Relational Energy Healing

Dean heads to Okinawa

Posted on 28. Apr, 2008 by Dean Ramsden in Travel Blog

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..

Tags: Dean's Travels