Hello and Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
to you all!
The Brucato’s are about to embark on a nostalgia trip (for
me, at any rate!) and if you’re interested, we would love to have you along!
We are heading to Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture in
Japan, for a visit of approximately 2½ weeks.
So now the question is either:
why, or whatever for? In my past
life, I was married to a Marine C-130 pilot and lived in Okinawa for two years,
1975 – 1977.
As has been pointed
out to me, that was 40 years ago (emphasis on the 40 in particular). A lot has changed, I’m sure. For instance, when I was there, everyone
drove on the “American” side of the street.
Sometime after I left, it was changed to the “other” side. Should definitely make for interesting
driving, that’s for sure!
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| LAX to Tokyo, and then south to Okinawa! |
I really loved living in Okinawa, for a variety of
reasons. First of all, as this was
supposed to be an “unaccompanied” trip, we had no access to on-base
housing. That meant living “on the
economy” – such a great phrase. We did
have access to all military base facilities, such as the PX (Post Exchange, i.e.
Department store) and the Commissary (grocery store) as well as laundromats,
clubs and libraries. There were many
other “unaccompanied” wives as well, and everyone was basically in the same
boat (or should that be airplane?) I was
one of the lucky ones, in that our large studio apartment had an actual working
oven. Most other people who even had
ovens had propane ones that needed to be lit every time it was needed – it also
had no real heat control. One friend
decided to take a cake decorating class, and had to bring in a naked cake each
week. She managed to actually blow
herself up on the propane oven, after which she came to my place weekly in
order to bake!
Also, no one (believe it or not!) had a television set. (How primitive!) We shipped a small one from the U.S. as an
experiment, and found that the only thing available was in Japanese … so much
for that! We did have one radio channel
– U.S. Armed Forces Radio. I can
remember getting up in the middle of the night to listen to the Super
Bowl. Wow – that was a long time
ago! We also had the daily newspaper
“The Stars and Stripes.” Such was the
beginning and end of our news offerings, and I managed to miss the entire Jimmy
Carter presidential campaign as well as the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal. Our “fast food” was initially limited to
A&W Root Beer and KFC. The first
McDonald’s got there at least a year after I did, which was a great relief to
me! (Some bad habits never go away!)
As a result, many people (me included) were very insulated
from the happenings in the rest of the world.
It was really nice. Very peaceful,
very little crime of any sort, and I loved it!
In the evenings, we mostly played Bridge, but we also read a lot, did
huge jigsaw puzzles and – wait for it – actually wrote real letters – by hand!
At some point, I went to work for the Japan-Okinawa Regional
Exchange (JORE) in their offices, first in the engineering department at the
port near Naha, and after that in the Executive Offices for the Commander while
his assistant was on maternity leave, and finally, in the HR Department. Let’s just say that we had a great
department, and consumed may bottles of inexpensive champagne on Friday
afternoons. It was a world apart! I cried all the way from Naha to LAX on
returning home. Somehow, coming back to
reality was a real jolt for me!
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| Okinawa and overnight stops planned! |
So … I am hoping that I will be able to find the apartment
where I lived, although it is entirely possible that it may now have a real
“freeway” running through it! We won’t
have access to any base facilities, which I would love to see, but hopefully
that won’t be any hardship. It turns out
that Okinawa is the only “subtropical” part of Japan, and is surrounded by
islands large and small. The coral reefs
which surround the island have become a scuba and snorkeling paradise, and from
what reading I have been able to do (not a lot published) there are huge
mega-resorts that cater to quite a wide Japanese and Asian market! Who knew?!
Robert is very excited about the possibility of eating sushi and fish for 2½ weeks. Hmmm…I have been able to
discover that several of the restaurants that I visited all those long years
ago, are still in business! Who’d a
thunk it?
At any rate, we are heading there the 8th of
January. It’s a two-plane trip. LAX to Tokyo, and then Tokyo to Naha, the
capital of Okinawa. L-o-n-g plane
flight (12 hours to Tokyo), which we are making on All Nippon Airways (ANA), a code share partner
with United.
As blogspot usually stops sending emails with the blog about
2½ weeks into our trips, I am hopeful that Feedburner, the distributor, might
actually make it through an entire trip this time! We would love to have you join us. Please see the “gadget” on the right-hand
side of the blog page to sign up.
REMEMBER: Feedburner will send
you a confirmation email once you have entered your email address, and you MUST
click on the link! If anyone has any
problems, please let me know!
Take care, and sayonara for now!
m
xxx
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