Walking Around Okinawa — I made my 10,000 steps today, but I didn’t go quite as fast as yesterday. Suellen seems to feel we are moving too fast. Possibly we have begun to emulate days of her childhood, when sightseeing would involve going on tremendously ambitious on-foot expeditions, and pushing forward, using public transit, all day and into the evening, whether people were tired or not. We (the parents) would be dragging everyone in the party along, including, at times, children too young to walk, who had to be carried, and sometimes even harder, children big enough to walk who didn’t feel like it. You’d be out on some outskirts of town looking at some tomb that most people never see, not only because they hadn’t read the ancient historian Livy, but also because it’s too far from public transit. We’d be walking along the edge of some country road, stepping around dried grass and weeds, with weird foreign vehicles and motorinos scooting by, telling kids not to slow down because the last metro pulled out at 8 p.m.
This memory, as I recount it, is from Italy.
Back to Okinawa, Back to Japan
For me, the stressing factor is not actually walking so far, it’s not knowing any Japanese, not even hello or thank you. Actually, I know “thank you,” arregato, but I find it hard to produce in the context of actual transactions. And my transactions are all the same: find the item I want to buy, estimate how much it costs in dollars, identify the check out counter, bring the item, and produce credit card. I have yet to get actual yen from the ATM. Suellen has yen, of course, and Suellen has a phone that goes online. Mine, from Metro PCS, does not. The e-sim I bought so the phone can use Japanese cell towers is not working, because the phone cannot be unlocked until I’ve owned it for 365 days.
So, outside of buying an entirely new phone for the next week, I’m offline. Except in the hotel or airport or other places that have free wi-fi. Offline, and can’t speak Japanese, I am … feeling less connected. I concentrate on looking, taking pictures, shopping, talking to Suellen, and mastering the most basic Japanese phrases.
How to Say Hello
Japanese’s most basic hellos are temporal. From waking up to 10:30, it’s “ohaiyo gozaima!” From then until evening, you can say “konicheewa” and then, as evening comes on, you say “konbawa.” But pulling this sequence up in your mind when you face a new person is tricky.
At any rate, this morning when I tried to suggest to Suellen that we drive around the island and go to ancient religious caves, go snorkeling, have a picnic, and check out the pottery district, I got an eye roll.
“I’m never going to get any rest,” Suellen told me. “This is like going to work!”
It’s Important to Remember with Adult Kids … They’re Now Your Peers
Wait wait, I never said we had to move this fast. It’s just that … I’m only in Okinawa for three days and there’s about an entire summer’s worth of things to do out here. I had not considered that as a non-driver, I may not appreciate the full difficulty that is borne by my daughter, who has to drive the 8-foot long “kei” car (that’s an ultra-compact size) 100% of the time. The laws of the country do not allow me to drive her car, which is a special “SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement)” registered vehicle with registration linked to her work for the U.S. Military.
Anyway. We agreed to slow down. We went to the mall to try to find my eyeglasses, which I’d left in a shop while trying on clothes (Success! They were behind the counter in the Kahiko Hawaii shop in a small pristine plastic bag, and the young shop girl, who didn’t know English, recognized what I was asking when I made a hand gesture of rings around my eyes for someone wearing glasses. So I got them back.) We went to Bali Noon, Bali Moon, a Balinese restaurant for lunch, which was good. Rice, soup, vegetable curry, chicken, tea, cheesecake. I went to pay for the meal and there was no place to add a tip on the slip.
“Mom, they don’t tip here.”
“What?”
“There’s no tips.”
“None?”
Shakes head no. “I told you that.” But … no tips anywhere?
I Suddenly Miss the Discomfort of Tipping
Who could complain about that? Nevertheless, I suddenly miss the discomfort of tipping. The cost, the exchange of awkward evaluation and thanks. The threat of giving too much or too little. The worry about where to put the tip. The fear of forgetting. All gone. There is no tipping.
Suellen also tells me it’s extremely rude to put your chopsticks standing up in your rice bowl. This is a funeral ritual. I wasn’t going to do it, of course, but … she just wanted to make sure I knew.
We went to the Yomitan pottery district. We wanted to take another art class, this one with clay. The discovery was made that you can build your own shisa, the guardian statues of Okinawa that we both love. We found our way into the workshop. There were no classes available right away, but we could come back tomorrow at 9:30! Suellen quickly agreed. Then we went on the gallery crawl, out in the semi-rural village of Yomitan, to see pottery and hand-blown glass.
Yomitan Pottery Village Does Not Disappoint
It is at the end of several turns, this pottery village. Hand painted signs in Japanese and English direct us to a wide parking lot in front of a winding dirt road that leads past small wooden studios that the artists have built since the pottery kilns were moved here from Naha. Tile roofs with the traditional round caps on the end predominate. Inside the galleries, rows of dishes, plates, cups and platters, not to mention a few tea pots and quite a few shisas. Suellen is considering getting a set of dishes, perhaps four place settings, for her home. She notices that the Okinawa table setting is more “small plates” than “big plates.” There are larger plates, but most of the ware is bowls, with many, many rice bowl sizes, as well as square sauce dishes, chopstick trays and rests. The glaze on the bowls are generally abstract, high fire pottery glazes, with some animal designs created with sgraffito.
This is not an area for a formal garden. Outside the galleries, the jungle is trying to come in. Buckets and metal ware used for the potting process are stacked ready. The artist, as I well know, is a person without time for non-art niceties. Every improvement here is geared toward producing and selling pottery, including the coffee shop, open until six, which is at the turn around point on the “pottery village trail” or road. When you produce art, you need to sell art, and conveniences for the customers are in place.
Shisa are Ubiquitous Here
Suellen finds a large shisa pair that she thinks she wants to buy. She tells me she will go to the ATM in the morning and get yen. This pair is big enough to place on the gates of a small house. I see a handleless mug with blue glaze that I think I might want to take home. When she says she’s going back for the shisa, I plan to go back for the mug.
And that is it, we go back to our sleeping places and rest, and get ready for the shisa pottery making class in the morning.
Konbawa.
More from this series:
Day 1: Leaving on a Japan Trip
