today we got up and left the house much later than i had hoped. i had to hold my tongue about this one as everyone is now on island time. twiddle thumbs has been dying to try dragonfruit so she bought a white one and cut it up this morning. she was disappointed that it tasted bland. i told her they look great but don't taste like anything. we got our things together and took the bus to downtown naha, the capital and hence big city of okinawa. we had to take another bus to get the the shuri section of the city and we didn't get to the shuri-jo castle park until after 12pm. okinawa was once an independent kingdom and warlords from japan had been invading and trying to takeover for awhile. okinawa finally became an official part of japan in 1879 when it forceably became a prefecture. until then, okinawa was known as the ryukyu kingdom and the royal castle was in shuri. all the castles in okinawa were destroyed in ww2 and only shuri-jo castle has been rebuilt so far. (see history of shuri-jo)

shuri-jo castle

the park complex has several things to see in the area but we focused on the main attraction, the castle itself. a lot of the stuff is listed jointly as world heritage sites for okinawa. there are a few gates that are noted with that status and we got to see them but they're not that grand. it's more of historical/cultural importance than "behold this majestic gate!". at one of the gates, you can pay to have your photo taken wearing traditional okinawan dress. perhaps one day i will go to a photo studio and do that properly but right now i just don't feel like it. i've never worn traditional okinawan clothes before! you'd only have them if you do traditional dances in front of others, i think. what i like about the castle is that it sits high above so you can get a view of naha and the sea. since it's the only castle in okinawa that has been rebuilt, it's the only place to get a sense of what okinawan castles were like. all of the other castle ruins are really just foundation walls. at first i felt weird that they rebuilt it but i really don't have complaints because many other sites in japan have been rebuilt too due to civil wars and other disasters. so what if it is recently rebuilt instead of rebuilt 1000 years ago. there are other famous places that have been rebuilt in modern times. hell, the famous kinkaku-ji golden pavillion was rebuilt in 1950 after a monk burned it down. i think it's only natural to rebuild after destruction, that is life!

okinawan royal court dances (teacher)

we stuck around the castle park until 2pm for the free traditional dance show that was being held. they don't normally have this but were doing it for a few days for the uchinanchu taikai. it was nice that they were offering something extra like this and it's free for everyone to see. the dances were being held in the courtyard before you have to pay for an admission ticket. the sun was blazing but there were a few seats under a canopy so we made sure to grab those. towards the end of the performance, the sun had changed position and we were no longer in the shade. there were a couple of sanshin (shamisen) players that sang and also a koto player. a couple different dances were done but they were pretty much all royal court dances, (i.e., slow and boring).

tamaudun royal masoleum

after the dancing was over, we walked down to nearby tamaudun, the royal masoleum. admission is cheap but it was free with our taikai name badges. this was my first time at tamaudun. they have a small museum (air-conditioned!), actually just a room with objects on display to give you historical background on the place. however, the information is only available in japanese so only mom went around reading the stuff. i pretty much got all i was going to get by the pictures. it may be a world heritage site but it's a masoleum for fuck's sake! then we walked to the masoleum, passing by gajumaru trees (banyan). the masoleum is a big, fancier version of a regular family's tomb in okinawa. you have to go up close to see the intricate decorations carved in stone.

we walked back to the bus stop to return to downtown nara. we walked down one of the many enclosed shopping streets and had dinner at a small place that was willing to make dishes without meat. we had various champuru dishes. "champuru" simply means "mixed". i've read that it's not originally an okinawan word but borrowed from malayasia. i've also seen it spelled about a million different ways. champuru dishes in okinawa often have pork, goya (bitter melon), and whatever else you want to stir fry with that. the food heavily tasted like the metal pans they cooked them in but the fu champuru dish was really good. (again, in case you didn't read an earlier post from this trip, fu is wheat gluten.) we also tried a special tofu that isn't really tofu since it's not made by soybeans. i forget what it's called and i think it's made from sesame seeds but it tasted like it was made from peanuts. it was just a little bit weird. they had goya juice and i wanted to try it but i was hesistant. i had read of a place that serves goya juice and mixes it with other sweet fruit juices to help cut down the bitterness of goya. i asked if they mixed their goya juice with anything and the waitress said they put sugar in it. alright, i think this will be my only chance so i better order it. damn that shit was nasty! like they juiced even the rinds. yuck!

we then walked back to the main street, kokusai-dori to watch the uchinanchu taikai opening parade. we weren't sure which way the parade was going to go but ended up standing in the main area. a small stage was set for this guy from osaka (?!?) who lives in okinawa now to sing and pretend to play sanshin (?!?!) as a bunch of children danced around him and beat on drums. then the parade began. it is really a chance just for everyone to see who came for the taikai. you are supposed to march with your local kenjinkai (okinawa prefecture assocation) but we wanted to watch the parade, not be a part of the parade! this way we could see how many and from where everyone had come from. perhaps next time we will walk in the parade. my aunt keiko (the one from georgia) had spent last night at my aunt kimiko's place because she lives in the naha area and keiko had to be in naha early to meet her kenjinkai to line up for the parade. if we had been in the parade, we wouldn't have had as much time to spend at shuri castle and the like.

my aunt waving to me in the parade

watching the parade, you feel ike truly okinawans live all over the world. the most were from the usa and even within the usa i was thinking, wow, there is a kenjinkai there?!?! within the usa, most okinawans live in hawaii, then i think in southern california. there are also huge numbers of okinawans in south america, particularly brasil, peru, and argentina. since okinawans have spread out throughout the world, the festival has 4 official languages: japanese, english, spanish, portuguese. if you don't know one of languages then you are fucked. areas represented in the parade: hawaii, los angeles (ca), san diego (ca), san francisco (ca), sacramento (ca), washington state, utah, colorado, new mexico, dallas-fort worth (texas), austin (texas), arizona, chicago (illinois), new york, pensacola (florida), tampa bay (florida), jacksonville (florida), florida, alaska, atlanta (georgia), michigan, ohio, kubasaki high school alumni (military high school in okinawa), guam, canada, cuba, argentina, bolivia, ecuador, peru, brasil, mexico, france, germany, norway/sweden (jointly marched), australia, new caladonia, malaysia, philippines, thailand, zambia (everyone was surprised to see an african country), and areas of mainland japan. those in the parade were supposed dress in your local costume and even do a cultural demonstration if you wished. some did did hula dancing, line dancing, karate demonstration, mexican dancing, etc. the parade was at sunset time and i had little battery power left so i used flash sparingly and many photos are blurry. after the parade was over, we shopped on heiwa-dori street and the adjoining side streets. i think we had dinner on heiwa-dori actually. i really didn't find much that interested me personally but i was able to finish up my present buying for friends/co-workers. the only thing that i got for myself was another cellphone strap and again it was of the father from the "gegege no kitaro" cartoon. this time it was the father wearing the traditional okinawan costume for females. (if you don't know the cartoon, the father is an eyeball. an eyeball! it's hilarious.)

we took the bus home and went to get some food near the bus stop. as we were ordering food, my mom waited outside and was talking to another guy who got off the bus at the same stop. he was here for the taikai too and as they got to talking, they realized they were related. the man is my mother's cousin's brother-in-law visiting from brasil. he is staying at said cousin's house and invited all of us to go back with them. he said that if they are sleeping, he will wake them up! we walked what felt like forever to the cousin's house. i was starting to think we should've left a trail of rice to find our way back to the main street! my mom's cousin and her husband were awake and shocked to see all of us there. i don't remember this cousin. she used to work at the px on base so she knows english very well. her husband knows some english too so it made the conversation much easier for the sisters. only the brasilian didn't know english. he spoke like an old okinawan, using mostly okinawan dialect and little regular japanese. this caused my mom and her cousin and husband to speak in dialect too so i didn't understand everything they were saying but i got the drift of it.

it turns out my mom's cousin's brother-in-law is the director of the kenjinkai there in sao paolo (what luck!) and he knows our relatives who live in brasil from my grandfather's side of the family. (this cousin of my mother is from my grandmother's side of the family.) he said that they have 3 more siblings who live in brasil and he has been living there for 49 years. he said that in 2008 there will be a big festival in honor of 100 years of emmigration to brasil and invited us all to go. he said we could stay with him. wow! this is what i had been hoping for actually, to make contact with brasilian relatives so we have local guides if we ever go. the only thing is that he and our other relatives live 40km outside of sao paolo as they have fields so they're not right in the heart of the city. also, twiddle thumbs and i have a friend from sao paolo but he got fed up with brasil and is trying to make it in asia so we have 1 less person to visit in sao paolo. :(

it was getting later and my mom's cousin's husband drove us home, thanks! keiko was there already of course and was starting to wonder where we were. we told her how we bumped into relatives and she was surprised too. she said she forgot some very important things at kimiko's place in naha and felt really bad about it but kimiko was coming over to return those things. most importantly, she forgot her festival name badge and without that, she can't go to the festival's opening ceremony tomorrow. when my aunt arrived with the stuff, the story of how we bumped into relatives was relayed again. with the 3 sisters together, it was another mini family gathering. kimiko's husband called while she was there and she passed the phone to me. uh, it was so awkward! they have been married forever but i swear i have never met the guy. at least, not that i can remember. (they don't have kids otherwise i'm sure we would have seen other on a regular basis when we lived in okinawa.) he is so allusive. i have only seen the wedding pictures! right now he's living in mainland japan for his job so i won't get to see him during this trip either.

today's expenses in yen:
¥800 shuri-jo castle entrance fee
¥1000 dinner
¥570? cellphone strap
plus a couple drinks from vending machines throughout the day to hydrate