Paradaisu: Okinawa-jima

I am working—finally. I’ve been assigned to teach between Aoshima, Oosu, and Okabe Junior High Schools, rotating approximately every two weeks. I have seen the buildings; met the principals, vice principals, and head teachers; greeted some super cute students (the schools house 7-9th graders); and there will be many more school details and stories to follow. But for now…

I was able to squeeze in one last vacation before entering training for work. Now that I’m a foreign national of Japan I have to pay to get a permit to leave the country (if I want to retain my working visa status and remain employed), so this time I kept it domestic…about as far away as I could travel domestically, however: Okinawa.
You know your vacation is going to be good when you get to fly in a Pokemon plane. My travel buddy and I flew from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, and spent the first night perusing shopping arcades full of fresh fruit, tropical-print beachwear, traditional three-stringed Okinawan guitars, and Ryukyu glass (handblown glassware made from recycled soda bottles, an art form that became prominent with American occupation of the island and the mass import of bottled beverages).

When explaining that we planned to camp on beaches throughout our trip, people had warned us of poisonous Okinawan habu snakes. Nearly all of the snakes we encountered on this trip, though, were coiled at the bottom of jugs of alcohol. Awamori is Okinawa’s variety of sake, and habushu is the extra special recipe, snake included. Purple potatoes at the micro-brewpub Helios.

The next morning, we took a bus to north to Nago and onward to the Motobu peninsula and a clump of tiny islands with beaches for camping. Upon missing the last ferry to Minna-jima, we settled for camping on the one island that could be reached by bridge: Sesoko-jima. Just in a brief walk before sunset, we saw a bull being led down the street, watermelons growing in gardens, and bananas bunched in trees.

We camped on a pseudo-beach underneath this bridge; free camping is free camping. A good 30 feet from the shore, we found what seemed a nice spot to set up the tent…but in the morning, we realized that along with the rain we’d heard in the night, our tent had also been visited by the ocean!

Along with the ocean’s seaweed evidence from high tide, we also found a hole right outside our tent door. Habu, perhaps?After our less-than-serene camping experience, we needed to relax. We bussed back to Nago and toured the Orion brewery there, before returning to Naha, anxious to ferry out the next day to one of the far-outlying Okinawan islands.