A Week In Okinawa
Here is an interlude post about my trip to Okinawa. Next week, back to bonsai, where I hope to share some wonderful old bonsai on Honshu.
The city of Naha, at the southern end of Okinawa.
At the top of the main island is a large laurel forest. I went up there for a few days.
At the guest house I misunderstood the food situation. Thought there would be dinner, as we were miles from town. The owner was busy and said he’d take me in the next day so I could shop. So I didn’t eat for 24 hours. I survived off a drink vending machine on property. An inadvertent juice fast.
These vending machines are everywhere. They’re even nowhere. A little delivery truck trundles up the barren road once every couple weeks to supply the mistaken.
Site of my starvation
Laurels and tree fern. Okinawa is subtropical, around 60 F this time of year. This is the dry season.
Azalea
Fire-bellied Newt. I shouldn’t have picked this up, as a friend later told me. The newt’s skin has toxins.
A protector deity on a roof. Behind the lion grows a sapling pine, I think a Ryukyu Pine. “Ryukyu” is the name of the sea-trading Okinawan culture that dates back thousands of years.
Photo courtesy Merlin app
I did some birding, including trying to find this bird, the Okinawa Rail. It’s a sneaky shorebird that lives in the lush laurel woods and it eluded me for several days. I heard many of them in the deep ravines but had no intention of slithering to my demise over a bird so intent on not being seen. That they were only described to science in 1981 is no mystery to me.
It’s rural and quiet in the north. Or so I thought on the first day.
Right at 6 pm a loudspeaker blared out over the sparsely inhabited forest: It’s time to go home to your children, the day is done, good night.
This was LOUD. And it made me jump—
What?! A fire, an earthquake, a liquid beverage delivery?!
Then, my feathers smoothed out again, a huge shape swooped in to hang on a branch. Another few flew by. Bats, flying foxes with 3-foot wingspans.
Another evening shock. Would they quietly munch on fruit as advertised, or skip that amuse-bouche and go for the main course?
Back in the south in a rice paddy. Many crops grew there, including taro.
Impressive root flares help stabilize these tree mangroves in the mud.
A quiet street in a small coastal town.
The current trend in Okinawan homes is concrete, with a brutalist flare.
A more typical older home.
Back in Naha for the flight to Tokyo, I found this sidewalk with embedded broken pottery shards.
Naha is proud of its past potters. Here the masonry wall of a building holds a platter.
Next week, the Kokufu show-
8 Comments
Nice job catching a glimpse of the Okinawa Rail. I bet the first thing you ate tasted good. I recall being a surgical resident working without a chance to eat for the entire day. I was on call at a VA hospital and found a cold uneaten “low sodium low fat” patient tray. I was starving and I still recall the satisfaction of having any food to eat.
As always thank you for sharing your experience and insight.
Well I didn’t see the bird, only heard them. Had I hired a guide I maybe could have seen one, but elusive fellas, those rails. Even fairly common rails are tricky!
Hemingway said something about being in Paris and only eating one meal a day from the economics of youth and how he’d write hungry, and that he thought it improved it. Certainly looking forward to a meal is something many of us don’t do.
Cheers!
I love flying foxes, you shouldn’t worry. Your strange but I wouldn’t call you a fruit.
Ha! Well, I’m a fruity strange perhaps but then I grew fond of flying foxes, which I hear is a common experience after getting over the fright of it all. Charming in a monstrous way.
“The site of my starvation” sounds like a great book title.
Oh!! That is quite good, now someone has to write it.
Hi Michael, thank you for sharing your pictures and experiences in Okinawa. As long as you did not lick or eat the newt because of the food shortage or rub your eyes, you would be fine. Many amphibians produce substances in their skin that can be irritating, but the fire-bellied newt also has neurotoxic tetrodotoxin (also in puffer fish). If you licked your fingers, it could have caused a tingling sensation on your tongue (as in the thrill of eating puffer fish sushi), but unlikely to have enough dose for serious effects. Eating the newt could be fatal.
Looking forward to your blog from Obuse, thanks, Joyce
Thanks Joyce for the long comment and my late reply (that goes for everyone who comments, sorry if I take a while to respond ; ) Joyce is a toxicology expert. So thanks for weighing in here. I’m glad I didn’t eat it. The proper sauce had me baffled on the culinary level so I guess that saved me.