Up and breakfast at the hotel buffet. All of the hotels in Japan serve huge breakfast buffets both American style food and Japanese. We then left for our first visit.
We went to meet Taira Toshiko the woman whose face you see in the picture. She is 85 and has been designated “A Living National Treasure”. She has a weaving studio where every aspect of weaving is completed from creation of the thread to the weaving of the final product. She has taught many people from Okinawa to be weavers and has preserved the art. When she dies a part of the Okinawa tradition will depart with her. Although she has people that can do part of the process she is the only one that knows it all. As you might know, the residents of Okinawa live longer than any other people on earth. Know one knows exactly why, diet, lack of stress, genes, whatever, however when you see the faces of these old weavers, you can’t help but wonder if keeping the traditions alive have something to do with it.
From there we went to visit Maeshiro Okishage. He showed us his finished textiles, beautiful kimono’s and pieces of fabrics. He created many pieces and showed us ones created by his mother and father. His son is now working there and will carry on the tradition.
A bit of history. In World War II, Okinawa was virtually destroyed. Over half of the buildings were flattened. The population was displaced. Today, the US Armed services have bases covering 20% of the island. Surprisingly, where we have been we see no sign of the US presence and almost no non-Japanese.
At the end of the Maeshiro presentation of his collection of Kimonos he then presented the gray one you see on the table in the picture. He then related the story of the Kimono. In 1946 his father who was a weaver wanted to return to weaving. However, he like everyone else was very poor. He took Army rope apart strand by strand for use as thread for the warp (the length of the loom). He then took socks apart using the thread of the sox for the weft of the loom (the width of the loom). To dye the threads he used the following, cause they were so poor: for the grey and black he soaked carbon paper (this was pre-xerox) and used the carbon that came off of the paper. For yellow he ground up malaria pills which were yellow. For the red he used lipstick. He then created the kimono that you see. He said his father just needed to return to weaving and use his hands after the war. It took our breaths away to hear him tell the story (he only spoke Japanese of course, and it was translated for us).
We then were driven way up in the mountains to a little inn for coffee. It was an amazingly beautiful spot. Almost every house and building in Okinawa are protected by twin statues of a mythical creature. One of the statues has their mouth open the other has their mouth closed. One his to ward off bad things the other to gather in good things. Many of the houses have multiple statues, even some attached to the roof, we saw them everywhere. It is an Okinawa thing. The picture shown in this blog is kind of cute one, don’t you think?
We then went to the Okinawa Aquarium. I didn’t expect much, aquariums aren’t high on my list of must sees. I guess I forgot we were on an island surrounded by the East China Sea. This was a fishing culture, they take their fish seriously and have created a wonderful Aquarium, full of amazing creatures of the sea. Everyone really enjoyed it. Lucky we didn’t then go out for dinner for Sushi!
We did go out to dinner at a major resort hotel: The Busena Terrace Beach Hotel. It is gorgeous. The G-8 Summit (The presidents of the major countries) was held a few years ago here, with Bill Clinton (ah for the good old days), and the other Presidents and Prime Ministers. They picked a great hotel! We would have stayed there, but it is actually in a secluded area away from where we want to be. If you are ever in Okinawa, this is the place to stay! We all realized that we have never heard of anyone ever vacationing in Okinawa, but it is VERY nice, especially if you have a guide that can get you into these amazing places.
We then went back to the hotel and wound up the night by have two masseuses come to our room and we had great massages (our first of the trip).
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