7/17 It Can Take You Back to the Place, but It Can't Take You Back in Time

I awoke feeling refreshed, but was determined to catch myself up on my writing and photos, so after a little instant noodles that weren’t all that great, but filled me a little, I sat in the room for quite a while loading and exporting photos and writing about my adventures until then.

  It was a lazy morning and soon I was ready to put on yesterday’s clothes and make my trek to the Renaissance for the use of their wifi. 

 

Once there, I had a few emails to return and I was ready to begin my process of uploading photos from iPhoto and entries from word documents.  I never open this computer without a silent thank you to my friends who have lent it to me.  I took a few pictures around the lobby and realized I had a headache and I was famished. 

I went to the Sailfish Café and saw a sumptuous buffet spread out, but really wanted just a sandwich.  The hostess told me it was only buffet and I didn’t have the nerve to walk out with the look on her face and the emptiness in my stomach.  It was like I was being led down a path and I didn’t or couldn’t stop myself.  I was led to a big round table with a crisp big linen napkin and a basketful of silverware and chopsticks in the center of it and it was all out on the lanai overlooking the blue and white stripe umbrellaed beach and there was music playing and glasses clinking and it was just so nice.

 

As I walked up one buffet spread and down the next, I couldn’t help think of how much all this would cost.  This was not that kind of trip and I was already thinking about how I might economize for the rest of it to pay for this.  I can’t begin to say what all was there and some of it, I’d never heard of.  There was every Asian food imagineable.  There were several curries for rice, sliced pork and beef, and stir fries galore and breads and salads (including jellyfish and tofu salad), there were pizzas, stews, a fruit table with gorgeous fruits and a dessert bar with everything from crepes made to order to cakes to my favorite Okinawan shiikuwasha sorbet. 

 

I helped myself to whatever my heart desired.  I had two different waitresses come up to take my photo with my camera for me.  This was a resort and it was, well, it was nice like resorts are.  I chose a little slice of pizza, but mine had sliced goya on it – yummy – and it was delicious in that way that pizza can be when the crust is so perfect and the flour on the crust gets on your lipstick and you haven’t had anything remotely resembling American food since July 2 and it was July 17. 

I had another piece of that stuff.  I had a smoked mahi mahi salad, an baby octopus stir-fry, an assorted cold seafood selection with the biggest mussel I’ve ever seen, I had pork and beef and chicken and pretty much all the animal groups.

  I chose two halves of passion fruit, a new favorite I don’t know how I’ll ever live without and something I could really embarrass myself with eating so much of if I had a chance.  I chose something I didn’t have any idea about and still don’t, it was a dark brown spiky thing on the fruit table. 

Japanese desserts aren’t like the Cheesecake Factory mile high concoctions.  No, they are these little dainty ladies at tea sized slices, which only makes us Americans feel like that allows us to taste even more different kinds of dessert.

I did'nt show out too much, but I had a bit of the ganache cake, rich and dark chocolatey, and I tasted a fluffy cheesecake thin, and a little slice of banana bread with black tapioca coconut milk on it and I had the shiikwasha sorbet that I saved for the last and ate with my eyes closed in the deliciousness of it all.

I inquired about my check and my smiling, uniformed, picture taking waitress brought my check where she reverently, with two hands presented it to me and watched my face as I took it in.  I looked slowly down, holding my breath and when I saw the total, honest to goodness it was all I could do to keep from laughing aloud.  2200 yen.  I had imagined at least $65.00 dollars worth of amazingly wonderful cuisine.  This lunch, all less than $22.00 of it was still costing me more than any dinner I’d had here, but it was so much less than I’d expected I felt like I was floating.  I felt like I did when we took the stray cat to the vet after it had been hurt and the vet knew we were doing a good deed and I let the vet do everything but clean that cat’s teeth and added it up in my head to over $600, but it was only $183 and I cried and embarrassed my girl. 

 

No problem.  I’ll pace myself for the rest of the day, not that I’ll be hungry again.  I won’t have dinner – and I didn’t.  I had a big Japanese cracker wrapped in black seaweed the Yamauchis had given me that I’d saved.  And an Orion.

 

After lunch, I drove through some rain and decided it was time to see if I could recollect enough to find where we used to live.  I took good old 58 south and turned left on 130 and that took me to 330 where I turned south and before you knew it, for the second real time since I’d arrived, I knew where I was.  I drove along the fence with the barbed wire on top and saw that family housing inside. 

I passed the gate my sister and I would walk out of to go to the Japanese bank to exchange our allowance for yen and shop by ourselves without my worry wart mother all day long and we’d go home with pencils and scented erasers and pencil boxes and dried plums that the American kids all called seemores and trinkets.

 

I parked my car and stood at that fence with the barbed wire on top and took some pictures of the government housing inside.  I couldn’t see our old quarters, but I saw some that looked like ours.  I wished I could go on to see if I could make my way back to ours after all this time.  I cried and cried.  I wasn’t expecting that.

 

I got back in my car and drove back north on 330.  This road was our main drag and our go to road back then.  I think I only remember driving along the road that’s called 58  when we went to Kadena AFB to go to their PX or to go to Camp Kue to the hospital to do my Candy Striper job.  The funny thing about my drive north on this day is that everything was there, but it was out of proportion somehow.  It’s hard to describe.  A & W was there, but I remembered the hill it is on as being higher.  Kubasaki High School, my old high school, came up way before it should have and I remembered it being further.  Rogers’s department store was there, but I remembered it being further back from the street.  The cut off to Awase Meadows Golf Course was closer to Rogers than it used to be.  The traffic was stop and go, rush hour I guess.  I turned down toward Awase Meadows and remembered it being further down that road.  Now there are fences with barbed wire and postings all along the road with the golf course behind the fences.  I don’t remember the fences.  I took some pictures.  I was going to go see if I could find the old apartment we lived in, brand new then, before we moved into quarters, but the traffic was crawling and it would be late enough when I got back to my room as it was. 

 

My gas has gotten low again.  I’d put gas in this little Demio after driving it for 5 days and it had cost about $44.00.  

I pulled into a service station near the American Village and was greeted by a smiling attendant who filled up my tank for me and with two hands presented me with my credit card on a traI’d driven another just about 5 days and filled up for $50.00.   

Once home, it was almost sunset and I took a pretty long walk north on my little street in my little village and came across several little restaurants and one 24 hour diner on the beach that looked kind of like an American one. 

I noted those for later, as I wasn’t eating dinner tonight.  Once the sun went down and I got some glorious photos of the clouds, the diner’s neon went on and I got some photos of that.  I took lots of video.  I walked along the seawall and it was nearly dark and came upon a group of men drinking Orion and playing gate ball. I’d read about gate ball and know the older ladies are supposed to be able to engage in lively games of it.  I know it was gate ball I’d come across because one of the men took the sharp point of some scissors and spelled it in the dirt for me.  There was an American among them.  He said he’d grown up in Okinawa and had been a colonel in the Marine Corp.  He was speaking Japanese and Hogen, the Okinawan dialect, to the Japanese men and they seemed very impressed by his colonel status and he modestly downplayed it.  He mentioned he’d gone to Kubasaki High, but had dropped out.  Something about his man didn't seem very Marine Corps colonel-y to me, but what do I know.

 

Back in my room, amazingly, the breeze was so cool and strong; I opened my window on the parking lot side and the door on the beach side and was comfortable without an A/C feeding.  I don’t know whether it was actually cool enough, or whether I’d gotten acclimatized, but it felt good.  Maybe this little typhoon spinning out in the ocean had kicked up a breeze.  I’d seen on my one channeled TV earlier a little spot when the female announcer told about the typhoon and a map was shown, looking much like our impending hurricane maps, and after the brief typhoon spot, the announcer bowed to her audience.  You don’t see that in the states. 

 

The waves were lapping on the beach and the moon, nearly full was rising over the hill, spotted with houses, on the other side of the inn.  What a lovely night.  It would be perfect if only my family and friends could share it with me.