Transportation & Fresh Food

About a week after we got to Okinawa we purchased our first car - a Honda Odyssey. Yes, Joe and I are owners of a mini-van with no children. It's a little funny, until we realized how helpful it would be when parents and friends come to visit -- they will actually be room for people, luggage and golf clubs! The van was purchased from a PCSing Oral Surgeon.

The second car we found was at the Kadena Air Base "Lemon Lot". Not actually, lemons, but cars that people were trying to sell, mostly because they were PCSing. After careful consideration (and me really wanting a "cute Okinawan car") we settled on a silver Nissan Cube. This cute (and small) little car we purchased from a PCSing Doctor who worked at Camp Lester. I thought it was kind of ironic that we bought all of our cars from people in the medical field.

Yesterday I went to our local produce market. It's about a five minute drive from our apartment. This is a tiny little place, consisting of a small building and a tent. They don't have every kind of produce imaginable, but what they do have is wonderful! Joe and I go there routinely to get red and green peppers, onion, cucumber (which are fantastic), tomato, greens, lemon, eggplant, green onion and fruit. It's a quaint little place and I've been there now about 5-6 times and only once have I seen another American there. To top it off, all the local workers run around giving you samples of the food and yell something like "oh-soy-a-soy-soy-a!!!!!" very excitedly. I'm not sure what this means, but Joe and I are thinking it is something about "fresh, fresh, fresh!!".

Anyways, I purchased my usual peppers, eggplant and greens (in yen of course) and said my one piece of Japanese (thank you) and was on my way out, pleased with the amount of produce I got for my money. I was stopped by one of the workers for a bite of pineapple. I obliged, and it was, of course, delicious. However, this led to a rather akward conversation of him trying to get me to buy the pineapple. He kept speaking in Japanese and I kept trying to look confused and say no. I like pineapple, but the last one we bought was about 450 yen (about $5) and I wasn't planning on spending that much. While that is going on, another worker comes up to me an offers a slice of peach -- that was heavenly! but also not on my agenda. My pineapple salesman tried "for baby?", to which I replied, "No baby". He tried again with, "for boy?" --- "Yes, boy." He was excited then. We finally reached an understanding when I figured out that one pineapple was only 180 yen. He knew he had me then.

So here it is, my glorious, 180 yen pineapple.