JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

Rumor has it that one of Okinawa’s own is returning home next year. She is a very well known singer (Marie Kyan) that started-out on the Okinawan rock scene in Medusa, which soon after became Marie with Medusa, of Kinville fame in the ’70’s and ’80s. It seems her mainland recording contract is coming to an end and she has plans to go into some sort of journalistic endeavor. The way I see it, she’s lucky. After all, what better time to return home then when an entire city block, on Gate 2 Street, is getting ready to be torn down to accommodate a major government sponsored facility? The new facility, Music Town, is scheduled to take two years to build. This should allow sufficient time to make necessary organizational and administrative assignments and preparations. Oh well, maybe it’s all just coincidence. Stay tuned and we’ll all find out together.

Well the annual Gate 2 Fest took place this week. As I expected, the event was crammed full of local youths as the entertainment organizer pleased them by promoting the sounds of up and coming J-pop band Orange Range. But the organizer’s disregard of the other side of the Gate 2 culture did not go unnoticed. I heard many negative comments on how the contibutions of the local rock scene seemed to be completely ignored this year. Usually the organizers have a stage at both ends of the street (one for local pop music and one for rock music). There seemed to be fewer hogs out this year as well. But Taki and I still enjoyed our outing for the day, even if it somewhat lacked in international flavor.

What is it with men who have to grab and tug on women who say they don’t want to dance! If a woman says “no” the chances are she doesn’t want to dance, and dragging her out to the floor isn’t going to make her night very enjoyable. These men need to learn to relax and leave the poor women who say they don’t want to dance alone!

Well it seems my assessment of how “friendships” and business on Okinawa work (West Wind, East Wind) was pretty much on the nose. The organizers of the Gate 2 Fest are people Taki has been associated with for many years. Each month they get together to discuss plans for promoting and advancing the street for all the businesses’ benefit. Yet when they planned not to include JET as part of the entertainment this year, not one of these so-called friends had the guts to be straight forward with Taki about it. After waiting until three days before the festival to hear from them concerning confirmation of the schedule, Taki finally called them and found that the band was not on the schedule! Even though JET will not be performing this year, as it has in the previous Gate 2 Fests, we still wish the organizers the best of luck in having a successful event where they can rake in the profits.

Here it is 3 o’clock in the morning Thanksgiving Day. It is the calm before the holiday madness. This is the beginning of the season of non-stop partying on Okinawa. It begins this weekend with the annual Gate 2 Fest which brings together Harley owners from all over Japan for the impressive parade of hogs and a continuous cornucopia of festivities. Next comes December, the time of bonenkais. These are annual year-end parties giving thanks and bidding farewell to the current year. In addition there are the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. Finally come the shinenkais in January, which are annual parties welcoming the new year with hope of wealth, health, and happiness. So Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays!

Taki and I received our replacement vehicle Sunday. We decided to take it out for a drive up North and headed for Miyazato Soba. The facility is a non-assuming place that looks like it was one of the many temporary tin huts built back in the mid-seventies when everyone was getting ready for the Expo. The walls are bare of decoration; tables have simple plastic tablecloths; and the chairs are plastic patio furniture. But there is plenty space in between tables, so the customers are not eating on top of one another. It’s a no frills type of eatery where you purchase tickets from a machine, hand them over to a staff member, and wait about fifteen minutes for the food to be delivered. The soba is unusual. In addition to the required noodles and pork, it also has kombu (seaweed) and one of the most flavorful stocks I have eaten in a long time. We each ordered the small size, which is about half the regular size and great if you have children. This allowed enough room for one of my favorite local dishes, obaa curry, which we split between the two of us. Although the golden yellow curry wasn’t chunky-style and didn’t have bell peppers, it was very tasty and just like I remembered. The whole meal only cost us one thousand yen!

At the end of last night, one of our regulars told me that there had been a “Best of…” vote earlier this year in the Stars and Stripes and that Bar JET was voted #1 in the live music category for Okinawa. We want to thank all of you who voted for us. We’re sorry that we didn’t thank you earlier, but we didn’t even know about the voting. I just wish I could find the article on the net, so I can show it to the band! I’m sure they would get a kick out of actually seeing in print that you think so highly of them. Again, thank you for acknowledging the effort they put into the music.

As I was doing some web searches, it came to my attention that several websites have begun to use several variations on the JET Okinawa or Live Music Bar JET Okinawa terms for ranking and/or business purposes. I want to state right here and now, we are NOT ASSOCIATED NOR AFFILIATED with these sites!!! There are three official homepage addresses associated with JET band and Live Music Bar JET these are:

http://ryukyuno-okinawan-rock.jet-okinawa.com/JET/
http://live-music-bar.jet-okinawa.com/Official Website/
http://jet-okinawa.com

In addition, there are various tour sites that also contain links to the outdated Japanese JET band member fan website. Please use care in screening your searches.

It’s mid-November and all around the island bits and pieces of holiday decorations are slowly, but surely, being displayed. The commercial side of the holiday season is very big on Okinawa. Over the past three decades the retail stores have wisely increased the supplies available to the public from a few very questionable-looking trees to just about every decoration a person can think of. This is a time of year I especially enjoy because the various decorations remind me of a more relaxed time in America. A time before putting up decorations became environmentally questionable. Each year we gather our “family”, the dogs and us, and drive all over the island looking for the best of the holiday cheer. And we are never disappointed because each year some enthusiastic and creative individual always divises a new combination of the decorations that inspires and fills other islanders minds and hearts with joy.