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.

Japanese Fashion

So clearly I made my plane to Kyoto, and it was a blast! I hope I find the time to tell you all about it. There are many things I want to post on the blog before I move back to America in 1.5 weeks, but I'm swamped with packing and goodbyes and other silly business so I will just have to squeeze in what I can.

Of course I will be posting about my vacation (many of you will have gotten far too many photos of it in my Snapfish album already, btw anyone I don't know who would like to see 200 photos of Kyoto, send me your email address in a comment and I'll mail you the invite) but right now I want to post a few photos of youth fashion that I witnessed on mainland Japan. I had noticed the bizarre nature of fashion in Okinawa, but it really doesn't compare to what mainland has to offer.

First lets take a look at some boy-hair, photographed by the lovely Deejers/Robyn:

This boy hair is extra-special so it doesn't go in the same group. I saw these kids at the America Mura triangle park in Osaka:

These girls I chased down in the subway in Osaka, about one hour after arriving to mainland Japan. That's when I knew the vacation would be good. I asked them if their style had a name and they looked at me like I was crazy and scary. See the troll dolls hanging around their necks? I wonder if they are supposed to look like those things with their hair?

This girl explained to me that her fashion is a new fangled take on the traditional Japanese summer kimono. It's like hippie/rastafarian meets kimono. She worked in a store full of hand-made clothing/accessories pertaining solely to this style.

This photo is just some every-day lady's fashion, walking down the shopping district in Osaka. Most stylish females were wearing get-ups like this that looked very odd to me but seemed to be perfectly normal there:

Lastly, I finally got a good shot of a school girl. This isn't one of my students, but this is exactly what my girls look like (except mine aren't allowed to bleach their hair. This girl isn't either, but I would bet she goes to a school in the city that is too full of crazy kids to enforce discipline, there are a lot of those). Anyway, here you note the school uniform skirt rolled up around the waist so that it barely covers anything, as well as the big white baggy socks that are popular in Okinawa. I heard these were stylish like 5 years ago on mainland and came to Oki a bit later:
Unfortunately, the absolute best fashion victims that me and Cheryl saw in Osaka escaped us without photo documentation. We stumbled upon a clothing store dedicated to this fashion, and then attempted to stalk a couple going in, and we also tried to take pictures of the women working in the store/the customers in the store but they had a very strict no cameras policy and didn't let us. Probably have tourists coming in all the time and gawking at their customers, like me. Anyway, the fashion was baby dolls. Yes, grown women dressed as baby dolls. Bonnets, bows, puffy sleeved lace up dresses with puff out skirts (like tutus underneath or something), baby doll shoes, pacifiers hanging around their necks, etc. It was stunning. Their boyfriends were all wearing brightly colored striped stockings.

Kyoto, here I come?

The internet claims that my flight to Kyoto today is NOT canceled, so I am going to throw a few things in a backpack and see if I can't get on a plane at 1:20. No news is good news! If I make it, I'll be gone from the blog until Monday, July 23.

Republican Rep. Bob Allan arrested on Sex Charges!

uh, read this short article. you'll laugh.
article

A curse upon typhoon Man-Yi

Well, typhoon Man-Yi is arriving to Okinawa just in time to cancel my Saturday afternoon flight to Kyoto, where I am supposed to be meeting my friend Cheryl (coming from China) for a final bout of tourism in Asia before I return to grad school and America. After living in "Japan" for a full year, I can honestly say that I haven't seen any of Japan. I live a billion miles away from that place, it feels like it'll be a foreign country! So me and Cheryl plan to tour the famed Kansai area (Kyoto, Nara, Osaka) for 8 days. In the second-most serendipitous travel coincidence of my life (the first being the Pope dying just after I'd bought a 40 euro ticket to Rome and me being there for his funeral), I accidentally planned me and Cheryl's trip to Kyoto during Gion. Gion is like, the first or second most famous festival in all of Japan and occurs in Kyoto. We are catching the last few culminating days of the week-long thing. A curse upon this typhoon if it makes me miss Gion!

Back to my point though: just when I thought I'd escaped a year of living on a tropical island without seeing any real typhoons, Man-Yi pops outta nowhere and is about to plop down right on our heads. This one is supposed to be serious or something. School has been cancelled for tomorrow, and all flights in and out of Okinawa. No reason to be worried, we are living in sturdy concrete buildings with metal bars in the windows, not grass huts here. I will certainly be fine (we've got candles, canned goods, flashlights and all that jazz) but my co-workers claim that there is little chance my Saturday flight will not be cancelled. All I can say is, they better put me on the next one for free! It's get to Kyoto or bust, this is definitely my last shot since I'm only in the country for another 4 weeks!

A man with 2 heads

I played a game in class today (thanks for the idea, Tim!) where I read sentences aloud in English and the kids had to understand what I said and draw it. 10 sentences formed a whole picture. Below you see a most disturbing misinterpretation of the sentence,

"the man has 2 heads"

Though I have to admit, the picture IS correct.

Japanese fashion

That's a man on the right there. Doesn't he have amazing hair? NOTE: this is nothing out of the ordinary in Japan. In fact these folk are probably downright mundane. Look at their footwear as well. Women here ALWAYS wear high heels. With anything and everything. Usually the high heels are plastic and sparkling.

couple watching the sunset at the tropical beach next to my house

It looks like I've found a source of whole grain! But wait, no, this is not a pumpernickel loaf. It's another fun bit of Okinawa that I've never mentioned before. A squid ink baguette. Indeed, a fairly popular cooking ingredient here is SQUID INK. It makes things pitch black, like this otherwise nutrient-less loaf of white bread (sorry, I am very biased against non-whole grains!) You can order things like squid-ink soup and squid ink rice at a restaurant but they have the unfortunate tendency (despite their fine flavor) to turn your teeth black. I was a bit taken aback to discover squid ink bread this weekend (not to mention that the place we foudn it was a so-called American export food store), but as it turns out, the baguette is the perfect medium by which to transport the delectable flavor of squid ink to your palette without dying your entire mouth black. Yay for innovation! 3 cheers for squid ink.

Sun Phoebia

Finally! Here is the proof I've been waiting all year to get on camera of Japanese people's sun-phoebia. I remember mentioning the sun-phoebia once in an entry about Iriomote, but I'm not sure if I've ever really ranted about it. The deal is, it's cool to be white in Japan. It is everything other than cool to be darker skinned. It's a status and class issue, and it's constantly in your face. No one dares leave their home without an umbrella in the summer, I'm serious. It serves as a parasol. They avoid the beach altogether in the summer but if they're out there, they will be wearing large hats protecting their faces and will be huddling over in the concrete section's shade, watching their children play from afar. Japanese women seem to each carry around a small tube of sunscreen, which they are constantly applying to the back of their hands. If they aren't doing that, it's probably because they are wearing black arm gloves or long sleeves to shield them from a tan. At Beach Day I told Junko sensei that in America, our hands is a body part that we never apply sunscreen to, just to get a rise out of her. I wasn't disappointed, no siree! "EEEEHHHHHHHH?!!!!" She was absolutely flabbergasted. Yay cultural differences!

Now, to the left you can see a wonderful example of the Japanese sun-phoebia. This is a female jogger. THAT is her jogging outfit. She is jogging around 4pm, in the middle of summer on Okinawa. That means it's hot enough that I'm dripping sweat just sitting still. My favorite part of her outfit is the Darth Vader visor.

Odaijini Jon!

Get well soon, Jon! Our buddy Jon from the teeny weeny distant island of Minami Daito got appendicitis suddenly (does that happen suddenly? I don't know, at any rate he got sudden stomach pains and found out that he had appendicitis) last week, and had to get helicoptered to my island to go to the hospital and get it removed:-( Luckily, he's ok. They even showed him his appendix in a jar afterwards. Coooool.

Leaving Party

Sunset with dragon boats at the leaving party, June 23rd

It was leaving party 2 weekends ago, but I forgot to post anything about it. Leaving party happens every year around this time: a big party to say farewell to the old JETs going home. Right! That's me. Sniffles. About 40 of us Okinawa JETs rented a "party pad" up in Onna village (about 1.5 hours north). It was way good times. Unfortunately I actually missed most of the party because once I entered the karaoke room, I didn't come out again until 6am. I like to think of the karaoke room as makin' its own party though!

You can read a bit more about the party if you read the captions in the photo album below!

Leaving Party

Another Fun Japanese Video

Let's keep the videos comin' so you can all get a feel for what a weird place I'm living in. This video has English subtitles, though they aren't especially important. What's going on: the members of a girly J-pop band called Morning Musume have had slabs of raw meat strapped to their heads and have their heads inserted through holes into the pen of a hunger crazed giant lizard! If you remove your head from the pen, you LOSE!!!! Keep your eye out for the one chick who is cool as a cucumber among hoards of screaming others.

Okinopoly

Last night we christened Okinopoly: Hilary and Gabe's marvelous new board game that they have slaved over day and night for the last few months. This christening was especially exciting because Rachel brought oatmeal raisin cookies (not sure how she found Quaker Oats) and Hilary and Gabe made pesto and tomato salad. Oh yeah, it was oishii.

Here you can see the board. It probably won't be interesting unless you are familiar with Okinawa:


Having never played Monopoly in my life (and being proud of it, as a good anti-capitalist child should) I was relegated to Jeff's team and mostly just watched and made bad suggestions that involved cooperation or other non-Monopolistic ideals. It's a pretty cut-throat game, this Monopoly. Whatever happened to the nicer games I remember from childhood, like the Women's Suffrage card game, UNO, and North to Alaska? The world's going downhill, I tell you. But you probably didn't need Okinopoly to tell you that.