Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tree Lovers, Here's Fukugi Trees from Okinawa Just for You ! (Photos)

There's a small village in northern Okinawa named Bise.  They have trees called Fukugi up there and all the travel agencies promote Bise and the Fukugi trees.  I just had to go and find out what the big deal is and what's special about a tree named Fukugi. So, that's what I did.

Yesterday, I wandered around with my camera to shoot all the photos I wanted pretty much undisturbed by any humans. I figured, on a weekday, there wouldn't be a bunch of tour busses dumping tourists off in the woods and I could set up my camera and tripod in the middle of the narrow streets to shoot a series of photos for any tree lovers out there who never saw a Fukugi tree.

It was cold, windy and most of the day pretty cloudy so, the only people out in that kind of weather had to be pretty much idiots, cameramen, intoxicated or maybe, tourists from Hokkaido.
Folks from way up in northern Japan, where it snows, probably think it's warm down here, not me.



Once you get off the narrow, one-lane paved road there are a couple of side streets heading towards the ocean that are just natural, a mixture of sand and clay. You don't see any litter in the streets; they are kept clean and you can tell someone rakes the sand daily. It's always clean.


As you walk farther into the tree-lined streets it gets a bit darker. The Fukugi trees pretty much block out the sun. Where you see bright light ahead lets you know how far it is to the next intersection.


There are about 250 homes in the village of Bise.  I deliberately composed these photos to eliminate them from view. This post is for tree lovers so, that's all I'm showing you, today.



A cloudy day makes it ideal for taking pictures. I've visited here many times in the past when it was sunny. The sun shining through the dark shadows these trees create make some awful high contrast photography.



This scene was shot from the outskirts of town as I was leaving. There is much more shade covering the streets the deeper you go into the interior of the village.



For the true afficionado of trees (I think that's a tree lover) I shot a close up of these leaves. I don't like to post things here and end up misidentifying trees, birds or anything. So, just in case I couldn't find the correct infomation, scientific name, common name and all that jazz, for the Fukugi tree, I'd have this shot to show and maybe, some scientist or tree lover could help me.

It's a good thing, too. After three hours online, trying to ID this tree, last night, I gave up.

Somewhere, I found out it was called a Garcinia. Well, all the searches I did showed me there were anywhere between 150 to 400 kinds of Garcinai trees. They have them all over the world and people claim these trees do all kinds of stuff, from making medicine to talking to the gods.

Now, don't get me wrong. I believe in freedom; freedom of speech, worship, free parking and keeping the internet free. Free stuff is good. There's just way too much on the internet today.

It sure would be nice if they had, like, some kind of special place for idiots to post their stuff on the internet so I wouldn't have to waste so much time sifting through garbage to find out the truth.

Couldn't somebody create a special internet for idiots and liars where they could post their stuff without aggravating the rest of us?  I'd be willing to pay. It'd be like a rodent control tax, yeah!

Oh, back to the trees. This morning, with the proper level of caffine in my body, I found what I wanted to give the tree lovers.  They are  Garcinia subelliptica and are planted around homes in Bise Village to shield them from typhoons.


2 comments:

Map It! Okinawa said...

I have to go to this place!!! I'm gonna Map It!

RyuKyu Ru...

RyukyuMike said...

Great place to visit, anytime !