On our last day in Seoul, we went geocaching – let’s continue right there, but here in Naha. We took a walk around the area to see where we landed in Okinawa. Let’s say we’re a bit outside of downtown Naha. But to make this walk a bit more productive, we went geocaching, which often helps to get to know an area. Unfortunately it wasn’t very effective, since in the end, we could only grab two. But maybe that was a good thing as well, since all the others we searched were too small to contain a pen… and we forgot ours, so we would get depressed for not being able to log them.

Anyway, our search led us even to the less frequented streets of Chatan (the part of the city we’re staying in). Like everything in Naha we encountered so far, most of them were a bit rundown. Being on an island really has to make things harder, which is probably one reason why the buses here are so old. (Being used to (and just coming from one) very modern Asian metropolises – not counting Beijing – doesn’t improve the impression.) And the American presence and influence is quite noticeable, one indicator being that this is the only place in Asia where we ever noticed a tanning saloon. I mean tanning, which is the opposite of the Asian ideal of beauty – in Okinawa, the hottest and sunniest prefecture of Japan. All of our wut.

Well, back to the geocaching story. For some reason, all but one of them led us to restaurants, although most of them were closed due to our earliness (restaurants rarely open up before early afternoon). But then a multicache required us to get the telephone number of a curry restaurant – and as the readers of our last trip might remember, that was one of Steffen’s preferred forms to assimilate his nutrition. It was a small shop – hardly larger than our hotel room – on the second floor of a small building, but with a narrow balcony that allowed you to eat in front of the ocean scenery. Very nice and the curry buffet was quite tasty as well. Maybe we’ll go there again, if we have enough dead time here in Naha. After we left, the final stage led us back towards our hotel. The cache itself was hidden in a nice spot, but had no pen inside, so we could only photo log it.

On the way back we bought pens, did our daily food and snack shopping and got back to the hotel to check on the laundry. Yes, we got our own washing machine and dryer in our room/apartment (a kitchen, too). While we surely miss the convenience of having a laundry service, this is way cheaper and allows us some extra washing runs. Downside: Everything on the controls is in Japanese and I can only understand a fraction of it.