Buses, Taiko, and More Buses

 We spent about 6 hours on buses today so we could take a 1 hour Okinawan (Eisa) taiko lesson. Sounds fair to me.

We left the Chunaumi area at 6:30 this morning and got to the airport around 9:15. Why the airport? Well, we needed to take a local bus for about 90 minutes to the Koza area where there is an Eisa museum and we couldn't drag our luggage with us and needed to transfer buses anyway, so we grabbed some coin lockers and got back on another bus, finally getting to Koza at about 11:15.

Very long story short, Koza is where American troops were staged before deploying to Vietnam in the 60's and 70's and the whole area looks like it. The entire main road north of the museum building is various "gentlemens" clubs and other clubs that would look normal in L.A. but not Japan. Also quite possibly the first pizza restaurant I would consider eating at. It is still near a US Navy base and likely where a lot of them hang out. It was an interesting cultural juxtaposition, but all in all, looked kind of trashy.

The Koza Music Center, on the other hand, is a three story building with the Eisa museum, a radio station, a karaoke club, a recording studio and one of the premier concert venues in Okinawa, a modern 1100 seat theater.

Eisa is kind of all over the place here

Manhole covers

Buses

Statues

Umm...

Eisa is an Okinawan form of drumming and dancing tied closely to the O-Bon odori and stems from a different Buddhist branch than what is seen on the Japanese mainland. It is largely dancing while hitting the drum, with unique techniques and an extensive history and cultural significance to the Okinawan people. They have been holding Eisa competitions annually since 1946 and it has grown into an art form in its own right.

So, we spent an hour stumbling around, trying to hit the drum and move our feet at the same time. And it was a blast!

Ha-i-wa!

It really was fun. We learned just enough to know we don't know anything, but have more of an appreciation of the art form and how they play. Our instructor was excellent. He spoke only Japanese, which wasn't a problem for us, but he was able to speak slowly and clearly so we could understand right away while still conveying his lesson. He made it fun, and because we were the only two taking the class this afternoon, we got to go over the introductory song a number of times and actually start to learn it.

After the lesson, we hopped back on ANOTHER bus and, with a brief monorail transfer, got back to the airport, got our stuff, got BACK on the monorail a few stops to our hotel. We checked in, dropped our stuff off, walked about a quarter mile,

AND THEN!!!!!

Shiawase da

hontou ni shiawase da ne

After over a week with only two actual meal, this was like heaven. Real vegetables! Cooked food! We thoroughly enjoyed our first CoCo Curry experience of 2026. It's been pretty ridiculous with how few food options we have had this past week. But after a plate of curry, all is right with the world. Well, at least in the Y's Inn Naha Oroku Ekimae. Tomorrow, we bid adieu to Okinawa and take a flight back to Tokyo, where we'll bum around for several days and very likely, most probably, will have slightly better food choices.