okinawa hai!

CONTRIBUTED BY SARAH FILLMAN My husband and I are new to Okinawa and really want to dive into some of the unique cultural experiences that are offered here (there are so many.) A great resource is the Schilling Community Center on Kadena. They offer a ton of great classes, excursions, ticket and travel information, big [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY MONETTE EAMES Wrestling 3 One-two-three! Ding-ding-ding-ding!!! I remember being in intermediate school, saving up my lunch money to buy wrestling magazines and praying that we didn’t have to do family things on days when I had to watch wrestling. The guys in my class loved my magazines and were amazed at how much [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY MONETTE EAMES Adan Boy A little swish of the brush here, a little swish there, and maybe a slight smile looking thing on the page. Whenever I watch my students practicing writing kanji and hiragana, pure amazement comes over me, making me want to teach myself whatever they’re doing. A year ago, I [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY AVIVA BOWMAN As a four-year veteran of Okinawa, I’ve been through a couple of typhoons, the worst of which was Man-Yi in 2007. It was a near direct hit by a category 4, sustained wind speeds were over 100mph (that’s not gusts, that’s sustained). At the time, people weren’t really prepping much because [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY PENNY VA HEERDEN In the comments section of my Why Martial Arts? post, someone asked for links to local Martial Arts Association websites.  There are so many top notch dojos in Okinawa that I was, at first, a bit hesitant to list only one association.  However, since coming to Okinawa I have received so [...]

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We were recently invited to enjoy a complimentary dinner and show at The Orchid.  Sarah & Tara enjoyed the evening with their families, but the opinions are all ours. CONTRIBUTED BY SARAH FORTE When you think of traditional Okinawa what comes to mind? Maybe it’s Eisa dancers, sanshin players and taiko drummers pounding out their [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY MICHELE LEHANE Dug into a hillside outside of Naha city is one of the islands most somber reminders of the bloody Battle of Okinawa. In 1944, the Japanese Navy Corps of Engineers dug a 450 meter tunnel complex to serve as an underground headquarters.  Towards the end of the battle, as things began [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY JENNIFER SHUE This little gem is nestled right between the Toys R Us/Babies R Us and the Naha Mainplace. If you’ve been down there you must have seen it. The outside is the creamy limestone so common in Okinawa and is stylistically reminiscent of the various gusuku sites scattered around the island. Inside, [...]

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CONTRIBUTED BY SARAH FORTE    You can’t go far on Okinawa without bumping into Orion: Orion lanterns, Orion Fest, Orion shirts, and of course Orion beer! Orion (pronounced O-ree-on) is uniquely tied to Okinawa: Orion beer controls a majority share of beer consumption on Okinawa, while in mainland it is a distant fifth to the [...]

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I received a fun email from Brenda last week about a video her son directed and edited and had uploaded to YouTube.  In the last couple of days, the video seems to have gone "viral" on FaceBook as well!  Here's the story behind the video: CONTRIBUTED BY BRENDA JONES This is a music video featuring [...]

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