2. In Okinawa it is acceptable to stop your automobile on any road, put your blinkers on, and go out and about to your business. Go to the bank, the grocery store, visit a friend, shoot the breeze. On the highway? No problem!!! Just stop and flick on those blinkers. I find myself constantly weaving in and out of hazardous stationary vehicles, in what I like to call the Slow Poke's Tango of Death. I call it this because the speed limit in Okinawa in the city is 25mph, and on the highway it's… a whopping 30mph. That's right! 30mph an hour on the HIGHWAY. Despite the Speed Gods working in their favor, the Okinawans still manage to get into twice as many traffic accidents as mainland Japanese.
3. I have 69 channels with my satellite TV. Among these 69 is one called The Samurai Drama Channel. Dedicated purely to… you guessed it. Samurai sitcoms. What could be cooler? The Samurai channel is in competition (I am the only judge) for first place channel with Star Karaoke, where famous Japanese people make fools of themselves doing karaoke all day long. Cast your vote, if you want.
4. There are no janitors in schools. The students clean the entire school everyday, during a 7th "cleaning" period. BTW:
Brooms here are bundles of tree twigs tied together, they're not into Western style brooms. I noticed the same in Russia: every street cleaner was brushing about with a fistfull of twigs. Nicaragua had this goin' on too. What's up guys? Someone let me in on the secret. Is there some big advantage to the twig approach that I don't see? I've got to get one and try it out.5. Girls and boys sit separated onto different sides of the classroom. Not sure if this is by choice or traditional seating chart arrangement. If they have to do group work together (even at the supposedly mature age of 18) terrified giggling, and refusal to speak at all, lips pressed tightly together, heads frantically shaking, while faces turn progressively more red, ensues. If pressured to continue, I speculate that they might implode. Will keep everyone updated.
skip six.
7. They don't have substitute teachers here. If a teacher is sick or on vacation, the students just go crazy by themselves in their classroom, unsupervised.
8. Interesting fact about rice: it is incredibly illegal to bring ANY rice into the country of Japan. Though they could import rice from China for one fifth the cost of home-grown rice, the gov't thinks it would be best to remain self-sufficient in case of war, and therefore puts incredible amounts of effort into the difficult and non-profitable business of Japanese rice growing (it is difficult and non-profitable because Japan has very little flat growing land: most arable land is mountainous, so rice is produced by a bunch of family farmers, eking out little paddies on the mountainside... I once read that 28 times more labor goes into each acre of rice in Japan than the world average.) Most people here eat rice 3 times a day, at every meal. The gov't spreads these rumors that non-Japanese rice is inferior and unhealthy so that Japanese people aren't interested in chucking rice production and moving on to something more profitable. HOWEVER: Okinawa is the only place in Japan that is allowed to import foreign rice. They have a special allowance to use Thai rice. This is allowed b/c OKinawa used to be their own country before the Japanese took over a few 100 years ago, so their cultural heritage is different from mainland Japan, and they traditionally distill awamori from Thai rice. Hey, if you can't have your independance, at least have some Thai rice.
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