What is Normal?

It`s easy to lose track of what was once `normal` for me, while living here in Okinawa. The other day I took a walk in downtown Naha with Deej and Jon, and we decided to take pics for our friends at home by trying and look around us with virgin eyes: what aspects of everyday street life in Okinawa might seem bizarre to you readers? This was a lot more fun than we thought it would be, because as soon as we got our just-stepped-off-the-boat goggles adjusted, we realized that just about everything was downright weird. Example: there are large plastic statues of all sorts of things just standing around on the street in Okinawa. Look at the photo above. These demonic looking eisa drummers with mini-me s on their arms have nothing to do with a product being sold in a store behind them. They're just chillin`.

If you saw 3 ginormous babies dressed as cucumbers welcoming you into a store, what might you assume they sold there? That`s right! LIQUOR! What other logical thing might be standing in a liquor display than cucumbers with giant baby heads?

Or take just an average store front. Though almost every home in Okinawa is guarded by a pair of shisa, a business might well be guarded by 2 lion-sized Hello Kitty shisa. Rar!
Or you could be boggled by the high-tech assortments of vending machines sprawled across the pavement on every corner. What happened to the good old days? This vending machine has flashing lights and buttons all over, it`s got a build-in television screen playing commercials for thirst quenching drinks that you simply must have NOW! Oh, did you want to buy a cute laughing shisa statue with one arm that waves? Or how about a PENIS ASHTRAY?! Not only are such finely sculpted wooden penis ashtrays to be found incongruously placed on shelves in the shopping district of Naha, me and Sandi found them offending our gazes at the gift shop attached to the HIMEYURI monument... that`s right, the monument to 100s of Okinawan high school girls who were forced to work as nurses during the battle of Okinawa and were all killed or forced by Imperial Japan to commit group suicide. How appropriate.

Perhaps as you walk down Kokusai Street and see all the funny things there are to see, you will also have the pleasure of seeing some up and coming Japanese musicians. They won`t fail to amuse you with their cool outfits.