Tokyo 'r Us RE-ENACT

This past week has been hectic as usual. As always, we have kanji quizzes almost every day and a chapter test as well. Asami came by during the Monday and I cooked some spaghetti and meat sauce for her and she brought some pudding for dessert. She also bought this cute mobile phone strap for me. I eat bananas everyday here since they’re cheap and good, but unfortunaly they go bad very quickly here for some reason. In any case, I’ve been saying that I want a banana strap for a while so she bought me the perfect gift. Today I had a speech about Gustav Vasa, the “farther” of our country. He liberated Sweden from Denmark during the 16:th century and became king June the 6^th, which now is our independence day.

I’ve also been writing on my JASSO report which is due later in November. It’s actually harder than I thought to write it. We are supposed to write about our achievement during our stay here and for some reason it’s hard to praise yourself in a report. I’ve written about one A4 page (which was the lowest limit) but I want to do at least one more page. Tomorrow is also the deadline for our graduation composition, which I’m basically done with I just need someone to correct it one more time. It became like 5 pages long including some pictures. I wrote about Swedish food which was more difficult than I could ever imagine. To think that food is such a complicated subject!

So who would’ve thought that November could be such a sweaty month (literally speaking). We went to Okinawa last weekend and damn it was hot. It was humid even as soon as we stepped out from the airplane and into Naha airport. The very same day, Friday, had been 27 degrees Celsius which is like high summer in Sweden except for the humidity. It was my first time in there and it was certainly a real nice experience. It seems to be “off season” for the Japanese, but I wonder how that can be since it’s colder during autumn and winter while the weather in Okinawa is crazy hot.

In any case, Ryosuke was the kindest for having planned the whole event for us, including reservations of trip, taxi, hotel and even where we should go and visit. The first thing I was kind of surprised of was that we actually rode a Boeing 747-400 to Okinawa from Haneda. The 747 is usually meant for long distance but Haneda – Okinawa only takes about 2.5 hours.
When we got out the airplane it was like walking straight into a sauna. Well OK, it wasn’t THAT bad, but it was most definitely warmer than Tokyo (and Swedish summer). We went by Taxi to the hotel, which took about one hour. On the way there we bought some food, awamori (Okinawa Sake) and Okinawan beer.  The Okinawan beer was alright, but I prefer Asahi over it and I’m not too fond of sake except for Umeshu (plumwine, sweet) but I drank it nonetheless! So we arrived at the hotel and it goodness it was a very luxurious hotel with ocean view. The rooms were big as well and the hotel had onsen (hot public bath) along with sauna and the whole kit. It had been a while since I’ve gone to an onsen and it felt real nice. Me, Ryosuke and Kyle went down to take a bath as we talked about various things. Afterwards it was time to go to the beach and to enjoy the ocean during the fine evening with a few beers and snacks. We were supposed to get up around 8 o’clock the next morning because our schedule was pretty much full for the entire day. Mikael was the first one to go to bed and I was the second one. Apparently in all the drunkenness, the rest of the people went out for a swim in the ocean.  Kyle and Ryosuke, who I shared rooms with, came back around 3 o’clock in the morning so I had to get up and open up for them.  You could imagine how they looked like in the morning… Or check the pictures! :>

So the Saturday started off with us going to eat the biggest breakfast I’ve ever had in my whole life. It was a buffet (Japanese call it Viking which is actually another term for Smörgåsbord!) and god they had everything there. There were mostly western style dishes, but also Japanese food sorts as well.

The first even we went to was snorkeling! And it was really nice. I never thought the ocean could be so beautiful. I got to borrow Asami’s underwater camera so I took some photos but I probably won’t get them processed until I get back to Sweden. After that we stopped at some random place where apparently 10 000 people can sit at the same time. I can’t remember it name though, but it was nice. It had some fine views of the ocean and cliffs. After that we continued to theme park of some sorts. It had an aquarium, dolphin show, museums and stuff so we all went around looking freely as we pleased. After that we went back home to eat at a restaurant and then to get together to play a game called Maffia in our room until late.

Sunday came and it was our last day in Okinawa. We went to a cape which was not far from the hotel, a artificial made Ryukyu Village (Okinawa used to be it’s own kingdom before it became a part of Japan. There’s still an Okinawa language and such.), the old castle of the Okinawa Kings and to the international street (It’s just simple called that). After that we went back to Naha airport and flew back to Haneda.

I wanted to try to make this post short so I could explain it with pictures instead. There’s no point in writing how beautiful something is unless you can’t show it!
So enjoy the pictures!