I miss living in Okinawa. The people are great, the food is great, the culture is great - the only thing that sucks are the American military bases which are a blight upon the otherwise beautiful tropical landscape, but if you get your SCUBA license you can go underwater and see some of the most diverse coral reefs through some of the clearest water in the world, which is also great.
Then I lived in Tokyo I told myself a million times to visit Okinawa. Instead I hardly traveled at all and I never went. I should've. I'm far too lazy to learn how to scuba dive but I could have at least gone snorkeling.
There are old people whose primary retirement activity is protesting the military bases (they're out there basically every day), and every time a news story breaks about a troop committing a crime everyone else comes out in force for a huge protest, which is on top of the yearly demonstration which is practically a cultural festival alongside all of the other ones.
Americans like to cope by saying that actually most of the protestors are paid or that they fly down from the mainland, but it's basically the number one issue among politically active locals so even if some mainland Japanese come down they're pretty firmly in the minority. When I first lived there the protests were a lot smaller than they used to be, but when I left they were ramping up and getting bigger again in response to Shinzo Abe talking about militarization.
Other than that which was impossible not to see I wasn't really involved in politics myself so I can't talk about much else.
Thanks for the answer of a kinda obscure, yet interesting topic. Getting involved in politics as a foreigner is definitely a pretty high bar to clear and I'm speaking from personal experience haha.
I miss living in Okinawa. The people are great, the food is great, the culture is great - the only thing that sucks are the American military bases which are a blight upon the otherwise beautiful tropical landscape, but if you get your SCUBA license you can go underwater and see some of the most diverse coral reefs through some of the clearest water in the world, which is also great.
Then I lived in Tokyo I told myself a million times to visit Okinawa. Instead I hardly traveled at all and I never went. I should've. I'm far too lazy to learn how to scuba dive but I could have at least gone snorkeling.
Okinawa is a stronghold for the Communist Party, as revisionist as it is. Was it noticeable in any way?
There are old people whose primary retirement activity is protesting the military bases (they're out there basically every day), and every time a news story breaks about a troop committing a crime everyone else comes out in force for a huge protest, which is on top of the yearly demonstration which is practically a cultural festival alongside all of the other ones.
Americans like to cope by saying that actually most of the protestors are paid or that they fly down from the mainland, but it's basically the number one issue among politically active locals so even if some mainland Japanese come down they're pretty firmly in the minority. When I first lived there the protests were a lot smaller than they used to be, but when I left they were ramping up and getting bigger again in response to Shinzo Abe talking about militarization.
Other than that which was impossible not to see I wasn't really involved in politics myself so I can't talk about much else.
Thanks for the answer of a kinda obscure, yet interesting topic. Getting involved in politics as a foreigner is definitely a pretty high bar to clear and I'm speaking from personal experience haha.