Tobacco Aficionados Check It Out

Visit Okinawa to Get These Smokes

It began when I walked out of a bar to buy a few packs of cigarettes.

At the local grocery store, I ran into an old friend, who was hanging out, watching TV.

We drink beers together sometimes and, I had noticed him with Uruma cigarettes.

He had bummed one of my Mild Sevens, before I spotted his red pack of smokes.

It seems, he's trying to quit. The Urumas are helping him.

They are so strong he says, "After smoking one, you don't feel like having another for 3 hours."

Products Sold Only on Okinawa Islands

Way back in the late 1800's the government of Japan took over the tobacco industry.

It became a monopoly for the purpose of  taxing people so, the country could get rich.

Many years later, they figured out, private industries could make them, even richer.

The monopoly, got done away with but, the government still gets to hold one third of the stock.

When Okinawa, reverted back to Japanese control in 1972 the farmers weren't happy.

They had been raising their own tobacco and making these cigarettes, for Okinawa.

So, the big boys, up north, decided to give the tobacco farmers a break.

Before investing a total of  ¥ 630 or, about six bucks on those smokes, I did some research.

That's how I learned, these are brands exclusive of Okinawa, Japan.

Taxes drift upwards sometimes but, not as high as they would on any other Japanese smokes.

The way to get some of these gems, is to come to the islands. You can't buy them online.

Just for fun, I read some reviews of Uruma cigarettes on a Japan website.

A customer said, "They are a little bit pungent and sweet."  He recommends them for women.

When he, opened a pack, it smelled like some fancy liquor.

Another dude (in Osaka) met an Okinawan girl, who was smoking Uruma cigarettes.

He was a non-smoker but said, everyone around him was sucking smokes.

So, he decided to start sucking them, too. And, he liked to sweetness.

He's looking forward to, having that girl, smuggle him some from Okinawa on her next visit !

Some Do's and Dont's

Do: Plan on me getting rid of these smokes tonight. I ain't smoking them.

Don't: Send any correspondence, asking me to get some for you, back in the USA.

Reason: Once, in the custody of Uruma police, I promised, to be law abiding forevermore.

 More Information

Each cigarette, of both brands above contains:

Nicotine: 1.2 milligrams

Tar: 17 milligrams

Source: Learn Okinawa A-Z

Quote of the Week: Thanks to Facebook

End of the Month Parting Shot: Osprey in Flight

Maybe Not the Best Bird of November

But, it sure was fun trying to catch this critter in some blue skies.

Yesterday, was sort of a goof-off day, for the professor (Doc) and I; we had no plan.

Neither of us, carried long lenses, which we should have, for shooting birds.

The weather forecast was sort of iffy and, rain could be expected.

When he arrived at my office he said, "Where should we go north or south?"

Having just received an influenza shot and, a bit sore I didn't really care.

Any where, I could get by, without humping a heavy lens and tripod, sounded good.

We started going north, then came up with another idea,

Let's drive south, to Itoman and see if, the Spoonbills have showed up, this year.

All Kinds of Birds

There were ducks, herons, coots, egrets, Japanese White Eyes and stilts but, no Spoonbills.

We positioned ourselves on the far side of the wetlands, with the sun at our backs.

After awhile, of picking away at birds, that were truly out of range, an osprey flew by.

It was way up in nice blue skies but, wouldn't get close enough for, us to get some great shots.

Every time, it came within range, the rascal would turn and, fly into the sun.

Sometimes, I swear those birds know what, I'm trying to do and, just mess with me.

While they circle around overhead, I talk to them, trying to get the best pose.

"This way, that way, look at me, when the sun lights up those eyes" and stuff like that.

Should one of those psychiatric doctors come along, I'd probably get hauled away.

So, I really don't speak loud enough for anybody, close by, to hear me.

Take a Little Break

What, I tell Doc, "If you quit paying attention, for a minute, the osprey will come back."

Whenever, you get away from the camera, to relieve yourself or, light up a cigarette, it happens.

I bet, out in the wilderness, it's been my misfortune, over a thousand times.

So, we practised being vegetarians, for a while by, smoking Japanese cigarettes. 

No. I'm not crazy. Frank Zappa, is where I learned this from. Cigarettes are food.

He said, "Tobacco is my favorite vegetable."

So, that's a good enough excuse, for me, to become a part time vegetarian. Hah.

There were only three cigarette butts in my pocket when, I took this shot.

And, I told Doc, we could go do lunch because, I thought maybe, I got a good one !

Five All Time Favorite Sunday's Silly Signs

Here are five of the Sunday's Silly Signs that, Google Stats tell me, got the most giggles.

SMOKERS AND CHEWERS

 Maw, we better get a new sign or have this one repainted.

Don't want customers comin' in here and thinkin the place is tacky.

Folks, I hate to tell you but, this sign has been hanging on the wall

in my karaoke bar for, heck, I don't know

maybe ten or fifteen years !

A LIT CIGARETTE

Whoa, Sunday's Silly Sign alomst slipped through the cracks on me this week.  It may already be Monday, where you are but, I haven't forgotten you.  Here's one I discovered in Naha Okinawa, Japan.

That Mayor back in New York City, I hear, is going to ban all outdoor smoking.  He's probably worried about kids gettin their faces burnt by cigarettes, too.

Now this got me wondering. Kids who aren't much taller than a cigarette probably hang around inside the house. That's the same place all the smokers will be lighting up their tobacco.

The mayor should do like us and post these signs. Let folks smoke outside.  Police flying around will catch them if they burn any little kids faces and we'll get the criminals in jail where they belong!

ESCALATOR WARNINGS

These signs may be seen in just about any store in Japan that has an escalator.  Call this a drive by shooting. RyukyuMike has been banned from taking photos with a real camera in this store so, the only option I had the other day was  do like everybody else; don't ask and just shoot with my cell phone camera.

The silly sign isn't at the bottom or the top of the escalator. That would have made it easy to snap a photo.

What I had to do was send the wife up ahead of me. Then, jump on the escalator , whip out my cell phone, crouch down and make sure it was in the Photo Mode, try not to loose my balance and get the cheap camera to focus on a moving target.

Well, the danged steps on that contraption move too fast for a gentleman of my age and the stupid camera wouldn't focus fast enough. So, it took me several attempts, going up and down the escalator.

The wife wouldn't go along with my plan after the first unsuccessful attempt. Women get embarrassed, I guess, when men do stupid things.

So, I told her to just keep all the salespeople busy so they wouldn't notice me riding up and down the escalator half a dozen times. She could cause a distraction on the second floor like, pretend she had a few thousand dollars to spend on underwear and jewelry. That'd cause a distraction. I've done it before.

After several attempts, these drive by shooting-looking photos for this week's Sunday Silly Sign are going to have to do the trick. I deleted 10 or so worse ones than these.

One time, I was squatting on the stairs, riding on the down side and figured the camera might focus and snap the photo quicker with the flash turned on. The silly sign was near the bottom third of the ride. I was concentrating on my shooting and not paying attention to how close it was to the first floor.

You know what happens when you get to the end of the ride and forget to step off ?
The thing throws you off and you land sprawled out on the floor.

People were looking at me like I was crazy. Hah !

In case you haven't figured the sign out, yet, it warns people not to hang over the handrails while riding the thing. That's so you don't bonk your head on something like the ceiling of the second floor.

Probably, after they saw what happened to me, they should make a sign warning people to be careful while using their cell phones on the escalators. The thing could throw you off going up or down, if you're not paying attention, I bet.  Maybe, I'll just take the stairs next time.

SUNDAY'S SILLY SIGN PLUS: THE SILLY WIKI STUFF IN JAPAN

On Easter Sunday we don't really get into the Easter Bunny, eggs hunts, chocolate mess and all that stuff over here in Okinawa. Some people go to church and wear Easter Bonnets, I guess.

 That'd be down around the big cities. I only know it's Easter from people online wishing me a happy one.

Anyway, I went back up in the northern mountains to see what I could find for today's blog and came across this sign warning you, if you don't watch your step, you might fall on your butt.

There are plenty of places along this trail where you could slip, trip, stumble or fall and plenty of these signs to warn you. The silly signs just didn't do the trick for me today.

I hiked all over the mountains and just couldn't find anything that cracked me up.

After getting out of the dark jungles and into some decent sunlight I came across a pond with these critters in it and figured, maybe, they were some kind of endangered species.

When a couple of them got real close to each other I got thinking, "Oh boy, we're gonna see some action".


But, all they did was check each other's packages, sniff, or whatever they do and went their separate ways.

When I got out of the woods and off the nature trail I went and asked this nature dude if he could give me the name of these critters I had on my camera. I was hoping they were some kind of endangered species and I wanted a scientific name so I wouldn't have to do so much research when I got home.

"Shirikenimori", he tells me and he helped me translate it from his Japanese wildlife book into English.

Together we came up with "Shi Ri Ken I Mori" and he made sure I wrote it down in proper English.

And he made sure I returned his pencil.  It almost went in my pocket.

Nice guy, he was. He even spoke a little English and was very helpful. 

But, he didn't have a scientific name for the critter. No problem, I Google stuff.

That lead me to plenty of sources but, my favorite source was Wikipedia Japan.  This just made my day because I hadn't had a good belly-laugh like this in awhile. So, I'll quote directly from the Wiki folks in Japan and post a link and hope they don't mind.  I want them to take full credit for this masterpiece:

"Shirikenimori (newt ass sword, sword蠑螈ass, Cynops Ensicauda ), the animal phylum Chordata Class Amphibia Caudata Salamandridae newt species are classified as urodele."

My guess is maybe they couldn't afford an educated translator so, they just grabbed somebody out of a bar.  Like they were in a hurry to finish their Wikipedia homework.
So, they found some homeless dude or a drunk sailor and asked, "What would you call this tail sticking out of this newt ?  It looks like a sword to us." 

So, the dude says, "Oh, call it a newt ass sword.  That's what I'd do."  So, that's what they did !

It's all RIGHT HERE.  You can call me old-fashioned.  I would have thought something like "sword tail" would have gotten the job done.  And it wouldn't have sounded so silly.  It did CRACK ME UP !

It turns out, the Cynops ensicauda (Shirikenimori) or, Sword-tail Newt, is an endangered species found in Okinawa, Japan.  I'll be heading back up that way to try and get some better photos, now that I know where they can be found.  I'll keep my eyes open for more silly signs while I'm on the highways.

RETURN A ROAD: THIS IS FOR CITY PEOPLE

Could be they've had some sort of road rustlers up in the mountains.

You know, scoundrels who come and steal your highways in the middle of the night.

No questions asked. We'll give you amnesty. Just come clean and return a road here.

This sign is located just outside Okinawa's Quasi-National Park.

It's way up north in the mountains about as far as you can go on this island.

The sign, I think, was put there to tell city slickers how to get down off the mountain.

See, if you don't take the road that returns, living on an island, and all, you could go the wrong way.

You could wind up goin' around and around the island and keep coming back to the same place over and over again.

People who live in the country don't need silly signs telling them how to get off the mountain.

We just follow any road until we see the ocean.

Then, we turn left, or right.  It all depends on if we want to get farther or closer to home.

Shucks.   Look real close at the photo of this silly sign.

It looks like it used to have an arrow pointing both ways and somebody taped-over one end !

Maybe, next time I go up there I'll fix their sign for free.

Pull the green tape off and cover the "A" so it wouldn't be a silly sign anymore.

We could have arrows pointing both ways.

Then city people will be driving around and around the island acting like they're lost again !

MORE SILLY SIGNS IN THE DOOZIES

VISIT MY WEBSITE FOR THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

Sunday's Silly Sign (Photo) Jul 17, 2011 Smokers Doggonit !

The Anti Smoking Campaign

Must continue until we get everyone properly trained.

Doggonit, there's etiquette we have to teach smokers.

First, we ought to cut down on the size of the cigarettes.

Look at the size of that thing.
It could qualify as a bazooka !

Etiquette?  Well, if he'd side step a little further when he sees someone downwind of him, the smoke wouldn't have got the guy.

Look at the dog, though.  He aint no dummy.  Naturally smarter than his master or went to one of those schools like DOGGONIT ACADEMY

The dog came out clean. Hah!

This Sunday's Silly Sign was spotted at a convenience store in Okinawa, Japan.
It was posted on the ashtray outside the front door of the place.  That's where I go to buy my smokes and iced coffee.  Somebody with no Slurpy Etiquette spilt a drink on the sign !

VISIT MY HOMEPAGE FOR THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

Sunday's Silly Sign (Photo) Jun 5, 2011 A Lit Cigarette

Whoa, Sunday's Silly Sign alomst slipped through the cracks on me this week.  It may already be Monday, where you are but, I haven't forgotten you.  Here's one I discovered in Naha Okinawa, Japan.

That Mayor back in New York City, I hear, is going to ban all outdoor smoking.  He's probably worried about kids gettin their faces burnt by cigarettes, too.

Now this got me wondering. Kids who aren't much taller than a cigarette probably hang around inside the house. That's the same place all the smokers will be lighting up their tobacco.

The mayor should do like us and post these signs. Let folks smoke outside.  Police flying around will catch them if they burn any little kids faces and we'll get the criminals in jail where they belong!

VISIT MY HOMEPAGE FOR THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

Plastic Typing Keys and Cigarettes Don't Mix

Today I want to bring up a rant from the past. It was posted on one of my other blogs and now is probably a good time to do some editing and bring it here. That's just in case someone is planning on buying a loved one, or me, a brand new computer for Christmas. It's important to know:

PLASTIC TYPING KEYS AND BURNING CIGARETTES DON'T MIX AND THIS PHOTO IS PROOF!
Original Post Dated April 6, 2010 over on my WordPress blog but, I like blogging here.

This was a brand new laptop, just last month. I'm probably still paying for it. Haven't even figured all this Window 7 stuff out yet and my "S" key is already melted!

They just don't make machines like they used to. I bet Mark Twain didn't have half the problems we do nowadays with all this junk technology. He probably had a real typewriter, one with wrought iron, metal keys; something you could leave a lit cigarette on, go get a cup of coffee and not have to worry about your whole house burning down and toxic fumes, stinkin' burning plastic and all kinda pollution coming outa the machine.

Now, I know somebody's probably going to try and tell me I should quit smoking. And I probably should but, it probably won't happen, at least not in this lifetime. If you think I'm a miserable old goat now, you should see me when I try to quit smoking.

Smoking is good for some people and I'm one of them. It drives the Doctors nuts when they give me physicals, stress tests and all those wierd examinations. One time they stuck me in some contraption that looked like a glass helicopter with a breathalyzer and a bunch of computer wires hooked up to me. The technician had to leave the door open and wave his arms while he was screaming, "Inhale hard, exhale harder, longer, more, more , more, harder, a little bit more, more, more"!  That's 'cause I don't hear well.

When I flopped outa the bubble, all sweaty from huffin' and puffin' on his silly air tube he showed me the ticker tape with the results and said I did amazingly well. I must have been 100% recovered.

He wanted to know how long ago it was since I had my last smoke.
He figured I'd quit 30 years ago, or something and the Doctor sent me in for a follow up, I guess.

When I told the guy I had my last smoke about 15 minutes ago, before I came in his office, he almost choked !

And all the stories you hear about bartenders and airline stewardesses croaking from second hand smoke, hah!

They're making it up.

I have proof.
Just go and read the Obituary Column in your newspaper. Not one pet caught cancer from secondhand smoke.
I check everyday

Have your ever heard of a dog or cat catching cancer from people smoking cigarettes around them?

Now, I try and be polite and don't smoke around non-smokers but, I won't let them kiss me, either, at least not on the lips, anyway.

The Doctors tell me I should quit because if I don't, I'll die,

I inform them that the odds are, they'll probably die someday, too.

Anyway, the laptop is fine. I put the fire out and turned it upside down to shake all the ashes outa the keyboard and everything seems to be working perfectly.

I'm wondering now if I shoulda spent the extra grand and bought a Mac. Do they have metal typing keys?

Why would I want to spend an extra $1,000 if they don't?
Plastic Typing Keys and Cigarettes Don't Mix. 
I have proof !

Guys and Gals, Eisa Dancers and Facebook

So far this week, I've posted Eisa Gals and then Eisa Dudes so, today I decided to throw a photo with both in the same shot on here .

It'll be another day before I finish developing all the pictures from last Saturday night. Then, I'll sort through them all and decide which are the best to put a real story together.

The darndest thing happened today just from the few pictures I've posted aleady. I got an email from somewhere in the USA and this gal from Okinawa says she thinks one of the photos I posted is her second cousin. Now, all I have to do is figure out who she's talking about and see if I can chase the culprit down and find out their name.

Another thing that happened: People are actually finding my little Facebook Fan Club widget here on the blog and FOLLOWING ME !

It's barely enough to fill up a bus but, if I ever earn a million dollars from using my camera and these same people keep following me, I might rent a bus someday and take everbody to Las Vegas. They still give away free food, booze and cigarettes in the casinos, right?