My travel companion, Fuchiko-san: the witness to my journey - Okinawa (July 15th - 20th 2016)

A trip abroad, a holiday, had always been therapeutic for the working class. A break away from work, from the people you hate but must face on a daily basis. 2016 started with a downward spiral at work. My beloved superior tendered her resignation and left. The replacement was incompetent, she didn't gain much respect from me. I couldn't work with people I didn't respect. I was not happy at work and desperately needed a break. One night in March, I posted on Facebook if I should just buy a ticket and leave. The next morning, I bought a ticket to Okinawa and Shanghai for July. My Okinawan friend was excited I was finally visiting. I booked a room in a local community centre.
View from my room in the community centre.

I travelled with my friends and experienced the local lifestyle and culture. I fell in love with Okinawa and the gachapon, the vending machines that dispensed toys in capsules. It's here that I met Fuchiko-san (5th series) for the first time.

Fuchiko-san calling her friends to gossip about us while I had dinner in Naha with Jay, her girlfriend and their friends, a newly-wed couple from China.

At the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

With friends at the 2016 Pink Dot Okinawa (gay pride event)

Fireworks at the Ocean Expo Park summer festival 2016

Ryukyuan religion is generally characterised by ancestor worship, where almost every home owns a buchidan, a small closet dedicated to the family altar. My friend works in a company that manufactures buchidan. She said the buchidan is a 100% hand-made and prices and designs varies. She works on the finishing of intricate details of the buchidan, applying gold plated sheets, lacquer and varnish on the buchidan. Here, she is working on the thin layer of gold plated sheet, it required so much attention and detail that she was often exhausted by the end of the day, sore shoulders and neck.

One last beautiful memory of Okinawa on the hot summer July night was playing hanabi (fireworks) on the beach, under the bright full moon, listening to Nanase Aikawa's Hanabi Ga Owaru Koro, 花火が終わる頃 (When the Fireworks are Over).

I promised myself I would visit Okinawa again, stay a little longer... and bring Fuchiko-san back to her hometown. 20th July I was on the plane bound for Shanghai, but was stuck on the airplane on the runway for over an hour because a fighter jet stalled in the middle of the runway and was waiting to be towed away before we could take off. First time I had an in-flight meal while the plane was still at the airport.

I bought some kinky uniform and sex toys in Okinawa for a friend who was getting married in September and got into trouble with one of it in Shanghai, but that's another story.