はいさい！
How have you all been? Last week, we in Japan, had a “week vacation” known as Golden Week. (Although, not everyone)
So, since we had some rest time, we, of the Ryukyu Stomp group, decided that we wanted to go on a tour of some places in the northern part of Okinawa. The trip was to learn more about the history of Immigration from Okinawa.
Originally I was going to just translate what Chiho wrote. But that’s pretty boring so I’ll wing it. I’m by no means an expert so feel free to comment about things that I missed. So, LET’S GET STARTED!

The first stop on our field trip was to Kin Town. “What’s so special about this place?”you may ask. And, honestly, I was thinking the same thing. It’s the birthplace of Toyama Kyuzo. For those of you that know about the history of Okinawa, you will know that he largely considered the ‘father of Okinawan Immigration’ because he was one of the first people to travel abroad for work. He went to Hawaii in 1900.
Click below to continue reading about our journey

We went on a scavenger hunt around the town and, for such a small area (the area that we were at least), there was a lot of interesting things to see. Here are some pictures:

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Here is a picture of Manu and Chiho who were the tour guides of the day.

While we’re on the topic of Toyama Kyuzo, the next stop on our list was to the statue of Toyama Kyuzo. While there, we heard about some of the history of immigration from one of our lovely tour guides, Manu!

Onward and forward we go from our little talk about the history of immigration. Our next stop was to someplace that we all love, a restaurant to eat FOOD!! What type of food?
As some of you may know, this year in late July, we of the WYUA, are planning out the 1st Youth Uchinanchu Conference/Festival to be held in BRAZIL.
So, we felt it fitting that we go and eat some Brazillian food. I don’t remember everything that we ate because we basically ordered everything on the menu and tasted everything that we could. YAY!!

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It was all really good and we also had the opportunity to listen to the shop owners’ recollection of the past when they, themselves, were abroad.

Our last stop on our tour is to the Grave of Orlando. I personally don’t know too much about the history but it was an interesting area. You should definitely look into as I know I will later today when I have more free time (*^^)v

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So, that was my one day of Golden Week.
Okay, so I did do more which included seeing the Naha Hari Boat race and meeting up with more Uchinanchu from abroad.
Anyway, last time I left off with a question of Uchinanchu, what is it. What makes one Uchinanchu.
This time, instead of something so difficult like that, why don’t you tell me about some things/places that you would like to see in Okinawa. I’ll try and see if I can get something worked out to visit those places and learn some of the stories behind them.