Wasabi Ice Cream

I first noticed this place after I had gone to Krishna in Plaza House for what seems to be the best curry in Okinawa City.

It's a fun looking place, but I don't really eat a lot of ice cream as a rule. But one night I thought, "what the heck," and am I glad! I first had the blackened sesame ice cream, which tastes kinda like peanut butter, but with a delicious smokiness. Then I saw this:

Wasabi flavor. There's real wasabi in there, they blend the ice creams right before you. They also offer juices and smoothies and advertise that this is all additive free, low in sugar, calories and fat (hmm...)

Other flavors include:

• green tea
• turmeric
• sea weed
• purple sweet potato
• okinawan sugar cane and soy flour
• and a bunch of more traditional flavors

Oishi Desu!

Their website is:
http://gelobello.ti-da.net/

Southeast Botanical Gardens

The Southeast Botanical Gardens in Chibana are great. Really great. It's very cheap (about 1,000 yen, but they give you 500 yen in credit at the gift shop), and it has some really neat things to see:

like this cactus-y tree (?)

Okinawa has gorgeous flowers and lots of orchids (which you note immediately after you leave the airplane in Naha).
Here's something called a Jade Plant


There are so many gorgeous things to see at this place that I kinda gave up and just started taking pictures of things that were of interest to me like these guys:

On the left is the bottle palm, I don't know what that is on the right. In both is some kind of tropical mistletoe.


These two above were in the Enchanted Forest section.

This has to be one of my favorite signs (next to the sign at Naha Airport that states puddings are not allowed):

But the real highlight has to be the carp. They're disgusting.

So I took several videos:

You can feed them, there's a vending machine (of course) full of fish food and it's gotta be the best 100 yen you can spend.
Here's me gettin' more riled up:

and here is their bizarre crescendo:


The website for the Southeast Botanical Gardens:
http://www.sebg.co.jp/e/

Cultural Differences

We went to Katsuen Castle Remains in Uruma City. Katsuren is a World Heritage designated by the U.N. and it's a beautiful place. The castle was built in the 12th and 13th centuries and was the home to the great Amawari... you gotta go there, it's free and you can get brochures in English if you so desire.

Here's a picture as we begin the ascent:

It's pretty steep walking up there and as you can see from above, it's a flat drop on the side.

When I got up there I was really struck by two things:
1) Okinawa's gorgeous!
2) there's nothing keeping me from being blown off this castle!

Here's what I mean:

This is the Castle Wall, it's at me knees, and from this picture it's hard to tell, but there's a straight drop just three feet in front of me (refer to the first picture in this series).

Maybe this will clarify what I mean:

The kid is standing at the edge of the Castle Wall and just a foot away from his feet is a significant drop.

In the U.S. this would never happen. I guess we're simply too stupid as a people to know better...I'm not really sure why American society is such a litigious one. Maybe it's the lack of Nationalized/Socialized Healthcare, I dunno. But I do know that this also wouldn't happen in the U.S. because we're so eager to enter lawsuits:

This is a chainsaw plant, I took this photo at the Southeast Botanical Gardens. It's just laying there, waiting for you.

Of course, I am not saying that things should be different here in Japan. I am saying that it's interesting how our two societies are able to function so differently. I'm glad to know it's possible.

Graffiti in Okinawa City

Found in Okinawa City on Awase Bay Street



These three were found in the Park Avenue area near Koza


These with JMO(0?) were found near Ike Island

Getting an Inkan Registered

The Japanese prefer personal seals (sometimes they are called inkan, other times they are called hanko - I'm not sure why the two names) over what they feel are easy-to-forge signatures. There is some flexibility for gaijin on this matter, though. You can establish a bank account, a cellphone contract, even a lease with your signature, but there's a caveat:
If you start an account with an inkan/hanko, you are forever bound to using that same stamp for the term of your account (no signing one month and stamping another), so don't lose your inkan!

You can buy inkan in many places and there are inkan stores that will make a seal to your specifications, typically in less than a week. It seems that if yours is a Western name, it's likely you will get an inkan that is in romaji (the alphabet), I am guessing that all others will have their names transliterated into katakana (the Japanese syllabary). Here are some examples of inkans/hankos:
This is from the ANA Visa people and it's the organization's official seal.
This is from the Roshi (Abbot), Fukushima, of the Tofukuji monastery there are several seals on this fan.

You should only use your inkan for official documents, don't go slapping it on any old thing (which was my first impulse). For that, you use an unofficial stamp (again you can buy these all over the place), they are called sanmonban. You use sanmonban for signing for packages, maybe as a neat little embellishment to a letter to your buddies back home, whatever.

Here's an informal stamp that I use:

It says "Po-Ru" which is the transliteration into katakana of my name.

To register your inkan you must go to City Hall (near Koza here in Okinawa City) and present your gaijin card and pay some money. In Okinawa City you receive a Hibiscus Card (like a credit card) which is used to further verify your address. Here's where in City Hall you go to register (also the same window to get a gaijin card, by the way):

You go to the window there, don't worry, they speak English, and tell them what you'd like to do. They will ask for your identification and Hibiscus Card and then tell you how many tickets to purchase:

I guess it wouldn't be right to give the municipal authorities money outright, so they have this ticket system in place. You put your money into a vending machine next to the window and select the tickets you want and then present the tickets you've purchased to the office clerks. You'll notice that you rarely just put money into someone's hands in Japan.

Bullfighting Capital of Japan

Uruma City is the bullfighting capital of Japan, and it's the immediate eastern neighbor of Okinawa City. We work in Uruma City, which is where I saw this manhole cover:

Then, on the way to Ike Island (also part of the Uruma City district), I saw this man brushing his huge bull on the side of the highway:
He's going to be fighting on the 31st of March.
But the bull fights are a little different here, instead of being killed my matadors, they buck-up against other bulls, maybe like sumo wrestlers? They try to knock each other out of the ring, I guess. I'll be sure to fill you in!

Getting a Cellphone

The laws in Japan were changed recently (I think in 2006-7) requiring all aliens (not Japanese citizens) to verify their identity, your certificate of alien registration (gaijin card).

The DoCoMo (the largest cellphone service provider) website says you may also enact a contract using the following:

• Japanese Health Insurance Certificate
• +
• Utility receipt
• or
• Certificate of Residence
• or
• Certification of Information Recorded on Foreign Resident Registration File
• +
• Credit Card

None of that is true, I can assure you from experience. If you are an alien trying to get a cellphone contract in Japan, wait until you get your "gaijin card." We tried several times to get a contract enacted and brought everything, including paystubs, certificate of hanko registration, and our visas from the Ministry of Justice. Just wait until the gaijin card is available.

The contract took about an hour to complete (someone was on the phone with us while we reviewed the terms, translating) and they even charged the phones and switched the menus to English for us. We told ourselves before we moved to Okinawa that we would treat ourselves for working so hard last year and get a really cool cellphone. That means we could have saved a good amount of money by just taking an older phone, but we ruminated for several weeks and comparison shopped, and we decided in the end to get the P905i:


If you look carefully you'll see that it does a number of things.
We can start by commenting on its high-def screen.

This is particularly nice because we can watch tv with the phones (and so save a few hundred dollars instead of buying one)

And we also save money by not having to buy a digital camera or a video camera (the HP camera that we've had for a couple of years now is just as good as this one!)

But I think what really sold me was that I can use the phone in the U.S., Australia, Europe, South America, and most of Asia. I can send and receive email overseas (it does cost a it more), and I can make video conference calls on my freaking phone!

We can record tv with it, we can pay for stuff with it (the phone's like a debit card), we can surf the web and download music and movies (it uses Windows Media Player), it's got GPS applications, it's got video games....every day we learn something new about this phone. It's like a new hobby. The manual is, like, 600 pages and available in English as a pdf (which you can review on your cellphone).

White Day

So there's Valentine's Day in Japan, but it's not quite like in the U.S.

In Japan, Valentine's day is the day that women give men chocolate, and it's pretty free of the stresses of Valentine's day in the U.S. But, then there's White Day.

White Day is the Japanese Valentine's Day, for the ladies. On White Day the men are expected to give the ladies a little chocolate, maybe a small gift. But, again, you give these gifts to all the ladies that you interact with on a daily basis and so it is somewhat freed from the stress of finding a Valentine like in the U.S.

I work in an office with several wonderful ladies and so I thought I'd do right by them and by a box of chocolates for them to share.

I found a nice box, it even had a nice little message on it and that little symbol I see on gifts. I thought, "sugoi, I've found just the right thing, the ladies will be pleased." Wrong. The following morning another Westerner asked one of the Japanese speaking ladies what the message on the box I purchased for them said, and she quietly shared that it says, "Congratulations on Passing Your Examinations." Being the wonderfully polite woman she was she also said that this was a good gift I got because this is the time of year when students are taking exams...but we both knew that it was pretty funny.

The box I bought is on the far right side:

St. Patrick's Day in Koza

Who knew that there was a St. Patrick's Day Parade in Koza, Okinawa City? There sure is. I missed the parade but did get to stroll around the Park Avenue area. Koza is the music capital of Okinawa and what says Erin go Braugh more than crumping (a highly-stylized street dance from the West Coast of the US)?


Not only is there a parade, but there's live music all day and night and a little flea market where I saw this:

Instant Coffee in Okinawa

As I've mentioned before, I love coffee and I have been really tickled that coffee is so readily available here in Okinawa. It's in the vending machines (one in the neighborhood in front of my apartment) both hot and cold, it's in the restaurants; there's even Starbucks! The "American Village," just like in America, has something like 3 Starbucks all within a two minute walk of each other!

In my office we have a reserve of instant coffee, but it's not Sanka, it's Blendy:

Blendy comes in these little tea bag-looking things, and I thought, at first, that's all I did: let the bag steep. But then I looked at the above directions and realized, no; this is way cooler than that.

Here's the bag. You pull this tab (one on each side) and it makes little wings:

The "wings" hang on either side of your mug, and you rip the top of the bag off:

Now it's time to take your cup and bag over to the hot water maker:

Put some hot water in and let nature take it's caffeinated course:

Enjoy!

Okinawa City's Ephemeral Art

I'm from Atlanta, GA where we have a thriving graffiti scene, so I have been very pleased to see that Okinawa has quite a lot of this public art as well.

I'm really enjoying riding my bike or walking around town and snapping photos of what's up.

By far, the most prolific person or group has got to be RASKA followed by GUN, NER (also NEVER?), and I see a lot of SUBZERO splashed around.

Let me know if there are others I should be seeing and what are some good spots. Clicking on any of these photos should open up a larger viewing. Oh, and these were all taken with my P905i cell phone camera, thus the strange angles sometimes.