Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

9/29/2005, Okinawa trip day 1: Arrival, swimming, sunset

As of October 10, 2005, Akemi and I will have known each other for a year.  To celebrate this, we took a trip to Okinawa, the southern-most island of Japan.  Okinawa has an important history before, during, and after World War II.  Currently, Okinawa is home to a huge military base and a lot of American military people.  Unfortunately, a few of our soldiers have done some nasty things relatively recently in Okinawa, so there's a fair amount of controversy about whether the American military is still welcome there.  As an American, I decided to stay away from the war memorials and such, be extra polite and friendly, and just enjoy the place as a Japanese person would.  For Japan, Hokkaido is like America's Alaska and Okinawa is like America's Hawaii.  So for us, it was like a vacation in Hawaii.

For what it's worth, we paid ¥26,000 (≈$260) a piece for airfare, 4 days of rental car, and the first night's stay in a decent hotel with a gorgeous hot-tub type bath room almost as spaceous as the main room.  A second night would have cost us around ¥13,000 (≈$130) so we didn't stay beyond the included night.

On this first day, we went to Sunset Beach in Okinawa's main city, Naha.  We went for a swim together.  We got a shower and went back out to the beach just in time to see a beautiful tropical sunset.  It was a very romantic time for us.  (And not a time for cameras.)

For dinner, I had two big juicy steaks, something Okinawa is known for.  Akemi had a lobster tail.  This would be prohibitively expensive in Osaka.  In Okinawa, it cost us around ¥3000 (≈$30).  It was a real treat.

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