A little 4th of July fun!

Because we are an American School, we did have the 4th of July off. That meant a day that we were all free to do a little exploring. There is an island off to the Southeast part of Okinawa, Kudaka, that is considered to be a very "holy" place for the Okinawans. They train many Yuta Priestesses over there and I've heard that many believe it to be the "birthplace" of all Okinawa. I am not sure what that means, but it is considered a special place. When I started planning I wanted to stay in a Minshuku (a tatami mat bed and breakfast house. Often you can get a room for 3,000 yen and then split the cost among as many people as you can have going.) Well, another missionary wanted to go and offered to make arrangements for us. We wound up having 4 people go to spend the night - but it wasn't a Minshuku. It was a huge resort with an authentic Japanese bath house (something I had managed to avoid all these years!). It sat up on a mega ridge and looked out over the ocean.

Once we got there, we learned the outdoor pool was closed, the buffet we were planning on enjoying was not included in our price - and I was too cheap to spend almost $35 for dinner - that was more than I spent in two full days there! However, the view was incredible. We had a tatami mat "bedroom", a wooden floored sitting room with two chairs and a mini table, a bathroom area, and an entry way. It was huge! The best part, however, was the view from our balcony! After all four of us finally made our way to the resort: Rashelle Hadley, Noriko Wada, Linda Griffith, and myself, we opted to go find some dinner. The place we wanted to eat was closed, so we drove around for a good 40 minutes (stopping for some lengthy directions part way through) and finally wound up just stopping at some cafe we found by accident. We had an incredible view over the Pacific Ocean as we watched the sun set!

Upon returning back to the resort, the decision was made that we would ALL go to the bath house. Oh the internal trauma that caused for me! I can't even change clothes in front of anyone! Oye... Being the cheap-skate that I am, however, I decided, "I have to pay for this bathhouse as a part of my resort fee. I had batter use it." With much fear and concern I decided to go. Okay, for those of you who haven't been to a Japanese bath house you need a little culture lesson here. Okay, yes, everyone is nude - - let's get that out of the way first. First, you go in and you are given this tiny little hand towel. You have to figure out for yourself how you are going to use that. Then, you have to go to a shower area. In this place, there were two rows of showers and little wooden stools in front of each shower. Basically, even though there are people around you and on every side (unless you can claim a corner shower which I did), you just go and do your thing. You are supposed to scrub yourself perfectly clean before going to the public bath. The towel is supposed to be for your hair to keep it from falling into the bath. Once clean from you shower, you make your way to a series of tubs all of differing temperatures - some very cold, some very hot. Here it was a natural hot spring - but it didn't smell of sulfur. It was HOT! I couldn't stay in the biggest tub for long. A part that this experience that kind of scared me was that there was a huge wall of windows looking out from the big tub. It looked out over the bay. What was interesting, was that we were there while the big fireworks display was going off near Kadena airbase (why they shot them off on the 3rd of July I will never know). Anyway, once you have cooked yourself long enough, you rinse off again, get changed, and head home. I have to admit, it left my skin VERY soft, and I was quite relaxed when returning back to the room. Will I do it again? Only if I have to, but it was not as bad as my mind had made it out to be for all these years. sigh....still traumatic to think about though.

The next day, after watching the sunrise from the balcony, we took the ferry over to Kudaka. There we rented bikes, rode all around the island, and managed to do some snorkeling as well. It was a beautiful and relaxing day! When we got back to the school the missionary staff, and some friends, had a fellowship barbecue to celebrate the 4th of July. We light some fireworks and enjoyed the evening together. God topped everything off with His own fireworks display that night!