westward to the east.

aloha from india!

but before I blog about india...prior to coming here, we spent two weeks in japan getting spoiled rotten by my mom and her family.

my mom and I flew to japan from hawaii on march 21. she's originally from okinawa, where my grandma and an aunt still live, and also has sisters and a brother in osaka and yokohama. one brother lives in LA, where he owns a sushi bar named Sushi Tsune after my grandmother.

my mom and I spent a few days in osaka, then flew to okinawa. delaney met us there. then delaney and I flew back to osaka and used it as a base for a week of travels around southern honshu.

in okinawa, we stayed with my grandmother and auntie takae in my grandma's two-story concrete home in itoman, a little fishing town on the southern side of the island. most of our days were filled with sightseeing, eating, viewing the world swimming championships on TV (go michael phelps!), and marveling over the amount of japanese food delaney could put away on a daily basis.

here we all are at my grandma's favorite restaurant, the cheerily named Hello Restaurant. she and auntie takae go there every day for lunch. L - R: auntie saechan, my mom, grandma, auntie takae, me and delaney.


my auntie saechan bought a day-long bus tour for all of us, which took us to several interesting and scenic places on okinawa island. one of these stops was at something called Ryukyu Village (okinawa used to be known as the ryukyu kingdom prior to its annexation to japan), where you could see people in old-time costume playing traditional instruments, cooking traditional foods, making pottery and other handicrafts, pressing sugarcane with an old-fashioned water buffalo press, and so forth. my mom and aunties said it reminded them a lot of their childhood. here are auntie saechan, my mom and auntie takae in front of one of the traditional stone-tiled roofs. the figure crawling over the roof at top right is a shisa, or mythical lion-dog. pairs of shisa are staged at the gate of every household in okinawa to keep away evil spirits. you would never guess it, but these lovely ladies are 55, 65 and 62 years old respectively. if genetics are to be believed, I guess I'm going to be carded until I'm about 50.

here's a picture of delaney manfully tackling a meal at a fancy new organic restaurant specializing in ryukyu cuisine. our hosts were astounded that he would eat not only the mundane stuff like raw fish, seaweed and pickled radish root, but also purely okinawan exotica such as pigs'-feet soup, stinky fermented soybeans, and bittermelon stir-fry. trust me. that's stuff I don't even eat.

a word of advice for anyone who is planning to visit japan: get the Japan Rail Pass. trust me on this one. if you're planning to spend at least a week there, the JRP is the best deal around. it's available only to foreigners, and can only be purchased prior to coming to japan. it's sold in 7, 14 and 21-day increments and allows for unlimited travel on all Japan Rail lines, including bullet trains. for $244 each, we received the seven-day pass, which we used on city trains, intercity trains and bullet trains every single day that we were based out of osaka. one bullet train ticket can cost nearly $200, so this pass was an incredible bargain. we spent many an hour sitting and taking in the views in japan's unbelievably spotless, efficiently timed, punctual and comfortable train system.

here we are in front of the okinawan peace memorial and museum, an astoundingly educational and moving experience. the battle of okinawa in 1944 pitted the american forces against the japanese imperialist army. as okinawa is an extremely strategic military location, the americans and the japanese were both hell-bent on acquiring it for use as a base in the pacific theater. the okinawan civilians (who at that time were not yet japanese citizens) were caught in the middle of intense fighting. many were massacred or forced to commit mass suicide by japanese soldiers, who told them that if they didn't, the american barbarians would run them over with their tanks and that the only way to save their honor was to die en masse for the emperor. there are memorials and shrines all over okinawa to those who died in the horrific conditions. one of the most famous, himeyuri-no-to, is a natural limestone cave where dozens of high-school aged nurses perished. they were first urged by the americans to surrender and come out, but having heard stories from the japanese soldiers about what americans were like, they stayed inside and were killed by a bomb.

the most impressive thing about all these museums and memorials is the pervasive theme of peace and harmony, and how human beings not only have the capacity to inflict grievous violence on each other, but also harbor the potential for living together peacefully. (this was also the theme at the atomic-bomb peace park in hiroshima, which delaney and I visited the following week. those pics have yet to be posted as they're stuck in delaney's camera.)

in osaka, my cousin's son keishin was about to graduate from kindergarten, so my mom and I decided to attend the ceremony. boy, were we impressed. first of all, while walking there we were passed by several moms on bicycle or in cars, kindergarteners in tow, on their way to the special event. every single mom was wearing a formal suit, usually black, with a corsage pinned to the shoulder. we started to feel a little underdressed. when we arrived, the headmaster himself greeted us at the doorway. he asked if we were there for a certain student, and we said yes, we're here to see keishin hayakawa graduate. he was very understanding and welcoming, even when he discovered that we had not brought a set of indoor slippers to wear. (everyone has a set that they keep at the kindergarten, which they change into from their street shoes to keep the place tidy.) no problem -- he instantly procured a pair for each of us, emblazed with the kindergarten's name: Akebono ("dawn") Day Care and Kindergarten. then it was time to go upstairs to the third floor auditorium, where video cameras were trained on every kid. over the next couple of hours, we were treated to songs and speeches (most of them by the kindergarteners themselves or their younger schoolmates, and all of them from memory) and pomp and circumstance and pageantry that we agreed later we had only ever seen on the collegiate level back in the states. here is my cousin's son, accepting his diploma from the headmaster. note the deep bow signifying lots of proper humility.





anyone who has been to japan has probably heard that they use squat toilets. well, yes, they do, and those deserve an entire blog entry for themselves, but nowadays they also have these rather space-age sit-down models that feature a choice of big v. little flush (see characters at right) and nowadays the best thing to come along for your bum since charmin: the built-in bidet. this control panel is on your right as you sit on the toilet. the buttons offer such post-BM goodies as a shower spray (from front or back), adjustable water temperature, adjustable strength of water stream, warm air blast, heated seats, and vacuum to whisk away offending odors. some of them will sense when you open the cubicle door and lift their lids automatically, as if to say Welcome! and enjoy! my auntie saechan has one in her house. on a visit with my dad a few years ago, we realized that had we hadn't seen dad for a while. upon investigating, he was found in the bathroom giddily trying out all the bidet choices.

finally, some silly pics of me and Tate taken in hawaii that I forgot to upload earlier. hopefully more to come soon about the rest of japan, and then india!

namaste and jaa, mata ne ~

cindy