Day 365

JAPAN - OKINAWA (DAY 4)

The day before a nice girl in my hostel let me borrow her phone.  I made a phone call to a dive shop called Top Marine.  Nobody spoke English, so I had to make the reservations entirely in Japanese.  I explained to the man on the phone that I wanted to do the whale shark dive tomorrow, I was a certified diver, and we agreed on a 3pm dive.  I told him that I wanted to go to the shop's Onna location, since that was closest for me.  Everything sounded fine, and I felt so proud that I did everything in a foreign language.

Spoiler alert: everything was not fine.  But we'll get to that later.

Anyway, I woke up early and decided to drive around and check things out.  I wanted to find a post office to mail my souvenirs home, since I would be diving all day tomorrow (Friday) and the post office was closed on the weekends.  I also wanted to pick up a few more souvenirs, so I headed up to Onna with a handy map of the souvenir shops.

I ended up at Cape Manzamo, which is a beautiful viewpoint with a little souvenir shopping.  I bought a few t-shirts for running, which I suppose means that I buy three types of useful souvenirs.  (The other two are teapots/teacups and fridge magnets.)  Then it was off to the view.

Don't worry, there are plenty of tourists behind me.

It's beautiful!

A lady gave me a flower for my hair.  This is my new dive-bun hairdo.  It works great, although it isn't very hydrodynamic or attractive.

After this I managed to find a post office and ship off all my stuff.  I hope I used enough newspaper to prevent it from breaking!  The people at the post office were super nice and helpful, just like everyone else in Japan.

At this point it was almost 12, and even though my dive was at 3pm, I figured I had better go to the dive shop and make sure nothing was wrong.  Call it a premonition, or just good sense, but I feel very lucky that I did.

First of all, all I had was a GPS-phone-number for the Top Marine dive shop in Onna.  That number took me to a crossroads at the top of a large hill.  There was nothing there.  I drove around and managed to find their tiny shop with a super tiny sign, and feeling accomplished, I walked inside.  There was one person there, and while he spoke not a word of English, he managed to communicate that this was the wrong dive shop for whale sharks.  Whale sharks were only at the Yomitan shop, but he had no idea where the shop was.

He couldn't find it on a map.  He also apparently had no phone number for them, since he could neither call them or give me the number for the GPS.  He basically told me to drive to Yomitan and look for it.

Which I did.  It took about two hours, because nobody in town seemed to know where it was either.  How did I find it, you ask?  There was a Japanese-language guidebook, about an inch thick, that I had grabbed at the airport for no reason whatsoever.  I was actually using it to keep the lid on my icebox.  I found the Yomitan section based on the map, since I can't read the kanji for city names.  I knew that Top Marine would be written in katakana (the syllable-based script for foreign words) and then I read every single katakana business name until I found Top Marine.

I am not a particularly skilled Japanese reader (or speaker) and I especially suck at katakana, so this was not easy for me.  It was about 20 pages, with at least 30 businesses on each one.  But through perseverance and sheer anger about having to try so hard to find something, I managed to get a tiny 1x1-inch map with the marking "koko" (here) for the shop.  No address.  No phone number.  Nothing but a next-to-useless map.  And believe it or not, I actually found the place.  I was mad as hell, but I found the place.

And extra bonus: the ad in the big business book came with a coupon.  I couldn't read anything but the word 'coupon' so I didn't know what it was for, but I gave it to them anyway.  It was apparently for a free tiny whaleshark plushie.

I had about 30 minutes to kill before the dive, so I just relaxed and prepped my camera.  I couldn't take it on the dive because it wouldn't go deep enough--it's only good to about 15 feet--but I figured it was better than leaving it in the car.  (The heat was the issue.  Nobody steals in Japan, I guess.)

The lens area was too long, which is why there are big black areas in the photos.  I later realized that I could make it shorter, and felt like a moron again.  I had many moron moments on this trip.

Around 3pm a super-cute Japanese girl who strongly reminded me of Shae from Game of Thrones (in the pretty face, not the prostitute mannerisms).  There was only one other diver on the boat--everyone else was just snorkeling--so we had to watch a safety video together.  The video said not to touch the sharks, how to get in and out of the enclosure, and that the "ring-a-ling" would signal the end of the dive.  It turns out Japanese-Shae had translated it herself (very well, actually) from Japanese, and I felt bad that we were laughing about it.  We told her to keep that translation because it was so darn cute.

My dive buddy.  I never caught his name, but he and his lady-friend were from Hong Kong.
Side note: every single Asian woman had a bra-bathing suit.  Underwire, extreme padding, the whole shebang.

I have to say that the safety standards for the Japanese diving industry were seriously lacking.  I've never been anywhere where tanks weren't secured while the boat was in motion.  Here, they just keep them standing in the middle of the boat, while the boat is moving.  They fall down, they roll around, and nobody cares.  I found this a little disturbing, but hey, go with the flow, right?

Bad bad bad.

On the way out of the marina, I saw a ninja fisherman.

That's right, I went to Japan and I SAW A NINJA.  A fishing ninja.

The whalesharks are wild-caught by fishermen and placed inside a large netted enclosure out at sea. Those buoys are markers and also hold up the roof of the net.  The idea is that instead of killing the animals (which is what they'd normally do) they use them for tourism and make money that way.  I think it's a win-win situation: the whalesharks get to live, and people get to learn about them and see them up close.  The whale sharks are released after a few months, so sometimes there's only one in the enclosure.  When I went, there were two.



Momentary pause for moral objections: I know a lot of people think that keeping animals in captivity is horrible, but I think it's an important learning tool.  This is especially true in Japan, where there's still a big market for killing and sometimes eating whale and dolphin meat.  Japan is probably the only country in the world that still hunts and kills whales.  If you've ever seen the documentary The Cove, you'll know what I'm talking about.  If you haven't seen it, I strongly suggest watching it.  You might cry.

Additionally, these sharks are all caught by local fishermen.  When the fishermen catch a whaleshark, they've got two options: cut up their net and save the (often injured) shark, or cut up the beast and throw in with the other fish.  The second option is obviously better for the fishermen.  This operation began as a way to monetarily incentivize the fishermen to not kill the whalesharks, while simultaneously allowing the whalesharks to recover AND allowing biologists to study them.  I've heard that scientists are no longer studying these particular sharks, but I'd rather support their temporary captivity than let them be slaughtered and made into imitation crab with the other fish.

Anyway, back to the super-cool whaleshark experience!  I wanted to focus on the experience and not on a camera, so I chose not to rent a camera.  (They also don't let anyone take video, though I didn't totally understand why.)  The dive was short by most standards--only about 25 minutes long.  But it was a magical 25 minutes.

First you descend about 12 feet to the opening of the netted enclosure.  The dive leader opens the net and leads you in.  It's too small for the whalesharks to escape; I'm not actually sure how the whale sharks get in and out.  There was a pretty strong current while I was there, so I got my tank and octopus (the spare breathing apparatus for emergencies, normally connected to your body but like I said, lacking safety standards) entangled in the net.  Fortunately the dive guides were very good about untangling us.

Here's a video that starts when they enter the net.  Apparently you were still allowed to take video when this was shot.

Once we were in, they started the feeding.  A big bag of food was opened, and the whalesharks went crazy.  One of them pinned us to the net!  You're not supposed to touch them, but when a 20-foot-long fish (and they can get more than twice that long!) is pressing you against something, you can't help it.  The whalesharks didn't seem to mind.  In fact, they were so intent on feeding that one grabbed the feeder's hand in his mouth and dragged him all around the enclosure.  (He was fine, whale sharks have about 3000 tiny tiny vestigial teeth that are harmless and play no role in feeding.)

After the feeding we spent the next 15-20 minutes just chasing the whale sharks around, getting a good look at them and basically pretending to be a remora.  (There were also remoras.  I'd never seen one in real life, so cool!!!)  It was an incredible experience.  They were by far the largest creature I've ever dove with, and I doubt I'll be having another dive like that any time soon.

Here's another photo I found on the internet, of the same place:

Photo by Slove7777 at divebuddy.com.

For the record, the whale sharks were in surprisingly good condition.  They didn't have any of the marks or scars I'd expect from an animal in captivity, and they didn't seem to bother each other.  Their skin didn't seem damaged, and nobody was touching them--intentionally, anyway, and the sharks obviously didn't care about touching people.  The enclosure was pretty big, and knowing that they get released periodically made me feel a little better.

When time was up, I heard the "ring-a-ling" bell and we returned to the boat.  Bye bye, whale sharks.

From this angle you can see all the floating barrels.

There's a quote I like from C.K. Louis about how we use words like 'amazing' and 'awesome' to describe mundane things in our daily lives.  (That quote cannot be posted here because this is a kid-friendly blog, after all.  Well, usually.)  I'm sure I use those words too often and with too little care, but this is an experience that I can honestly describe as "awesome" in the sense that it inspired awe.  Whalesharks are really amazing.

Here's a photo of me and my dive buddy after the dive.  I'm just glad there's no mask marks on my face.  My dive bun worked really well!  I used to use a braid but my hair got horribly tangled, like nasty-dredlocks-that-take-hours-and-scissors-to-remove tangled.  The bun ain't that pretty, and it's not hydrodynamic, but it's a lot less work.

Sorry I never got your name, dive buddy from Hong Kong!

After the dive I didn't have much to do, but I passed an interesting-looking shop as I was leaving.

This place was crazy.

Chikyu Zakka was basically a warehouse full of decorations and furniture and who knows what else.  There were enormous 12-foot-long crocodile benches and 8-foot-tall statues of what appear to be feathered demons, but there were also very very tiny things too.  Such variety.  I wanted to find a Shisa mask for my sister, but alas, there were none to be found.  Most of the stuff did not appear to have been made in Okinawa, or anywhere in Japan for that matter.

So much to look at!

Just what I always wanted, a cicada-shaped bone necklace container with a removable head!

Oh yum, food!

What is this, food for ants?!

Uhhhh no idea.  But it's really expensive.

Cool beachy furniture.

I want one.

More scary statues.

Biiiiig scary statue.

Another big crocodile bench.

What is this, a teapot for ants?!
(Seriously who is going to use those, they're the size of my big toe.)

Animal skulls with designs!

More animal skulls!

More crocodile benches!

Big shisa, and a cooler crocodile bench.

I obviously could not afford anything in this shop, so I left.  I still hadn't seen Cape Zanpa and it was only about 5pm, so I decided to drive up.  There were a lot of signs, so it was easy to find.  Mainly it seems to be an empty area with a large hotel and a crappy beach.

Some non-aquatic activities for kids.

Um.

This is like if a segway and a paddleboat had a baby.

There were some pavilions for picnics, but they seemed like they'd been abandoned for a long time.  It reminded me a bit of a tropical zombie movie.

Much like Tropical Beach, the beach itself was a bit disappointing.  A small roped-off area with murkey water.  At least this one wasn't crowded.  There were some water sports, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

That's it, that's the whole beach.

If you get away from the main beach, it gets a little nicer.

Not a bad view.

Adan trees with fruit.  If only those were real pineapples.

There was a nice wedding hall right off the beach.

I found a spot to go camping!  (Not very good facilities though, yikes.)

Oh.  Guess I'll watch out for that then.

Let's be straight, Cape Zanpa was boring.  I drove back into town to hit the newly-discovered grocery store before I headed back to my hostel.

There was also a big manga area in the store.  For those who don't know, manga are Japanese-language graphic novels.
They're really popular in Japan, and have been on the rise in America for a while too.

I also found this poster... I tried to buy it for a friend in the States, but it wasn't for sale.  It's from a very popular current anime called "Attack on Titan."

Sorry, Jane.

I bought an assortment of snacks here, but I think I'm going to devote an entire post to the things I ate in Japan.  Most of them are very strange and did not taste very good, but in the name of science and experimenting with new things, I tried them.

I discovered this night that my hostel had a serious problem with insects.  There were roaches everywhere.  Literally everywhere.

Notice how the computer is right next to the tree?

See those trees up there?  It seems that the trees were there originally, and the hostel was built around them.  They are filled with holes and make a strange crunching sound during the day, like a person rhythmically eating chips.  I thought it was termites.  I was wrong.

This was just one of dozens.

It's coming for me!!!

I killed one that came too close and left its carcass on the floor as a warning to the others.  That turned out to be a mistake, as an army of ants descended on the fallen beast within mere minutes.  That's when I went to bed.

I also found this enormous and shockingly aggressive spider:

When I came close, he shook his front legs at me angrily.

He also chased me away the night before.  When a spider that size chases you, you run.
He was fast!!!

Here's another view of the common room, the kitchen part:

Looks decent.

I mistook that thing for a cup.  It was enormous.

Plus I found this on the screen door.  I'm not even sure if it's a beetle or a cockroach.  I don't really care as long as it doesn't move.

Ewwww.

After the first night, I never saw another soul at the hostel.  I was alone in my six-bed dormitory, which was blessedly bug-free.  (Or at least, if they were there, they didn't show themselves.  Smart move, bugs.)

More coming soon!

Cheers,
Ashton