It’s been a very busy June for me. Not only am I rushing to get everything ready for the upcoming Anime Expo (where J-List, JAST USA and J18 Publishing will have a ton of great products for you, at booth #4821), I’m also taking a quick trip to Ishigaki Island in Okinawa Prefecture. Here are photos from my trip, if you want to see!
An Otaku in Okinawa! Why Did I Visit Ishigaki Island?
Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost part of Japan, a series of beautiful large and small islands about 2000 km south of Tokyo. We visited Ishigaki Island, the largest of the dozen or so major islands that make up the area, to rest and relax as well as to attend my son’s wedding, which was delayed by COVID.
While I’d visited Naha before, the most urbanized part of Okinawa and the location of several large U.S. military bases, I definitely preferred Ishigaki. The combination of beautiful natural beaches, the largest blue coral in the world, and a simpler, less tourist-ey size island allowed us to relax quite nicely.
There’s another reason I enjoyed Ishigaki over the more built-up Naha: there was no battle during WWII here. The Battle of Okinawa saw some of the fiercest fighting of WWII, and whenever you visit one of the beautiful beaches on Naha it’s easy to picture what things were like during the three-month long battle, which saw 20,000 deaths on the Allied side and 110,000 among Japanese forces, plus another 40,000-150,000 Okinawan civilians. I really can’t enjoy a beautiful sunset on a beach if I think there might be a rusting tank or P.T. boat right below the waterline.
Since I love talking to local taxi drivers, I chatted up one on this subject. I was told that while there was no fighting on Ishigaki, there is an annual memorial held for 3,300 civilians who fled the coastal regions to hide from the incoming Allied soldiers, where they died from malaria, since the Japanese military had taken all the malaria medicine for their soldiers.
Of course, we’re still dealing with COVID, and there are many rules to follow, mainly wearing masks in public, taking temperature before entering some places of business, and so on. Do not get dense with COVID19 measures!
While resort locations like Hawaii and Okinawa have had a very hard time during the crisis, I’m happy to report that Okinawa, at least, seems to be 100% recovered. Every hotel room on the island was full, and every rental car was reserved. Let’s hope the positive energy for hard-hit parts of the world can continue as we recover economically from COVID!
One thing we learned is that promoting local products is very important in Okinawa, and every TV commercial we watched seemed to be for important local products like Orion Beer. Like every other Pacific island community, Spam holds a very special place in the hearts of everyone, and visiting the “Spam aisle” in a supermarket will amaze you with the many varieties they manage to produce. (It’s kind of like the breakfast cereal aisle in an American supermarket.)
I was surprised to see how far south Ishigaki was. We could basically throw a rock and hit Taiwan or Hong Kong, and the TV here receives Chinese channels, no doubt because of the many tourists who come to visit.
Curious to know the details of the island disputes Japan has with Russia, South Korea, and China? I’ve got a post for you here!
One of the big cultural differences between people from Okinawa and those from mainland Japan — called ナイチャー naicher, since we come from the 内地 naichi, what the main Japanese islands are called — is how they feel about A&W root beer. While mainland Japanese will nearly always detest the drink, thinking that it tastes like Salonpas pain-relieving patches, Okinawans love it, and there are more A&W restaurants here than there are McDonald’s. So I was happy to stop off at one and enjoy a root beer float and, um, a ham sandwich? Do they sell those at A&W in the U.S.?
I even managed to score some “limited” Hololive keychains, wow!
Of course, the real reason we were visiting Ishigaki was to attend my son’s wedding. Many J-List customers have been following our company for years, back when my son was cosplaying as Neo from The Matrix at our booth back at AX back in the early 2000s, I thought it’d be fun to show you a picture. Thanks for all your warm support of J-List through the years!
That’s all for this post. Time to roll up my sleeves and get busy at Anime Expo. We hope to see you at the show!
J-List is super happy to announce a tie-up with UPS, which allows us to offer you lower shipping rates for products from Japan! While the new lower shipping rates only support the U.S. at present, we hope to expand that eventually. And for all customers outside the U.S., we’re happy to announce even lower DHL rates for all orders!
