last night's club adventure: johnny's car was soaked again from the rains. he left the windows open and it had almost completely dried off, but then it rained again. he drove the car we were borrowing from him. we first went to pick up his retired marine friend tony, who is originally from california. they're both divorced so they're really good drinking buddies. we went to bc street/park avenue but the club my mom wanted to see a group called diamantes at is no more. some worker outside one of the strip clubs told us that but he didn't know where diamantes plays at now. tony suggested a club so we drove to a place called partida on highway road #58. it's a very small club. it turns out it's run by members of kachimba 1551, a group whose 4th album my mom recently bought on cd. they're a very good okinawan salsa band.

inside partida

the club was completely decorated with cuban goods but i spotted 2 mexican things: a flag and a car license plate. the bartender said that the members of kachimba were rehearsing next door. then she brought back the bassist to say hello. i remember seeing him outside as we walked down the stairs to get in. he was very nice. i asked him about their songs because some of them are sung in spanish. he said the singer lived in peru until he was 16 years old, so he speaks spanish better than japanese. he also said that there's dancing lessons at the club every tuesday. at that, my mom started dancing with him and showing him some moves. then some other patrons started dancing.

the club played salsa music and there was a small tv with videos of cuban groups i was not familiar with and sometimes footage of kachimba in action. i started to wonder if the bartender was one of the female singers in the group. i definitely saw one of the female singers talk to the bartender. ok, i did a search and here's the bartender, so yes she's a member.

over the course of the evening, i drank a mojito and a caiprinha. we left after midnight and outside of the club, i saw a tobira/gokiburi/cockroach. he was a very slick and clever cockroach. he only crawled in the shadow of my mother so that at first i wasn't sure what i was seeing.

i got up this morning at 5am to pee. no big deal but i'm blogging everything! *evil laugh* we thought maybe if we could get up early, we would drive to the north of okinawa. actually, it was only mother who wanted to do this. i didn't wake up my mom or my brother. i went back to sleep and got up at 7am something. i went through my things, trying to decide if i can carry everything or if i need to buy a backpack. i figured i could stuff my suitcase and check it in. then i could stuff the 2 little adidas bags i brought with me and they could be my 2 carry-on items.

i needed to wash some clothes and my mom had previously used the washer before so my mom did that for me. i've had enough of the blisters on my feet! they're a pain every time i put on and take off my shoes, especially my left heel when i put on my shoes. my mom had some bandages and neosporin so i drained the blisters. i didn't shower because i didn't have anymore bandages to put no after showering. i ate the brown rice cereal again. it's really so plain and not at all filling. the food is just really sucking for during this trip. the low points are really low. it's depressing. it's lowering my morale. i've been homesick ever since korea. then i checked email and blogged for a little bit. i hung my clothes to dry and worked on my blog again. then i talked to yoshie as she hung her clothes to dry. i watched her play with the dogs a little bit. they love plastic. she took a ribbon and tied together some plastic so that it became a toy. the dogs don't understand the concept of "fetch" and would just hog the plastic to themselves. mukku, the small one, is the dominant male (japanese society! hahaaa) and would not share the toy at all. nana, the submissive female (she should be subversive!) would wait patiently for her turn.

k1's family had to do some grocery shopping, as did we, but we wanted to keep on going to other places so we drove in separate cars. my mom decided she didn't want to shop at navel kadena again so we dropped off my brother there to be with k1's family because he didn't want to go to the other stores we were going to and he thought he could buy a cellphone in the navel kadena complex.

my mom and i drove to jusco again. i bought bandages for my blisters. we ate at the chinese restaurant this time. i tried to order gyoza without meat, just vegetables, but the waiter looked so perplexed and said they couldn't do that. my mom told him that we came in recently and they said they could. so he went back to talk to the chef and told us that they cannot make vegetable gyoza. i had no idea what i could eat now! every dish has meat/eggs in it. i told him that i don't eat meat and it looks like all their dishes have meat in it. he pointed to something with fish in it. i told him i can't eat that because it is meat. he was even more perplexed, "you don't eat fish either?!". no, i don't. my mom asked if the meat/fish could be substituted with tofu or more vegetables. no, they can't do that. goddamn this sucks!!! then the waiter pointed to a dish and said that it has a lot of vegetables and they could remove the meat. fine, make it now!

we waited...a waitress came up and asked if i can eat something or not. it was a vegetable that i didn't know the name for. i asked her, what is that? she explained and i said that i can eat vegetables, it's no problem. i just do not eat anything that comes from animals. no meat, no fish, no cows, no pigs, etc. do you fucking get it? i wasn't mean like that but that's what i was thinking. i'm sure they thought i was this really picky eater and that's why she came out to ask me about the vegetables. shortly after that, they brought out my miso ramen, without meat or eggs. thank you. again, this experience just makes me question, why is the service in japan so bad these days? is it just okinawa? is it just malls? or is it just jusco?

as we were leaving justco, we passed by a food vendor selling various kinds of dango. i got a kinako dango. it was very good. soooo good. dango is several pieces of mochi on a stick and may have some other flavorings. the kinako one had powdery sweet stuff on the outside.

we drove around the other side of the shopping complex and walked a little bit around the seawall that is famous for all the graffiti it has. you could tell we were tourists because we were the only ones stupid enough to be outside in the heat. everyone else was indoors enjoying the air conditioning.

the seawall

we went into the nearby arcade because my mom wanted to use the bathroom. it was nice and cool inside. i saw a video game that surprised me. it was a music video game aimed towards children. it teaches you how to play taiko, traditional japanese drum. i just had to try it.

taiko video game

then we drove to a used book/video/cd/dvd/cd-rom store that i noticed when we were visiting relatives yesterday. i really wanted to find old cds by soft ballet and barbee boys and was having very poor luck at new cd stores. we went into the store and immediately on the right there was some toys/costumes and my mother went to look at those. slightly to the left, there were magazine and i rushed towards those. i found the music magazine i had seen at the shop at navel kadena that i wanted to buy the first time we went, but was no longer there the second time i went. i haven't seen it since. i put the magazine back on the rack and decided to check out the cds. there were tons of videos close by, kind of sectioned off and i thought the cds must be back there. i barely walked in and immediately went back to the magazines. i realized that i was in a porno shop. i felt like an idiot. i remembered that outside the store they had a sign that said they're open 24 hours. i should have realized what kind of store it was when i first saw that sign. after all, what kind of store in okinawa is open 24 hours? i had to get my mother out of there quickly. i paid for the magazine and looked for my mom. she was looking at the costumes and things and said it's like a halloween store. then she saw some dvds for sale, like "a streetcar named desire" and asked if i wanted one. "no, let's go." i had to get her out quickly! we left immediately. she had no idea what kind of store it was.

then we went to shop at book box, a chain of stores i used to frequent when we lived in okinawa. on the first floor were books/magazines, on the second floor were cds/dvds/games. i went upstairs and my mother stayed downstairs. i found 3 buck-tick side project cds that i had been looking for all over. when i went to pay for them, the employee said that they don't take credit cards for cds/dvds. damn! i told her to please hold onto them and i will be right back, i was going to go borrow money from my mother. i quickly got the money and paid for the cds. my mother was taking a long time looking at books when mr. hankey called my cellphone, if you know what i mean. it was an urgent call. i think that the little bits of animal products hidden in my foods over the past few days has finally caught up to me. i hurried myself to the bathroom and chatted with him until he left me alone. sorry for the silly wording but that's the nicest way to describe it. my mom was still debating over which books to buy so i looked all around the books and manga. i found a macrobiotic book and one on natural housekeeping (nachuraru hausukiipingu). i showed them both to my mother. she wasn't interested in the macrobiotic book as she had already bought a macrobiotic cookbook at the health food store. she ended up buying the natural housekeeping book. she said she would start to learn how to do that sort of thing. i'm interested in it too and my vegan books contain a few household recipes but it would be nice to have a whole book devoted to it. when i get back to america, i must find a similar book. i got another magazine at book box.

we started to drive home and my mom wanted to stop by some relative's house. she was driving around the neighborhood, but couldn't recall which house it was. as we were driving down one street, she realized we were right next to another relative's house. she parked and we went up to say hello. it's very rude not to have called earlier, but being that it was my last day and we were here, my mother thought she would just say hello at the door and ask a few questions for her family history research.

we went up to say hello. the lady of the house answered. this is the house of my mother's cousin, the son of her father's older brother, i think. his wife answered and was so surprised to see my mother. she kept insisting that we come in the house even though it is messy because she's been babysitting her grandchildren. eventually, we went inside and eventually, her husband came out to chat with us. we were there for awhile and learned quite a bit. they have a copy of the chibana kamon somewhere but he couldn't find it. he did find a book that has various okinawan family history in it. it had an abbreviated version of the lineage. it starts out with the ohshiro, or his chibana son, then there's a note that it skips 11 generations, then the line is complete from there, minus the women, of course! the are only notes about the sons. it does list the order of the birth and type of death in some cases. i learned that my mom's cousin and his wife are first cousins. at least, i think they said first cousins. she said it was a very close relation. they're both chibanas. hmm....

after that, we went to navel kadena as my mom had some books on hold at the bookstore there. we went back to k1's house and had a sushi dinner with johnny. i had a tofu/onion/carrot/mung bean sprout stir fry. after that, we kind of watched tv a bit and talked. i started to pack up my things upstairs when jun and his family arrived. i finally got to spend some time talking with erika, his wife. i think she had a big desire to talk to me because she doesn't have any macrobiotic friends. she wasn't sure if we'd get time to see each other before i went back to america so she wrote me a letter. i asked her to write down her address so that i could send her a reply. she gave me some presents and said that one of them was from her father.

jun and erika were eating as we were talking and riku kept eating from their plates. erika told him, 'no more', but he kept eating this and that. he has a bottomless pit of a stomach. yoshie brought out a dragonfruit because my mom and i have never heard of it. jun and erika explained that it grows in hot countries, i think they said it's the fruit of a cactus. there's 3 types, red, white, and yellow. the yellow is yellow on the outside and inside. the red and white ones look the same from the outside but differ on the inside. we cut up the dragonfruit and tried it. it was the red variety. it was pretty plain, nothing much to it, but gorgeous to look at. we also had some pineapple.

dragonfruit

being that we're all japanese, it was photo time and it took awhile for everyone to have a photo taken with their camera. ;)

cousin line-up

both of jun and erika's sons fell asleep and it was a very rare sight. yoshie said that she had never seen riku sleeping before. it was so rare that i had to document it. *snap* as midnight approached, everyone went home. it was too late to shower, (i didn't want to sleep with my hair wet). instead i packed my bags.