Okinawa Highlights, Day 1: Food, the Neighborhood, and the Beach!

First and foremost, I must apologize for my near month-long hiatus. I did return on July 16, but since then I have been beyond busy, both at work and after, with weddings, get-togethers and a looming new website launch (which is happening tonight!) Needless to say, I simply haven’t had the time!

I finally finished uploading all 415 pictures from Okinawa on Facebook last week. Whew. I even tried to cut back a little, believe it or not! Fortunately, I’m going to spare you all on spending all day looking through my wonderful pictures, and just give you the highlights from days 1-5 in Okinawa, starting with day one.

I can honestly say there is nothing worse than being on a plane for 12 hours. In total, it took us nearly a full 24 hours to get from St. Louis, Mo., to Okinawa, Japan. We left St. Louis around noon on Friday, July 16, and we finally arrived in Okinawa at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 17 (Japan time, which would make it around 8 a.m. St. Louis time).

When my sister Kayla and I finally arrived, my mom and her youngest brother, Yoshto, and her only sister, Kyomi, along with Kyomi’s husband, Noriyaki, greeted us at the gate and offered to take us out to dinner, to which Kayla and I happily agreed (I hate airplane food and we didn’t have time to eat in the Tokyo airport, mostly because I got lost and we barely made our plane to Okinawa.)

Our first Okinawan restaurant experience couldn’t have been better.

My mom and her siblings just started ordering food for us left and right, first yakisoba (Japanese fried noodles), then yakitori (teriyaki and soy chicken kebobs), gyozo (my uncle Noriyaki calls them “Japanese meatballs”), raw squid with a yummy horseradish-type sauce, and some kind of fried chicken with a delicious sauce on it. Plus Orion beer, which is a rice beer and later turned out to be my favorite.


As tired as we were, Kayla and I had a blast hanging out with my mom, aunt and uncles. My uncle Yoshto and aunt Kyomi can barely speak English, but we made it work. My uncle Noriyaki can actually speak English pretty well, so I spoke with him the most, and my mom helped translate when she could.

My uncle Yoshto and aunt Kyomi.

My mom actually has two older brothers as well, Yoshihiro and Yoshikuni, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see them as much. We ended up spending the most time with Yoshto, who actually took three days off work to spend time with us, which was awesome. More about that later.

We finally left the restaurant a little after midnight and arrived at my grandparents’ house, where we were staying for the week, a little before 1 a.m. My sister and I immediately crashed as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

When we woke up, we realized how small our grandparents' house is.


It's cute though isn't it? Most of the houses over there look like this. They’re very small and very close together. My grandparents’ house actually housed three bedrooms, but it was between 8 people, two of them being my crazy and wild 5-year old brother and sister (Seika will be 6 in August, they’re only 10 months apart).

See what I mean? They're crazy.

Oh, and there was only one bed, which belonged to my grandparents.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for having a place to stay for free (and with lots of food!), but I have to admit I was pretty happy to come home and sleep in my own bed in my own room where my little brother wouldn’t be kicking me in the stomach and I wouldn't have to deal with my sisters’ snoring.

And let me get back to the food! Oh, the food. My grandma (or Ba-chan, in Japanese) was relentless in making sure we were always full. The minute we walk into the house she goes immediately to the kitchen and starts cooking anything she can find in her fridge and pantry. I soon found out that this is customary in all Japanese homes, because all of my aunts did the same thing. (My uncles are a little more adamant in making sure your beer is never empty.)

But my grandma sure can cook! Our first breakfast consisted of rice, seaweed, pickles, donuts, fish soup, gyoza (my favorite!) and fruit. It was a weird combination of food, but amazing nonetheless.

After breakfast on our first day in Okinawa, my siblings and I decided to explore the neighborhood.


We also stopped by my uncle Yoshikuni’s house, which was right around the corner.

This is the view from my uncle Yoshikuni’s backyard.

We also found shisas, and they are EVERYWHERE in Okinawa.


They are little lion/dog type creatures that protect your house from evil. I now have several in my apartment. ☺ I took a ton of pictures of these guys, because they come in all different shapes and sizes, and I might make some kind of collage out of them. Not sure yet.

Also along our stroll in the neighborhood we found these, which are also everywhere.


I later found out they are basically tombs, and entire families are buried in them. Well, when I say buried, I mean cremated and in urns, because everyone in Okinawa is cremated. I also found out that my grandpa’s family tomb is over 300 years old. And every spring they have cleaning ceremonies to honor their ancestors and have a picnic on top of the tomb itself. Very interesting.

After our trip around the neighborhood we headed to the beach! Which I later found out would be our only trip to the beach. ☹ Don’t get me wrong, we spent a lot of time in the ocean and exploring the coral coast, but when I say a beach trip I mean in a swimming suit, playing in the water and laying out in the sun. I wish we could’ve had a few more of those days.


It was beautiful though. This was actually on a different, smaller island than Okinawa, called Ikei Island. It was fun, too, because most of my family came with us. My uncle Yoshto, who works for the Okinawan government as a researcher and basically knows everything there is to know about Okinawa, found a baby jellyfish, a sea cucumber and a bunch of fish that he pointed out to us. You really didn’t even need goggles unless you started going into deeper water because it was so clear!

From left to right: Miku (2), Keito (3), Seika (6), Sarang (12) and Hanna (11) in the back.
Also note how clear and beautiful the water is.

Miku and Keito are my cousin Aska’s kids, Seika and Sarang are my half sisters, and Hanna is my uncle Yoshto and aunt Yoko’s daughter.

After a long day at the beach we drove back to Okinawa and had dinner.


Dinner was fantastic as always, I got steak this time. ☺


Every restaurant that I went to had buzzers, located on the tables, that would call your server over (very convenient!) and instead of writing down orders on paper they had electronic pads that they entered them into (very cool). And yes, we had to remove our shoes before stepping onto a platform where we sat on the ground to eat dinner. Personally, I like sitting in chairs, because my legs start to fall asleep after sitting cross-legged for a while.

After dinner we went home and I was in bed asleep by 10 p.m. After a full day of traveling, followed by a day at the beach, I was exhausted and slept until 10 a.m. the next day. I’ll post day 2 as soon as I can!