17 posts tagged “culture”

Okinawa is dense with historical and cultural finds. So much so that, wherever you wander on this ostensibly tiny island, you're likely to run into an interesting site you hadn't reckoned on.

On the way to the Southeast Botanical Gardens, instead I found a sign leading toward Yara Castle on the outskirts of Okinawa City.

Built on a limestone hill, the castle reaches 38 meters over sea level, offering a formidable defensive position. It's arranged around local park facilities -- baseball diamonds, playground equipment, and a path leading to a nearby river -- so the fact that it isn't the largest or most impressive castle around is offset by its concordance with the local landscape.

(This particular gusuku site is also known as Okawa Castle, after the feudal lord who ran the place. There is another site also called Yara Castle or Yara Fort, but it's a different enterprise, and was built in Naha in the 16th century to defend against pirates.)

Stone formations work with natural vegetation to create a timeless landscape:

Amawari, who you may remember as the rebellious lord of Katsuren Castle and traitor to the kingdom, is said to have been born here. This isn't certain, but it's held in common belief.

When you've got history right in your backyard, at some point it ceases to become history and merely becomes the backyard. So it was for these beer delivery truck workers, who chose the castle parking lot to take a noontime nap.

Okinawa's hot and humid climate affects the people here in numerous way. Handkerchiefs are standard fare everywhere. Cool ice tea is ubiquitous in summer. And clothes have to breathe.

The warmth also brings particular types of trees. Perhaps nothing shows how Okinawan culture has adapted to the natural environment than bashofu, the practice of making light, breathable clothing from banana fiber. Yesterday I watched artisans at the Ogimi workshop and village in northern Okinawa engage in this centuries-old tradition.

Fiber is drawn from the Ito-Basho [pdf], which is the type of banana tree that does not produce edible fruit. Ryukyuan traders brought the tree to Okinawa in the 13th or 14th century, likely from southern China or Malaysia. This is the Ito-Basho:

I witnessed about two dozen weavers making fabric from the long, fibrous strands. Photography isn't allowed inside the studio itself, so I can't show you the actual work being done. I can tell you, however, that the male-to-female ratio inside the studio is roughly 12:1. If I were a young man in Ogimi village, I would study weaving.

Commonly, the clothes are dyed with bark from the sharinbai, an evergreen shrub. The bark is shown below:

This link has a history of bashofu weaving, including the post-war collapse of the industry after cheap western clothing came onto the market. Once mass produced cotton became available, bashofu dwindled. Thankfully, it's being revived.

Not just clothing, either: the Ogimi workshop displays various artistic items, handbags and wall hangings, the local three-stringed banjo and more::

The clothes are beautiful, functional and very expensive. Yes, that link points to a $2100 children's kimono. That's what the market dictates for the hours of time and care it takes to produce material of this nature.

I had hoped to get a bashofu shirt for myself, but they didn't have any available. Besides, I didn't have an extra $1000 or so. But I wanted to support the locals and look good at the same time, so I purchased my first-ever bolo tie (modeled below with my friend Chihiro, a tour conductor from the mainland):

You might say that I should try the bolo with a dress shirt. I would retort that the juxtaposition of timeless craftwork with the type of $10 t-shirt that nearly led to its extinction here is a beautiful irony.

Note: a week of minimal internet connectivity has hamstrung my posting capability. The site should start updating as normal, on a daily basis, starting today.

Over Okinawa soba last month, the debate intensified. The one that had been raging in the back of my head, that is, except this time the arguing principals were friends of mine from Naha. He (fiery activist) and she (thoughtful journalist) found one point of disagreement to hash out between noodle-slurping. I listened.

The issue: When we say "Okinawan," who is an Okinawan, anyway? The meta-issue, for You, The Reader: What does this have to do with a trip to Nakijin Castle?

Let's start with the simple. Nakijin is the largest castle in Okinawa. The sturdy construction on the Motobu Peninsula is, even today, imposing as it looks out toward the East China Sea. When the landscapes were dominated by regional lords known as anji, having a fortress of rock and stone was an essential bulwark against the slings and arrows of one's rivals.

High vantage points helped keep track of the enemy's advance:

All the views in the world, though, won't defend a kingdom against a superior army. A recurring theme in local history, the poor denizens of Nakijin would fall to an invading force. Just another example of the unfortunate Okinawans being conquered.

Except this time they were conquered by other Okinawans. Kind of. Until the 15th century, when Sho Hashi conquered the whole of Okinawa, the island was divided into three kingdoms divided by geography.

A quick translation: the term for "conquer" in English historical language is "unify." Funny, that. I remember when kids in school used to unify our respective lunch monies in a wallet that wasn't mine. 

Nakijin, before the "unification," was the seat of Hokuzan ("north country"). The lord of the castle and his main aides all committed suicide after the battle to defend their kingdom went south. Reading about this campaign -- and later campaigns, in 1500 and after, to pacify the islands of Miyako and the like -- affected me more than I thought it would at first.

When you're writing a book about how an essentially nonviolent population has been consistently caught between larger, warring powers, there's more than a little disquiet that comes from reading about smaller scale internal violence -- to learn that Okinawans treated each other the way the Shimazu clan of Satsuma would later treat them, as subjects to be brought to heel. 

A little cognitive dissonance is good, though. Cleans the brain, opens one up to new perspectives. So it was as I sat and listened, soba disappearing, awamori glasses being refilled.

When we say Okinawans, she was saying, we're really saying "people from the main island, and even then, mostly people from the populated south." For a long time, people from the rural north were looked down on in the manner of American hillbillies. It's even more clear for people from the outer islands, she continued: the word Okinawans call themselves in the local language, "uchinanchu," doesn't exist in the southern dialects. Miyako people don't call themselves uchinanchu, and neither do people from the Yaeyamas.

Sure, came the gruff reply, we haven't always been one. But we're one now, and language doesn't matter as much as a shared fate, anyway. Besides, maybe we can tell the difference between a Kunigami villager, an urbanite from Naha and a surfer on Iriomote -- but can anyone else? Can the people building airports on hallowed ecological spots? Do they care?  

The discussion was polite, if forceful. And there was more than a little surprise that these two would disagree. Neither hesitates to use the label "Okinawans" when defending the island against those who would act against local interests, and this is illustrative.

Language is deployed differently for descriptive purposes than for activist purposes. "Leave the peace-loving Okinawans alone!" is a much better slogan than "Leave the largely non-aggressive, though occasionally internally violent, population of the former Ryukyu Kingdom alone!" "Save wild Okinawa!" works better than "Preserve the chain of Ryukyu Islands, which at one time politically did not include Miyako, Yaeyama and other outer islands!"

In communication, criteria matters. The journalist knows this, and I suspect she was playing a bit of academic Devil's Advocate.

Time, too, has to matter. Sho Hashi's aggression happened almost 600 years ago, ushered in an age of relative prosperity and created the entity we now refer to as the Ryukyu Kingdom. It gives me pause now, even at this point in time, to issue sweeping pronouncements about Okinawans as one unitary monolith. But my historical musings prove little other than that the victims sometimes become executioners, and vice versa. Identities form when they form, sometimes organically, sometimes from necessity.

One more informative detail. My Devil's Advocate friend? She's a transplanted mainlander with a background in Okinawan history. The staunch defender of uchinanchu identity is a local, born and raised. Note the different perspectives of the learned academic and the native-born rabble-rouser. With detachment comes perspective, on occasion at the expense of passion.

In history, there are times for unity. Then, there are times for taking sides. It takes intellect to see which is which and passion to follow through on what one knows.

People ask me if I believe in ghosts. Sure, I say, but only when I'm in Okinawa or on an Indian reservation.

The cultural environment of a place informs its reality, or at least the way we experience reality. Little rituals and folk wisdom become ingrained. Before we know it, we're naturally knocking wood, throwing salt over our shoulders or becoming uneasy at the sight of an owl (a sign of death in many indigenous cultures).

My country is younger than many of the bars in Europe, so our own traditions are a bit muted by comparison. Ideas passed down from pre-Columbus, pre-William the Conqueror, pre-you name it gain more traction, and in the physics business, traction is equivalent to strength. If I learn something new -- as I did the other day, when someone taught me that in Japanese folklore, the gecko is considered a kami-sama of the home [pdf] -- it interests me.

The person that teaches me these things, by contrast, learned from her parents, who learned from their parents, who got the roots of their knowledge from hundreds of years in the past. The time distills the story, makes the story a part of you.

Kami-sama roughly means nature spirit, a manifestation of holiness on earth. There are many different kinds. As you might imagine, it's frightfully bad luck to injure or kill them, which made me feel all the better about my benign treatment of the geckos. The tiny chirping lizards are protectors of hearth and homestead. And here I thought they were just cute, harmless consumers of insects.

I've written several posts about my houseguests without realizing there was a greater significance there. This experience in particular looks much more consequential in retrospect, with me seriously ill and wondering if I'm going to make it through the night without emergency services. As it turned out, I had services of a different nature from my own reptilian omamori (good luck charms).

Reading too much into this? Maybe. The power of old stories might be all in our minds. But the mind itself, remember, is a pretty powerful thing.

An Okinawan woman I respect a lot told me once about a rough time in her life on the family farm. In the throes of despair, with no one to turn to, she strolled outside and vented to the only entities she felt were worthy of trust: the pigs she worked with every day.

Later, in the states, she was asked by an American if she believed in God. She paused before answering "You know, I'm not sure. But I do believe in pigs."

I believe in pigs and geckos, too. Especially when I'm in Okinawa.

How can a culture widely renowned for its pacifism be the birthplace of an ancient fighting art? Okinawa is in the business of paradox, pal, and business is good.

Simple stories are beautiful. It's why I love children's books -- they distill essential life lessons into the most stark, spare terms. Complex stories are darker, with more gray areas, and only adults can understand them. This is why adults are, as a rule, both wiser and sadder than kids.

So it is with karate, and indeed with Okinawa. The story of Okinawa as a pacifist kingdom is simple, and it isn't entirely false. Like Groucho Mark's maxim about a girl in a fine bikini, though, what this story doesn't reveal is vital. This is among the facts brought into sharp relief after my first karate class this week.

In choosing a dojo, I consulted a few different local friends. My criteria were simple: I wanted to learn a style native to the island, and I wanted more focus on form, as opposed to physical confrontation.

The first place I tried had nightly sparring, and word on the street was to stay away if you were fond of a full set of teeth. Given that I am a complete neophyte in the ways of unarmed combat, I thought this might be the equivalent of jumping into a kick, ass-first.

Many believe that martial arts is all about handing out beat-downs. Not so. Titanic figure Gichin Funakoshi's oft-quoted statement that there is no first strike in karate says it all. The practice's history blends the practical with the philosophic, and like the history of the island itself, is fascinating. Okinawans practiced their own martial art rooted in traditional dance called te ("hand"). Modern karate developed after kenpo practice was introduced from China at the end of the 14th century. The style I'm practicing, the Shorin-Ryu style, comes out of this tradition.

"Ryu" are different schools of the art, defined by their emphases and their choice of kata (forms). Martial artists, like any artists, delight in debating the relative merits of each particular style and possible permutations thereof. There are others substantially more qualified to pontificate about these matters. Me, I just like to tell stories, like the following take on how Okinawan history intersects with the history of open-hand fighting.

After the separate kingdoms of Okinawa were united by King Sho Shin -- not through the gentle art of persuasion, mind you -- private weapons ownership was forbidden. Sometimes this is used to advance the narrative of Okinawans-as-peace-lovers. It actually says more about Sho Shin's desire to consolidate power, shutting out his rivals' access to arms. Ditto for when the Satsuma clan invaded in the 17th century and implemented their own weapons ban, except that time the prohibition on weapons was forced on Okinawans from without.

Karate advanced by leaps and bounds during these periods, when Ryukyuan people needed to learn to defend themselves using simply their hands and their farm equipment. This is why so many weapons-centered styles use gear that looks close to something you'd use to cut sugarcane, build a fence or slaughter a pig.

My thumbnail sketch of  Okinawan  pacifism -- a topic explored in much greater detail by the scholar Gregory James Smits [pdf] --  is this. Island culture has always valued peace, though not as an absolute, and in addition to a moral stance this position has been a practical necessity. A tiny, usually poor country in the veritable lion's den of larger, more militaristic cultures couldn't rely on deterrence to forestall invasion. It had to choose other means, like diplomacy and image. Whenever an imperial power wanted to put a military base here, the Okinawan response uniformly included the following argument: if you do so, it will only serve to attract hostile attention and provoke other nations, nations with whom we have no quarrel. We would rather simply get along with our neighbors.

This doesn't undercut the larger truth that Okinawans have always opposed aggressive military action out of principle -- at least, when undertaken by other countries, after their own was unified by such action -- but it does add texture to the tale.

There's much more to this that I need to think about, including what it says about Okinawan/Ryukyuan identity. Before Sho Shin brought the whole of Okinawa island under his control, there were three kingdoms here -- and that's without getting into the acquisition of Miyako Island and the Yaeyamas. When we say "Okinawans" possess a love for peace, who do we mean? When we use these terms, are we trying merely to describe what we see, or to achieve larger goals?

It's a complicated story, although I still maintain that it includes good guys and bad guys in addition to those inhabiting the shadowy spaces between.

Complexity exists in karate as well. Shorin-ryu as taught in my dojo uses the Pinan series of kata, an intricate series of dance-like movements. During my first two-hour session, I eagerly tackle the tandem stretching exercises. I leap into the strength training. While the other students practice the kata, though, new students like myself (and today, I'm the only one) are expected to just watch and learn. This, of course, is for the best.

If you are prepared to try karate, know this: you can be a professional dancer, yoga teacher, torch singer, whatever, you are not going to look graceful compared to the sensei. It's just not happening. These individuals spend a lifetime with a focus on perfecting particular movements. It shows.

I watch Daigo-sensei's path across the gym as he leads the exercises. My feeling is he could do this in the dark, outdoors, in a typhoon, with Metallica's "Ride The Lightning" blasting from high-volume speakers as a distraction and still not miss a step.

The practice of karate, including the exercises themselves and their effects on the body, remind me a bit of yoga. Stretches play a role. Freezing one's body in challenging positions is central. In yoga, the physical tests are a step toward quieting the mind and centering the self into meditation.

I've been practicing yoga for years, and the endorphine release after a session of such resembles what I experienced with karate more than any other exercise. Every exercise affords the body a sort of high, but these two each left me feeling a kind of perspective -- as if my arms and legs intuitively understood, even more than my mind, that we'd just taken a step on the endless road toward perfectibility.

In talking with one of the other folks around the dojo -- a woman whose husband and two daughters have been practicing there for more than a year -- I find some of my reads confirmed. The one gripe some potential students have is that the sensei doesn't promote often enough, while other teachers allow their students to move up every few months. His focus is helping students master each level. Given that I care much more about the journey than about belt color, this lines up well with my own desires.

After two hours of a solid sweat only broken my my time spent watching kata, I decide that I've found my home for karate practice. The sensei hands me the sign-up form, and I am pleased to find that my Japanese has advanced enough to understand all of the fields, with just one exception. How about this one? I don't recognize this kanji, I say.

He smiles. "Oh, that one? That's for your blood type."

There might be no first strike in karate, and practicing martial arts might lead to meditative insights and intellectual satisfaction, but that doesn't mean we're playing chess.

Without question, the flagship issue concerning American military bases in Okinawa -- and likely the central topic of my book -- is the plan to transfer Marine Air Station Futenma to a site in northern Okinawa.

I've written about this a lot in the archives, but here's a quick summary. The one thing all parties -- the U.S., Japan, and Okinawa -- agree on is that Futenma has to go. It's a terrible place for a base, especially one with daily flight exercises. Noise, risk of accident, and environmental pollution, all in the middle of a college town's schools, hospitals and offices.

Moving the base to Henoko, though, may well be a Faustian bargain. The area is less populated, but is critical habitat for numerous endangered species, including the totemic dugong. The dugong isn't the only ecological argument against the site -- far from it -- but the creature is a charismatic marine mammal, is endangered, is the only such animal left in Japanese waters and is key to the local culture. Thus, that's what we hear about most in public discourse.

For a fresh approach to some of the other arguments against moving the base to this site, read this: Yoshikazu Makishi, prominent architect, prime mover behind the Okinawa Environmental Network, and an advisor of mine, has a new article available on-line. There are many items of note here, including Makishi's take (shared by many Okinawans) that the Japanese government are more collaborating with Americans to undermine Okinawan interests rather than serving as advocates for the prefecture.

The article is translated by Dr. Miyume Tanji, and is collected in a new book [pdf] that I need to get.

From just about every source, we hear that the Okinawan public largely mistrusts Tokyo's motives. Of course, the Japanese government isn't on the same page, at least as far as public pronouncements go.

Comments from government officials on successive days contradicted each other. We're trying to find a new plan. No wait, we're going ahead. Given that Okinawan government Hirokazu Nakaima has softened his stance as well -- not unexpected -- there's a lot of waffles around without a lot of syrup.

Environmental assessments begin again this month. I'm told that February will be the time to expect more protest activity.

Interesting times indeed.

Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
-- Robert Frost

Four times the world of Shuri Castle has ended in fire, most recently with the mighty conflagration that occurred here during World War II. Today's Shuri is the fifth incarnation, and what better color for a fifth-generation phoenix than red?

Historian George Kerr called Shuri "one of the most magnificent castle sites to be found anywhere in the world, for it commands the countryside for miles around and looks toward distant sea horizons on every side." The Chinese influence is apparent, and some of the surviving stonework originates from Okinawa's old ally, parent state and trading partner. This dragon fountain, for example:

Situated on a hill and protected by a stout outer and inner wall, Shuri made an effective fortress when it wasn't being accidentally torched. Say what you will about simple living, but a modern fire extinguisher could have saved the Ryukyuans a good deal of treasure and heartbreak between 1453 and 1709. It wouldn't have done them a lot of good during the Second World War, when the Japanese co-opted the palace for use as their military headquarters. But then, not much would have done the Okinawans good during the Second World War.

This wasn't the first time Americans had used force on Shuri, though it was certainly the worst time. Commodore Matthew Perry bullied his way into the palace in the 1850s, putting Okinawans in a bad spot. That's a post for another day, though (and what we in the business of typing our thoughts call "foreshadowing.")

Nowadays, the castle is a place families can while away entire days. If you're interested in historical artifacts (old technology, royal regalia, various forms of art), you can find them here. You can also stroll through the royal gardens, roam the walls marveling at the architecture, or just take in the view:

Shuri survived as the seat of Ryukyuan government for hundreds of years. Even the parts of it that died survived in a way, preserved beneath the new castle site as rubble:

Not quite ashes, but modern Shuri rose from them anyway.

There are certain rules I live by. Rule one is this: don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to. It's simple, easy to remember, and when violated reveals too late its efficacy at preventing disaster.

I have other rules, sure, but that's the one that loomed largest in the now-gone (over here) Year of the Dog. We've moved in Okinawa, as my Amerikajin brothers and sisters are about to, into the Year of the Inoshishi, the wild boar. New days bring new insights, and I'm always looking for other precepts to add to the prime directive I just mentioned.

Asian astrology says that it's good luck to have an image of the boar around during his year. Shopkeepers and my local friends are following this example. For a year-long houseguest, the texts say you could do worse than old inoshishi: "Intellectual and sets difficult goals. Sincere and honest and expects same." That doesn't sound so bad; admirable, even.

Another rule: you have something to learn from everyone you meet, be they educated, illiterate, rich, homeless, or even the idealized spirit-persona of an animal.

I read that tourists are flocking to see and photograph and albino boar born on the mainland. It doesn't quite approach the White Buffalo in terms of prophecy and significance, but it reminds me that there are certain cultural currents that pull all of us. I'm not an Indian, but one of the few items I packed for this trip is a Cree prayer flag containing a prayer for compassion.

Today, many people are headed for the Futenma Shrine for their first prayers of the New Year. I have couchsurfers coming in -- maybe we'll follow that example. Rule the third: there is more that unites us than divides us.

So the sun sets on the year, for real, this time. I'll remember 2006 for myriad reasons, but mostly I'll remember it as a shadowy continuation of a previous cycle that was supposed to go only 365 days.

A few annums back, it was the Year of the Monkey, a time when astrologers warned of unpredictable change, tumult and trickery. This can imply good change, bad change, or a chanpuru of both. If you had to adopt a rule for responding to it, I'd offer "keep all of your limbs inside the ride at all times, kids. It gets bumpy." That's rule four if you're scoring at home.

I have this theory that the Year of the Monkey never ended, and that, for some of us, it never intends to.

Rule five: train a spirit-boar to kill that spirit-monkey. Then, we're set until 2016.

"Two women brought me some Okinawan sugar today. No one knows how much such a friendly advance means to me." -- The diary of Blanche Tilton Bull, Sunday, May 19, 1912

The little villages of Okinawa are the best places to go for a sense of what life was like here 100 years ago. The bucolic pace of life, the men breaking for lunch in the cane fields, the tiny shops run out of people's homes.

Getting away from the concrete streets and into the green hills has appeal, to be sure. But the rhythms of living and popular attitudes provide the gravitational pull of these places.

My raves inspired my mom to ask me to take her to a small village today, her final full day in the country. We roved up the coastline, looking for an ideal place to make a turn toward a random tiny hamlet. I didn't know where I was going. We were on a fairly main thoroughfare, and I was looking for the smallest road I could find to turn off on. I did so. Foolishly, mom assumed this meant I had a destination in mind.

I didn't. But I did have a plan.

"Where are we headed?" mom asked. "Up," I said.

Central Okinawa generally slopes upward from the coast, so a quick drive to the top of a hill is the best way to get your bearings. When you're looking for remoteness, you head for the thickest hunk of green grove you can find. The place I was looking for would have farming, to be sure, and mom-and-pop stores, and no one would have any idea what my Mom was saying when she spoke English.

We hit the first part immediately. I saw the cane fields stretching up toward the hill's apex:

When I stayed in Tomori Village down south, the typical pattern of a day went like this: wake up and walk to the neighborhood store for fresh tofu and eggs. Happily accept whatever baked treat the obaa-chan had concocted that morning. Come home, make food, write notes. Take a walk to someplace new. Wave and smile, a curiosity to all you encounter.

Granted, my experience in this was hardly typical of a village resident. Vacations are usually gentler on the soul because you don't have a time-clock to stare at. I was writing, sure, but it wasn't my job then, as it is now. Even the village wasn't typical; it's so small, many Okinawans don't know how to find it, and people who grew up there still get lost trying to seek it out.

I thought of this as I, lost myself, motored up the hill. We emerged with a great view and right next to six or seven men working on the sato stalks with cane scythes.

"Will you take a picture of them?" Mom asked, awash in the thrill of finding our goal of Real Rural Okinawa. "I'll ask first," I said, "they're armed."

Friends, let me tell you this: when you come to Okinawa, tell them it is your first time. Whenever I began explaining to people anywhere that I lived here, but that it was my mom's first time visiting, the hospitality red carpet was unfurled. Not one, but two older men walked over in succession bearing armloads of freshly-cut cane:

Mom was both instructed the art of eating the cane and assisted with its cutting:

At this point, the magical stalks could have tasted like sea urchin with the spines still attached, and it would barely have mattered. It's gestures like these that help give Okinawans their well-earned reputation as among the world's most hospitable people.

I remembered the passage from Methodist missionary Blanche Tilton Bull's diary where she talks about being touched by a similar gesture. Even if the cane was a local product that Mom had no taste for, it would still make a great memory.

Fortunately, you can see for yourself how it tasted:

One of the men started telling me stories about his time working on an American boat, traveling to far-flung locales like Korea and Germany. I was more interested in his humble village on a hill. " What's the name of this place?" I asked. "Shioya," he said.

Shioya is a place where you come when you're lost, and leave looking like this:

The countryside is full of special spots like this one, where the streets look much the same as they must have at the time Blanche Tilton Bull was receiving her gifts:

With one or two exceptions, of course:

Ginowan is perfect for me as far as newsgathering goes. I'm right next to Futenma, am close to urban centers, and possess a blazing-fast internet connection. I get Google News Alerts. I can make a wire transfer from multiple different banking centers. I am within jogging distance of bases that house all four branches of the U.S. armed forces.

Once the research is wrapped up, though -- say, when I have six weeks left here -- I'm giving serious thought to shipping my stuff home, taking a set of notebooks and a camera, and living in a little village that no one knows how to find.

Just me, and some -- not all -- of the folks who grew up there.

Here across the international date line, we've already endured our post-Thanksgiving shopping rush. Back in the states, it's the biggest shopping day of the year (and the target of the Buy Nothing Day boycott).

Since it's Friday going on Saturday here, I can't  figure out if I blew Buy Nothing Day or not by heading to Naha, the biggest city in Okinawa, to buy gifts and housewares after my forest policy meeting. Fortunately, I am not handicapped by such trifles as caring.

Today's an appropriate day for this post, though. On the occasion of this unofficial orgy of capitalism, where shoppers elbow other shoppers out of the way in search of bargains (or just that early Christmas present), I went the only place in Okinawa where one might conceivably find this sort of thing.

I wandered along Kokusai Dori (International Street), Okinawa;s central sales destination for items large, small, and in-between. If you can't buy it here or in the associated maze of alleys just off the strip, it's probably not worth having.

And not to worry, just like in the states, you can buy plenty that's not worth having here, too.

One pre-empt: though of course I've noticed a lot of signs and stores that strike a gaijin as odd, I refrain from doing many posts on that for fear of feeding the "those wacky Japanese!" meme. Since Japan markets so many goods to English speakers, hilarious errors of translation are easy to come by. The strangeness of shopping, though, springs from much deeper roots.

Let's face it: commerce is just plain weird everywhere. What do a grinning redheaded clown and a purple lump of goo have to do with hamburgers? Why does John Mellencamp believe that September 11, Hurricane Katrina and baseball equate to me buying a Chevy pickup? Why would the initials "L.V (for "Louis Vuitton," natch) stitched on a plain t-shirt make that t-shirt worth $300?

Yes, the act of selling is surreal and mysterious wherever in the world you happen to be. Adding the language variable is more the sprinkles than the ice cream of this phenomenon.

Now that we have that clear, let me take you to urban Naha on a beautiful, cloudless November day. Almost all of the shops are on the first level, but bars and concert halls exist if you venture up stairs. It helps to have local advice on this score -- navigating just the ground level is challenging enough if you don't speak Japanese, or if you do and don't have Minotaur-level navigation skills.

A side-trip from Kokusai is Heiwa Dori (Peace Street), once known as Black Market Alley. It's crowded, you can get lost here, and doing so would not be the worst fate one could suffer. The deeper you go, the further away you get from kitschy tchotchkes. Instead, you'll wade your way through the sea of shoppers ...

... and find small boutiques, little farmers' shops run mostly by charming little old women, and handcrafted musical instruments or pottery. You might want to drop bread crumbs or make a map, but definitely go as deep as you can; you'll find something to treasure, even if it's just a few minutes with one of the shopkeepers.

The fabrics here are very beautiful:

I'm not a huge shopper, but I'm a bit jealous since there's much more here for women than men. I found a wonderful breathable print shirt that I loved -- Okinawa formal wear -- but I didn't "6,000 yen" love it, which disappointed me, since I really wanted to make the old obaa running the store happy. Also, inexpensive and nice men's suits abound, but I have three suits already, which is three more than I wear regularly.

Maybe you don't need clothing, though. Maybe what you want instead is a nice, cool drink:

Just what you wanted to spice up your nightcap: a pit viper.

These are bottles of awamori, Okinawa's rice liquor, distilled with the help of the island's indigenous (and highly venomous) habu snake. It's supposed to be a health remedy. Then again, so is trepanning.

Look out! There's two of them in one bottle! What could possibly be scarier?

The price, of course:

That's right, you can expect to pay more than 26,000 yen (almost $250) for one of these. To put that in perspective, I'm paying 12,000 yen tomorrow for three scuba dives in a pristine group of islands. That includes ferry travel, the dive boat, front door pick-up and lunch. Or, you know, I could forego that trip twice, and nearly have enough to buy a little hair-of-the-snake-that-bit me. Keep in mind, this is the cheap stuff. The shelf above the pictured bottles has a 65,000 yen bottle.

While I'm diving, I will be sure to watch for the deadly Amethyst Shark, rare and indigenous to the Ryukyus.

That gaping maw is, for scale, about half the size of yours truly. Like I said, you name it, you can buy it around Kokusai Street.

As with any major commercial district, there's a healthy share of the absurd. The Blitz Character Gallery has huge stuffed replicas of just about any fictional character you can think or, American, Japanese or otherwise. Think human-sized versions of Elmo, Stitch, and evey Dragonball Z character. You get a feeling for what the place is like just by looking at the entrance.

Inside the store, a gang of Santas prepares to repel the joint robot/raptor attack:

Yes, Kokusai is in full Christmas swing. The street earns its international appellation, whether it's because of adherence to other nations' cultural traditions, the Israeli street vendors selling handmade art, or its incorporation of American iconography. Like, for example, what Christmas celebration would be complete without a cowboy and his sidekick, Frosty the Snowman?

"Hey, Frosty: after my steak, I'm going to go get some of those Birkenstocks. These Tony Lamas suck!"

I'm thinking a lot lately about the interface of American and Okinawan cultures. Especially if you drive on Highway 58 through Ginowan and Chatan, you see a series of shops intended specifically to appeal to Americans. Kokusai is no exception, but there's less of that -- the area nearest to the military bases really depends on that business for livelihood in a way that Naha really doesn't.

I feel pretty safe saying that you'd never say this near Ginowan. Not that I know what it's doing here, either: