A Trip to Okinawa

This past week I spent vacationing in Okinawa with my friend Jamiel. I think I want to detail the trip in a few entries, so I can include pictures without making one massive, overwhelming entry. But first I want to put this out there. Even though I traveled with one male companion to a tropical, even romantic location, Jamiel and I are not romantically involved. It's actually kinda weird to imagine, and I just feel the need to clarify this to everyone who knows we traveled together. In fact, he was not the most ideal travel partner, but despite a few pet peeves, the trip was overall rather enjoyable and served to take my mind off of all things related to Work and Routine.

So what was Okinawa like? People say it's nothing like Japan "proper", and I think that's very true. There's certainly a lot of meeting-tourists'-expectations going on, but overall you can just feel it. The atmosphere is laid back. There's even PDA from time to time. The speed limit on the main highway was a shocking 60 km rather than the usual 50. There were a number of A&Ws, (fast food restaurant centered around the root beer), and a few army surplus stores. There's a U.S. base on the island, and one of the first things I noticed in the airport was the large number of Americans, clearly in the military, waiting at the gates for people to arrive.

There are tons of islands that make up Okinawa, and in the span of 9 days we only visited 3 of them. The islands furthest south you can only reach by plane from Naha, and in peak season there are flights from Tokyo and Osaka (peak season is late April through August or September). So we opted for islands we could reach by ferry. The weather was cool and cloudy our first 3 days, partly cloudy a couple days, then bright happy sunshine the last 3 days. Back home, it is once again quite cool, and tomorrow is back to work. In fact, tomorrow will be a big day of meeting the new teachers and staff members. There is much to do back in the real world, away from the beautiful beaches, that were largely too cold to swim in, but gorgeous nonetheless.

I loaded all my pictures on facebook, but I still want to chronicle the adventures here with some pictures, so stay tuned and those should be coming soon. For now, it's bed time. G'night!