Thursday, February 08, 2007
The Waiting Game
Art and John start the morning off with a run down to the Shintoshin Park. It’s another glorious day with blue skies and mild temperature. We eat breakfast together in our Super Hotel and I do a load of laundry in the tiny washing machines. At 10:00 A.M. we must leave for the day so that the hotel can be cleaned. John grabs his skateboard and we head to the Monorail to go downtown.
Kokusai Street, is lined with tourist shops, restaurants and bars. I am happy to be wandering along this bustling street again. There is an energy here that is more exciting and “foreign” than that in the Shintoshin district. This is my fourth trip to Okinawa and I am familiar and comfortable on my own so I part ways with Art and John. The shops I want to poke into are of no interest to them and visa versa. We agree to meet at 11:30 A.M. at the every present Starbucks. We meet and Art leads us down a side street to his favorite hole in the wall for lunch. A half dozen tables line the wall of the tiny noodle restaurant. There is no glossy menu to order from, just simple drawings of the “sets” posted on the wall. I can’t say the food is memorable, but it is ample and cheap.
After lunch we wander down Heiwadori Street on a quest for freshly baked sweet bean fish. (a pastry in the shape of a fish with a sweet bean filling.) Heiwadori means “Peace Street” and is a long covered market with hundreds of tiny shops, street venders and narrow alley ways. As we exit John spies a beetle vender and is immediately enthralled. He REALLY wants one. These are the horned rhinoceros beetles that are several inches long. There are several species to choose from. I am not sure how I feel about adopting a beetle, but I think it may be an option once we move into our apartment. John is excited and talks nonstop about this for the rest of the afternoon. Should we allow him to buy one, John has already chosen the name, Frackasaurus. “Frack” will not be able to return home with us so one of the prerequisites to all of this is that John find a future home for his beetle when we leave.
Takaaki picks us up at Heiwadori Street and drives us to the internet café. There is a “Pet Box” a block away so John and I go there while Art and Takaaki drink iced coffees. Pet Box is the Japanese equivalent to Pet Smart except that our local Pet Smart doesn’t have rhinoceros beetles for sale. John browses all the accessories available for purchase to house and feed his future beetle. We return to the cafe and decide that Art will go with Takaaki to sign the rental agreement for our apartment while John and I walk back to our Super Hotel via the skate park. I sit under a tree while John skates, pull out my book and begin to read. The skating is short lived since John refuses to wear his helmet and we get into our first serious argument of the trip. We leave the park and walk back in silence. Actually, I am silent while John tells me exactly what he thinks about my rules. We sit on the curb in front of the hotel and “discuss “our differences. Fortunately neither one of us ever stays mad for long and we return to the skate park an hour later. This time John wears his helmet while on the half pipe but continues to test me when he is on flat pavement.
We catch a cab back to Heiwadori Street in the evening. We have been offered the use of a friend’s cell phone and we plan to have dinner downtown at the same time. John is hungry and impatient with our search of the perfect restaurant. I am determined to choose a restaurant quickly and within a few minutes we decide to gamble our luck on an upstairs tonkatsu restaurant. From street level it looks quite charming but when we enter we discover that we are the only patron which is never a good sign and the menu is all in Kanji. There are no glossy pictures to choose from so Art translates as best as he can. We each order a different type of tonkatsu. Tonkatsu is basically a wiener schnitzel and is a specialty in Okinawa. It’s served with a thick sweet steak sauce somewhat like Worcestershire sauce. Art and I share a small heated flask of sake. Dinner is excellent