Okinawa/Ishigaki, Japan

April 1, 2024 | Mike Mikus | Asia

Hello friends. Thanks for checking back in.

The last few days, we have spent time exploring Okinawa and its neighboring island, Ishigaki. This was our first of many stops in Japan. Having never been before, we were very excited. Having had back-to-back excursions for the last week or so, we were exhausted, but we roughed it out and did what we do best. (Karen fully explored the cultural side of the areas that we visited, and I drank all their beer and ate all their food…)

Okay. You caught me. I was exaggerating. Karen only partially explored the culture.

We hit the ground running first thing in the morning, and the little city of Ishigaki was pretty cool. Loats of all different sorts of Japanese shops,markets, and restaurants lined the main streets. We quickly figured out that the 3/4 story buildings housed lots of addition fun things if one was brave enough to venture up the narrow stairwells to the upper floors, or down into the basements.

One of the first stops was in one of these basements. The open floor-plan housed half-a-dozen vendors cooking up all kinds of things we had never seen before. In the middle was 5 or 6 tables. After ordering, you sat down and waited for them to bring your food.

Each table had a squirt bottle and a stack of paper towels. We quickly figured out you had to clean your own table before eating.

We opted for several mysterious items, each from a different vendor. The first thing to show up was our local lager. Having never had a breakfast beer before, I opted to go with the flow (so to speak). Yum! After a sip or two, our breakfast arrived.

We had ordered a breakfast “SPAMwich, which consisted of a slice of fried spam, with egg and cheese, served in a bread-like sticky rice with a seaweed crust. It included a side of fried buckwheat cake, a chicken nugget (?), fried rice, and a cup of the best miso soup we had ever had. Yummo!

For desert we had an additional delicacy that seemed to be a fried ball of coffee cake batter. Pretty good stuff, and while it didn’t break the bank, my belt is getting tight. (It must be shrinking I suppose.)

Afterwards we explored around Main Street, and stumbled upon a several block-long covered outdoor mall. We also walked some of the local neighborhoods just to get a feel for this little city.

One of the coolest things we saw was a speakeasy behind the door of a vending machine on Main Street. I saw the door open on the vending machines, but did not realize that it was a staircase down to a 4-table speakeasy until I got back on the ship and folks were talking about it. Sorry I missed that…

Later in the afternoon, we doubled back to a nice little burger joint that specialized in Wagu Beef Burgers. It turns out that one of a leading producers of Wagu beef was just around the proverbial corner (an island or two away).

Anyway, the hamburger was phenomenal, and the fries were even better. They have this thing they do here with fries, adding the thinnest slice of garlic, fried crispy. It really ups the recipe game.

The following morning, we were really dragging, but we could not miss Okinawa, so off we went.

We tried Japanese breakfast sandwiches at the local McDonald’s. It was different but good. Then we explored around.

Okinawa was much like the city the day before, but we had a great idea. After a bit of site-seeing, we checked into the cutest little shop, and we both had facials. Now I had never had a facial before, but it was very relaxing.

An hour later, we were on our way to a surprise appointment, and we both had a reflexology foot rub followed by massages. We were like new people.

Afterwards, we skipped our way to a cute little upstairs cafe where we tried the Japanese Tacos that everyone had been talking about. (It was kind of a taco salad over rice instead of lettuce. Different…)

Very nice people here, and more custom-painted manhole covers. I’m not sure what that is all about, but I like it!