and current when we were tired, but we had a great time! The instructor took care of all the technical details like timing and choosing the waves, so instead we could focus on paddling and trying to stand up.
Ocean Expo Park - Grounds
After surfing for the morning, we grabbed a falafel lunch at a bistro as we continued north to visit Naha. We stopped at the Ocean Expo Park, as initially were going to visit the Maritime museum, but when we arrived we got distracted by all the outdoor attractions, and it was such a nice afternoon after a grey morning we didn't want to go inside.
Instead we explored their reproductions of traditional Okinawan houses. They had a number of different houses on display, from one room buildings to fancier multi-room houses. The kitchens were typically separate with dirt floors, while the main living areas featured raised floors and sliding or removable doors. The simplest houses were also designed to be levered back onto their foundations if they were blown off during a typhoon. There were also some nice gardens that Jesse got some lovely pictures of with his drone!
After the gardens we checked into our hotel and had a tasty supper at a chain restaurant geared at families. It felt a little like the Kelsey's of Japan, although maybe a bit fancier.
March 5
Sesoko Island
We had a slower morning, and decided to visit a small island nearby for lunch. Driving around Japan is interesting! The speeds are all much slower than in Canada and Sesoko Island has a max speed of 30 km/hr. Which felt like a snails pace until you internalized that the roads were so small and winding that every driveway is essentially a blind entrance so a car or person can pop out of nowhere absolutely anytime. Also trying to find where to turn in residential areas of Nago was difficult because you couldn't tell what was a driveway and what was a road until you were practically in the intersection. Bigger roads are fine though.
For lunch I had a miso pizza which was delicious while Jesse had taco-rice. We haven't seen miso pizza anywhere else, but taco rice was on many menus throughout the Okinawan islands.
After lunch we visited a local beach so Jesse could fly his drone. He flew down to the end of the beach and saw a couple taking their wedding photos around the point! It was fairly windy but thankfully not raining.
Ocean Expo Park - Oceanic Culture Museum
For the last bit of the afternoon we went back to the Ocean Expo Park to visit the Oceanic Culture Museum.
Even though there wasn't much English, it was a very interesting museum which recorded the indigenous cultures and history of Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. What I loved about it was that when I think of "living off the land" of course I think of the flora, fauna, and geography of North America, or perhaps western Europe, but these islands in the Pacific are completely different in every single way. It was a lot of fun to marvel at the human ingenuity and think "people actually crossed the Pacific Ocean in that!?" or "there are so many different ways to fish!". Humans make such ingenious use of their surroundings no matter where in the world they are. 🙂
The image carousel to the right has a number of photos of the large boats in the museum, while below is a display with miniatures showing the range of styles in use both in different areas, as well as for different purposes (such as to fish in shallow water close to home on the reefs vs travelling between islands to trade).
Part 2 coming soon! We did so much that it was too much for 1 post.
The next post is here: Okinawa - Part 2
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