 Ask me anything! Ask me anything! Where is Okinawa? My God, where is Okinawa? It's such a small island. I know. I can barely see it on the map. Okinawa is basically like just a small island on the very south of Japan. It's basically in between Taiwan and Japan. Now, I'll be honest with you. I, for one, I didn't know where Okinawa was. And I actually had to Google that when I, you know, OIST. It's tropical. Nothing living in the Caribbean. I call Okinawa the Jamaica of Japan. It's serene. The waters are blue. The people are nice. The weather is bombastic. So just think of it as being south of Japan. It's a subtropical island. Well, I'm from Tokyo, in Japan, by the way. And then I had visited OIST when I was little, like with family. So for me, it's like, yeah, like warm, nice place with great nature. That's one definition I had before. And then it's humid. Like, mold can grow quite easily. So that's really like, yeah, great tip for like living here. What's the weather like? I personally like the weather because there's a lot of sun here. So it's an island so you can have crazy beautiful day with beautiful clouds and amazing sunlight. And then the next second you get rained on. Apart from that it gets super humid but it's island weather and it's quite nice, especially because you can go enjoy it at the beaches. Don't ask me. I don't like the humidity of Okinawa. What's one thing that surprised you about Okinawa? The price of mangoes it's so expensive. It breaks my heart. Especially since I'm from India and we have a mango farm. But otherwise Okinawa's cool. Would you also like to answer that? Yes. For me the watermelon is super expensive. In Pakistan watermelon is super cheap and I really miss watermelon from Pakistan in Okinawa. Other than Okinawa it's so beautiful. Do I need a car? Yes. Yeah, you basically need a car here. There is no way that without car you can survive in Okinawa. Because in Okinawa at least where we are in Onga village there is no train system and taxis are very expensive. So forget about it to get a taxi here if you really want to save your money and survive in your stipend. So you need a car but the good thing is here you can get a K car which is a super cheap car. The car I have I cannot buy that car in Pakistan because it's very expensive but you can see I can have it here even being a student. So that's a good way. So you can get your K car like the used car and the dealers are good. Oist is going to help you to find a good car and other than that you can enjoy whole Okinawa with this small teeny tiny cute car as I am doing it from last 5 years. What is the food like in Okinawa? What do you think? It's okay. There is a lot of food you can try I feel because there is also a lot of Americans here a lot of Americanized food but still I think my favorite is Okinawan so good so yeah I really like it. What about you? Yeah I feel like I explored a lot of food here to be honest not just Okinawan and Japanese food but also food from different places and different cultures as well. So I have been vegetarian slash vegan for some time and luckily also there are options here so I think I am very lucky in that regard. Okay so next question is do I need to learn Japanese? Probably a little. You don't need to come here knowing any Japanese. I would say if you have even the most remedial Japanese ability but there are classes here there are ways to improve your Japanese. I had a little experience in Japan so I came here knowing a little bit but I know people who come here there's quite a strong American presence on the island with military bases and so a lot of the local businesses are set up to cater to that. There are some things you're going to have to learn how to maybe go to the post office or the doctor's office and how to navigate that go to the doctor's office a lot. So with children What do you do for fun? Okay What can we say? Besides watching anime and reading manga I always have a lot of clubs and I am a member of volleyball club and I also do yoga so that's what I do for fun. What about you Chris? So yeah we have a lot of clubs here I'm an active member of the aerial circus club I've been co-running that with my friend for two years and I also do a lot of LGBT activism on the island trying to organize or trying to organize booths for OIST at different events called Pink Dot Okinawa I think they're the first year. The Pink Dot Yay it's a nice event. It's very nice. And doing volunteer work for them and yeah it's a nice nice little getaway out of voice. So what's Okinawa like compared to compared to the rest of Japan? Of course nature beauty calmness, silence and a perfect place for research where you don't want any noise or disturbance. Are there earthquakes? Tsunamis? Sharknados? Sharknados not that I know of. I've been here for some time I haven't seen any maybe there was one very small earthquake like several years ago it was very small like nothing happened nothing even fell off the table nothing but that's all I remember in the past five years. I used to live in mainland and we have a lot of earthquakes I feel like being here is just baby earthquakes it's not a huge one it's very rare right? Yeah it's not very common in Okinawa Thank you for watching our videos and thank you for all the questions that you sent in Like and subscribe And if you have any more questions post them down in the comment section below Thank you Bye bye So the key question can I have a family and do a PhD at the same time Do you want to? So I would say if you want to