This is just a shot in the dark but are any of you folk in Okinawa and looking to do a little Shadowrunning? I already have 3 other players but we'd really like to get that number up to at least 4 per session with the potential for one or two other players to rotate in at their leisure.

Sorry, I missed you guys by about five years. Out of curiosity, where are you stationed?

Freaking Camp Schwab, you understand now why we're so hard up for players. I'm this close to just slapping flyers up that read "Stop Playing WoW, Come Play Shadowrun Instead".

Where were you at?

Schwab. First barracks down from the chow hall. 0311 baby, steely eyed killers. Are those two crummy bars still walking distance from the base in Henoko?

The best place we used to go up there was Nago. There was a restaurant up there called Ganje Te (I'm guessing on the spelling) which had grills in the table and raw meat buffets, you cooked everything yourself. A couple blocks away there was a little bar called Birdland that we'd walk to afterwards. I got drunk there once with our newly appointed Regimental chaplain (I was a PFC at the time). It beat trying to get all the way down to Naha, which was too crowded and a little sleazy (although if the banana show is still going on, tradition dictates you catch it). I'm drawing a blank on the name, but the little town outside Camp Hansen wasn't bad either.

I never had anyone in my unit who gamed, so you're ahead of the game there. Other than putting up a few flyers in some barracks or at the USO, I don't really know how you can drum up business other than by word of mouth. You could scrap the fantasy and sci-fi elements and run a few MOUT scenarios, convince people its a training exercise. (In high school I ran a similar scam that had me running Marvel Superheroes in the study hall after lunch.)

God... There are /two/ crummy bars in Henoko? Everytime I walk by Whiskey Dicks I cry because I know there are Marine in there getting tatoos in the "parlor" they have set up right next to the bathroom.

Guan je Tais (also spelled wrong) is pretty awesome, although they have this place in Naha called JonJon's that has all you can eat all you can drink. Not much of a drinker but I certainly can appreciate the services offered. But you're right, Naha can be kinda sketchy. My god man, you're talking about Kin Town: The Tijuana of Japan. Don't even get me started on Kin. If I get woken up in the middle of the night to go scrap some dumb sailor/marine off the pavement I'm going to burn the fucker down.

And no, I flatly refuse to partake in the banana show. The "performer" hasn't gotten any younger and... they have a snake now.

Actually I've had bad luck running military oriented games with AD people. Seems they're trying to game to help them forget how crappy they're real jobs are. Still, it leaks in from time to time. My current group had a hilarious time playing a game where they had to "pretend" to be in the UCAS Army. It was a real stretch not to instantly use all the right acroynms and what not. And of course we all got a kick out of making funny of "The Dumb Army" moo hoo ha ha.

I think posting in the USO is going to be my next option. I'm probably going to hit the library because an interest in reading seems to carry a high correlation to gaming.

Did you ever find any gaming stores out here? It strikes me that tabletop gaming is unknown in Japan, a society that seems to take special pride in hobbies that require you to never leave your house.

If you don't mind me asking, where are you at these days?

Atlanta, Ga.

They had a snake when I was on the island, but the snake doesn't really do anything. He's an unwilling participant, a spectator to the macabre goings-on of the banana show. Actually, the best stripper I saw was at a club called Naha Music; this Japanese lady who did a very slow, ritualistic dance with a knife. She gave the impression that at any moment she would plunge it into her own sternum or maybe somebody in the front row, either way it made for fascinating spectacle. Other than that, Naha Music was a pretty skeezy place.

The bars in Henoko when I was there were the American (or Texas) Roadhouse; it had a big American Flag mural on one wall. The other had a sign with a pink triangle that was not, as near as any of us could tell, a lesbian bar. Both were basically set up in someone's living room, but the American had good food. It seemed like no matter where you were in Okinawa, you could get a fantastic yakisoba or yakitoba anywhere. The only bad food I had there was at the Camp Schwab chow hall. (I had the worst mean of my Marine Corps career in that chow hall, and that's saying something.) It took me forever to figure out how to pronounce Orion so that bartenders understood, but I'd have say that's probably what I remember most, drinking draft beer out of bottles (took us a while to figure out how they pulled that one off).

The library at Schwab had a good selection of movies, from what I recall. I saw Seven Samurai and Rashamon there, as well as a Charles Bronson/Toshiro Mifune movie called Red Sun. They didn't have a great selection of books though, I spent more time at the library at Hansen.

I never saw any gaming stores while I was there. It seems like with all the military presence there, someone could sustain one place that sold wargames and rpgs. One thing I do remember was that every shop had the most awesome selection of graph paper, all metric, in just about every imaginable size. I still have pads of Japanese graph paper. I also picked up some neat blank scrolls that I gave to my D&D group when I got home. But that was just stuff you could find in any market in Nago.

A lot of my friends didn't like Okinawa, or were bored there, but that was probably my favorite time in the Marines. The weather was nice (I was there from Nov to Apr), the scenery was beautiful, I was ODP for a lot of it because I was one of the few guys in my unit with a Humvee license and a Japanese driver's permit. I drove all over that damn island. I was also coming to the end of my enlistment, and I was going stir crazy a lot of the time, but I still had a lot of fun and I still look back on it fondly. Good times.

I think you'll find the "Good Food On Demand" thing is pretty endemic to Japan. Take Family Mart. If I wasn't on duty I could march down to Family Mart with 600 yen and march out with a warm satisfying meal and something to drink. Or I could go super poor man and thrown down on 5 pieces of delicious fried chicken and a drink. I went to Tokyo last year and the main thing I learned is "If you are paying more than 600 yen for a meal it probably isn't worth it" the exception was sushi as I had to pay 850 for the best sushi I've ever had.

The chow hall is better now... usually. Doesn't beat Kadena though.

Ah see, no wonder you liked it. 6 months in Okinawa when the weather is reasonable and you have a drivers license is a wonderful place to be. I'm /crawling/ into my 2nd year and I'm getting good and ready to get home. Course the beaches are still nice and I am playing Shadowrun so I can't complain.

Was the pink triangle bar called Pony or some such? I think it's still there but I don't think any of us have really wanted to go in there.

I'm not sure the pink triangle bar had a name. It was basically a counter, some sofas, a karaoke machine and two old Okinawan ladies. The only thing that hinted that it wasn't just another concrete block house was the lit pink triangle sign.

Kadena did have a nice chow hall. Of the two trips I took to Naha on my UDP, the first was right after we got there. We saw the banana show (I actually missed it because I figured I had the gist and I'm not a big fan of bananas) and caught the bus back to Schawb early the next morning. (Two things. One of my friends who was sitting in the front row had gotten up to use the restroom and when he came back, there was a piece of banana shrapnel on his chair, and Two, an air force officer ate the banana.) The second trip was late in the deployment, and about 8 of us got together and rented a hotel room in Naha, drank the bars closed, slept in the hotel room and then ate at Kadena.

The only thing I didn't do in Okinawa that I later regretted was the 5 mile cave that runs from one side of the island to the other. I kept thinking I'd get around to it and then I ended up coming home a month ahead of my battalion, and I ran out of time. Seems like if nothing else it would have made good fodder for an underdark campaign. (Although its not like there aren't caves all over the place.)

Ha! You sound like fodder for my upcoming SR campaign.

Shadowrun: Target Okinawa

I intend to use free spirit animated 8 foot tall shisa dogs and work traditional okinawa magic/beliefs into the framework. After all, what kind of goodies did the UCAS leave behind when the Imperial Japanese diet forced them to withdraw?