Tokashiki

Was made of win. Soooo much fun.

We get up early and catch a cab to the port. We have some confusion about where we're suppose to meet and almost miss the ferry, but whatever. We all made it in the end.

The sea was nice and I got some nice pictures of the scenery. We got there in about an hour and headed out to the campsite. It was . . . primitive. Just metal skeletons for large "tents." But all good. At least I found the real bathrooms, not the hallowed out shack that I seriously thought were the bathrooms for a good minute.

I went wandering and found a sign that said beware of habu, the highly venomous snake in Okinawa (that Miyako doesn't have ^_^ ) so I was very cautious as I walked around the sign to find the beach (where I thought everyone was, but wasn't) that was completely deserted, beautiful, and had a buddha. Yay. I then back tracked and found the beach that everyone was one.

We rented some snorkeling gear and went out. It was a bit cold, but only because the sun wasn't out from behind the haze. We saw nemo (again), and a starfish, and clams, and a fish that was brown and had leopard spots, and a sea slug that was purple with orange spots, and lots and lots and lots of schools of fish. The sea was very calm because there's another island in the mouth of the bay, and I think it blocks the nasty waves. It was awesome.

After, I was feeling famished, so I went in search of food. I found three noodle places and went in the third one, which turned out to be a good idea. I had yoshidofu soba, which is soba with tons of tofu on it. Kinda tasteless if you don't like tofu very much, but I love the stuff. It was great.

Then back to the beach for long beachy things. Some of the boys went out on a wake board, I took a nap and so did other people. Some more swimming, some Frisbee (I'm so bad at it), some more sitting and roasting (I didn't put on lotion except for my face and my arms and legs are a nice golden brown tinged with red now--doesn't hurt at all.

After we meandered towards dinner and got there a couple hours later. We tried to go to the "big" restaurant, but it was full, they had a large reservation, so we ended up going back to the same place I happened to have lunch at. Some people ordered individual meals, but my table decided to go izukaya style, and we ordered a bunch of different things and split the bill. We also ordered one of those HUGE bottles of awamori, and I was very surprised that we finished it before we left. (at some point I caught my sweet tooth and ordered a mango shake, which wasn't very shaky, so I poured some of my awamori in it, and it was better).

We headed back down to the campsite and beach and proceeded to have a very fun night. Turns out at midnight it was Yan's birthday, so he taught us a Gaelic birthday song, we met Kim, Jeff's predecessor, also randomly down in Tokashiki for the weekend, and she and her friends were really fun to talk to. Much stumbling around on the beach, and no body got hurt or burned or anything. Great fun. We only lost John once. But we found him again shortly after. Would have been even better if my crimson friend hadn't shown up in the middle of the party, but eh, she'd been threatening to come all week, and I wasn't really surprised she showed up.

In the morning I actually sat up (didn't get up for about an hour after waking) because the ants had found me. They weren't biting, but it was annoying to be crawled upon. I woke up to find I'd shared my "tent" with Kirsty, Ollie, Lynette, Lynn, and Ryan. Kirsty actually got up, and Sam moved from the beach where she'd passed out with a very drunk Guy on her lap and took Kirsty's place. She said the only reason she'd gotten up was because it had turned cold. And it had. The rain had moved in and while it didn't actually "rain" on us, it sprinkled a bunch.

While we were repacking a nice Tokashiki man came by and offered us FRESH clams that he'd gotten out of the ocean himself. I would have, but raw shellfish and I don't make the happiest of couples when I haven't been drinking the night before. I didn't think they'd go down very well. We slowly packed up and 17 of us (I did a head count on the bus) headed back to the early ferry, which us Miyakans had to take because we would have missed our 4~ flight if we'd taken the 5 o'clock ferry. The ferry was rough, but Cameron was nice and let Ollie and me watch his "media," Ollie watched South Park with me until the sea became too rough and he had to close his eyes. I kept the earplugs in and mostly watched the horizon after that, trying not to think of the waves.

We caught a cab back in Naha, and Sam, Kirsty and I went to the airport. They wanted to get lunch and I couldn't really stand the idea of food, so we all checked in and checked our luggage and I bumped my flight up to the 1:30 flight, giving me 2 hours. We tried to find the Starbucks in the airport, but were told that it was inside the gate, and the girls wanted to do a little shopping before leaving, so they left and I got my omiyage, a christmas present for curi, my mocha frappachino with whipped cream, a white chocolate and macadamia nut cookie and a mini quiche. Starbucks is the happy, I want one here. And I'm happy we don't have one, all at the same time.

On the flight, I just happened to be sat next to one of the office ladies from the iinkai, which was nice, and stunk all at the same time. Because I stunk and was kinda embarrassed by it. There weren't any hot water showers at the beach, so I hadn't washed the snorkeling off, let alone a day of walking around and then laying down drunk on the beach. But she didn't say anything about it and slept the whole flight.

Oh! I forgot to mention! While I was in Naha we found a bookstore. An ENGLISH book store. It was small and very overpriced, but I was finishing up my book and wanted one to read on the plane coming back. So I picked up Peter Pan. I think I might want to write a thesis on this book. It's awesome. Just. Plain. Awesome. If I actually get my degree in literature, yep, that'll be it. How Peter Pan is his own god. And the influence of fairy lore. Or something like that. So much fun.

Yeah, so I get home and I'm still not feeling very perfectly well, so I go out in search of food. I was planing to go down to Lillians and get some yaki niku, because they actually have veggies with their meat, and veggies sounded like a really good idea. But it was raining and I was feeling bad, so I didn't even make it to the end of the block before going in a random izukaya. Turns out to be one of my best decisions ever. I sat there for 10 minutes studying the menu, trying to read what they had to figure out what I though my stomach could handle, when the chef/owner came over and asked me what I wanted. I told him the truth, that I'd drunk a lot the night before and wanted easy to digest food. He then tells me that he will make me a set, charge me 1000 yen, and put on it only things I like. It was probably the best food I could have had right then. Sooooooooo very good.

And then I get back home and experience my first earthquake. Fun times. It lasted less than 4 seconds. I mostly heard a weird rumbling, then the house shook for a moment. Then by the time I was thinking, should I get off my bum and get under a doorway? It was over. Not that I have any real doorways anyway.

Today I was so tired, and I had to teach 5 classes, which was awful. And my nose is acting like it's trying to be sick. So I slept through the break after lunch, and left early to go get my re-entry permit and drop my omiyage off at the iinkai. Since then I've been typing up this and uploading my metric ton of pictures. You should look at them. The photo sets used in this weekend were MYC, Tokashiki, and Airplane pics, or you could just look at them in order starting here (continues to the right). Fun times. Fun times. Bed now.