TL:DR – I was in Okinawa in the 80s. It was great. Had a wild adventure in Itoman with a Dragon Boat Race Team but, in my memory, Itoman was a village. It seems to be a large city now. I don't know if Itoman was always a city and my new friends there just took me to a small village-like part of it, or if it really was a village back then and has grown immensely. I planned on visiting and seeing if I could run into any of the people I met, but I see now that's an impossibility. Not really looking for advice. Just felt like sharing my story, but if you have advice, feel free.
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In the Summer of 1984, I and two of my friends (Two Marines, including myself, and an Air Force guy), on the spur of the moment, went to Itoman to watch the Haarii boat races. Because it was spur of the moment, and because we had never been to Itoman and didn't really know exactly where to go, we got there late, just as the races had ended. However, my friends and I were very much into making friends on Okinawa, so we went up to one of the teams–dressed in all white with large blue dots on their happis–and started talking to them. They adopted us for the night. They took us around to party after party after party. It was always in some little neighborhood with old, traditional looking houses, and it was always the party of some other Haarii team with similar uniforms but in different colors. Though they were opposing teams, they all knew each other and were tickled pink for us all to show up. I could sense a little competition between the teams, but always a friendly kind.
Before the night was over, we somehow ended up at the mayor's house. At least they told us he was the mayor. Who can know for sure. He and his wife were home alone, but they welcomed us into their home. By the reverence my Haarii team friends were giving them, I can easily believe that he was, if not the mayor, someone important. The wife cooked up some fried squid and fried purple potatoes, and the mayor broke out bottles of some kind of milky-white sake, probably Awamori. Then, at one point, the Mayor went into his cellar and pulled out a dusty old earthenware bottle that was full of some homemade Awamori, which I was informed was rare and old, and that we should be honored that the mayor was serving this to us. There we spent the rest of the evening eating, drinking and enjoying each other's company. Then the Haarii team took us back to a house that had a room with nothing in it. They laid out three futons for us to sleep on and bade us goodnight.
That night is one my fondest memories of my entire life, but all three of my years in Okinawa were sublime; I had three amazing friends (including one other Air Force guy, but he missed the Itoman trip). We were young and in a foreign land. Two of us had cars so every weekend was an adventure for us. We explored everything we could find on the island and met a lot of warm and friendly Okinawan people. We hung out with old people at seaside cafes, young punch-permed teenaged guys on mopeds, wind surfers & snorkelers, a couple of lady cops, and some people who led us to a hidden waterfall and swimming hole and let us participate in their bar-b-que. We took a ferry to Yoron Island and rented mopeds, then we ended up on the beach where we made friends with an old drunk beachcomber dude who, even when a horsefly landed on his face and walked right across his eyeball, never blinked the whole time we were talking. Whenever I think back over my life, those three years always rise to the top as among the best.
I am 62 years old now. One of my Air Force Friends was killed in a home invasion just outside of Chicago a few years back. My Marine friend had cancer, beat it, had stroke, was left by his wife (till stroke do us part), and now he resides in a terminal care facility. The other Air Force friend is happily married and living in Hawaii. I am in Tokyo.
I am thinking of taking a motorcycle tour of Okinawa sometime later this year and will probably bring a tent and sleeping bag and spend most of my nights in hostels or at free camping spots, which I have already researched. One of the spots is at Kitanashiro Beach in Itoman. I was thinking, "Wow. This is great. I have photos of my friends and me hanging out with the villagers. I can bring those photos and see if I can locate any of them. They'll be old like me now, but they may recognize the photos." Then I checked out Itoman and found out it's a city with a population of 57,000 people. WTH? The pictures I had in my memory were a lie, or at least I only remembered the tiny part of Itoman we saw that night. There's no way in hell I will know how to find those little village-like parts of town, much less locate the people in the photos. I guess it's true. You can never go back.
<Edit: fixed a couple of typos>
by BWWJR