More Snorkeling on Aka Island

 Not a lot to report, other than we're on day 4 of convenience store food and I'm ready for something real and cooked at some point. Sumi's breakfast this morning

They sell individually wrapped jumbo carrots at the "supermarket"

But the highlight of today was our snorkeling trip in the afternoon. 

We went out on a small boat with only 6 of us, all experienced snorkels/divers. This meant we were basically set loose in the open water with vague instructions like "Don't go too far over that way". We were in slightly deeper water, but the water was so clear, it didn't matter. We saw a huge variety of fish and coral, including a very poisonous sea snake, a Moray Eel out swimming in the water (they are always bigger than you expect), and some turtles. 

Today is our last day on Aka. We move to the larger, slightly more commercial island of Zamami tomorrow. They have restaurants there.

Sumi has been collecting pictures of shisa, traditional Okinawan statuettes that are half lion, half dog that sit in pairs outside of homes to keep evil spirits out and good spirits in. They come in all shapes and sizes.

Shisa!

Shisa yaibiin!!

Um...

Snorkeling and Biking on Aka Island

It rained all night last night and we were afraid we'd not have great weather today, but boy were we wrong. After our convenience store (excuse me "Supermarket") breakfast we took a walk down to the shore to check it out.

Oh, that's right. THAT'S why we came here

The clouds had lifted and it was a gorgeous, sunny day and great scenery all around. You can't see it in these pictures, but the water out here is pure blue (white sand bottom) and SO clear you can see clear to the ocean floor even 20-30 feet deep. More on that later. We had set up to do a snorkeling excursion in the afternoon, so we had the morning to kill. 

Walking over to the "Supermarket" we stocked up on food for the next few days and walked behind it to "Rental Shop Shou". It was, um,  a rental shop. We rented a few bikes to explore the island chain. The bikes were...mamacharis. What is a mamachari?

This beautiful thing

They actually kept their rental gear in great shape. These bikes were well tuned, oiled and, clean. Not an easy task on an island with all the salt in the air. Of course, being in Japan, to say it did not fit me would be an understatement. My knees hit the handlebars when I tried to pedal (I had to squeeze myself fully between the handlebars to ride at all) and I had to sit almost where the rear basket is just to fit. I'm sure I looked athletic and graceful. But they were bikes and we got to cross over the two bridges, leading to the southern islands, Geruma and Fukaji. The entire trip was about 4 miles (these islands are not large at all) with some really nice scenery

This is an elementary/junior high school. Imagine your school grounds looking like this.

We ended at the Kerama Airport. Remember the "Supermarket"? Yeah, this airport is tiny. There is a single runway that takes up pretty much the entire island and is like if you have ever landed in a jungle, there just a bunch of trees then a single runway. Yeah, except make it a island full of small mountains.

After our leisurely ride, we headed back to our cell and napped for about half an hour we walked down to the shore to meet the SeaSir van (the company doing the snorkeling/diving excursion). The first stop was a bunch of divers and jusrt us snorkeling. The second stop was just use snorkeling. Very different from the Maldives in many ways, not least of which is that the coral is very much alive here. It was fantastic snorkeling. With the clear water and lush coral, we saw a ton of new types of fish, as well as turtles, a water snake (Sumi saw that, I did not) and a manta ray! They are rare around here in May, so we were quick lucky to see one. This is our first time seeing one in the wild. They are big. Like, really big. Nearly three times to size of the eagle rays and sand rays we saw in the Maldives.

Not the best picture, but his wingspan is about 5 feet

Our guide took this of us.

Back at the cell, we had a feast consisting of ham and cheese sandwiches and...yeah that's it. Mild sunburns despite constantly re-applying sunscreen. Gotta be careful the next few days.

The beach is littered with old coral "fossils"

Shiisa yaibiin!

Cute little painted Shiiisa

Translation: If a tsunami comes, we're all screwed. 

We have RULES in this here town.

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!

Shiisa!

Shiisa Yaibiin!

Not a Shiisa. Found at Tomari Port on a bridge

I love Japanese manhole covers. Made in Neenah-Menasha!

Aaaaand We're Back!

The trip this year snuck up on us so fast, we realized on Monday that we were leaving in six days. Between school and the band touring, I haven't really had a day off in months. Luckily for us, we're pretty good at packing for these trips. This year, we will be finally traveling to the southernmost islands of Japan, Okinawa!

But first things first, the trip down to O'Hare and the flight to Japan were surprisingly smooth. Just, you know, 22 hours of travel door-to-door. We're staying tonight at the Hotel Metropolitan Tokyo Haneda, which is a hotel on the same man-made island that the airport is located, just on the southwestern tip of the island. It has an observation room on the 10th floor where you can watch the planes take off and the whole hotel is a weird combination of upscale business and... plane nerd. The hotel restaurant has $150 steaks and everything is hardwood and marble. But then you get to the hallways leading to the rooms.

Sumi and I were so burnt by the time we got to the hotel, all we wanted to do was get some food from a konbini and collapse. Fortunately, as this is Japan, than meant an 8 minute walk to the nearby Family Mart, which was just over a bridge to the "mainland". The bridge was also full-on plane nerd, with artwork depicting a history of air machines in Japan

Starting with 18th century balloons

To early 20th century planes

I love the fact that there is a blimp, too.

Ans up through the Boeing 747

There were also REAL plane nerds on the other side of the bridge taking pictures of the planes taking off

While the other side of the bridge was typical Japan, with river boats and a vermillion bridge. Red bridges are traditional in Japan, vermillion being a color that wards off evil and prevents disasters. Traditional ones, called soribashi, were fairly steep foot bridges that symbolized the transition from the physical to the spiritual worlds in Shinto and Buddhist traditions.

Typical view from a bridge in Japan

Traditional soribashi

As we walked back we saw a plane taking off and realized just how close we were to the airport. One of the runways for domestic flights is literally across the street from the hotel, and the planes are just taking flight when they go over the building.

Anyway, that's it for our first check-in of the trip. By this time tomorrow, we'll be on a tropical isalnd in Okinawa!

P.S. Japan never fails to amuse with their products and their signage.

Think Corn Chex with chili and....cod roe...flavor <shudder>

I so wanted this to be a specialty amphibian waxing salon or something.
It's an airport logistics company.
Very disappointing.