Day 3 In Okinawa

I was so disappointed. I expected something, but got nothing. Absolutely nothing. No nod, no surprise, no compliment, nothing. Perhaps it was because I was kind of expecting one, but there I was in the middle of nowhere (Komesu), in an Oba store (a tiny store run by an old lady out of the back of her house) by myself with an Oba asking how much the senbei was. In my skilled and mumbled Japanese, I asked, and she answered...as if I wasn't a gaijin (foreigner) speaking in her native tongue, asking about a product no true gaijin would ever ask about.

She looked at me (if she even did look up) as if she had gaijin coming in everyday asking for senbei. Hanging my head just a little as I walked out of her shop, I turned to purchase a Dr. Pepper from one of the ubiquitous soda machines.

This was kind of a neat road trip for many reasons. We went down to the Itoman area to: 1) find my Itoman apartment (no, the "Elvis Van" - as named by Johnny - was not still parked there); 2) swing by a craft store (of sorts) to get some Okinawa-looking placemats; and, 3) go to the Ryukyu Glass Factory south of Itoman.

The best part of this swing through the southern part of Okinawa was that Miwa really had no idea where we were going. She didn't know the area all that well, and had to trust that I did. And I did, for the most part (excepting the part where I trusted a sign against my better judgment, and we spent about 15 minutes on a dirt road going through puddles and satokibi (sugar cane) fields. The picture of me standing there is of what we were looking for; a beach'ish spot south of Komesu - Mabuni Cliff behind me in the distance.)

We got the placemats, found the Itoman apartment (and I think we found the Tomigusuku apartment on our way down there - I can only remember the general neighborhood we lived in, not exactly where the apartment was. I had to guess.), we got some glass (beautiful pieces), stopped at the aforementioned Oba store, found a beach, ate some senbei, and mawaru'd our way around the southern tip of Okinawa, rounding past Peace Park, up to Ojima (getting some squid tempura there - soooo good), wrapped around the Chinen Peninsula, then back up through Yonabaru and Nishihara, passing the very McDonalds that Matsuoka and I found Hunter and Watson at.

(I must explain: So Matsu just transfered into Shuri, and we had to go down to Naha to get his gaijin card updated. On the way back through, we decided to raid the Yonabaru apartment of any good food it had left - both of the Elders had been transferred out until later that afternoon when the transfer van dropped off two new choros - Atagi and Covino. However, from the Yonabaru apartment, neither of us were quite sure how to get back up to Shuri, without going all the way back through Naha. That was no good. At a loss, we decided to look for Hunter and Watson in Nishihara, hoping and betting that they might be at McDonalds. They were.)

So, yeah, Miwa and I stopped at that McDonalds to get a bacon potato pie (sorta like a hot apple pie, but not). There were other places of note: the McDonalds in Haebaru where we - King, Bacon, Hollibaugh, Hodson, and a couple others, as I recall - came across an RX-7 that was on fire, and tried to convince the McDonalds employees that, when we asked to use their fire extinguisher, we weren't simply mistaking the word "Big Mac" for "fire extinguisher" (I still remember shokaki today because of that experience); and new bridges where they weren't before, making navigation by distant memory a bit more difficult. But it was all fun, and a very relaxing journey through some very hilly territory....but this time in a car, not on a bike.