Ian Rambles
Booking the ferry to Okinawa I opted for second class, in a dormitory with about 300 other passengers. The crew member at the gangway showed us to our "seats". There are traditional Japanese bath houses onboard for each sex - complete with open bath. Our trip was smooth. It could have been interesting of the weather was rough!

Looking for somewhere to eat in our hire car I folllowed hand written signs to a "Pancake House" - closed - then to a Cafe - again closed. We finally ended up at a factory outley where they made garish yellow and purple cakes - you could see the production lines through big windows. Our coffe and pastries from the cafe were very nice though - and coloured normally.

Fiona's Journal
Back at Little Asia we loaded our bags onto our backs and headed for the ferry terminal. The 27 hour ferry trip takes passengers and cargo right down the chain of islands that make up Japan, stopping off at each one to unload and pick up containers and people at each one. The passenger area was not unlike a cross-channel ferry with a cafe and on-board shops but the sleeping arrangements were peculiarly Japanese.

We had deliberately chosen second class accommodation, for the experience as much as the cost saving. This meant a 300 person dormitory where we each had a mat on the floor (slightly too short for an average height Westerner) with a heavy woolen blanket and a brick-shaped pillow of mock leather with extremely firm stuffing. The mats were laid out in rows with a 2” gap between each and an 18” path between each double row.

We stowed our bags in the lockers around the periphery and removed our shoes at the margins of the bedding area and settled ourselves onto our 5 adjacent mats. Then we sat and watched other passengers, almost all Japanese, settling into their allotted spaces. More of this later because it was a fascinating way of covertly observing the Japanese at their admirable best.

We had supper in the on-board cafe, taking a random selection of variously recognisable and unrecognisable items from the buffet counter, and this proved to be my undoing though Ian and the boys were all fine. After an hour on deck watching the sun set over a classic volcano-shaped volcanic island, I started to get violent gut cramps. Sparing further detail I came to on the floor of the ladies washroom, drenched in sweat and feeling iller than I can ever remember, with two stewardesses patting my hands and speaking very gently in Japanese to me. They brought me a little glass vial of medicine which I downed without caring what it was and I am sure it contained opium because within minutes the agonising cramps just melted away and I stopped sweating and was able to wash my face and hands and totter back to my bed mat. I rolled myself up in my blanket, laid my head on the brick and slept like a baby until morning.

Monday August 4th
I awoke at dawn to the familiar dockside sounds of cargo being unloaded at our first stop in the island chain. I felt dehydrated and mildly nauseous with a headache so I sipped some bottled water and went back to sleep. I was vaguely aware that some passengers had disembarked and a lesser number had boarded so our dormitory was only half full now.

I awoke again at the next island stop a couple of hours later and went out on deck, which was already baking under a pitiless sun. I watched men in forklift trucks whiz around the dockside with containers completely blocking their forward view half the time, expertly stacking them onto lorries and into warehouses. More passengers boarded and I returned to my mat to watch them all settling in as we steamed gently on our way.

We seem to be almost the only Westerners travelling second class but amongst the Japanese it does not seem to be the poor man's option particularly – certainly not if you can judge affluence from shoes! Amongst the shoes shed at the edge of the mat area were some exquisitely beautiful and obviously expensive pairs and they were mostly tiny, especially the women's ones. Ours look like the footwear of shabby giants by comparison!

There were many families travelling with small children. One young mother and father opposite us had five children ranging in age from 4 months to about 7 years, at a guess. They were cheerful and quiet, playing amongst the bedding while their parents dozed and never intruding on other people's space, for the whole 12 hours of their passage. The older ones ate their packed lunches of sushi without getting any on their clothes or bedding and handling their chopsticks with amazing dexterity. The 18 month old was fed noodles by his dad with chopsticks without getting so much as a spot of the sauce on his pristine white shirt (dad's or baby's). The baby didn't cry once. I was amazed and somewhat ashamed of my own inadequate parenting by comparison.

An elderly couple had two mats just a few feet from us and the ease and suppleness with which they got up from, and down onto, them impressed me as did their ability to sit cross-legged and straight-backed for hours reading their newspapers and doing sudokus. I think a lifetime of sitting like this must do wonders for maintaining mobility and suppleness into old age, combined with the fact that almost everyone in this country is slim, as far as I can see.

Anyway, the day passed very pleasantly in this manner and by the end of it I felt able to eat a slice of bread and marrmite (always my recovery food and we are travelling with a large jar of it!). We docked in Naha at the Southern end of the island of Okinawa at about 8.30 (it is dark by 8.00pm this far South) and then faced the challenge of finding our hostel, obscurely named “Hostel Burney's Breakfast”. The directions off their website, which we had printed off, read -

“The Yui-Rale from Kencho Mae street for walking 2 min. from Kencho Mae street of Yui-Rale across the road and walk through the beside of Okinawa Bank walk straight two blocks then you will find Family Mart you will find brown building 6F in our hostel”.

Taxi drivers in Japan, generally, neither speak nor read English and I don't think this would have helped much if they did! Our driver did recognise our pronounciation of Kencho Mae street and Family Mart and not unreasonably dropped us in a side street behind a Family Mart on Kencho Mae street. We could not find the hostel, or a 6F or even a brown building anywhere and there was a worrying absence of an Okinawa Bank.

To cut a very long evening short Ian eventually found an English speaking Japanese man called Tacu in a bar who very kindly led us the half mile or so to the correct Family Mart (there is one on virtually every corner here) and round the back to the hostel itself and even helped us carry our bags up to the sixth floor for us. Yet another incidence of our indebtedness to Japanese kindness.
Nice rooms. Sleep.

Tuesday August 5th
We had breakfast at Burney's (included in the overall price of 35,000 Yen or £175 for two rooms and 5 beds for 3 nights) and got talking to some nice Canadians who were staying there. The girl in their group speaks fluent Japanese which gives them all a great advantage and her great power, she says! We talked about how tall we all feel here and how lovely the Japanese people are to strangers and also enjoyed a bit of mutual “slgging off the Americans”. They are quite unpopular on Okinawa because they have a large military base on the island, established as part of the post WW11 repararations. As a result many American's are apparently passing themselves off as Canadians here but continuing to act like Americans and giving Canadians a bad name! True? Or Urban Myth? I don't know, but there is nothing like the sharing of common prejudices for establishing friendships!

We took the MRT elevated train (like the Vancouver sky train but with a driver) to Shurijo castle which was then a sweaty climb to get up to but well worth it. The original castle had a military operations base built beneath it during WW11 so the castle got obliterated by allied bombing. It has been completely reconstructed above the ruins of the original, which you can still see remnants of through glass floor panels. A lot of it is extremely plain and beautiful and then one section is elaborately decorated and beautiful in a different way. I cannot begin to describe it so I hope we have some decent pictures.

Somewhere in the labyrinthine circuit around the various wings of the castle George and I lost track of the other three and, after waiting some time at the exit in the sweltering heat, they had not rejoined us. We headed back to the air-conditioned reception hall to wait there and the charming lady on the desk (who had earlier made delightful little origami boats for George and Harry while telling a little story as she did so) spotted that we were hanging around in a rather lost sort of way. She offered to put out a tannoy call for us and it was very odd to here “Een Petri” booming out across the castle courtyard. I have never had to ask for a tannoy call before but it worked and, reunited, we headed back towards the station.

We stopped for an ice cream at a roadside kiosk and Ian chose potato flavoured ice cream which was purple but didn't taste of anything much, just sweet and milky.

Once back at the hostel Ian got to work on his computer and the boys did whatever boys do on their computers and we all lacked the ambition to leave our air conditioned rooms for the sultry streets again that day. I went round the corner to Family Mart and found trays of ready made meals in the chiller cabinet. I picked a selection of variably identifiable noodle dishes and was just wondering how I was going to decipher the Japanese microwave instructions when the girl at the checkout offered to microwave them for me. They went down fine with hungry boys back at the hostel.

P.S. I have forgotten to mention that we have adopted the Japanese habit of going everywhere with a wet, light weight towel draped around our necks, or over our heads, to combat the extreme heat and humidity, which even they say is exceptional at the moment. We refresh them every time cold water is available and it makes a surprising difference.

Wednesday August 6th
We booked a hire car for today so that we can explore the island of Okinawa a bit. We all got up early with the aim of picking up the car on the dot of 8.00am to make maximum use of the hire period but then it took us nearly an hour to find the hire company's premises, and it took half an hour to do all the form filling and identity checking, so we didn't get on the road until 9.30ish. We got a 7 seater Toyota, automatic, left hand drive (oh joy!) and, of course, we get to drive on the right (as in correct, so actually left) hand side of the road again. It was like slipping back into comfortable boots after weeks in stilletoes. The car had magnificent air-conditioning and state of the art sat nav with a big screen but all in Japanese which made it less useful if more fun!

We headed north, through the American occupied area and, quite apart from the extensive military bases themselves, the American influence was very evident everywhere. Macdonalds, KFC, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks reappeared in our lives, along with massive billboards and trash-strewn wasteland. As we continued up the West coast we turned off the highway and into the narrow and winding coastal roads and here it became much more rural with little villages and agricultural land growing rice and other crops we didn't recognise.

We stopped at one little beach nestled amongst volcanic rocks and swam in the warm blue sea and wished that the water was just a bit colder! There's just no pleasing some people. Then we drove over to the East coast and across one of the many long road bridges linking smaller islands to the main island. Here we found a little beach-side cafe whose menu was entirely in Japanese and without pictures, and whose proprietors spoke not a word of English so we ordered by pointing at three items entirely at random and waited to see what arrived.

Apart from the fact that we would not, from choice, have ordered curry in a Japanese restaurant. it proved a very successful technique and we ate and enjoyed everythng. Then we had another swim and the water was still too warm to be really refreshing so we piled back into the heavenly air-conditioning of our Toyota, transferring industrial quantities of sand into its pristine interior. We took a deliberately convoluted and interesting route back to Naha because Ian and I were both enjoying the driving and we got to see more of the island that way.

Okinawa is definitely different from Japan's more Northerly islands, less densely built on, though still crowded by British standards, and more obviously tropical in its vegetation too.

We refilled the car with petrol and returned it unscratched, if full of beach. Then back to Burney's and a prolonged fight with the washing machine which refused to spin, until one of the hostel staff told me to lean all my weight on one corner of the lid until it managed to wind itself up to full spin speed and that worked. Finally got all our clothes washed and dried and packed by 1.30am, ready for our flight to Taiwam tomorrow. I am sorry to be leaving Japan. This is a country I definitely want to revisit for a longer stay, at a cooler time of the year and having learned a little of its language in advance.

Arthur's Log:
3rd
Another traveling day, after a long day and a huge queue we were on the ferry heading for Okinawa. We went for second class (as we usually do) but with this one you sleep in a huge room with 300 other people and you all have a designated mat on the floor.

Wile I was asleep mum got very ill, she went missing and was found later passed out in toilets by a attendant. She slept most of it off but it took the whole 27 hour trip to cure her.

4th
The ship stopped at many ports along the way. As soon as the ship was tied up, a stream of people rushed off and another stream rushed on and in that 5-10 minutes all the staff would sprint around replacing the 100 mat/pillow/blanket set with fresh ones and at the same time as that 2 or 3 fork lift trucks would come flying into the boat taking a dozen crates on and putting another dozen on and in the same amount of time unloading five or six cars. It wall all very high pace and was fun to watch.

Just something I figured when being talked to by a Japanese guy, that the Japanese don't have the short words we do like a and the, ect. So when every they ask for something in English it will be like this “could I have coke” or for “the” “Could you pass remote please” And that just how they speak.

We saw some flying fish, and they are amazing, they fly just like a bird but they have a really long tail with just touches the water as they fly leaving a trail.

5th
We some how got to Burney's Breakfast last night but we got there and thats what matters.

We set out to find a castle, which we found. The castle had been bombed flat in the second world war then rebuilt. It was still good but a bit plastic and new feeling, as it is.

To be honest they really don't like the USA here and they have very good reason. The Americans bombed the whole place to hell for a few weeks killing 200,000 Japanese. Then as a self thank you the USA gave to themselves 20% of the Island, build military bases on it and now half the time all you can hear is jets flying over your head.

6th
We hired a car for the day and as we drove down the Island we stared seeing how the Americans are affecting or more like infecting the island with their big name brands. The worst that I saw was a giant model of the KFC man dressed in traditional Japanese clothing.

We stopped at several beaches, and ate a little place near one, ill tell you now, if you go to Okinawa order something with pork in it when you eat, it is some of the best pork I have ever had.