showered and dressed by sunrise

my body must be used to japanese time as i didn't wake up in night! i did my morning routine of course: got up and showered, greeted dogs as i combed my hair. however, today i didn't have a chance to eat breakfast. my mom and i walked to the closest bus stop, which isn't that close.

the start of our journey, my uncle's house

vending machines everywhere! even in front of my uncle's house

it was not even 8am and it was so hot! during our walk i took pictures of the neighborhood so that people back home could get a sense of what the streets are like in japan. there isn't much room, so the cars tend to park on the sidewalk, much like san francisco.

notice how the cars are parked

as we were walking, an ambulance appeared. i thought it was inappropriate to take a picture, but i didn't think i'd have another opportunity to take a picture of a japanese ambulance, so i quickly took a photo.

kyu-kyusha

it was getting too hot and my mom wanted something to drink, so we bought cold drinks at a vending machine. i tried the sanpincha, a tea that i had seen commercials for. it wasn't my thing. it had jasmine in it and i usually don't like jasmine tea. we were waiting at the bus stop for a few minutes when my mom realized we were on the wrong side of street to catch the bus to naha, the capitol city. the street has trees/bushes in the middle so we ran as soon as we had a chance. i saw a mouse ran by my feet and screamed a bit as seeing a mouse means that habu (a type of pit viper) might be near. i sure as hell don't want to be bit by one of them as they are lethal.

moments after the snake incident, bushes we crossed in background

the bus ride to naha took about 50-55 minutes. when we got off the bus, my mom was talking very loud as to which way we should walk to go shopping. a blind person overheard us and gave directions!

naha street with all the tourist shops

one of the first stores we came across was mcdonald's. i did not want to go in but my mom did. we ate green salad with ice tea. the japanese mcdonald's menu still lists smile for 0 yen. very cute. after that, we went omiyage shopping.

a store sign we came across

japanese mailbox

when it became lunch time, one of the store clerks told us about a taiwan shojin ryori (buddhist temple food, no meat) restaurant. the name of it is kintsubou (golden pot) and we ate there. i have a weakness for fried rice. we ordered that, vegetable stir fry, vegetable gyoza, and also had soup and rice. the food wasn't that great (some gyoza was still cold like it was frozen!) but i was so grateful to be able to eat such food. the fried rice had egg which was very disappointing. i tried my best to avoid eating the egg bits. we did place an order for yasaiman to go (a kind of vegetable dumpling), but the lady forgot about it and my mom didn't want to bother after all because she really didn't like the food. after that, i really had an itch to eat yasaiman during my trip.

taiwanese-japanese buddhist food

we started to walk back and i wanted to take a short cut but my mom didn't trust me so we ended up walking more than we should of. my mom was trying to find the tourist info center that some store clerk told her about. an old lady overheard her and told us about one but we didn't go. (okinawa is a bit country so people are still considerate and nice and will help out.) we gave up on the idea of doing more tourist things. my mom had originally wanted to take a tour bus to go somewhere or other, i can't quite remember where she wanted to go. we took the regular bus back to my uncle's house.

mazes of stores

we started to walk back from the bus stop but it was too hot for my mom to go on. we went inside a small store and my mom called k1 to pick us up. we bought a few things while we were there. when we got to the house, i finally got to see some of the olympics on tv, but sadly only a glimpse of the opening ceremony. it seems like almost every program has this guy from smap, i think his name is nakai. he was even hosting the olympic coverage. it's like the bloody nakai station. there were olympic specials that had like biography pieces on the japanese athletes and footage of north korean athletes practicing.

we had dinner with johnny but without k1 as it was too late for him and he was going to go to bed. they picked tony roma's (a vegan's nightmare!) in mihama. johnny played golf today and had all the car windows down. it rained and his car got completely soaked. he drove us in k1's car. we got to tony roma's and had to wait about 20 minutes for a table so we wandered around the complex, mostly at the movie theater which has 7 screens. it must be the biggest in okinawa. it costs $16 for an adult ticket and there are no matinee prices(!)

mihama at night

it's practically all military persons at tony roma's. i ate a salad (huge!) and baked potato. it came with melted butter already on it, argh, which i scooped out as quickly as possible. i also shared some hot vegetables my mother had ordered but they were drenched in butter so i only ate the top layer.

hello, my name is johnny

we went back to k1's house to talk for awhile and johnny said we could borrow an extra car of his. he is only 1 person and has 3 cars. he said his friend is borrowing it now and he's going to go pick it up and drop it off in the middle of the night.

it's a small world after all: johnny was talking about his friend who runs a pool hall. his friend has a sister in america. johnny asked where. los angeles. johnny asked where in los angeles. and then the friend named of all places, where we used to live. johnny freaked out and told him he has an aunt that lives or at least lived in that suburb. the sister works or had worked at the duty free store in lax. my mom had also worked there. johnny told us this story and he was trying to recall the sister's name. it turns out the sister is one of my mom's old friends. i used to play at her house when i was little. i never knew she worked at dfs. wtf?! do all asian women in LA work at dfs!? is this mandatory? we joked that we should go to the pool house and have my mom take a picture with johnny's friend brother, then go back to LA and show pictures from her trip. she should say she made a new friend and show the picture to the guy's sister and watch her freak out.