Hiroshi

My last week in Okinawa, I had a little companion for the long days while T is at work. Meet Hiroshi!

I was beyond excited when I found out we would be taking care of him for a whole week. I had tons of plans to take him on walks to stores close to our place and even take him to the beach. I was supposed to get a rental car for one of my last days on island but we went last minute one afternoon and oddly there were no cars left. Super disappointed. So without a car and it rained almost every day, we didn't have much opportunity to get out. The one day it was beautiful outside, we left the apartment to go on a walk and found ourselves greeted by this.

Yes, a chicken! This little guy saw us standing on the first floor landing and heard the dog bark and started coming after us. I may be a small town girl but I am NOT a farm girl. I don't know anything about chickens and scared I was going to be pecked by a wild one decided it was best to run back upstairs. Once inside our place, I decided to sneak back downstairs and see if it really had followed us. And it sure had, it was squawking on the second floor. When T came home he was gone. Gone to where; the corn field, a tomb, or maybe a neighbor has a pet chicken?

Hiroshi really makes me miss our kitty back at my parent's house. Excited to go home so soon!

 

Last Home Cooked Meal

For my last night with Tom, I wanted to go all out with dinner since I know he will miss my cooking. At least he better. Knowing how much he loves tacos and all the trappings of a good Mexican meal it was a no brainer. Taco Tuesdays are our favorite!

Our lovely dinner included the basics for the best tacos and then I made guacamole and queso. Our lovely friends Caralee and Paul had come over for dinner earlier in the week and brought us a bottle of wine. We decided this was the best night to open their gift.

I will miss cooking for my husband for the next few months. But by then we will have a big kitchen with lots of room and appliances for me to cook even better meals. My little domesticated heart cannot wait!!

 

Date Nights

At the beginning of my stay here we would have at least one date night a week. Either dinner and/or a movie. Well after a few weeks for unknown reasons we stopped having date nights. It was just easier for T since he was working extremely long hours and sometimes not getting home till 6 or later. 

But with my departure fast approaching, date nights were reinstated. Most of the time these date nights included one or more of his friends which just made it even more entertaining as I often would be pulled into conversations only guys would have. This happens all the time but I don't think I will ever get used to it. 

For our first date, we decided to go to a restaurant that everyone must go to at least once while in Okinawa. CoCo's Curry. You will hear about this restaurant from the moment you get there until you leave. Some people swear it is the best and strangely addictive. It was pretty good but not my favorite (best curry later in the post). The salad dressing though was amazing. I don't know what that stuff was but I could have drank that straight from a cup. About the curry though, beware of the spice levels! I love spice and got a level 4 (Level 10 is highest) and couldn't finish it. 

We followed up our next date night at a Noodle & Fried Rice restaurant. It was highly recommended to us and I love fried rice! Jeremy came along. Many restaurants in Japan have vending machines where you decide what you want by pushing the respective buttons for your food and drink. It makes it a little difficult with just a picture and no description but I don't think you could go wrong at this place. 

T and I both got the fried rice, garlic rice, and dumplings. And J ordered a noodle bowl and dumplings. The fried rice came with the egg cooking so you had to stir it into the rice fast so it would fully cook and not burn. The food was delicious and extremely filling. I left with a full tummy and a food baby. 

Tom stirring in the egg

We decided to continue with our Japanese themed date nights. We went to an izakaya just up the street from our apartment. Another recommended place which turned out to have some of the most interesting decor. 

You could eat in huts over water!

My planning skills were off that day and we didn't make a reservation so we ended up sitting at the bar. But I thought it was cozy and I loved looking at all those chandeliers.

They didn't have an English menu but most of the items had pictures. So it didn't seem too difficult. Find a picture that looked appetizing and order it. Between the two of us we ordered avocado slices, taco sushi roll, steak with a spicy soy sauce, edamame, a plate with a variety of sashimi, and well a plate of something unknown. The picture looked like chicken but it definitely wasn't. I delegated that dish to the "only in Japan." 

WHAT IS THIS?!

For our final night out I knew exactly where to go: SomChai (Thai). We have been to this place several times and it was one of the few restaurants we went to when I visited last summer. I love it and will miss this tiny little place for their delicious food.

Every time I go I want to get something else because everything on their menu sounds amazing but I flake because I want their curry. I crave this stuff despite knowing I will likely leave with my mouth on fire. Every meal comes with soup and you can pick rice or noodles with your curry. The soup may be basic (very few veggies in a chicken broth base) but I love it. I even found a recipe so I could make my own.

After we got I food I kind of forgot to take pictures of it. That is just how much I love this place.

We had successful date nights even though it rained every single time. While I am ready to get back to being able to order and understand what I have ordered, there are so many diverse restaurants in Okinawa. Unlike the US staples of Chili's and Macaroni Grill - don't worry they have those on base if you ever need a refresher of what a chain restaurant taste like.

 

Cafe George

Cafe George is our local watering hole in Okinawa. The bar is actually in the "penthouse" apartment next door and the Japanese man who lives and works there is one of Tom's first friends when he moved to Okinawa. Ken is in a band with three other guys and they play in the bar or at local talent shows. I never got to hear them live but we have one of their CD's - happy birthday is my favorite! Tom actually is their English translator for syntax.
 

Besides Ken, his mom and the apartment complex owner both are regulars. And are pretty fond of my husband. We love this bar not just because it is so close to our place but for so many reasons that only pictures can best explain.

The Drinks - Ken pours them strong!

Karaoke

The View - Okinawa City Lights

Darts: My skills were laughable and yet I almost won!

Hopefully we can find a bar in NC just as worthy of being our local hangout. 

Tourist Visa: Expired

I just realized I have less than 2 weeks left in Okinawa. Less than 2 weeks to spend every waking moment with my husband. Less than 2 weeks to make sure I see and do everything on Okinawa we planned to do and haven't gotten around to doing for the past few months.

Leaving never gets easy and I should know this by now. In the three years we have known each other, this is the longest we have spent together in consecutive days - our record was just under four weeks before the wedding.

It's only six weeks. Six weeks apart used to be easy. But I am dreading more than ever saying "see you soon" at yet another airport. I so hate airports it is not even funny! Just thinking about makes me feel sick.

For now, I will hide the part of me that wants to cry because this sucks every single time and be happy I have almost two weeks left to spend with him. And that even when I leave I know I can talk to him almost anytime I want and that he is safe. Much better than some other possibilities.

Like most times we have been separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, just gotta keep myself busy.

Throwback: Our last picture together before he left for Okinawa

  

Acquired Allergy

The other day I had a minor cut on my face. No big deal but I wanted to make sure it healed fast and didn't scar. So I put a little Neosporin on it. The next morning I woke up and noticed my face had some red splotches on my checks and near my lips. My face was also a little itchy and swollen. It was like stinkin' de ja vu. 

This is not the first time I have had an allergic reaction to Neosporin but I had totally forgotten. My first reaction was after I started using it to keep a second degree burn on my arm from getting infected. I had been instructed by the doctor to use it as a base coat so my bandage wouldn't stick to the burn. But after a few days, the burn was incredibly itchy and it was red with dark red dots all over the new skin. The doctor said it was just the new skin reacting differently to Neosporin. I stopped using it and the burn finally started to heal. 

The story behind the burn: For one week during Occupational Therapy school, we have to learn how to make hand splints with materials that require hot water to mold. It was an all day class and by the afternoon, we were all tired and stressed out. Splints are not easy for even most experienced OTs. In order to get the water hot enough, we use electric pans to heat the water. On this particular afternoon I wasn't thinking and I noticed someone had turned up our pan to make the water boil so I turned it down and then lifted the lid. As I did the steam hit the underside of my arm and I dropped the lid splashing water onto my arm as well. This lead to a very painful 2nd degree burn from both steam and water. But it has healed really well and I like my grad school battle wound :)

Burn with Allergic Reaction

Several months later, I had extremely dry lips. I was unable to breathe out of nose at all. I was becoming an all day mouth breather. My lips hurt so bad and nothing was working. I went to the pharmacy and asked what they recommended. After the rundown of her suggestions that I had already tried, she said Neosporin. First of all, don't ever use Neosporin on your lips. Later my doctor told me it doesn't help them heal any faster because there is no moisture benefit from this type of medication. Anyways, I broke out in a rash and small hives all over my lips. They swelled up about three times their normal size.

Creepy picture but it looked worse in person.

So I am self diagnosing, because I don't need a doctor to know, I am a part of the approximately 25% allergic to one of the components of Neosporin. Who knew so many people were allergic to such a common medication! One week later and my face is finally free of the remnants of the allergic reaction. No more Neosporin for this girl - a Bacitracin family we will be.

 

Okinawa Tunnel Rats Tour

The only tour in April was on April Fool's Day which is the also the day the Marines landed on Okinawa - coincidence the tour was on this day? Thankfully, we had perfect weather on Sunday with the sun out and a little breeze so we didn't get too warm walking around.

When we booked this tour, I thought I heard Tom call it the Battle of Okinawa tour so I figured we would be walking around to the battle sites and there might be a small cave or two. I guess I misunderstood because as the tour guide is explaining in great detail all the insects to be aware of on the tour, I wonder if I am cut out for this. I hate insects, HATE them (as I sit here cowering in our extra bedroom hoping for Tom to get off work early so he can kill the MASSIVE spider chilling on our ceiling)! But that's not all - the tour guide goes on to tell us how we might find bones, skulls, bombs and other things I didn't want to come upon in a dark cave.

After the bus ride, I had run through all the possible bad scenarios. My heart didn't stop beating fast from this moment till we got on the bus to go home. The story behind the first cave was the US military found the cave and heard people inside whispering in Japanese so they called into the cave for them to come out with their hands up. Soon after, a man walked out and in English basically said "what's up?" This took them by surprise but as the man explained he had lived in Hawaii before coming back to Okinawa. He said there were at least 1100 people in the cave and they were terrified to come out because the Japanese military had been telling them the Americans would brutalize them and their families. The military explained they would give him some time to get the Okinawan civilians out of the cave but eventually they would have to blow the opening. By blowing up the opening of the cave the Japanese military would not be able to hide in the cave but it would also trap any civilians who stayed behind. Eventually, all 1100 civilians came out with the help of this man. A statue was built at the entrance of the cave for his efforts to save civilians but some years ago the Japanese came and destroyed it saying it was a lie.

Plaque built after statue was destroyed

The tour then took us to a museum on Camp Kinser. The museum had tons of artifacts found on Okinawa from the war. There were uniforms from all branches of the US military from that time and the Japanese military uniforms. Guns, grenades, bombs, Japanese dog tags, articles, letters, and tons of small pieces of personal items left behind in the caves from the Japanese military and civilians. The tour guide told us how they still find things on the island all the time - The craziest example was when the new base housing was first built the first family discovered a large piece of metal in their yard while mowing. The facilities engineer for base housing came out and discovered a huge bomb in the ground that had started to surface within feet of their front door.

USMC Combat Uniform During WWII

Current USMC Combat Utility Uniform

Bombs that blow up when stepped on - Tour guide has stepped on four!

The third cave we went to was at the top of some stairs overlooking the beach. It was a relatively small cave system but they had a cave with a lookout point where the Japanese would sit with a gun. It was overgrown but almost 70 years ago you could probably see for miles and miles.

Lookout Point

View of Beach from the Cave

By the time we reached the last cave for the day I was starting to calm down and think there wasn't anything frightening about these caves. And then we climbed down to the opening of the cave with a 20 foot drop. From what the tour guide said the cave opening had been smaller but had been hit by American artillery during the war. Now there was a large open area before the drop into the cave.

I didn't want to go but I knew I would be nervous the whole time if I didn't go in with Tom. The guide had already told all the guys there was a rope leading into a well if anyone wanted to try but he wasn't coming in to help if someone was to get stuck. Tom would be the first to want to try this so I needed to make sure he didn't. Out of five women,  only two of us chose to climb down into the cave.

I was freaking out inside until we got to an area where I didn't have to climb down anymore - the rocks were slick with mud and I had already fallen once. I could never imagine people living inside those caves as it was extremely muggy, there were no flat areas to sleep on, and dark. We climbed around inside for about 30 minutes before I started to get anxious and most people had already left.

Sorry for the bad pictures, but it was so hazy!

Bone found inside the cave

Tom went up first and waited for me to start climbing. It was definitely a challenge and a few times I didn't know if I would make it. Being as short as I am it didn't help - the first rock to climb was taller than I was. Then I had to jump across an opening between two rocks about 15 feet up and instead of just doing it I pictured myself falling and hitting my head; didn't know I had such an imagination!

Pretending to Fall.

But we made it out and got back to the bus with mud all over us. I don't know if I would go again but we had an interesting experience.

 

P.S. For those we tricked on April Fool's with our clever little joke, You're Welcome :) I wish I had a video of y'all reacting. Congrats to my little sister (and the rest of Chi Omega's DM lovers) for four years of dancing at the University of Florida's Dance Marathon - 104.8 hours of standing for a great cause!