Okinawa: the triumphant return PHOTO ALBUM!

At long last! I returned to Okinawa 2 months ago, and am only now putting up photos of the trip. In case any of you readers are still signed up to the RSS feed for this blog, I thought you would be pleased to see some of the old haunts return in these photos :-)

Okinawa 2009

It was a great trip. Full of happy, full of sad... mostly natsukashii in a way that perhaps only my fellow Okinawa JETs can appreciate.

Visualize Okinawa

In case any of you readers are still out there two years later, yesterday I input this blog's URL into Wordle and here is the resulting visualization based on the frequency of words used over all the entries... pretty neat to see it laid out this way!
On another note, I am finally making my triumphant return to Okinawa! I'll be headed there to hang with the remainders of my crew (Yvonne, Nancy, Amie, Jamie, Ayumi, Junko, Chiye!) on May 1. I may just post some photos here from the trip...

Things I will miss

The sun breaking through the clouds outside my apartment

Well, here I am. Last day in Okinawa. I've been walking around in a bit of a daze. Every time I do anything I find myself thinking, "this is the last time I will make coffee here. This is the last time I will drive down the 58 to Chatan. This is the last time I'll take out the trash" and I get all teary. Of all the countries and places I've lived, Okinawa has by far been my favorite and made the deepest impression on me (not counting my home town of Chapel Hill, mochiron). It will be hard to leave, and impossible to forget. In order to come to terms a bit with my departure, I've spent some time thinking about what I will miss here. I'm sharing my list with you! Some random photos inserted.

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT OKINAWA

-The blue sky, wider than anywhere else in the world!
-The ocean: deep blue or sparkling green, always in sight
-The ever-present sea breeze
-Warm soybeans with salt
-The smell of tatami when you enter a house
-Futons for sleeping
-Taking off your shoes. Indoor slippers.



-Tropical flowers, overrunning sidewalks and concrete every which way
-The Tea Lady, always bustling about, clattering cups and boiling water
-Little peeping voices at school, "good-o morning-u Joyce-sensei!"
-The Japanese culture of napping and snacking
-Beni-imo ice cream. Orion beeru
-Weekends with Tonaki Jon at my place; Yvonne in her box-apaato; Jeffu
-Snorkeling: the beautiful world under the water. Coral. Nemo.

-The reef, waves breaking out to sea instead of at your feet.
-Sea chicken mayo onigiri
-Junko-sensei's laugh. Ginowan High school and its teachers
-Izakayas
-Chatan and the many walks, talks, and lattes shared with friends there.
-The Ferris wheel: emblem of Mihama
-Gajimaru (banyan) trees and their magnificent roots-The crazy man who wears a bushel of plastic flowers on his bike helmet and lives at my intersection
-Jusco! Mr. Donut! Arinkurin! Lawson's! Paul and Mike's! Hinotama Hall! Blue Seal! the Tropical Beach, Sunset Mihama, Okume, Sunabe seawall, Fabu, Day's Café, my neighborhood GEO (even though I left without paying my 4000yen fine!)
-Islands… Tokashiki, Tonaki, Kume, Miyako, Ishigaki, Iriomote, Okinawa
-Street festivals and eisa dancing
-Caramel popcorn at the movies
-Pericula with friends
-Sitting on the floor in restaurants
-The ceremony of shoes
-Cellphone accessories
-The ping-pong
-Turtle-back tombs: stately and quiet among the weeds, behind the houses, everywhere
-Shiny happy people (shiny because they're sweating, happy because they're in Okinawa)
-Tuesday night dinner's at Deej's
-Bento boxes at school lunch
-Cute-ness: appropriate for everyone!
-Engrish engrish everywhere
-Christina and Amy in Nago
-Sunsets from my balcony. From my beach. From the high way. From everywhere!

-Karaoke with friends
-Cicadas in the morning, like an army of minstrels attacking the island at full blast
-Naps and deep thoughts on the matter of Life in the teacher's dusty tatami room, where no one ever went but me.

last but not least...
-203 koupo shima: my little quiet home by the sea.

1. view from my kitchen window
2. view from my balcony

Just so this whole thing doesn't sound too sappy, there are a few things I won't miss about Okinawa:

1. The lack of road names, combined with people's general inability to give directions to the simplest place where they have been a million times
2. pig ear cartilage as a snack

BYE EVERYONE! THANKS FOR SHARING OKINAWA WITH ME!

The Last Goodbyes...

Last night was my farewell party/my successor's welcome party with Ginowan High School. It was sad but fun. I think I cried about 5 times, mostly every time someone gave me a farewell gift or asked me to make a speech. Above is a foto of me and the young gang remaining after all others had headed home.

Despite not speaking any Japanese , Ann (my successor) got on quite well with everyone. You can see her in the photo to the left. The dude in front had tried to convince her that he was a samurai and is reaching for a spoon to attack her with. For some reason (we'll blame it on the liquor) Matto-sensei has stuck some chopsticks in his nose. Cute-o!

The saddest part was saying farewell to Shouko, who has been my best Japanese friend here in Okinawa. Junko -sensei has probably been my closest and most constant companion, but Shouko is more a friend who is my age. We used to all three have our desks in a row: Shouko, Junko, Joyce, before me and Junko moved up to the LL. There we are to the right, I am wearing Jun's glasses in their suggested librarian pose. Shouko gave me bingata that she had made herself, and we had a long, tearful, and slightly intoxicated goodbye. I'll miss you, Ginowan High School senseis!

The empty house

Well. By 4pm Wednesday the entire house was emptied of vestiges of Joyce and I stood staring at my flowers -- the last thing that seemed to be a part of my life in Okinawa in the apartment -- waiting for my successor to arrive. Those were my last moments of quiet contemplation in my house before ownership moved on to someone else. It is sad leaving my little house, which has become very dear to me over the course of the year. It is odd to be sharing it with my successor these past 2 days: realizing that all "my" things really belong to her now, and watching her clothes get hung on my rack and toothbrush sitting in my holder. It was an accidental overlap due to a mix-up in her arrival date, I hadn't planned to be here at the same time as here. It has worked out well though seeing as I can show her around and stuff.

I almost feel like a ghost here. It just so happened that almost all my close friends left Okinawa a few days before me on trips, leaving me alone my last couple days (guilt trip, guilt trip, guilt trip!)
But! When I've started feeling too much like my life in Okinawa has suddenly disappeared these last few days, I just stop to sniff my flowers (a gift from Jeffu on his and Jon's last day here) and that cheers me up. Tomorrow I leave in the afternoon on the bus to Naha, to stay at Deej's (empty) pad for one night in order to easily arrive at the airport early Sunday morning. I think I will post one or two more things tomorrow morning on the blog... a final farewell to Okinawa!

Los Gaijin Iro Iro

In honor of our gang's breakup, I created a poster for me, Jeff, and Jon's imaginary country band. Yvonne is going to be our manager, fyi. During one of our many outings to the America Mura in Chatan, we stumbled upon a secret store of rainbow cowboy hats, and took lots of photos of ourselves in them. Apparently, all Americans wear these. After a democratic vote on everyone's suggestions for our new country band's name, we ended up with Los Gaijin Iro Iro: "los" is of course the Spanish definite article, "gaijin" is what foreigners are called here, and "iro iro" means "various" in Japanese. None of our Japanese skills are very graceful, but hopefully one gets the picture from our band name;-) Here we are, hung on a fake wall and all!

More Goodbyes

Before anything else happens, you need to take a look at my swell new socks to the left. I got these in Kyoto.

This week has been very busy and full of goodbyes (thus me not posting very faithfully to the blog). I've now seen all JETs for the last time (Jon Wieser even forgot his passport on Tonaki island and missed his flight to Canada JUST to get another few days with me;-). I've waved farewell to Jeff at the airport, had a farewell brunch with Junko-sensei and her family, tonight I have a farewell dinner with the librarians from school, and then tomorrow is my farewell party with all the teachers from Ginowan High. Here are a few photos from my goodbyes:
Me and Yvonne, one last outing to the beach

Tim, me, Michael: one last bash at Paul and Mike's








Jon W., Yvonne, me, and Jeff: the gang's final time at Paul and Mike's!

Me and Christina's last night out dancing at Hinotama Hall








Bye to Abhi and Robyn...

There were many more photos and many more people present and goodbyes that occurred, but many of you have probably already seen all these photos on Facebook or Snapfish so I won't relive them all for you! In any case, thank you everyone for coming out Saturday, thank you Jon for accidentally missing your flight and spending an extra few quality days with us, thank you Chrissy and boys for hauling yourselves down from way up north to say goodbye, thank you Yvonne for an excellent farewell feast last night!

I'll miss all you JETs.

Some Kyoto Pics

I'll keep updating this entry to add more photos and maybe tell you what they are of as well! Check back on it.
1. Fushimi-Inara temple (famous for hundreds of red torii)
2. Kinkakuji temple (that's real gold, folks!)
3. Lilypads on a temple garden
4. Sanjuusan gendou temple (famous for 1001 statues of the goddess of mercy)
5. Arashiyama bamboo groves
6. A geisha hurrying to an appt. in Gion, Kyoto
7. Covered bridge in garden, Kyoto

The First Goodbyes...

Ahhh, it's begun! My week of goodbyes and tragedy. Blow after blow, they come! Monday lunch was "goodbye" with my pericula girlfriends, Tuesday was the last supper with Deej (since she flew to Shanghai yesterday), and last night was the goodbye you see above (L-R: Amie, Dan, me, Nancy, Jon D., Yvonne). Sniffles, sniffles, sniffles. As a side note, those are little bowls of pig ear that we are eating in the photo. I have also completed packing one suitcase and have rid myself of no less than 3 garbage bags worth of real things. Like clothes. Magnificent.

The countdown begins: 9 days until I board the plane!

Pericula

This thing you see to your left is the miraculous Japanese invention: the pericula: tiny stickers of you and your friends that you decorate on a computer. This particular one is decorated by yours truly yesterday at a goodbye lunch with my 3 best teacher-friends from school. In every video arcade or mall there is an area of pericula machines. The machine is a large rectangle with 2 booths: one large one in which you pose and take your pictures, and one smaller one, where you decorate the photos on the computer. There are usually different booths with different themes. The booth's theme this photo was made in was "pretty pink". There are a daunting number of options when making pericula. You can have the booth take your photo from below, above, or straight ahead. You can pick background curtains that drop down behind you, and choose whether you want the photos to appear as cutouts or plain; ash, sepia, contrast, or normal, etc. It takes about 6-8 photos of you. Then comes the really hard part: decorating. You just want to cry with all the options they give you, and the worst part is that you only have 3 minutes with a clicking countdown clock to decorate each of your 8 photos. You have an electric pen and about 7 menus. Each menu contains different themes in different categories. Example, a frames themes, with different frames you can put around the photo, contains another menu with backgrounds so you can change the background design, or overlay designs, or insert shapes behind the photo. Another category is writing, with billions of different styles and colors. you can write yourself or write with their cute pre-designed alphabets, kanji, or kata. you can insert entire pre-written cute sentences and phrases. You can pick from different designs that flow out of your pen in chains on the photo, like sparkles or bubbles. You can pick many different pictures likes you see in the above photo and just insert them randomly. Plus you can change the size and color options on almost everything. Yes, thoroughly daunting. Don't get me wrong, it's super-duper fun! As good as karaoke? No way. But second best.

I've always got the feeling that no matter how many I make, I will never discover all the secrets of the Pericula.