Our Travels In Japan (and other places): Okinawaaaa!!!!

Today was a day of travel and forceable jet lag recovery! We were both so exhausted from the weeks leading up to the trip and yesterday's travel that we were out by 7 last night and didn't get moving until almost 6 this morning. The trip to the airport was ridiculously easy. The hotel was literally 40 feet from the monorail station and in about 15 minutes we were at Haneda airport struggling with technology to check our luggage for the flight. Everything was automated, because Japan, and once it worked it was pretty great, but they have these large scanners set up that you put your bags on after they issue you the tags with barcodes. You basically scan your boarding pass and it tries to handle the rest. The problem is the scanners struggle to read the tags, so we spent a good 10-15 minutes trying to reposition the bags, the tags, going to different machines until it finally just worked and was done. There was no one there to assist, so it was pretty much keep doing the same thing over and over and hope it works the next time.

Once that was done, we had a few hours to kill, because Sumi and I are both paranoid about missing flights overseas and gave ourselves about 3 hours, just in case. So we found a nice cafe at the end of Terminal 1 to sit in and relax for a while.

Cafe LAT25º, if you ever find yourself in Terminal 1 in Haneda

Security in Japan is actual, functioning security as opposed the the security theater we have in the US. It's far less painful to deal with and the things they are looking for are actual safety concerns. Both Sumi and I got held up at the metal detector because of our watches (something that US detectors don't pick up) but they did NOT care about bottles of water or number of electronic devices. They DID care about the power brick (battery) I had and my bag got pulled aside to verify it was not one of the ones that can blow up. The whole ordeal, with me getting pulled aside twice, was faster and less hassle than a typical US domestic flight.

The flight was easy, a 3 hour trip from Tokyo to Naha and we found ourselves in Okinawa by noon. We did in hindsight make a mistake by going straight to the port where the ferry departs rather than getting lunch in the city. Tamori port is fine, but it's a port and as such didn't have much around it. The few restaurants in the port building were either closed or cafes without a proper kitchen.

It's...uh...it's a...port

So we ended up at Family Mart again, which was fine but we could have sat down and had a real meal with the time we had. This was largely due to our uncertainty of how long it would take to get to the port and where we needed to be. This DID lead to one of the most unintentionally hilarious machine translated websites I have seen in a long time.

The whole site was pure gold, but this one was the best

The ferry, the Queen Zamami, was a high speed ferry that brought us to the tiny island of Aka in about 50 minutes.

Aka is very small, a permanent population of about 300. It is known for it's snorkeling and diving, which is what we'll be hoping to do for the next few days. We walked the short distance (because the island is so small EVERYTHING is a short distance), passing by Shiro along the way.

Shiro, a very good boy

So, this is actually NOT an "ancient Japanese legend" but something that actually happened. Shiro and his family, the Nakamuras, lived on the neighboring island of Zamami and he would play with Marilyn, a neighbor dog all the time. When his family moved to Aka island, he would often disappear for the day, coming back all wet. Finally, Mr. Nakamura followed Shiro one morning to see what he was getting up to. He watched Shiro jump into the water and got in his boat and followed Shiro as he swam two miles in open water to Zamami island, where he would find Marilyn and they would play. There was a movie made about this. Shiro lived to be 17 and this statue and a matching one of Marilyn on Zamami island were erected.

When we got to our hotel we were a little amused at the room....ambiance, though it really was very comfortable and clean. This place had shared bathroom and shower, all immaculately clean, even by Japanese standards.

A basement? A prison cell?

The owner warned us that there is no breakfast server on the island, so we should probably head to the "Supernarket" to get food for the morning. She also pointed out the only "restaurant" open tonight. It seems that the only restaurants outside of hotel restaurants and afternoon cafes are izakayas, think Japanese tapas. This particular one was their version of a permanent food truck.

It can't be THAT bad....can it?

Chorizo? In Okinawa?

So, a few things about the menu. Japan does not do ethnic food well. At all. Unless it's an Indian run Indian restaurant, ethnic food is often laughably bad. Italian food uses canned tomatoes and few to no herbs. So when I saw Teppanyaki-chorizo, I was hesitant. But everything else was either seafood or very likely the darkest, fattiest meat imaginable. So I took my chances. We ordered that, chili cheese fries (see previous discussion about ethnic food), Sumi tried the pork ribs and garlic yakitori (another red flag. Yakitori literally means "grilled chicken", though that's a not uncommon thing in izakayas) and the uber-safe grilled rice ball.

The little cast iron skillets were a nice touch

Welp. I was right on every count. The chorizo was glorified hot dogs with some odd spice. The mustard sauce made it palatable. The chili cheese fries...the fries were good. The chili was from a can and very sweet with almost no....chili flavor. The pork rib yakitori was probably pretty good if you like fat with a side of meat (which a LOT of people over here do), and the rice ball was actually not bad, though it really was just a ball of rice, grilled with some soy sauce.

Also, that was NOT teppenyaki. Teppenyaki is basically a stir fry with vegetables and some protein (tofu, chicken, etc). That was some meat thing on a skillet. This is teppenyaki:

Notice the vegetables? Yeah, that's what I was after

After the less than satisfying dinner, we went to the "Supernarket". The "Supermarket" is a store on the ground floor of a minshuku that has less food than a typical convenience store. It's also the only game in town, literally. We were really hoping for just some cereal and milk that we could bring back to the hotel. Cereal is not nearly as common a breakfast food in Japan as it is in the states. Convenience stores will usually have a few boxes, but this place did not. We snagged the last two yogurts and some apple juice and resigned ourselves to more convenience store food for many of our meals over the next few days.

Returning to our cozy little cell block, we settled in for the night, hoping for some decent weather and better food tomorrow! Also pictures!