A Trip to Okinawa

Ever since we’ve lived on the boat our hope has been to get our two children and their kids on board for a visit. We got close when our daughter, who lives in Hong Kong, agreed to visit us in Nuku Hiva this Easter. But after looking at the sparse flight schedule we all had to agree that three days of travel with overnights was a little too much to ask, especially when you have a very active 3-year-old and 5-year-old. So Plan B came into effect, Meryl and I would fly to Okinawa (only a two hour flight from Hong Kong) and meet them for a 10-day vacation.

For Meryl and I the chance to get off the boat and see the grandkids, plus the opportunity to experience hotels with hot showers, flush toilets (more about that later), and dining rooms, was too much to pass up. While we are seasoned travelers, however, we didn’t realize how arduous it would be to get from Nuku Hiva, essentially the furthest place from land in the world, to Okinawa in Japan.

The airport waiting room in Nuku Hiva is a little downscale from SeaTac Airport.

At least we're color coordinated with the plane.

We cleaned and prepared the boat for it’s two-week vacation from us, arranged for a local guy to look after it, and took a one-hour cab ride over the beautiful lush green mountains of Nuku Hiva to the airport on the far side of the island. Four and one-half hours later we were landing in Papeete, a place that’s beginning to feel like a second home to us. 

We stayed at the nearby Airport Hotel since we had to get up at 2:40 am for the check in for the 5:30 am departure. We went to a local Chinese place for dinner, then down to the local Champion grocery store to get breakfast goodies for the next morning. 

At o’dark thirty we walked down the hill to the airport. Two large tour buses had just pulled up full of Japanese tourists  and the line snaked out into the parking area. When they say show up two hours before your flight they are not kidding. 

We boarded a near full Air Tahiti Nui Airbus 380 and sat back and relaxed, enjoying the great food and service (and watching four movies apiece) on the 12-hour flight to Tokyo.  When you live on a boat even the cramped airline seats seem like luxury. And having people serve you food and drink, pure joy!

We crossed the International Date Line — losing a day — and landed at a very cold Narita airport around 11:30 am the next day. We opted to walk over to Terminal 2, almost freezing to death in the process (I was in shorts, naturally). We did enjoy some of the best tonkatsu I’ve ever had at an airport fast food place and got ready for the check-in on our cut-rate JetStar flight to Okinawa.  Want to know how they can offer tickets so cheap?  They absolutely kill you on the excess baggage fees. We only had two small roll-aboards and a near empty duffel but we got hit with over $40 in excess baggage fees. Since we were flying back on the same airline, and those two duffels would be full of food and boat parts, we cringed at the cost.

The flight and service, however, was very good and soon we were circling over Okinawa Airport in preparation for landing. Okinawa is about two-hours flight time south from Tokyo, and played a key role in World War II as the Allies needed to capture Okinawa since it’s airports put US bombers within flying distance of mainland Japan. More about that later.

We were supposed to have a driver meeting us as the airport holding a sign, but we couldn’t find him anywhere. There was a cab driver with a sign with our flight number on it, but everything was written in Japanese. After about 20 minutes of searching around (and Meryl had asked this guy if he was our driver but he spoke no English) we decided to convince him we were his fare just to get a ride. When we got in the cab we saw our name prominently displayed on his in-dash computer system. And so it goes.

The Hilton Okinawa Chatan, quite a step up from our 44 ft. sailboat.

Ironically the pool was scheduled to open a week after we left.

You don't know how much we appreciate a room like this after the close quarters on the boat for the last eight months.

Since our daughter wasn’t arriving for three more days, we stayed at the brand new Hilton Chatan hotel. Because of the screw-up with the cab driver, the manager offered us an upgrade for a minimal amount of money. We took it . . . and what a grand room it was with a view out over the Sea of Japan to the west. Service at the hotel was excellent, and even though the outdoor pools where not open yet, we did enjoy a refreshing swim in the indoor pool, complete with a new sauna to relax in. One of the highlights (remember we live on a boat) was the computerized toilet. While it was all in Japanese a little experimentation with the buttons brought many surprises. The heated toilet seat alone was a joy.

While this looks great, we found an even better "serve your own frozen yogurt" place upstairs. 

A large department store called Anon had an amazing selection of stuff, including this grocery section where we bought many of our meals (I mean, who can afford to eat in a Hilton?) and took them back to the hotel.

Okinawa has about 35,000 Air Force, Marines, Navy, and Army troops stationed at three major bases, and along with their defendants there are over 85,000 Americans on the island. The area we were in was close to the huge Kadena Air Force base so it wasn’t difficult getting people to understand us as we shopped and explored the Chatan “America Town” area. It’s full of huge Pachinko parlors (kind of like a vertical pinball game), restaurants, and movie theaters. Meryl found a good place to get a haircut and I found a wonderful hardware store where I bought a bunch of odd and ends (like brass bottle brushes that are impossible to find in the US …. we use them to clean the thru-hulls in the boat). 

We met an American serviceman’s wife (he was a para-rescue diver for the Navy SEALs, talk about a macho job) who gave us all sorts of info on things to do with kids on Okinawa, including a ranked list of the most amazing playgrounds.

We assumed this little restaurant specialized in fish.

Japan seems a lot more advanced than the US in a number of ways. These indentations are in the sidewalks in all the major areas. I assume they are for visually impaired people who can guide themselves.

We spent the next few days literally downloading hundreds of programs (think of what would happen if your computer couldn’t reach the Internet for eight months). We also had to download huge electronic chart sets for Fiji, Tong, and New Zealand, our next destinations. We took long walks everyday and found some great restaurants. Okinawa had never been on our “must see” travel destinations list, but it was starting to grow on us.

I had just finished a book call The Battle for Okinawa and was trying to identify landmarks and key hills where battles took place. The fighting in Okinawa was some of the bloodiest of World War II as the Japanese Army was firmly entrenched in a network of limestone caves all over the island. The thousands of tons of bomb dropped on them had little effect, and the fighting resorted to hand-to-hand combat for each yard gained using flamethrowers and hand grenades to wrest the Japanese from the caves. Ironically the Okinawan’s did not identify with the Japanese, who used them mainly to go outside the caves to get food and supplies (at which point they were gunned down by the Americans). The Japanese honor was such that they fought to the death, thousands committing suicide in the caves as the Americans took over the island. It was also the first effective use of kamikaze fighter planes and ships in the war. I had hoped to secure a guide to tour the battle sites but they only worked on weekends and were fully booked. Our generation has to have a lot of admiration for the sacrifices made by our fathers (and mothers home holding down the fort) during World War II, it was a incredible time in our history.