Okinawa Glass Factory - Lookie but NO touchy!!

Ok, so this adventure was actually form a couple weeks ago. Since Sarah and I are both unemployed... we were like, "What in the world should we do today?" In lieu of our excessive boredom, we took a sorta little, kind of long road trip down to the southern tip of the island to a town I can't remember the name of. There we went to the country's most popular glass making factory, which in reality was a bunch of huge outdoor kilns with a huge group of guys running around like chickens with glowing hot balls of molten glass. It was pretty interesting to watch.

From our deductions, we could make out that there were various stages in the glass making process with a different person performing each step of said process. There would be one guy who would heat the glass, another the would pour it, one would blow into the glass to start a shape, one would mold it into a glass, another would create the base of the glass... it was really quite interesting to watch. It all had to be timed just right so that glass would come out correctly.

Now apparently from the history I could gather this is how the glass came to be. After WWII, the americans came over here with our green, clear, brown, and other various colored glass and discarded it in a wasteful manner, as we Americans are known to do on occasion. Well, the smart Japanese took these glass bottles and started melting them down to make glass objects that soon became popular souveniers. Eventually the craft expanded and colors and textures of glass changed, but it is still extremely popular here with locals as well as tourists, but VERY expensive. A single standard sized plate can range anywhere from like 25 dollars and up. This type of glass is only made in one other place in the world, and that's in Vietnam. You can google okinawa glass and see it, very pretty!

We went one afternoon during the week and it was very quiet there so we were able to watch the guys work for a while, and it was just amazing to watch them work! They have huge kilns of various temperatures depending on what they were making and were all running around all over the place in a rush to get what they needed done before the glass cooled.

As we were walking along the building, I noticed the tiles looked very shiney and as I approached one, which was about 1/3 the size of a normal brick, it was actually like a painted tile or rock with a thick glass covering on the top of it. From the pics you can see just how many tiles are on the wall, and the entire place is covered in them! Thats what the pic of the yellow square is.

At this visit I didn't buy anything, although I was very tempted! Each piece is hand crafted and they are very proud of the items they make, which are all labled with a special "hand made in okinawa" sticker. They really are one-of-a-kinda and anyone who comes to visit really should stop in to appreciate just how much work goes into making a single glass!