Ishigaki and back, or how I didn't sleep this weekend.

Ishigaki and back, or how I didn’t sleep this weekend.

Okay, so, this is gonna be a long one, please bare with me. But you’ll want to read it. Especially you, Raoin. Especially you.

So, I go to work at Miyahara (my smallest school) for Friday before coming home, throwing my not packed pile into my school bag (after taking my school things out of it, of course), and get my happy self to the airport.

The smallest flight ever. Which is not quite true. But we take off, have the “it’s okay to stand up” announcement within 5 minutes, the stewardesses come down the aisle offering blankets, no drinks, then we’re told to put on our seatbelts again cuz we’ll be landing in 10 minutes. Woo. 30 minutes, take off to landing. And when we get there? Yeah, I had to walk off the plane onto the pavement. Fun!

Veronica picked me up in a taxi, because the Ishigaki gang had already started drinking, and we went to her apartment to drop off bags and talk for a bit before going out to a nice izukaya, where we had dinner and met a bunch of the Ishigaki peeps (continues to the left). It was really fun (continues to the left). My favorite bits being the rice with squid ink, no really, very good, and the fried cheese. Heavenly. And the people were fun too :P

Then we went home while everybody else went out because we were really tired and wanted to actually get up and see the island the next day.

We did get up, but not until 10, when we sat around and talked, and called Veronica’s mom, and talked some more and finally left the house for lunch around 2 or 3. When I got a chance to meet the most adorable kittens EVER (just that one)! They were born in Veronica’s garden, which has a gate so no dogs. They were very cautious, but I used my kitten loving whiles, and I was able to coax them out to play with me. Veronica was really surprised because usually they wouldn’t come close to new people and it took me about 5 minutes? Not even? It. Was. Awesome.

We ate the Yaeyama soba (their own style of soba, apparently Ishigaki and the surrounding islands are called the Yaeyama islands, while the islands surrounding Miyako are called the Miyako Islands), which was very very yummy and then we drove around up to the eastern lighthouse (continues to left). It was VERY windy. But fun. Then we continued up the coast and drove to Kariba Bay (continues to left), which was gorgeous and would have been more so if it hadn’t been almost dark and rainy on top of it.

Then back to town to buy Mom the Perfect Christmas Gift. We finished up just in time to go to Yakiniku (continues to RIGHT!). It was my first yakiniku experience, and it was Ishigaki beef, that they raise right out back. It was SOOOOOOOO delicious. After the carnage, we went for a little karaoke, which was alright, but you had to buy a drink XP and Matt’s girlfriend called with bad times, so he was pretty depressed. After karaoke, we found ice cream at the Hot Spar, found a very drunk French guy who lives on the island and wanted to talk to us in the little bit of English that he knew. Fun times. After, we said good night to Matt and went back to Veronica’s to talk, me, Veronica, and Kat.

We get to talking, and talking, and around 1am we hear a cat fight. We worry, but think nothing of it, as it is settled quickly and continue to talk.

Then, a little while later, we hear a knock on the door, and it’s Lina, the upstairs neighbor, with Puma, one of the kittens, bleeding from a wound on her neck and she just says “doushioo?” What do we do? I ask if there’s an emergency vet, and there isn’t. We take the kitten into the kitchen, and try to clean her up a bit. She goes from being very energetic and wanting to run away, to very very lethargic. We clean her up as best we can, but figure we’ll just hurt her worst if we try to get all of the blood off, and as it’s not gushing new blood, we should let nature do it’s course and take her to the vet the next morning. We also let her mother inside for a bit, but she didn’t seem to really know what to do with her either, and we let her back outside to protect her other kittens. It was not a very happy night.

Lina eventually goes home, and so does Kat, but we keep Puma wrapped up in a towel for warmth with water nearby (which she did drink some of during the night). We went out and tried to find the other kittens, but couldn’t until just before Kat left, and they were up high on a wall, with no way of getting them and brining them inside. And we only saw Tora and Ashes, not Yuki.

At about 7am there’s another cat fight and we go out to not see anything. But all three kittens are up on the wall. We coax them down (we went kitten fishing with a stick and caught 3!) and take them inside and Mama follows us. We let them look around, check on Puma (who has moved a bit during the night), and then go back to sleep for a bit.

We wake up to them all sleeping comfortably around the room, get up, and go with Lina to the vet. Let me impress that this was not easy. Veronica picked up Puma, who did not want to be touched, and she cried. And Mama, was immediately right in front of her. And when Veronica stood up and Puma cried again, Mama climbed Veronica in order to get her. I took Puma while Lina extracted Mama. I sat down on the bed and let Mama see that I wasn’t hurting Puma, while I used my considerable kitty holding skills to not let Puma jump from my arms, and after a bit we left for the vet. Holding a kitty that doesn't want to be held for it's first car ride is not a very easy thing to do, let me tell you. At one point Puma tried to jump out the window, and hit her head on the glass. Fun times.

The vet let us stay in the room while he cleaned the wound, which is apparently standard procedure in Japan, and he finally found that the source of All That Blood was this teeny tiny puncture wound on the back of her neck. They cleaned it, took her temperature, told us she was a girl, and decided to keep her there overnight because she wasn’t very energetic and gave her an iv drip. We left her there and went back home to check on the other babies.

Lina came in and we chatted for about an hour about all kinds of things, and her English is very good, but she has no confidence. And Veronica’s speaking isn’t so good, so it was great practice for her because when she didn’t know how to say something, I usually did, and we had a very good conversation while the kittens (to the left)ate breakfast and napped around us (on my lap :D ).

Then we had lunch with Kat at a deli (bagel with cream cheese and cream potato soup = happiness), went shopping at what I swear would have been Little Five Points (to the left)if it wasn’t for the Japanese customers, walked around in the beautiful summer-like weather (nice summer, not Okinawa summer), before going back to the house and playing with the kittens some more before getting back on the plane.

Afterwards, I was ded, so I stopped by KFC to pick up dinner. And I see the Cornel dressed up as Santa. I forgot to upload the picture, I'll do it in a bit. But I had Origninal Recipe chicken (HEAVEN!), the smallest side of coal slaw you've ever seen, a bisket with a hole in the middle with honey and maple, and an egg custard pie. It was awesome.

I’m so tired. I’m going to take my shower and crash. Pictures are up. Enjoy