Record Shopping in Okinawa City

This is a special post. My old friend, Alex, asked me if I would talk a bit about record shopping here Okinawa and this turned out to be one of my favorite things to do for this blog. So, please, if you are curious about something, like getting groceries, or driving, please don't hesitate to put me on an investigative report!

Okinawa City is the music capital of Okinawa. Recently, Okinawa has become the fertile birthing grounds of many of Japan's top pop performers. Since the 1970's Koza has been at the heart of the Okinawan music scene. So, I went down to Park Avenue Arcade in Koza to do a bit of record shopping.

First off, Japan has the second largest media industry in the world, after Hollywood. So, there's a lot to choose from. And, it's all in Japanese. Which is tough if you don't know how to read Japanese and don't know who plays what kind of music.

Fortunately for you, Tsutaya (which is like Japan's Blockbuster Video) has an extensive music rental section. That's right, you can rent all the cd's you want. Right next to the cash register where you rent the discs are a big ol' pile of cd-rw's. I've yet to rent a cd, but this will be my preferable manner in which to introduce myself.

But, back to Koza.

So, while my wife was away for a week in New Zealand, I decided I'd go check out the record stores one night. My first thought was here:

Teruya Music on Park Avenue is awesome. There's a great selection of both Western and Japanese music AND a really great instrument store. You can buy a Buckwheat Zydeco album, something off the Pop Charts here, an accordion, a digital delay, and head on to greatness.

But the best place I found, which I should realize is a no-brainer, is this used cd-shop:

I walked in and the first thing I noticed, was that there were tons of records, not just cds. Probably equal amounts of both. Then I noticed that there was this incredible noise playing. Literally, it was this crazy, droney, loopy stuff. I thought, "Sweet, lots of records, odd music playing, this is gonna be like visiting Matt Benard at the CD Warehouse."

Except Matt spoke my language and we were old room mates. Eventually I was able to ask who it was that was playing, Jim O'rourke (whom I'd only just recently seen when I was looking at the Tenorion youtube clips here and here). That's when I started to get really excited because I saw that they had a copy of his Tzadik (a record label I like very much because of it's "avante-guard stable) release. Then I saw a large collection of Smog's stuff on Drag City Records. Then they started playing this old 45 from Trojan Records (an old school reggae label from the 60s).

I was really floored because this is a used cd shop. These were used cd's. The only Westerners near here other than me and the folks from work are the guys on base (the street parallel to Park Avenue is Gate 2 street that takes you onto Kadena Airbase). In fact, walking around Koza I saw this graffiti that had been intended for the guys on base:

(there are a lot of rapes and bad things being visited on the Okinawans in this area by our service members, and I will address this later).

So, who's buying these cd's and then selling them? I'm stoked to meet them.

What did I buy? Because I'm curious to know more about Jim O'rourke, I get an album with and Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) on it. They put together a trio with Mats Gustafsson called the Diskaholics Trio. Click here for more information and to have a listen.

Ryukyu Mura

My co-workers and I went to Ryukyu Mura, which is like a traditional Okinawan Village Themepark. Before being called Okinawa by the Japanese, these islands were called Ryukyu. They were an independent, but poor, kingdom which had its golden age a couple hundred years ago when it was trading freely with China, Korea, Japan, and most of South East Asia. The Japanese conquered Okinawa in the late 19th century and has been slowly eliminating the indigenous culture since then. This village presents a Disney-fied version of what is "Traditional Ryukyuan" living. That said, I highly recommend visiting here, because it's a beautiful park and it's a lot of fun. Especially when they start doing the traditional dances, etc.

The Okinawans don't think of themselves as Japanese, they have a very unique culture that is a blend of indigenous ways of being and heavy influences from both Japan and China. Champuru, mixed, culture. Here you can see the influence of Chinese dragon dances, brought to Okinawa you get something a little different:

When the Japanese conquered the Ryukyus, they forcibly disarmed the population. Prior to this, there had been Okinawan samurai-warrior-types. From this the Okinawans developed the martial art system, Karate, which means "empty hand." In order to teach this deadly art, the Okinawans had to find ways to make it seem like they weren't doing anything particularly lethal, like dancing. If you watch in these videos carefully you will see that these dances are also very much like the movements that you learn in karate:



Here is a bit of the Eisa dance, which is pretty rousing:



No party is done in Okinawa until everyone dances as a group. This is when the really giant gaijin (not-Japanese), me, was picked out of the crowd and had to dance with everyone:

Dragon Boats! (Haari)

Our organization, in a sign of community affection, is entering this year's haari (Dragon Boat Race) in Onna-son. But I'm not entirely sure how we'll fare in the competition. Largely this concern comes from my total lack of dragon boat experience, and I think you can see that in these photos:

not really sure how to hold the paddle, exhibit A

exhibit B (although, to be fair, these folks were much better than we were)

20080522_second_haarii_training%20067, originally uploaded by paul.boshears.

Grafitti Around Okinawa

Some of these are from Okinawa shi, some are from Ikei Island. We took a long bike ride to Ikei Island which I am now referring to as "The Trail of Tears."