Fear Factor-Okinawa style

Sunday April 2 and Monday April 3, 2006 Okinawa

We set out from our hotel in Tokyo on Sunday to Okinawa, where we would be diving. After making our way to the airport, and trying to figure out which of the 30+ ANA gates to check into, we figured it out, and made our way. Our plane departed about an hour later than scheduled, and it was totally packed (and it was a 747!!). We touched down in Okinawa, and could immediately tell the difference in weather.

Okinawa is very different than many areas in Japan in that their dialect and foods are very strongly influenced by China, but they also have the influence of Japan as well. It’s a tremendously unique place-although some of its uniqueness is taken away from the concrete jungles of military bases.

We arrived at our Hotel Grand Mer ridiculously late (our shuttle bus had to wait for another person to arrive, whose plane was also late.), and there weren’t any restaurants nearby our hotel. So, we meandered our way up to the hotel’s bar and just had some bar food to sustain us until the next day.

The next morning, we woke up at 6 to grab a quick breakfast and meet our dive guide for the day Otis, of Okinawa Ocean Divers (http://www.oodt.jp/english/index.html). We met up with 4 other divers-Juko, Kayode, Miyumi (all from various cities in Japan), and Marco (Finnish and a dead ringer for Kurt Cobain--no pun intended) and began making our way to the Keramas islands-which are about an hour away from Naha. The Keramas are a bit like the Florida Keys, and are a series of chain of islands that stem off of the main island of Okinawa. The boat ride was extremely choppy, and I had to battle some serious sea sickness. We finally made it to our first dive spot-which was a beginner dive-mostly for everyone to build up their comfort level with diving. We fed the fish some sausages, which allowed us to see a lot of tropical fish swimming past our face. The dive was a calm one-got to see a stone fish (deadly), a few sea snakes (also deadly-and first time seeing snakes too!), and sea cucumbers.

The water was pretty cold, and we were shivering on the boat en route to our next stop, which was a coral bed. The coral here is beautiful, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It is most similar to what we’ve seen in Australia, but completely different in size, shape, colors, etc. It doesn’t have as much of the vibrant colors as the Great Barrier Reef, but the amount of life on the corals is astounding and heartwarming. We got to see a ton of tropical fish on this dive-lots of anemone fish (think Nemo), angel fish, parrot fish, sea urchins, flat worms (my first time seeing one), a small shark. Lots of really cool nooks and crannies to look in.

After our dive, we tried to warm up in the sun, and enjoyed a nice bento box of Okinawan cuisine-pork, rice, potato cakes, tofu, and goya (this is a really big thing in Okinawa-looks like a cucumber and super bitter!) After we finished eating, we did our final drift dive to Turtle Reef. With our body temps lowered after the first two dives, this dive was especially cold. A great dive though-tons of reef and tropical fishies—and a SEA TURTLE!! If any of you know about our experience diving, Al and I typically miss the turtles when diving, so I was super psyched to have seen one!

We headed back to the dive shop, agreeing to meet up with everyone later for a traditional Okinawan dinner. After our taxi driver got lost on the way…we finally arrived at our destination-Satto. Almost everyone had made it out, including Miho, Otis’ wife.

Our bodies were tired from diving, and we were ravenous. Luckily-we were in good hands, and Otis and Miho were tremendous hosts. They started ordering, and we just sat back in enjoying dish after dish, laughing our way through dinner. We sat next to Otis, Miyumi (one of the divers) and Marco. Miyumi was totally sweet-she is from Tokyo, and her English is impeccable. Marco is from Finland, and his English was also quite good, so we were able to converse with everyone. After a beer and Sake later, we realized Marco looked like Kurt Cobain, and he started joking that he WAS in fact Kurt, and still alive. We laughed about a lot of cultural differences, and had a great time over our beer and endless amounts of food.

Here is a list of things we enjoyed (not for the faint at heart):
Shima Rakyo-green onions with fried onion shavings on top
Sashimi-included parrot fish, octopus, tuna, squid, scallop
Ceaser Salad-made of goya and fresh sunny side up egg. Super Yummy!!
Goya Pizza-pizza with the bitter goya on top—surprisingly good.
Takowas-Octopus guts with daikon
Tofu-yo-The restaurants homemade tofu that had been soaked in Awamora (alcohol) for two weeks. Tasted like blue cheese soaked in port—a bit strong, and not very tasty.
Rafu Tei-pork with hot mustard—the Okinawans take their pork super duper fatty, so lots of yummy pork fat.
Soki w/ Garlic-pork with a tremendous amount of garlic on top (my dad would have enjoyed!)
Potato w/ muchi (pounded rice) and cheese—Super good!
Umi Budo Salad-sea caviar/sea grapes. Mmm!
California Roll-tuna, avocado, crab eggs
Orion Beer-Okinwa beer
Shima Dofu-warm, smokey tofu with giner, green union and soy sauce-my favorite dish!
Shito-Sake
And to finish off, we had a lovely lemon ice.

The next day....Japanese spa! Woo hoo!

Bright lights, big city

Saturday, April 1
We headed back to Asakusa to check out the side street arcades and cute little stores. There are a ton of street vendors making all sorts of interesting foods in Asakusa-one of our favorites are the cooked sesame crackers dipped in soy sauce and wrapped in nori (seaweed). Another favorite is the warm bean cake-basically a sweet batter filled with beans in an iron cast of some sort of fun shape-like a kabuki mask, or a fish, etc. Best eaten while warm and super yummy. After wondering afound a bit, we set out to get some tempura (which is a specialty of this particular area). Fodor’s had promised a cheap lunch at Aoi Marushin, the largest tempura restaurant in Tokyo. The tempura part true enough, and largest tempura restaurant seems likely, but it was not cheap. Afterwards, we made our way to the restaurant district Kappabashi, where we looked at all of the many chopsticks, rice cookers, pots and pans, sushi containers, and Japanese knives available for Japanese restauranteers.

After that, we went to Shinjuku, which is one of the busiest train stations in the city. Almost every type of train runs into this station-it’s like the Union Station/Grand Central Station of Japan, and when you exit, it is like being in the middle of Times Square. The streets are just a sea of people and it seems impossible to cross with about 1000 Japanese people all in a hurry heading your way, but somehow you are able to make it across the street unscathed and in one piece.

We walked around Shinjuku a bit, passing by the arcades full of weird games for all ages. We stopped at one arcade, where they had this wheel that you spin, and you win a ticket. Al and I decided to give it a try, and won a ticket, but then had no idea what to do with it. We had a pretty good laugh trying to figure it out. While trying to figure it all out, I looked up to see the weirdest commercial playing over and over again with these creepy dancing dolls—it was an ad for some sort of eel pasta or something, and I’m not sure what the creepy dancing dolls had to do with it, but it was mesmerizing and frightening all at once. Words can’t even begin to describe.


Once we walked around Shinjuku, we then headed to Shibuya—which has the giant telecom screen as seen in Lost In Translation. Al and I have definitely noticed that advertising is on such a different level than at home—almost everything has an advertisement of some kind-be it neon, a full screen of advertisements on a building, handouts at the subways, everything is so much more advanced as far as marketing goes. And, the technology—amazing. Everything is HDTV, and the cell phones, cameras, etc. are just mind blowing.

Shibuya was another huge area filled with an endless amount of people, all meeting up to hit the karaoke bars. Al and I have yet to go karoaking, b/c it is not like in the US where you sing to a group of strangers. Instead, you are supposed to get a group of your friends together and a get a room for karaoking, but since Al and I haven’t really met anyone to go out with, we decided it best not to pay a bunch of money to just serenade each other. But hopefully we’ll get a chance to do so in Okinawa—which is our next stop.

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Seeing Buddha

Friday-March 31.
After another sleepless night, we woke up again super early to hit the Tsujiki fish market-the market typically opens around 5 am for the fish auction to local restaurant vendors, but if you ask around, half of the people will tell you it is open to the public, and half will tell you it isn’t.

Since I was not willing to leave the hotel and get our busy day started at 4 am, I decided to believe the second half-and just think that it wasn’t upon to the public. But, we did get up at 6, out the door at 6:45, and made our way to the market around 7:45. The streets of Tsujiki are filled with fisherman and local workers just getting off of the night shift hunched over their sushi, or bowl of noodles. Paving the streets to the fish market, there are tons and tons of stores selling everything under the sun-Japanese knives, paper, ceramics, and a TON of fish-smoked, dried, fresh, etc.

We made it to the fish market by 8, and it was still buzzing with activity. Carts are zooming by left and right with the fish purveyors delivering fish and moving their wares from one side of the market to the other. This is not a typical tourist area-so they do not slow down for the Caucasians, they just continue mulling about their business, and it’s up to each person to make sure they don’t get run over by these carts. The carts nipped right past our noses a few times, but luckily, Al and I were there to yank each other back.

As we meandered through the fish market, it was totally fascinating. There were people hacking away at the biggest fish heads I have ever seen. The pictures can only do it justice-if I tried to describe how big it was, it would only seem like a fishing legend. In some of the stalls, they needed a hacksaw to get through the thickness of the fish. At one stall, we stopped to look at the beautiful tuna, and one of the older gentleman handed us a piece of freshly cut tuna sashimi. “Toro?” he offered. Of course! It was one of the most succulent pieces of sashimi I’ve ever had.

Another thing we noticed were the men hacking away small bits of meat from these huge fish. It wasn’t until we left the market that we realized that they were bonito pieces, which were to be fried and smoked and eventually used to make dashi, or the basis for misos, sauces, etc. Almost EVERYTHING seems to smell or taste like bonito.

We walked through the maze of the Tsujiki streets, freezing to the core. It was a super cold day out, and while we had on our layers, the wind whipped right through to the core. While everyone (including the guide books) recommends sushi while in Tsujiki, we just couldn’t stomach sushi that early-especially as cold as we were. We settled on a nice bowl of noodles in a delicious thick broth. Mmmm!

After the fish market, we decided to do a trip to Hase to see the temple Kotoku-in’s Great Buddha. We traveled about an hour outside of Tokyo to get to the Buddha, and he was a sight to see. Sitting at about 37 feet with cherry blossoms all around, this bronze statue was everything I had hoped it would be. We even got to walk inside his belly! Cool!!!!

We walked around Hase a little bit-it’s a super cute town, and it was nice to get away from the buzz of Tokyo for a few hours. After walking around, we made our way back to Tokyo, and headed to Harajuku. This is the infamous area that all of the teenyboppers in their baby doll dresses hang out. The fashion here is totally different than most of Tokyo (with the exception of Shinjuku and Shibuya which are both relatively close). Most of what we had seen in Tokyo up to this point had been business men and women wearing suits-but it was cool to see the punk rock side of Japan. Lots of hairdye, piercings, neon, and thigh highs.

After walking around for a full day, we retired back to the hotel early and I ended up passing out (finally) and caught up on some much needed sleep.

Turning Japanese

Touched down in Osaka Japan about 4 days ago, and it's been a whirlwind of activity since.

The night before departing, I got very little sleep in all of my excitement, but figured I would catch up on my sleep on the 13+ hours of travel time that we were logging en route to Osaka.

The plane ride was fairly smooth albeit a total wack job sitting behind us (of course) that had taken some serious drugs to fall asleep-so much so that the stewardesses could not wake him up to so much as buckle his seatbelt for take off.

Touched down in Osaka at around 5:15 pm, and made our way through customs, and found our way to the baggage forwarding service. Since we are doing a great deal of travel around Japan, and the spaces on trains are limited (plus, we packed a lot of different clothes to accomodate for the different areas we'd be visiting), we decided to forward one of our bags to Okinawa, and the other to our hotel in Tokyo-leaving us with one small suitcase for both of us to share. Since we know about 5 words in Japanese, and the baggage service people knew just about as much English, we just hoped we would meet up with our bags again and wouldn't be left to the same outfit for 2 weeks.

After checking our bags, we tried to figure out our way to the hotel via the rail station. I'm thankful that I made a printout that indicated which stop to get off at because the people at the "Tourist Information Desk" at the airport would have had us getting off at completely the wrong place. So, several "sumi-masen's" (excuse me's) later, we found our hotel. By this point it's about 8, and we are so exhausted from travel and so hungry. We wearily walked around the 'hood of our hotel, looking for food. Sushi?? No sushi restaurants apparently nearby. We found a cute little restaurant that was basically a small counter and a small table in the back. The table was packed of smoking business men (which I have noticed is the norm in Japan so far), and 2 men at the counter, one of whom was a ringer for the Japan’s version of Jerry Garcia.

We opened the menu-all Japanese. No pictures, and no plastic food to point to. Al and I shrugged and he yelled out Omikase! to the chef-which mean's chef's choice. About 6 courses later, we realized the chef/bartender/bus boy/waiter was making us a full Japanese meal. Our eyes glazed over--tofu, followed by sashimi, followed by an omelet, followed by seared tuna, followed by noodles, followed by fish. We finally motioned that we had enough, and went back to our TINY little room. I was thankful that we had fowarded our bags, because there was barely room for us in the room let alone our bags.

Woke up the next day after another restless night, and did a bit of touring around Osaka-went to the Osaka-jo palace. and went to Osaka-jo, a castle in Osaka that is one of Hideyoshi Toyotojmi’s finest buildings built in 1583.

From the castle, we went to Umeda to go look at the HEP 5 stores and get a bite to eat. We sat down in an Udon restaurant, but my jet lag caught up with me, and I wasn’t hungry, I was just a big grump. I didn’t eat my meal—I just was at the point of exhaustion that I could not stomach anything at all. With the exception of a McDonalds cheeseburger. I haven’t eaten at McDonald’s in 2 years, and chose our trip in Japan to break that habit. I think my body just needed some nourishment, and fish stock and noodles (which was about all we could find in Osaka) just wouldn't cut it.

After that, we decided it would be best just to make our way to Tokyo. We boarded the Shinkasen train, and I was able to finally catch a few zzz's on the train. The ride was about 3 hours, but really comfortable.

We arrived in Tokyo, again having to battle the rail way system. There is the JR line and the subway, and the two were mind boggling on such little sleep. We got ourselves pretty turned around, and literally about 2 hours later found our hotel. After stopping several people and bowing about 100 times to say thank you to everyone who helped us, we made it to our hotel.

The experience on the rail was interesting-lots of people wear masks here-very germaphobic, and EVERYONE is texting on their cute little phones. Also, everyone has a charm on their phones, very reminiscent of the charm bracelets of the 80's, including the men. I of course have snatched up a Hello Kitty charm for myself. How could I resist??

We settled into our hotel-found a quick bento box dinner. Stumbling our way back home, we walked through our hotel's beautiful garden surrounded by the magnificent cherry trees (which totally beat DC's by every stretch of the imagination.). As we wondered through, we ran into a group of Japanese men and women dining outside under a tree. They were laughing and having a great time, and before I knew it, they had asked us to join them! We sat with them drinking whiskey, eating fruit, and trying to understand each other. From what I could glean, they were here for a high school reunion. The whole encounter was hysterical, and they wanted to know all about us and how we were liking Japan. They were so hospitable, and we enjoyed sitting with them.

After drinks we tried again to sleep-but no luck. The next day we woke up early for our tour-which was a full day of Tokyo sights.

Our day included a visit to the Tokyo tower (14 feet taller than Eiffel Tower), a tea ceremony at Happo-en Gardens(which was very lovely, and quite a unique ritual to take part in), a barbecue lunch (think Benihana without the twirling of the knives and the tossing of shrimp in your mouth). After that, we went to the Imperial Palace Plaza (home of the Emperor), followed by a river cruise on the Sumida River. We ended the tour at the Asakusa Kannon Temple-the oldest and most popular Buddhist temple in Tokyo. After the tour, Al and I opted to head to Ginza-the shopping district.

The department stores are known for their food stalls on the bottom level, and so we decided to check out the stores and the food stalls-which was amazing.

Anyways, this has run on long enough, will blog about the next day soon. For now, we are having a great time, and adjusting to the culture. We've somewhat figured out the train system, and have learned to laugh at oursleves a great deal.

More to come...sayonara.

'Roids

So, I'm about 3 1/2 days out from our trip to Japan, and I've come down with a nasty sinus infection. I went to the Doctor, who decided that antibiotics just wouldn't do the trick. Nope. Instead, I'm on steroids. Yep, you heard it here. No, my voice hasn't deepend, and the muscles aren't bulging, but I am on steroids to help clear out my system. I hope it works, because I really don't want to have to worry about ear or sinus problems on a 13 hour flight--that is just not fun.

Until then, I'm being a total anti-socialite, and going home early from work, and not going out at all-not for happy hour, not to meet up with friends, not to even see my little brother-all in the name of healing. So, hopefully I'll get better by Monday. Wish me well!

In the Deep

Al and I rented the movie Crash earlier this week-and if you haven't yet seen it, it's an absolute must. It's probably one of the best films that I've seen in years. I can't even find the words to describe it--it was a mix of emotions-happy, sad, anger, heartbreak, acceptance---all in one. The movie was powerful, and thought provoking, and made me realize my own weaknesses when it comes to ethnic stereotypes-including my own religion.

Living in DC, and being explosed to a mix of races, it's good to be reminded that we are all just people, trying to make sense of our lives. We all have our baggage-no matter what the color of our skin. And, sometimes, there are people who are an embarrassment to our race, our religion, or our country--I know that when I travel and see Americans acting obnoxiously, I just want to scream--"YOU are the reason that Americans have this kind of a reputation".

What it comes down to is that we are all responsible for our actions. And all of those actions-no matter how big or small impact others. We are all part of this planet, which is bigger than ourselves. And, sometimes, we need to be reminded of that by crashing into others, just for that wake up call in life.

This movie definitely was a wonderful reminder to try to be more tolerant of all people. That everyone is connected by a small thread.

We're all in the deep.

February Sweeps

End of January/beginning of February hasn't been too shabby. Counting down our days until the big trip to JAPAN! We've got the whole thing booked, and now, just waiting for take off......vroooom!

At the end of January, got my 6 month review, which started out as, "This is the kind of review that everyone would love to have...." In the words of Sally Field, "You LIKE me, you REALLY like me!!"

Meanwhile, at my last job, they are laying people off left and right, and those who aren't being fired are quiting. Phew, glad I got out of there when I did.

Beginning of February was pretty sweet--started off with my friend Kristen from sunny San Fran coming to visit prior to her TNC conference. We had a nice weekend-went to the Corcoran to see the Andy Warhol exhibit, walked to the WWII memorial, and around my hood.

Sunday night, Kristen was initiated into our yearly Super Bowl ritual--which is held at Matt and Katie's house. Now, when I say ritual, I'm not kidding. There are all sorts of weird rules and rituals, and what have you...that seem to never get old. For example, all of the foods must fit one of the following categories: 1) fried, 2) orange in color or 3) contain alcohol of some sort. Sometimes it's all 3.

The other traditions are just as silly. Each year, Al's on wing duty, this guy Elliot makes a "burn the hell out of your colon" chilli, P.W. makes jello shots (sooo darn tasty-how does he do it????), and Bradis is on the fry-daddy. We have to draw names out of a hat, and drink whenever that player is mentioned or on screen. Since I had Kristen with me and I was driving, I was able to bow out of the drinking game (which helped prevent a hangover on Monday), but I still got shit for it.

Anyways, Kristen was privvy to all the festivities, and it was fun having her there. Lil Schwarz came along too, but this year, didn't fare so well in the poker match prior to the game. (insert liquor in the front, poker in the rear joke here....)

Last weekend was good times--on Friday, we had Colleen over to watch the opening ceremonies of Olympics, and made some yummy homemade pizzas. On Sat, went for the morning workout. It started to snow mid-afternoon, but that didn't keep Al and I from taking a nice long stroll in the snow to get to our friend Christina's for the monthly wine tasting party. This time-Merlot blends. I brought my own white, since I'm off the reds for awhile. Walked back home in the snow, which was so pretty--loved having a quiet DC night in the snow.

Sunday, our lovely friend Ilona came over for brunch, and spent the rest of the day kicking back and relaxing.

V-day was fun-got a lovely arrangement of flowers, and made a terrific lobstah dinner with Al. He's my lobster for life (awwwww...)

Which leads me to present--have a sinus infection (yuck), but friend Booth is in town (YAY!), so will be hanging out with her and the gang this weekend.

That's all for now--leave a comment, show some love.

My Space

Around November, I decided to sign up for My Space. I thought at the time I might be a little old, and maybe out of the "my space" league. It is teaming with youngsters, who are all single, and ready to mingle...which, is no longer yours truly. But, today made myspace all worth it. My friend Jen, (more fondly nicknamed Bubba) who I worked at Camp Friendship with added me as her "friend". And from that, all of a sudden, I was linking into other camp friend's profiles, and getting back in touch with people I haven't really seen or been in touch with for about 7 or 8 years, but often think about, and definitely remember fondly. And, while some of them may not remember me, it's pretty damn cool because I remember them, and it just triggered a whole stream of memories of that time in my life, which still to this day has had a tremendous impact on me. While my ex (Jason) got me into the whole CF thing, it was these friends that made it the experience that it was, and ultimately, the person that I've become.

It also made me realize how much growing up we've all done since that time. And, how much has changed, but through it all, the fondness of these people has stayed the same.

Check out my "myspace" account--would love to reconnect with more friends..
http://www.myspace.com/jodievt