Derek Torrellas / 53 Delta Images

Despite my title for this entry, there are no pictures of dancers nor did we see any. Our intention was to see them, anyway.

Every year in August, 10,000 dancers march down Kokusai street in the capitol city of Naha performing the traditional Okinawan dance known as Eisa. We missed the first half since instead of parking and walking to Kokusai street, we parked farther away just so we could get the ‘experience’ of riding the monorail in Naha. Once we entered the crowded foot traffic on Kokusai street, it was seemingly intermission, so we decided to eat and have a beer. At some point during our meal, the rest of the dancers entertained onlookers while my group obliviously chowed down. I think I heard some large drum beats from my seat, but I guess I found the ice cold Orion beer more interesting at the time.

Upon leaving, it was still more crowded than normal, but the parade had disappeared down the street. We decided to just do our typical wandering around as we did 6 or 7 weeks before when we toured Kokusai street the first time.

The monorail arrives (somehow Stanley always manages to make it into most of my photos)

Make sure those crab claws don’t get caught in the closing doors

Okinawa’s only monorail system

The crowded scene on Kokusai street

McClernon demonstrates why we missed the show

No more Eisa dancers

Paused in a stairwell while trying to find an interesting place

Yummm…. Okinawan style Desperado, a shot of awamori into a glass of Orion beer

Stopped at a Mexican cafe in the area for a taco and a Corona

Most cities have one, if not more, streets that are well-known and which people say, “you just have to go down this street.”

Naha, Okinawa’s largest city, has Kokusai street. It’s a kind of tourist destination, shopping haven, and bar/restaurant strip all rolled into one. Kokusai street even has its own small and covered side street that branches off, which was actually pretty big by itself since someone could probably spend two hours or more just in that one spot.

Kokusai Street

Did Stanley want to purchase this embalmed frog money pouch? Of course he did

The covered market

After all the noise and people, I sought out a quiet section

This was us figuring out how to pay the parking machine so it would unlatch a barrier from our car’s tires. Actually the funniest part of our day there was when we arrived and had to start the machine. It was entirely in Japanese and no parking lots in America worked in the same manner as this one so we pushed a bunch of buttons and, of course, nothing happened. Then an Okinawan man walked up to select his parking space and when he reached the machine, all 6 of us huddled around him to see the sequence of buttons he hit (it was green, yellow, red, I think??). When he turned around, he suddenly noticed he was surrounded by foreign Americans and there was a short awkward silence. He started walking away, then realized we couldn’t work the damned machine and came back and hit the buttons for us. That was when we understood how confused Europeans and Asians feel in our country.