Thank goodness for McDonalds and Starbucks.  Let me explain.  Today in Naha Okinawa, we wanted to visit Tsuboya Yachmiun Street, an older street in Naha which specializes in pottery manufacture and sale   In 1682 all of the kilns were consolidated here by decree of Ryukyu Kingdom   The street is particularly known for making Shisa Lions.  These lions are house guardians.  Usually there is a male and female lion.  The male is open mouthed to bring good luck and drives away evil spirits while the female is closed mouthed to keep in good luck and protect from evil spirits.  The lions are the same caricatures that you see in the lion dances in China.Thank goodness for McDonalds and Starbucks.  Let me explain.  Today in Naha Okinawa, we wanted to visit Tsuboya Yachmiun Street, an older street in Naha which specializes in pottery manufacture and sale   In 1682 all of the kilns were consolidated here by decree of Ryukyu Kingdom   The street is particularly known for making Shisa Lions.  These lions are house guardians.  Usually there is a male and female lion.  The male is open mouthed to bring good luck and drives away evil spirits while the female is closed mouthed to keep in good luck and protect from evil spirits.  The lions are the same caricatures that you see in the lion dances in China.

We asked the woman at the tourist desk at the port to write directions for us to show the cab driver.  She didn’t seem to know what we were talking about.  I pointed to the pottery museum on the map.  She smiled and wrote something out.  I was not sure if she understood what we wanted.  Her English was not very good.   I was tempted to ask another person at the desk to help but that would have been a loss of face for the woman helping me and I decided not to.  Bad decision.

The cab driver seemed confused but after a bit of driving around dropped us off at a place that he, indicated with a wave of his arm, was the street we wanted.  It wasn’t.  In fact, when we ultimately did find the street that we wanted, hours later, we realized that he had cruised right past it.  I don’t know if the cab driver was the one who made the mistake, or the lady at the tourist desk but the driver was certainly well equipped to find where we were to go.  I had been warned that cab drivers do not ask directions, that would be a loss of face.   But they do rely on screens.  This cab had a “glass cockpit.”  One screen had a larger overall map of Naha, two others had two different GPS machines giving him directions.  The fourth calculated fares and added tolls and a fifth was the normal screen on a Prius telling him when he was generating electricity.  It doubled as the backup camera.  There was also a screen selling us different exotic flavors of ice cream.  With all this help we still ended up in the wrong place.

After walking a little I said this did not look at all like the description in Lonely Planet of the street we wanted.  I pulled out both my iPhone and the paper tourist map.  The iPhone wanted to take me to the pottery museum in Red Wing Minnesota.  When I got that straightened around the path did not look right.  I am used to maps always having North on the top. North is relative on iPhones. 

The paper map had street names in English, but they were not in English on the streets themselves.  That is why I thanked goodness for Starbucks and McDonalds.  They are on the map and instantly recognizable in the brick and mortar.  Suzi and I each interpreted the maps our own ways and made suggestions to each other.  Sometimes I was right and sometimes Suzi was.  Unfortunately, when I was right, we went in Suzi’s direction and when Suzi was right we went in mine.

The iPhone said it was an 18-minute walk.  About two and a half miles later we found our street.  We had been spiraling in on it.  We identified it because it had a McDonalds at one end and that was on the map.  We were hot and tired (My iPhone said it was 85, “feels like 97”).  So, we went into McDonald’s airconditioned comfort, each got a coke with ice, a glass of water and an order of fries with a LOT of salt.  After that we enjoyed the pottery street.

I had hoped to see some kilns working and to watch the potters.  Given the heat it was probably for the best that we saw none operating.

We enjoyed our spiral meanderings. We took in a great deal of the local color walking through a large market that felt, to us, more Chinese than Japanese.  One thing that differentiated the market from anything else we saw in Japan was litter.  There was not a lot but enough to notice after the spotless main islands. We also saw a small amount of graffiti in Okinawa.

In our wanderings we caught some go carts cruising down a main shopping street.

I have no idea what this sign means.

It always pays to look down in Japan between decorated manhole covers and ceramic tiles.

It’s not a bad thing to be lost, wandering in a strange town on our last day in Japan despite the hot weather.