This post was recovered from an old blog that I had while studying abroad in Japan. I’ve only updated misspellings or dead links, but left any cringe worthy things or immature thoughts. I’ve decided to leave them as a snapshot of who I was and to see how far I’ve come. Any photos have been freshly edited and so are not the same as what was originally posted. Over the years I had several blogs, most lost to time, and I wanted to recover some lost memories and reflect on my life.

M y next adventure in Japan took me far, very far from Tokyo. Myself and a group of my closest friends were going to Okinawa and so we headed for the airport. Once at Haneda airport we got in line for security and everything was going smoothly until my friend realized he had a lot of metal accessories on. Dammit Dino why would you wear so many accessories when you knew you were going to the airport? I was laughing as he started taking everything off, then our Japanese friend, Ryohei, told him he could just keep it all on. At this point I was cracking up as he had to put all his accessories back on. The trip was already starting off on a good note, a sign of things to come.

As we arrived at the Naha airport in Okinawa we were pleasantly greeted by…Sun Sprinkles! You might be wondering what sun sprinkles are, but it’s actually quite simple. It’s these little droplets that fall from these clouds in the sky, but it’s not rain because that would put a negative feeling in the air. I had to keep everyone laughing and happy so from then on it was sun sprinkles that kept falling. These sun sprinkles soak us thoroughly as we wander through Naha on our way to where we would be staying. Ryohei told us it was a dorm/hostel, which I’ve never stayed in before so I was a little apprehensive at first. It was a good thing the hostel was located in the ghetto of Naha. As we walked deeper and deeper into the unkempt buildings and dirty shops my apprehension lifted as you can imagine. Then our beautiful building appeared and we walked up the stairwell.

The walls were a faded yellow and the lights weren’t bright so it felt like we were walking into some sort of bar. The guy at the desk showed us around and it was basically what I would imagine a hostel to look like. Cramped, with a somewhat dirty appearance, and plenty or jerry-rigged items around. Everyone kind of had this expression on their face of “WTF, oh shit I better not act to surprised cause I don’t wanna seem like a little bitch.” I was busy looking at everyone and seeing how they were reacting, it was hilarious. I was actually fine with it. It was cheap, interesting, and we wouldn’t be spending much time there anyway. After we were shown our room, yes we had our own room so that was a plus, we figured out how we would fit all eight of us in there. There were four beds on top of a loft thing, then two on a bunk bed and two on the floor. We split up, guys on the bottom, girls on the top. We got all our luggage and stuff situated and then went out to explore Naha.

The sun sprinkles were all around so we dipped into a little restaurant to get some taco rice, an invention of Okinawa’s. After eating the night was clear so we grabbed a drink at the combini, aka convenience store, and headed for the ocean. The walk ended up being pretty far, with lots of random sights along the way. Once at the mini beach with an industrial look we played in the sand. I couldn’t take it any longer and decided to go night swimming so I ran in with a friend. The water was the perfect temperature. We enjoyed our swim for around 10 minutes before a cop came and told us we couldn’t swim. It sounds bad, but Japanese cops are really nice and he basically asked us not to swim. We apologized and headed back to our “5 star hotel.”

Earlier in the day when we had arrived at our hostel we saw that they had a rooftop bar with really cheap drinks. After getting back we climbed the stairs to the top and opened the door to the roof. By now the sun sprinkles had started falling again, and heavily, luckily the shack/bar on the top had a roof, albeit leaky. This bar was probably the highlight of trip for me and couple others. We met some Japanese people, drank cheap drinks, and partied on the roof. What more could we have asked for? Soon we parted with the rooftop shack and headed for bed. We had a long day ahead of us tomorrow, we were going to the beach!