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In the beginning of March, I found cheap plane tickets to Okinawa and went off to visit my dad's family there. I had met Ritsuko, one of my dad's Okinawan cousins, once about ten years ago when she flew to Seattle to help take care of my grandma. But that was ten years ago, and at the time, I couldn't speak any Japanese at all, so we didn't exactly talk much. All I have are these hazy memories of folding paper cranes with this silent Japanese lady.
And so armed with only a vague impression of my Japanese relatives, I really had no idea what to expect of the trip, but it ended up being amazing. Over the five days I was in Okinawa, I had dinner with a different "cousin" every night and met probably 15 or 20 different people. They were all very kind to me and took me all over the island. I enjoyed the touristy stuff, but actually I think the most exciting part of the trip was chatting with everyone and finally being able to put faces and personalities to the amorphous group of Japanese relatives I had heard about as a kid.
After arriving at the airport, I went straight to the youth hostel I had booked so that I could drop off my luggage. (By the way, the youth hostel was amazing and deserves its own post, which will be up shortly, I hope.) Anyway, I was walking down the hall of the hostel towards my room when I noticed a lady at the other end of the hall standing completely still and staring at me with her mouth wide open.
Now, people in my little town stare at me all the time, but when they stare, they do it carefully -- if I happen to look back at them, they quickly avert their eyes or pretend to look behind me. This lady, on the other hand, was making no attempt to hide the fact that she was gawking at me, which really weirded me out. After a rather awkward moment (Why are you staring at me?? Do I know you from somewhere? No, of course not....gah, now I'm staring at her. Ok, Linds, try not to look like you're staring....gah, she's still staring...what's going on???), I realized that she must be Ritsuko, the cousin who I had met in Seattle ten years ago. After I finally introduced myself, she explained that she had been really confused because I look nothing like I did when I was thirteen. (She has a point. She showed me a picture that she took on her trip to Seattle, and I was this super skinny kid with hair down to my waist wearing a backwards baseball cap and a Mariners t-shirt. Pretty different....although my fashion sense hasn't changed much. :)
Ritsuko is in her fifties, quite serious, organized, kind and very concerned that I enjoy my trip to Okinawa. Before I came to Okinawa, I had reserved myself a dorm-style room in the hostel, the kind you share with a few other complete strangers. I figured that I might as well get a cheaper shared room since I wasn't planning on spending much time in the hostel anyway, but when Ritsuko heard that, she wasn't too excited about the idea. She insisted that I sit in the lobby while she changed my reservation to a single room and paid for the upgrade herself. I tried to argue that I really didn't need the nicer room, but since it's impossible to argue with a Japanese obasan, I eventually gave up and just said an embarrassed thank you.
The next day was Ritsuko's day off, so she drove me around the main island.
This is the park around the Peace Memorial Museum where the Battle of Okinawa was fought during World War II. I've read stories about Okinawan civilians who jumped off the cliffs behind me to avoid being killed by American and Japanese soldiers. (More civilians were killed in the battle than Japanese soldiers, I think, possibly up to a third of the population of the island.) The park is a very pretty place now, but there are also huge lines of graves. It's pretty somber, but I suppose it ought to be. People should know what happened there, and it's sad that most Americans (and probably most Japanese) don't.
Next, we went to Okinawa World, a park with interesting exhibits on traditional arts and crafts and Okinawan culture. They also had a short show featuring singing, dancing and Eisa, a style of drumming that I had studied a very little bit back at Stanford, so it was cool to see it in person. At the end of the show, the performers invited the audience to come down to the stage and dance. Although I would usually rather die than dance, it actually wasn't so bad this time, probably because it was low key and most of the other Japanese tourists there were just as stiff and awkward looking as I was. :)
Ritsuko and me with the drummers.
Me learning another percussion instrument from one of the other drummer guys. I am a music nerd so I really got a kick out of the show and all of the instruments, but especially the sanshin, a Okinawan style banjo-ish instrument with three strings. By the end of the trip, I ended buying my own very cheap sanshin and now I sit in my apartment and mess around with it all day instead of writing blog posts. Fun for hours. :D
The next day, I met Ritsuko's son, Dai, and his girlfriend, Kiriko. In the morning, we drove around to try to find Dad's old house in Kiyuuna (my dad was born in Okinawa and lived there until junior high), but after driving up and down the same street several times, Ritsuko decided that it had probably been torn down. (The last time she had seen it was about ten years ago when Grandma and Karen came to visit.) We tried to take a picture of the view of the ocean from the spot where Dad's house would have been, but it's sort of at a weird angle so you can't see the ocean too well. :( Anyway, do you recognize the view, Dad?
Ritsuko, me, and Dai at a very cool restaurant near some pineapple fields. They seated us in this balcony outside, so it was very breezy and nice. :D
Ritsuko, me, Dai, and Kiriko outside a big aquarium overlooking the ocean. I should have taken more pictures of the ocean, because it really was amazing and postcardish, but sadly my camera was broken at the time, so I had to bum off of Ritsuko's when I could.Dai and is a high school teacher and Kiriko works as a representative for some kind of education consulting company, I think. They were very laid back and big brother/sisterish towards me, which was fun. They're in their late twenties/early thirties and have been together for ten years, although Dai still lives with Ritsuko and Masako (his mom and grandma.) (Ritsuko kept saying, "I think they'll probably get married next year....well, I hope they'll get married next year." :)
At night, we had dinner with more relatives, Ritsuko's sister, Hiroko, half-sisters, Kumiko and Ikuko, and their families.
Whereas Ritsuko dressed fairly conservatively in pantsuits even on her days off, Hiroko was completely different. She's late forties/early fifties too, but every time I saw her, she was wearing serious nail polish, very high heels, and clothes that reminded me of a Japanese teenager. She is funny and more on the outgoing side though, so she can pull off the look somehow. I enjoyed her.
Kumiko is the cousin who is closest in age to my dad, and she told me that she still remembers playing with him when they were little. I guess they couldn't talk to each other because of the language barrier, but they ran around, and apparently Dad also threw a ball at her and hit her in the head once. :) (Sorry to digress into these little profiles. These are more for the benefit of my parents, but you can read on if you like as I will try to make it as amusing as possible.)
I also met Hiroko and Kumiko's children, and this is where it got a bit confusing. The three oldest daughters are named Ayano, Sayano, and Asano. Apparently, when they decided on names for their children, they didn't consult with each other much...
Fortunately, by now, I'm pretty sure that I have the three of them straight. Ayano is Kumiko's oldest daughter. She's a couple years older than me and went to college in Tokyo. When I came to Okinawa, she had just come home to look for a job after working in Tokyo for a few years. Since she hadn't been back to Okinawa for seven years, she was just as lost as I was in the city, but she still offered to take me around one day and we had a good time. Pictures of that in a sec.
Sayano and Asano are Hiroko's daughters, and they are absolutely hysterical. Apparently, they had been briefed that their distant quarter-Japanese American relative would be coming to visit, but hadn't actually seen me before. So when I walked into the restaurant to meet them for the first time, Asano turned around to look at me, looked completely baffled, and then finally said, "へ～、本当に外人さんみたい。。。" (Wow, you're really just like a foreigner...) ...And I am indeed a foreigner so she was right, but that's probably the weirdest response I've gotten yet to my gaijin-ness. Made me laugh. I think it is safe to say (in the most affectionate way) that Asano and her sister are a bit on the ditzy side. Sayano was late for dinner because she was doing her nails.
Their grandma, (and Ritsuko's mom) Masako, also came to dinner. She is a dear, sweet elderly lady, who unfortunately has some hearing loss, so sometimes she would say cute things out of nowhere that had almost nothing do with the rest of the conversation. Between Masako-Obasan and Asano and Sayano, that night's bizarre dinner conversation was probably the ultimate test of my Japanese listening skills because nothing quite made sense to me..... (Please don't misunderstand -- the following reenactment is not meant to be mean spirited. This is almost exactly how the conversation went and it was so funny.)
Asano: Oh! I should ask you questions about English... All of these foreigners come into my nail salon, and I can never understand what they're saying.
Me: Oh, that's too bad. Maybe I can help.
Asano: Oh good! Thank you!! Sooo...um...oh! I know! What does [unintelligible word]
Me: Um...could you say that again? How were they using the word?
Asano: Um...let's see. It's..uh..well, you know, it's
Me: Uh huh. (nodding gravely) Can you say it in a sentence?
Asano: Hmmm...well it was from some kind of magazine about...um...lions or Africa or something.
Me: Um....ok. It's...uh...the name of an animal??
Masako: Oh, there's no wild animal park in Okinawa, dear. Maybe if you went to Kyushu, though....
Me: Huh? Um, oh...really? ...
Dai: (laughing) Grandma, she's not talking about a wild animal park. She's....
And on it went. I loved it. :D
On Monday, Ritsuko had to work, so Ayano went with me around Naha and Shuri. It was fun to hang out with someone my own age. (Don't get me wrong -- I still love the old men of Ehime too.)
Here's us at Shuri-jo, the castle for the king of the Ryukyus back when Okinawa was its own country.
We also went to a big market in Naha. There were rows and rows of stands with huge mountains of boxes of candy and herbs and things I couldn't read.
The seafood part was also amazing, although I couldn't capture it so well in this photo. But the lobsters and fish were the hugest ones I have ever seen. You can see the lobster antennae poking out of that tank. I was a little afraid that they were going to pull me in with them.
The pork section was by far the most amazing. I guess they have a saying that in Okinawa, you use every part of the pig except for the squeal, and it's so true. Thankfully, I never did try pig face, but I did have sliced up pig ears one day. I guess they're a delicacy in Okinawa, but I wouldn't really recommend them. For me, they were somewhere down there with turtle hand...
After the market, we came across a shop where you could try making your own Okinawan pottery. We made plates with shisa, traditional Okinawan guardian dog-lion things.
The guy in the white shirt was from Tokyo and was soooo excited to be on stage. He basically yelled into the microphone while sanshin man on the left looked on in amusement. After white shirt guy was finished, sanshin man asked for a female singer from the audience. At first, he kept looking back at a group of young Japanese tourists in the corner, but they were too embarrassed and wouldn't come up on the stage. Finally, since I knew the words to the song (涙そうそう -- it's really popular here), I ended up raising my hand to sing. Sanshin guy was really surprised and yelled "Stand up!" in English, while the rest of the Japanese tourists Here's me, sanshin man, and the lady who played the drums after my Okinawan club debut.
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