ocean | Pam Webb

24 Nov 2023

Okinawa! Part Two

After visiting the botanical gardens my son decided I needed to see American Village. Not being fond of overt tourist attractions, I politely deferred, and said if we were short on time we could skip it and head to the beach instead. Turns out lunch and getting to the ocean involved American Village.

It’s difficult to describe American Village. It’s as as if someone took a child’s colorful toy village set and hobbled it together with bright posters, stairways, and sensational features, like a gigantic plastic fuchsia shark.

Yes, that is a bit of a smirk, as in “Really? Another tourist shot?”

Lunch was upstairs in a restaurant called The Pancake House. Apparently it is very popular with tourists and locals. The menus, three are presented, all have photos in order to guide selections. Prices are in yen, but Google is very helpful in converting and a Visa solves transactions. With my offer of paying for lunch my son ordered freely from the menu. His main entree being a plate that combines fries, pancakes, and chicken. I attempted what I thought was a simple chicken curry with rice. It was more of a gravy with chicken nuggets. It was okay, but not going to be a recommendation. The total meal came to about $30, a deal considering we ordered two entrees, a side, a drink, and a dessert.

Not found in American pancake houses that I know

A stop at an ice cream shop followed lunch and it’s difficult to mess up mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone. The ice cream is made on premises and it wasn’t as sweet as its American counterpart. Walking around American Village I was amazed at all the shops tucked in here and there around all the catwalks that connected the buildings. Considering it was a Tuesday it was busy enough with mainly Japanese tourists and few Americans. Christmas decorations were everywhere. Giant snowmen, elves, Santas and the usual convivial trappings of the season were ever present among the giant box presents. Again, I deferred visiting trinket shops, hoping for something unique. So my son took me to the Cat Cafe.

Cats are revered in Japan and the Cat Cafe concept involves buying kibble to feed the assortment of cats roaming around in the airy wooden-floored room. The cat varieties vary from hairless to stubby-pawed chubbs, to fluffy tabbies with personalities ranging from noisy complainers meandering about to contented dozers curled up in cozy kitty lofts. Some cats turned their nose up at the kibble, but most appreciated the free handout. They all looked healthy and were not overweight even though it was obvious this is a popular place to visit. Both locals and tourists filled the room, all were enjoying their interactions with either petting or feeding the cats. I noticed couples coming into the cafe as a date destination. In fact this was a favorite place for my son and daughter-in-law when they were dating since animals are not allowed in the barracks. When they married and moved off base they immediately got two lovely cats from the rescue shelter. Yes, it did seem silly to me that we were paying to pet and feed cats when two were waiting for us at home.

Ma-bo, one of my grandcats. He gladly accepts kibbles and pets at no charge

Last stop was the sea wall. The ocean has always been part of my life having grown up on the west coast. Living inland the last 30 years I miss the ocean and it was a treat to renew my appreciation for it. Oddly, there were no seagulls cruising around and no whiff of salty air as experienced when visiting my former hometown, Seattle’s waterfront. Still, the ocean is a tonic for me and I could have easily stayed the afternoon walking along the immense promenade gazing out on the diamond-dappled waters.

Our last stop was Foster Marine base: a haircut for my son and a stop at the base library because I didn’t pack enough books for the trip. What a library! Clean, well-organized, a bounty of selection. My son is now working at another base library and my daughter-in-law is studying for her librarian degree. Two more librarians in the family!

Soon I will leave Okinawa and return home. Not being much of a traveler this has been an eye opening experience and Part Three explores my observations. Stay tuned!

Posted in Family, food, Japan, memories, Reflections, travel and tagged cats, ocean, Okinawa, restaurants, tourism

29 Jun 2013

4 Comments

Prairie Love

image: oceanliteracy.org

Growing up with the ocean ever present in my life, I couldn’t fathom living without it. The salty tang of the air, the lullaby rhythm of the waves, the restoring sandy walks–I couldn’t imagine or even desire living apart from its presence.

And yet, for the past twenty years I have done so. I traded the ocean for trees and mountains. The ocean is still a part of me, though we are now parted. There are aspects of my adopted environment that have also become woven into my person. I call this the sense of setting.

image: wallstickeroutlet.com

Because of my familiarity and connection with the ocean, forests, and mountains, I find myself drawn to reading about unfamiliar landscapes, and for some reason my list of setting interests includes an abundance of stories about the prairie.

Initially, I don’t think I could bear the flatness, the unyielding run to the horizon from end to end, nor bear the extremes of seasons and the monotony of view. This is where the marksmanship and craft of writing happens. Writers, poets, authors portray the prairie in such a way I find myself surrounded by the grass, the wind, and witness vicariously the openness and beauty through another’s eyes. The sense of place.

Recently two writers have presented their sense of place, their love of the prairie so profoundly, my paradigm has shifted. I now understand the fullness of this unique setting, and respect it and perhaps even admire it, which replaces my former disdain. True writing, the skill of a wordsmith can do this.

While I have read many prairie pioneer books in my life, Laura Ingalls Wilder being the first, my most recent read is Willa Cather. She provided readers with a portrait of the midwest through her trilogy Oh Pioneers, My Antonia, and Song of the Lark. A memorable passage from My Antonia:

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disc rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share—black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.

Cover of My Ántonia (Dover Thrift Editions)

Cather presents both the starkness of the prairie and the greatness. The plough represents the solitary efforts of those who tried to tame the vastness of that flat, grassy expanse, and while the abandoned plough could have been viewed as sad or even tragic in its loneliness, Cather displays it as heroic. And this is the view I now have of the prairie. It is like the ocean in its vastness, its grasses the tide upon the land. Those who worked it by tilling the land, navigating its immensity with their ploughs, horses, and tractors are much like those who navigated the ocean with their own crafts of boat, steamers, and ships. Both land and sea represent the need to explore the unknown and forge a living from it.

Another view comes from today’s Poem-a-Day offering:

Poppies on the Wheat

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat,

A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow

Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow

Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat

Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet

Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro

To mark the shore.

The farmer does not know

That they are there. He walks with heavy feet,

Counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain,

But I,–I smile to think that days remain

Perhaps to me in which, though bread be sweet

No more, and red wine warm my blood in vain,

I shall be glad remembering how the fleet,

Lithe poppies ran like torchmen with the wheat.

English: , located on west side of just north of the Nebraska-Kansas border in southern . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I smile, too, grasping the juxtaposition of frivolity of the simple flower merged the purpose of the land.

I may never go to Kansas or Nebraska, but I can say I have traveled to their prairies.

Willa Cather: A Hidden Voice (nybooks.com)
Poppies… on a sunny day (loiselden.com)
Cather makes NYT front page (nebraskapress.typepad.com)
“She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.” (vtpanther.typepad.com)

Posted in America, Books, Literature, Reading, Reflections, reviews, Uncategorized, Writing and tagged Kansas, Literature, My Ántonia, Nebraska, ocean, place, prairie, reading, setting, style, Willa Cather, writing

Pam Webb

a writer's journey as a reader

Archive for the tag “ocean”

Okinawa! Part Two