It’s been several weeks of work, to pack up and leave our rental home on Maui. We flew directly to Tokyo, and then I taught two separate Relational Healing classes, followed by a week of private sessions. All in all, we are both tired. “Let’s go to Okinawa, and rest for a while”, says Yui. She has all the best ideas, so I wholeheartedly agreed. A few days later I find myself boarding a Boeing 767 bound for Japan’s outlying island. I’m suddenly, and unnervingly, surrounded by huge numbers of children, and their young families. “It’s Golden Week”, my Japanese-born wife informs me, knowingly. “Okinawa will be crowded.”
I’m excited to visit Okinawa, partly because in my youth I studied Shotokan Karate, a martial art that originated on this island. My brother and I spent two years punching and kicking our way to brown belt level, and still joke about it today, in the way brothers do as they bond over shared – and happily distorted – memories.
I grunt uncharitably, as I squeeze myself into a tiny Japanese aircraft seat that makes me feel as though I’m seven feet tall. Then, my eye catches a colorful curtain in front of me, looking like a young child’s bedroom wallpaper. There is something odd about this aircraft, as though it is designed just for kids. I see the flight attendants are all wearing matching kiddie-colored aprons, handing out kiddie-colored pillows for the two-hour flight. A quick consultation with Yui and I’m told.. we are flying on a Pokemon jet!
My Western desire to appear adult in situations like this melts away, and I regress to six years old. Not a stretch for me, by the way. I look out onto the tarmac, and there, in perfect synchrony, two runway workers are waving the jet on it’s way. Around me, real six-year olds are smilingly waving back to the men, as the big jet moves away from the terminal.
Ah, Japan. What’s not to love..
