Island of Flowers

One of the things we noticed right away when we arrived was that there are flowers everywhere on Okinawa.  When we arrived at the airport, the hallways were lined with orchids.

 Here is a poinsettia tree.  Jill said she thought those were what we buy at Christmas time and then throw away.  Look how big and beautiful this one is.

By the Tomori Lion, we saw these gorgeous lilies (we often call them Easter lilies) growing wild at the base of a banyan tree.

Look at how this tree looks like it has roots on the limbs...and note the hanging moss.

Look at the begonias and impatiens along the road. They were everywhere.  They can plant them pretty much anywhere because it rains there:-)

Petunias and sugar cane along the road.

I don't know what these upside down salmon-colored flowers are, but they were just growing in the wild.

Here is a lovely little bunch of lilies growing in a roadside park.  Notice the carp flags for Children's Day.

Here is a big blue version of what looks like what we call morning glory.

Traditional Okinawan Dinner Theater

At the Urashima Dinner Theater our teammate opted for steak and veggies, but Jill and I wanted to have a traditional Okinawan dinner while we watched the traditional dance.  Here's how it all started:

So on the left is a very yummy salad of thinly sliced pig ears, cucumbers, carrots, radishes (and these are a big white radish) with peanut vinegar sauce.  Jill and I loved this salad.  At the top are fresh slices of raw fish, or sashimi.  I liked that with the fresh leaf wrapped around it and dipped in the sauce that is just to the right of the fish.  The middle dish is seaweed in a vinegar sauce.  It was kind of slimy, but tasted good.  Jill didn't think so:-)  The dish on the right is peanut tofu with a soy-based sauce.  It had the texture of whipped jello.  All of this was served with plum wine.

Later we had glazed pork belly (surprisingly yummy) and a grilled prawn with sea urchin sauce.  The sauce looked yellow, like a light cheese sauce and was delicious.  We didn't know sea urchins would taste so good.  Then we were served a little pot with a custard-like dish in it of shrimp and vegetables and then steamed.  It tasted a bit like a runny omelette.  Then we had a big plate of tempura, which is battered veggies and shrimp.  Our plates had pumpkin and sweet potato and shrimp.  All of it was so good.

The last course had miso soup, which is like a broth with some herbs in it.  Since you are eating with chopsticks, you drink the soup.  It is served with white sticky rice.  We also had a side of white radish pickles.  Those were a hit.  Very yummy.

For dessert, we had a boat of fresh pineapple.  Juicy and fresh.  Some of the best entertainment of the evening was trying to watch the two of us manage the chopsticks.  We are not proficient, believe me!

While we were eating we were entertained with traditional Okinawan dances.  

This dance is a creative dance that celebrates a year of fruitfulness and abundant crops.  It was created on Hatoma Island.

These were my favorite costumes.  This dance is called the Yotsudake, or "four bamboos," which are the castanets the dancers hold to click in time to the music.  Their original function was to be used for ritual purification of an area where the celebration was being held.  This is the most commonly performed classical dance.  The hats are called Hanagasa, which means flower hat.

This dance is the Hana Fu which is a sad dance about a young girl seeing her lover off at Naha Meigusuku Port.

After the show, we were allowed to have our pictures taken with the dancers after we removed our shoes before going on stage.

Around the Island

Just driving around the island and getting to see the sites was a lot of fun for us.  We drove through an old fishing village and took these shots across the bay.  It's hard to imagine water any more clear and blue-green than this.

Lunch was one of the best memories of our trip.  We ate at Cafe Curcuma which sits high above the Pacific.  The cafe is surrounded by lovely gardens and trails, and you actually walk through a small dinosaur museum on your way from the parking lot to the cafe.  We had a wonderful lunch of Thai chicken, assorted spring rolls, and shrimp with veggies.  We were a bit taken aback when the shrimp came with eyes on them, but that didn't keep them from tasting delicious!

Look at that fabulous view of the Pacific.  We didn't get seated right away, so we were able to sit on the deck and have a beverage while we waited.

The dinosaurs looked pretty familiar.  They even
have a T-rex in Okinawa.











As we were coming down the mountain the from cafe, we came upon this little shrine.  We were told there are small shrines all around the island.  This blog has a lot of information about Okinawa including a section about their religion.  Apparently Shinto and Buddhism are the two main religions on the island, and it seems that many practice aspects of both.

The Tomori Lion

One of our favorite stops was the Tomori Stone Lion.  We had seen some pictures like these when we visited the Battle of Okinawa museum.  Notice how the vegetation is nearly gone around the lion itself.  You can see bullet holes and damage from the war on the lion.

But it is a beautiful, peaceful spot to visit nowadays.  It's actually amazing that this statute, that's been there since the 1600's, withstood the terrible battle that was waged all around it.  It's tranquil now, with a bridge leading from the stone steps up to the lion.  There is a picnic area that overlooks the surrounding area.

Here are a few pictures from up by the lion.  One thing that surprised us was the amount of cement we saw in Okinawa.  Most of their buildings have been built since the war, and they have strict building codes.  All homes and buildings have to withstand typhoons and earthquakes, so they are built to last.

This last picture is taken from the entrance to the Naval Underground Headquarters.

In Japan, they love their baseball.  Athletes practice many hours to be on the teams; and in Japan, school goes six days a week.  Here is a picture taken from the lion hill of a team practicing by their school. Not only do they go to school a lot, but Japanese kids clean up after themselves.  They clean the schools, the bathrooms, and the grounds.

The Beach

Our guide, Ron, was kind enough to let us Wyoming girls get our feet wet in the Pacific.  We went to a wonderful secluded beach where we walked and collected shells.  My mom has a shell bracelet that my grandpa had made for her when he was on Okinawa during the war.  We found some shells that were very similar to those in the bracelet.  Here is the trail from the road to the beach.

 Here I am walking to the beach.

 Here are Ron, our guide, and Jill.

 Here we are on the beach.  Jill's friend Susan, who works in the Okinawa school district office, came with us as well.

Can you believe how empty this beach is?  We were loving the privacy.  Ron thought it would be a very busy day because it was Golden Week in Japan.  Golden Week is a series of Japanese holidays including Showa Day, a time for reflection about the years Japan was ruled by Emperor Hirohito, and Children's Day, which we blogged about earlier.  Golden Week is the longest holiday period of the Japanese year.

Nakabaru Village

When we visited Ikei Island, we went to a restored village from 2000 to 2500 years ago.  Here is a picture that explains the site.

We were able to crawl into the huts.  We were thinking they may not have been ideal during the rainy season.

This picture tells about how the huts were constructed.

Traditional Japanese Bath House

We were persuaded to visit a traditional Japanese bath house...and we certainly didn't regret it.  We were so relaxed after that experience, we wanted to just fall into our beds.  The spa we went to is called the EM Spa Corazon.  You can read about it on this blog from Stars and Stripes.  I'm not going to rewrite everything, because Jill and I had a similar experience.  When we were done with our baths, we both had a massage.  Then we sat in some relaxation chairs and gazed out over the ocean while sipping some tea.  Quite heavenly.

Touring Around the Island

On Saturday, we had a wonderful opportunity to travel around the island with a teacher who has been on Okinawa since 1998.  He knew a lot of beautiful places to take us, and we learned a great deal about Okinawan history.

We started out driving near the ocean on the Pacific side of the island.  Here are a couple of pictures looking out from some cliffs.  It was a bit hazy, so it made it hard to take good pictures.

We were also able to see a lot of farm ground on this drive.  In Okinawa they raise a lot of sugar cane and tobacco.  There are fields like these in the pictures, but there are also a lot of smaller gardens scattered around the countryside and in towns.  There is really no zoning on the island, so you can have farming interspersed about anywhere.

 All of the fuel that comes to Okinawa is off-loaded just off the coast and piped to these storage tanks before it is dispersed throughout the country.  As you can imagine, gas is pretty expensive here.

There are a lot of cliffs and rocky outcrops on Okinawa because the island is made up of rock and clay. This high cliff was right along a road on which we were driving.  If you look closely, you can see that there are stalactites hanging from the high parts of the cliff.

Battle of Okinawa Study Day

We had such a late night last night, we didn't get time to update our blog.  We spent the day with Robert Mastriano, who used to be the Sergeant Major here on Okinawa and now teaches NJROTC at Kubaski High School.  He is an expert on the Battle of Okinawa, and he was willing to share his day with us on Friday.

The Battle of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945 when the United States landed four divisions, two Marine divisions and two Army divisions, on the beach.  They expected a lot of resistance from the Japanese, but, in fact, they faced very little.  Within a short time they had secured the airfields at Kadena and Yomitan.  The Marines were to move north from the beachhead while the Army moved south.

The Marines were able to reach the northern and of the island and secure Ie Island as well by April 21st.  However, the Army would run into stiff resistance in the south.  Okinawa is full of caves that served as ancient tombs for the dead.  The Japanese military took over these caves, expanded them, and put artillery guns in the entrances.  It was very hard for our troops to dislodge the Japanese soldiers from the protected caves.  Also, the caves were on the high ridges, so the soldiers could fire down upon the American troops.

We were able to visit a cave.  When we began to climb up the hill to the cave, here is what we saw:

That's some pretty dense underbrush, isn't it?  But Jill and I climbed through the jungle-like area going pretty much straight up a hill.  Here is what we saw when we reached the cave.  These are old tombs from well before the war.  But the caves were taken over by the Japanese soldiers because they provided protection.

The caves had more than one entrance.  Here is looking out another entrance of the cave we explored:

The Japanese made some of these caves into fortresses.  After the cave tour, we visited the Battle of Okinawa Historical Society Museum.  It's open by appointment only, but Bob had the key.  That was handy!

Near the end of the day, we visited the Naval Underground Headquarters.  This is a park and museum where you can actually enter the tunnels and see for yourself how the Japanese soldiers lived underground during the day.  They could only come out under the cover of darkness for fear of having the headquarters discovered.  Here is the entrance area of the museum:

When the Japanese soldiers knew that the battle for control of Okinawa was nearly over, they committed suicide in the underground tunnels.  Around 4000 men died here, 175 of them by suicide.  It was considered dishonorable to be taken prisoner by the Americans.  Before he committed suicide, the Japanese naval commander sent a letter to headquarters on mainland Japan telling them that that Okinawans had been loyal fighters during the battle.  Here is what it looks like underground.  It's been made safe now so people can go down there, but back during the war, it was a dark and dangerous series of tunnels.



Here is the room where Admiral Ota stayed.



It is said that this wall is scarred from where soldiers committed suicide using hand grenades.