Sakamoto-sensei, a teacher in the Junior high school math department and mother of three grown yet childless boys, brought her adoptive American daughters up north this weekend. I've been hearing about up north since I arrived. Okinawa is a very small island/prefecture, smaller than the state of Rhode Island. Anyway, in all of my byciclitic travels, south has been the popular direction. But north has been the land of dreams. I heard it was green there and open spaces. I heard I should go and that was enough incentive for me. On our way to Onnasan (the final destination), we stopped by Yomitan, a town where many artists from the Tsuboya pottery district in Naha City moved when the old street became too crowded.

Yomiton pottery village rests in the rolling hills of west-central Okinawa. Large studios stretch like mouths, open-wide and always chewing, working. There couldn't have been too many more studios on these many hundred acres than there were on the cramped street in the city. Most had multiple buildings with wide open doors and windows through which one can easily see busy, clay-splattered potters and shelves upon shelves of many hundreds/thousands of in-process pieces, barrels of glaze, kilns, and so on. There was even an impressive and enormous noborigama (climbing kiln) humbly commanding the top of a good-sized hill. Another interesting note is the presence of a famous/rogue glassblower, by the name of Ican't Remember who has been making is works out of recycled glass bottles for decades now and is beginning to experiment with clay as an additional element. There are pictures of all of these things and more when you follow the "my photos" link to the right.



When we finally arrived in Onnason, we turned right after a strangely spiral shaped cafe (which I might tell you about someday) and continued up a hill to our penshion/minshuki (cheap place to stay, guest house, bed-and-breakfast style). After a spot of tea, we were quickly shown our tatami (traditional Japanese straw mat) room upstairs, which was one of four small rooms above the first floor. It looked over trees and off to the East, to the China Sea. We opted to have dinner out this evening, but before walking into town, we toured the small farm plots further up the hill. There were pleasant, but it was growing dark and I was growing hungry. Dinner, walk, shower, roll out our futons on the tatami, read, sleep. I awoke to early morning light and eventually made my way downstairs, through the dining room, to the porch. It was chilly. There was a small boy playing with my fellow travelers a game of sea shell and coniferous needle. Things started to feel familiar. I pulled on my long sleeve shirt to welcome the cool breeze that seemed to come straight from the Midwest.

We were served homemade bread, tea or coffee, and homemade soup. They call it 'slow food' here. The opposite of fast food and relatively rare. It was rounded off with a fresh salad grown just up the hill. Things seemed right. A husband and wife (mother and father of the little boy who played on the porch and disliked wearing pants) maintained the pension, maybe made the bread, and did some of the farming. They were pleasant, interested, and unbusied. The wife, Hiro, retained some English from when she sheep-farmed in New Zealand during a mid-college break, and she and I discussed organic growing for a bit.

After breakfast, we rolled up our futons on the second floor, put them back in the closet, and took a walk up the hill where many things flourished. We found some wonderful plants, many of which we consumed parts. The sister (Ms. Misako) of the owner of the hill (including cafe, penshion, and farm, who was a friend of Sakamoto-sensei's and never appeared) arrived and showed us how she spun the cotton that she grew. And then we headed out to clean up the beach (something we'd been aching to do) with a gaggle of young children and their mothers. A handful of men were heading out on a kayaking expedition, a couple more were fishing aimlessly off the shore, and we ran around all of them with big bags and giant-tweezer-things, grabbing every glass coffee bottle and aluminum beer can in sight. I even found two toothbrushes, a large computer keyboard in perfect condition, and three popped balloons. Then we all headed back through town and up the hill, a party of about twenty or so, to medium-sized, garage-type building that sat amidst the small fields. And here we made one of the best meals ever.

We peeled and cut sato imo (country, as opposed to city, potatoes), ninjin (carrots), tamanegi (big green onions), and nagai gobo (long Japanese root-vegetable-thing-maybe-related-to-radish). Tofu, miso, pork, koniaku (a jelly-type substance made from potatoes), and water were added, in addition to a touch of cooking sake. This was all cooked in a giant metal bowl nestled amidst the brick of a traditional wood-fired kamado (Japanese stove) just outside the meeting quarters (garage-like-building). It was a multi-hour, many womanned event, but lunch was ready just after noon. Tea, soup, and gohan (rice) were served on long tables surrounded half by toddlers, nearly other half by mothers, and two young assistant English teachers. Later, nine Koreans took part in the meal as well. There was plenty of food for everyone and it was great. With our best (poor) Japanese, we made Ms. Misako and Hiro aware that we would be back again.



And then we left, walked through the sea at low tide to an island, swam back, and concluded our weekend up north we sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and one large blue starfish.



Okay, we didn't swim, we waded. But it was really windy and there was all sorts of liquid resistance on our calves.

The smell of the fire wafting from the stove, the rows of growing edibles, the running young, and tender old, it all reminded me of different parts, kinds, and times of home. Which is a little bit here now, too.