Okinawa: Oct. 14-17

I'm just back from a school trip to Okinawa. It was excellent and I enjoyed it very much. Did we go to a lot of places? Yes. Did we stay in first-class hotels? Yes. Did we eat enormous amounts of rather good food? Yes. Did we make real and lasting contact with the locals? No.

Well, this is a typical Japanese school trip. Just like the first brave Japanese tourists to Europe and the USA of the early 1970s, Second-Year high school students (16-17) travel every year with fretting teachers armed with bullhorns in large groups of 150-250 to previously unknown parts of their own country in a cocoon of safety, a bubble in which nothing untoward may happen. Fair enough. They stay in fantastic hotels (no grubby old youth hostels), get charged for evening gourmet meals which they don't quite always receive, although I must say that the help-yourself-to-everything breakfasts are truly magnificent. It's a change. It's a break from classes. It's paid off in monthly installments from the time of entering the school so 180,000 Yen for 3 nights and 4 days plus airfare doesn't seem all that bad. Work it out. Just 1800 dollars or 900 quid, 1250 Euro. No bother, I suppose. Money values change, I know, but back in the days when I was travelling that would have lasted me for -- I don't know? -- three or four months?

No more. That's enough weirdy comment where little comment is needed. The pictures below tell their own stories.

One more thing: if you'd like more info on Okinawa click on the Wikipedia Link at the bottom of the post, just below the last photograph.

1. The Inner Gateway to Shuri Castle

2. The Central Courtyard

3. Battle of Okinawa Memorial Park

4. Memorial Park

5. Memorial Park: strange to see your own surname -- a long-lost cousin?

6. Memorial Park: the Pacific Ocean meets the East China Sea.

7. Memorial Park: some of my homeroom students.

8. Himeyuri: 1000 paper cranes as a memorial to the high school girls forced to become nurses.

9. Himeyuri: entrance to the underground cave hospital.

10. Himeyuri: a rather bitter, disillusioned poem about getting pushed into the final battles.

11. The Chiraumi ("beautiful sea") aquarium

12. Chiraumi

13. Chiraumi

14. Chiraumi

15. Ryukyu Mura (Okinawan Folk Village)

16. Ryukyu Mura

17. R. Mura

18. R. Mura

19. R. Mura: Okinawan traditional dress.


20. R. Mura: water buff in charge of a "farmer".

21. R. Mura: the pottery centre.

22. R. Mura: the girls dress up as Okinawans.

Wikipedia Link to Okinawa

It was a good trip. The kids enjoyed it. Me, myself, I didn't have to pay, so that's another good reason to shut the fff up. We live in different times, and that's the end of it. The pictures trump the words -- once you know what they portay. Nevertheless, if you somehow come around to the point of asking me what I think about dragging the local people who never identified with mainland Japan into the last months of the war -- and thereby killing off thousands of them -- this is probably not the place for it. Comment if you like, though.