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.

Rainbows of the Rainy Season

Beach Day!

Once a year in June, Ginowan High has Beach Day. This is a day when all 650+ of our students (plus insufficient adult supervision) head out to nearby beaches from 9-3pm. I chose to go with the first year students, as they are the least likely to hit on my/ask me inappropriate questions about life and love. So I show up at Mihama beach at 9am with a latte in my hand and my shades, ready for action. Yes action. Don't think that beach day is a day for lolling about doing nothing in the sun! Is that what you think beaches are for? The regimen was tightly planned! There would be an introduction ceremony, where children were forced to sit in rows in the burning sun and give speeches. Next, there was to be a dodge ball tournament. I narrowly escaped being forced to play in this by my new found 1-5 (English Camp) buddies. Instead I became a cheerleader for their team on the sidelines. After several hours of dodge ball, it was BBQ time. In Japan, the students are responsible for all prep work as well as cleaning when anything happens. So I got to lounge about with the other teachers while 200 hundred kids bustled to and fro with bags of cabbage, large chunks of meat, bottles of gas and very heavy looking grills. Yay food!

In case it has occurred to you to wonder what my students are supposed to wear to Beach Day, if they are required to wear uniforms at school that would be inappropriate beach garb, the answer is: their gym uniforms. They were all wearing their gym uniforms. The only bit of room they had in which to shuffle was in footwear. as you know, the Japanese love different kinds of shoes for different kinds of activities. Beaches fall into one of those categories where its appropriate to wear outdoor slippers. Here are some photos of 1-5 kids' slippers.

After lunch, it was volleyball time. No time to waste digesting, we've got beach activities to complete before 3 rolls around! And then BAM, the day was over and it was clean up/closing ceremony time.

You may have noticed that there was no actual "beach" time scheduled into the day. Like, swimming or playing in the sand or sunbathing. That's because Okinawans don't do those things. They like to keep their distance from the actual water, and hang out on the concrete instead. It is a bit hard for me to be happy sitting on the concrete staring at white sands and clear turquoise waters a mere 20 feet out of my reach, but hey that's how the cookie crumbles. In fact, upon inquiry I was informed that students were not ALLOWED to get in the water on Beach Day. So none of them could drown on school time. Even though the official "beach" water in Okinawa is always roped off out to where you can still easily stand and there is a lifeguard. But about ½ my kids can't swim.