Golden Week

Sunrise from our balcony

The first week of May in Japan is what is known as Golden Week. The holiday actually starts on April 29 and goes through May 5. Typically this time of year the Japanese are off of work and take trips with their families. Since Okinawa is a popular vacation spot for mainland Japanese to travel to it becomes a time of year when we Americans living here are content to stay home. The traffic is very heavy since most are off work and all the malls and attractions have specials to draw in tourists. You need to develop patience when traveling around the island this week.

So, what is Golden Week you ask? It is four holidays rolled into one week. It starts with April 29 which is the birthday of the previous Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, who reigned from 1926 until his death in 1989. Until his death the day was known as the Emperor's birthday and after he died it was called Greenery Day. It began as a day for Japan to reflect on the 63 years of Hirohito's reign. Most just look at it as a day off of work rather than reflecting on their emperor which is similar to our President's Day I would guess. In May of 2007 the holiday was changed from Greenery Day to Showa Day (its current name) and Greenery Day was moved to May 4.

May 3 is known as Constitution Day (Kenpo Kinenbi) and commemorates the day that their Post-war Constitution came into effect in 1947. It is said to be a day to reflect on the meaning of democracy and Japanese government, but...similar to our 4th of July, very little reflecting is done in lieu of spending time with the family.

Until May of 2007, May 4 was considered a National Day of rest but became Greenery Day when the Emperor's birthday was changed to Showa Day (showa no hi). Greenery Day (Midori no hi) is a day to commune with nature and be thankful for your blessings. It was originally set up on the Emperor's birthday because he was known to love plants. Typically it is just a day to expand the Golden week holidays into one full week off of work.

Carp windsocks from the nearby school

The 5th day of the fifth month--May 5 is what is known as "Boy's Day" (tango no sekku) which is a day to celebrate the male children in your family. More recently the name has been changed to "Children's Day" (kodomo no hi) to celebrate all the children in the home. It was instituted as an official Japanese holiday in 1948. On this day the families say prayers for the health and future success of their children. As you drive around town you will find carp windsocks (koinobori) hung on each house. In Japanese culture the carp represents courage and strength because of the carp's ability to swim up a waterfall as well as upstream. Parents wish for their sons to grow up healthy and strong like the wild carp. The displays of the carp flags signifies the make-up of the family living in that home. There is usually a large black flag to indicate the father and a slightly smaller large red or pink flag to represent the mother and then varying sizes of blue or pink/red flags to indicate the number of children in the home. They will also display warrior dolls or Yoroi armor sets in their homes for the boys. (Girl's Day is March 3 during which a huge collection of dolls are displayed in the home.)

On May 5th there will be Dragon boat races in Naha and one of our friends from church is on the Lady Shogun Air Force Women's Dragon Boat Team. We are so excited for her to have made the team. I hope to drive down there on Thursday to see her race. Of course, there will be pictures to follow if I get to go. I hope you all enjoy your "Golden Week" wherever you are. Plant something green for "greenery day" and hug the kids in your life on May 5.....And if you really want to get the real feel of "golden week" find a nice traffic jam to sit in and reflect on the greenery outside your car window. Sayonara for now.

Learning Japanese

Russ and I learned quite a bit of basic Japanese when we lived in Iwakuni twenty three years ago but when we moved to Okinawa we found we had forgotten some of them but also had many Japanese phrases in our heads that we couldn't remember what they meant. I signed us up for a free Japanese language class that meets every Tuesday and Thursday for a month. I usually drive in and meet Russ at the classroom and then we eat a late supper at one of the restaurants on base. It's been a nice refresher course but also is giving us more vocabulary to add to what we already know.

I thought it might be interesting to those of you who aren't familiar with the Japanese language to learn a little bit about the Japanese writing system. In Japan there are four different forms of written language. First there is Hiragana which is a symbol for each sound of a word. Like the word for good afternoon - konichiwa would have four symbols when written in Hiragana (ko/ni/chi/wa). Hiragana has more curves  than the others do.

Then there is Katakana. It also has a symbol for each sound and has a straighter line look to it. Katakana is usually used for words that come from abroad. A sentence can have a combination of both hiragana and katakana and sometimes kanji in it.

The children in school learn to write these two first before moving onto the more difficult writing of kanji. I guess it would be similar to our learning printed English before learning cursive. Kanji is their main written form of language. It is derived from the Chinese writing system but evolved into unique characters that represents Japanese words and phrases more accurately than the Chinese characters did. So although they are similar in many ways, kanji is different than Chinese writings. If you would like to learn more about how it all evolved into what they use today, you can read this article in Wikipedia. With kanji there is a symbol for each word but when there isn't a symbol for a word it is combined with katakana which phonetically sounds out the word. Kanji looks like this...

In Elementary school, the children learn about 1006 kanji. By middle school and high school they add in another 1130 kanji. So by the time they graduate they know all 2136 kanji that represent their main words. Another 983 kanji are added which represent most of the Japanese names. In total there are about 3119 kanji. 

The fourth form of Japanese written language is known as Romanji. It is the Romanized version of their words that was formed as a means for foreigners who can't read kanji or hiragana to be able to sound out their words and speak them. We, Americans living here rely on romanji on road signs and business signs so we can feel semi-literate when traveling around this country. Since WW2, children in the Japanese schools not only learn all the hiragana, katakana and kanji symbols, they also have to learn how to write them in romanji (roman letters).  It amazes me every time I watch them write to see the complexity of each of the characters but yet they know the order of each stroke of the pen that creates the character and write them quite quickly. Their books are written in vertical lines from top to bottom rather than across the page and they read from right to left.

Most of you know at least one Japanese word if you've heard the song "Mr. Roboto" by Styxx. Domo Arigato means "thank you very much".  Thanks has a kanji character so it can be written in one more complex symbol. Or could be written with four simpler symbols in Hiragana--a symbol for each sound. (a/ri/ga/to). Or when it is written as "arigato" this is the romanized version of the word. I don't know if at my age I would be able to learn 3119 or even 2136 kanji and remember them all but it fascinates me enough that I try to learn a few that are useful to me. We try to pick them apart to remember them in what makes sense to us. We might say, "it looks like a road sign with a running man next to it wearing a triangular hat"...or something like that. Most days when I'm out in town, I feel as if I'm illiterate because I can't read anything unless it is romanized for me. But then even that's not helpful unless I know what the romanized word means. It's an adventure we're on though and somehow we manage to communicate with our skoshi Nihon-go (little Japanese) and their skoshi Eigo (little English) and we make it through each day just fine. Be thankful all you had to learn were 26 letters and the sounds they make.

Okuma and Cape Hedo

There's nothing like a relaxing vacation after the rush of moving into a new place. Since it's a little too far to go on our traditional Jekyll Island spring vacation we opted to travel to the northern part of the island to Okuma. Russ made several reservations for early in March and each time the weather forecast showed rain the entire weekend we wanted to go. He would switch it to the next weekend and have the same thing happen again. Finally, in mid-March we found a weekend that showed 10% and 20% chance of rain for Thursday and Friday and 70% chance for Saturday. One thing we've learned about the weather forecasts here, they're not always accurate. As we drove the one and a half hour drive from our apartment to Okuma the clouds got thicker and thicker and by the time we arrived it was obvious that 10% rain had turned into 90% chance of rain...a little disappointing, but we didn't let that stop us from having a good time.

Okuma is a beach resort owned by the US military for the purpose of having a place the military families can go for a vacations on the island. There's a golf course there, boat rentals, go carts, putt putt golf and many other options for entertainment in the area and it is almost always fully booked in the peak seasons. You can rent cabins, hotel type rooms with kitchens  or tent camp there.  Most of the rooms and cabins have beach views. Russ rented a hotel type room with a kitchen for our weekend and we brought groceries for breakfasts and lunches and then ate in the restaurant on the resort for supper.

We had a great time in spite of the billowing clouds and misty rains. The first day we walked the beaches at the resort and found a little sea glass to add to our collection. We made it back to our room just as the rains began. After waiting out the first round of rain we then went for another walk and found some stairs to explore that led to some beautiful lookout points. We climbed on rocks, took some pictures and had some laughs. Dinner at the Surfside restaurant was wonderful. I ordered Jerk Chicken and it was the best chicken I've had in a long time. The restaurant definitely had a top-notch chef because everything we had there was wonderful. When we checked in, we were given two free movie rentals per night because their satellite signal was patchy so after it was too dark to be outside, we settled in for a movie in the room.

Friday we spent the morning doing our own walks. Russ did a long walk around the perimeter of the resort following all the golf cart paths. I walked the beach and looked for sea glass. While on his walk, Russ found the perfect spot for our lunch so we packed a picnic lunch and walked to another area with stairs that led up to an overlook with a picnic table on it. The 20% chance of rain for Friday was a little more accurate than Thursday's forecast. It was still quite cloudy but wasn't raining so we had a nice lunch overlooking the rocky cliffs of the resort. After eating we climbed around more of the rocky areas. The large rocky areas in Okuma were pretty cool. Some are volcanic rocks or coral and some were like shale rocks with all the many layers and others looked like marble.  The stones along the beach had a blue tint to them and looked great up against the light colored sand and shells. I told Russ I'd love to have that color of rocks in the landscaping of my house in the states.

By mid-day we decided to take a drive to Cape Hedo, the uppermost point of the Island. It was a beautiful drive to the cape along the shoreline but the cape itself wasn't quite what I'd anticipated. I think my first words upon seeing it were "This is it?" It was smaller than the other capes we'd been to but still very beautiful. There was a big boulder engraved in kanji at the highest point of the cape which I learned was erected in 1976 to signify the American's return of Okinawa back to the Japanese people in 1972. They say it was put there to signify the Okinawan's passion for peace on their island. There were a few other viewing points along the pathway to explore so we walked to them all. In several places we saw little wooden boxes with water and coins in them.  I read on a few websites that the coin boxes were there for them to pray for the soldiers lost at sea. Another website said they pray to the god of the sea. We saw a few people stop briefly, drop a coin in and say a quick prayer.

Loved the blue color as the waves crashed on the reefs

The water was a gorgeous blue color as it crashed against the coral reefs and I spent a few minutes trying to capture with my camera the waves as they burst into blue when they hit the rocks . On one little pathway we saw a big white bird statue. Curious as to why he was there, I had to look on my phone to determine his significance since all the signs around him were in kanji. I found that the bird was called a kariyushi and has the head of a bird and but the body of a fish. It was put there to symbolize peace between the Kunigami village and the Yoron Island.  There were various other shrines for peace set up along the trail.

Another thing that intrigued me was a great big statue of a bird that overlooked the hillside to the right of the cape. I also looked it up on my phone and found that the bird on the hillside was a yanbaru-kuina bird or yanbaru rail. It was found as a new species in 1981, and since then became a symbol of Okinawa. Now it is on their endangered species list. One website said it is the only flightless bird on the island. We saw its picture on several signs on our drive to Okuma with cartoons that obviously say "don't run over these birds." or "look out for them" so we knew there was some significance to this bird on the hillside. It sort of looks like a cross between a fat roadrunner and a duck sitting on a nest. When we got nearer to it we realized it was a lookout point that could be climbed to via stairs inside the bird. It had great views of Cape Hedo as well as the beach area below.

The half bird half fish monument-kariyushi

More peace monuments

The yanbaru bird viewed from Cape Hedo

The yanbaru bird viewed from the beach below it.

The yanbaru bird at the lookout in front of him

After spending about 1/2 hour at the Cape, we drove a short drive to the beach that we could see from the cape. It had a small waterfall streaming down one side and we climbed a few more boulders here for different vantage points of the scenery. We spent close to an hour just walking the beach and finding shells and sea glass. My prize find of the day was a sea urchin shell that was in perfect condition. It looked like a ball with ribbons decorated around it. I was so excited when I found it and ran back to Russ to show him. I continued on my walk and he began looking for more of these shells. He ended up finding two smaller ones by the time I walked back to him. The views from this beach were amazing but the beach itself had a lot of trash among some great shells. We enjoyed our time climbing rocks and exploring there.

Directly above the beach was the huge yonbaru statue that we could see from Cape Hedo. We found the road that led to the bird..a very skinny one-way type of road. After parking, we climbed a trail of blooming azaleas that led to the yanbaru on the hillside.  In front of the yonbaru bird was a wooden deck-like lookout point and then you could climb stairs inside the bird and look out from his belly over the expanse of the ocean and views of Cape Hedo. It was almost sunset by this time and everything had a golden glow. Beautiful scenes for sure.

My best shell find of the weekend. 

After we got home I soaked them in bleach and they
cleaned up nicely

The waterfall at the beach below the yanburu
overlook

Saturday we had a little bit of sunshine before the next round of rain clouds formed for our 70% chance of rain day. Russ took me on the walk that he'd done the day before and then we got our books and sat on the beach to read until lunchtime. We ate at the Surfside restaurant again and then made the  2 hour trip back to our home in Ishikawa. We totally enjoyed our time in spite of the rain and clouds. Cape Hedo was on our list of places we wanted to see while here so we got to check one off the list. Here's some more of our Okuma and Cape Hedo photos.

Captured this one right before the rain on the first day.
The sun poked through the clouds and turned the
water a teal blue and it even reflected into the clouds.
One of my favorite pictures of the weekend.

Some of the rocky areas we climbed on
at Okuma

The water was such a pretty color even with all
the clouds. Can't wait to see it on a pure sunny day.
You can see all the beds of coral at the edge of the shore.

Another rock monument at Cape Hedo

Can't get enough of all the rocky cliffs

Playing balancing games on the rocks

The rocks below where we had our lunch

Loved the texture of all the rocks and the caves

A great beach for working on the
rock climbing skills

I told Russ it looked like God had personally
signed this rock. Can you see the "I AM"?
It wasn't graffiti. Just darkened areas on the rocks.

Where we had our evening meals. Kudos to the great chef.

So many places to explore

My fellow rock climber

The only way we get a picture together is with a selfie.
Love sharing these adventures with this man.

The beach in front of our room. We went out after dark and sat in the lifeguard
chairs. Very peaceful.

Those rain clouds stayed with us all weekend.