Bear

I've been busy this week running around trying to get all the supplies I needed for a weeks worth of Halloween themed classes. This was the most hectic week as it's my largest school. Next week will cool off and the week at Takae will be an easy, yet enjoyable, relief.

First priority was candy. I took care of that on Sunday, spending less than I thought I would. Second priority was pumpkins. I scrambled for this Monday night as the pumpkin season in Okinawa isn't now and the pumpkins they do have are much smaller compared to the ones I'm used to carving from home. Third priority was things to do in class. This has handled itself pretty well, time being spent mostly with crafts, games, games, and candy.

Amidst this busyness that I'm in, I found time Monday night to get persuaded to join some staff from the Board of Education at the Higashi Village museum. So I followed Kacho-san and Tsubasa-san on the short drive from my apartment to find a small barbecue underway. The meat? Bear. Or kuma. Another first for me and it was really good! I'm sure bear meat has a different flavor than traditional meats, but this was great. It was also explained to me that the right side of the bear is considered better tasting because, and this is pure science I assure you, most bears use their right paws to eat hachimitsu, or honey. Since the honey then runs down the right paw of the bear, the meat is sweeter.

I only planned to stay for an hour, because I had to drive to Nago to pick up some black and orange construction paper for the younger classes' pumpkin crafts. Chinen-sensei did me the favor of making some calls and arranged for a teacher at Higashi to pick the paper up in the morning and have it on my desk first thing. Now that's service! Apparently the store had closed for the night so my drive would have been futile. Instead, I relaxed into the evening, my task taken care of by someone else. Then began the "nomunication."

Nomu is the Japanese verb for "to drink." Tsurumi-san, whether previously or in a most serendipitous realization, mentioned that seeing as my duties for the night were no longer necessary, I could have a drink and begin the "nomunicating" with the rest of the company.

This was hilarious! Everyone started cracking up at mere mention and many small toasts were had to the idea. We settled on a motto for the event, something like: Nomunication is important for your life. Chinen-sensei said I should make this my announcement at each school's weekly Monday meeting - just don't do it in class! I lol'd.

Of course, drinking wouldn't suffice. Tsubasa-san's brother soon arrived bearing a guitar and I was asked to play. Beatles were the main request, and when Chinen-sensei wanted something from Chicago, all I could come up with was Hotel California. Yeah, I'm not a blues musician, never will be. It did the trick, though, and I was soon able to the put the quite mistreated instrument down for an Orion instead.

Revelry complete, and bugs biting at will, we called it a night and crashed in the washitsu at the museum. By poor chance, I fell asleep with my head facing west, a big no-no Chinen-sensei warned me when he woke me up to correct my mistake. So I turned around, settled in my new position, and failed to fall asleep. Chinen-sensei turns into a lumberjack at night and I was unable to win the battle of sleep versus sound. I finally called it at 3:00 am and drove back home to crash for three hours before starting my day.

Extracurricular

It was a good week this week. I was at Takae, the small school and had some very good lessons. The elementary lesson was probably the best. We practiced "What is this?" and had an interactive mystery box. Takako先生 and I would put something in the box, blindfold the kids, and ask them "What is this?" before allowing them to plunge their hands into uncertainty. Of all the items used, they only failed to identify two of them: a strangely shaped seashell and a blob of jelly. And now that I think of it, the 8th grade class was cool. I had the kids do a game involving changing sentence structure from "like to ~" to "like ~ing", putting emphasis on words that change like make, take, swim, etc. But the best part was the anime-style character pieces I did for each of them (there are only two in the grade). They got a kick out of the artwork, crap though it was.

I also got a little more involved in the non-class aspect of things. Tuesday I joined the P.E. class for volleyball practice and learned how to serve like a pro from Hiroko先生. Wednesday night I was invited to the weekly badminton event. I'll be going again this week and I'm really looking forward to it - because of the small size of the school, I know everyone there a lot more so than at the other schools. Its a little bit of playing favorites, but it hasn't affected the other schools, so there's no harm that I see.

Friday night was the Takae kangetsukai, a party in celebration of the hard work that has been going on for the past few weeks. I think this is what it was for, though I really have no clear idea. Anyway, it was good. The temperature in Okinawa is dropping a bit, so I was glad to have worn jeans and a blazer (I failed to do this Saturday night and was quite chilly for several hours). The yakisoba, a concoction of meat, noodles, and vegetables, filled our stomachs as the beer, awamori, HI-C, and oolong tea flowed freely. Karaoke followed and that too was a blast. I did my first successful song in Japanese - solo - and many toasts were had at everyone's musical prowess. It was 涙そうそう nada so so by Begin, a very popular Okinawan band, if you must know.

Saturday was a little more interesting, though, as I stepped up my level of interest in one of the local ladies. There was a youth festival in Ogimi, and Elina and Cliff were both going to be there, so I decided to join. Before that, however, I phoned and invited "unnamed" to the festival and was pleasantly surprised by her acceptance! Mind you, the drive for her was a little bit of a trek considering it was round trip, so I took her willingness to drive to Yanbaru with a smile. We caught some of the evening acts, headed out for Chinese, then came back in time to catch some really amazing eisa (an style of Okinawan dance, see left) performances.

Going back to "unnamed," she and I have agreed to practice each other's respective second language in an effort to improve. So while she speaks English, I speak Japanese. Her English is a lot better than my Japanese, but we do our best and it works pretty well. *Here, I plug the Nintendo DS Lite and it's Japanese dictionary cart.* It can be very frustrating, however, to have a clear idea of what I want to say only to kind of get the meaning across. I'm daily surprised, though, how an idea can get across despite language barriers; it's a promising experience.

The day spent and the temperature chilly for the first time, we parted for the night. I crashed upon reaching home, tired from...well, I'm not exactly sure - probably all the recovering I need to do from the past few weeks. I'm healthy again, though! Only now the baseball game took a toll on me and a few of the other kids: baseballs to shins, baseballs to necks, and shoulders to heads (my head in fact). But to hang out with the kids outside of class on a Saturday was a perfect way to spend it. I may not be the best English teacher to come to Higashi, but I like to think I could be one of the most interesting. Waisu desu.

Earthquake

I just experienced my first earthquake, 地震　じしん jishin. As I was sitting here viewing pictures of a friend's trip to Tokyo, I think I heard it before I felt it. Something started to rumble. Everything started to rumble. It wasn't bad, nothing moved, fell, cracked, smashed, etc. But it was definitely the earth moving underneath me. What an amazing check on insignificance.

I'll do my research and figure out what the scale was (assuming that Okinawa or nearby was the epicenter...perhaps it was a peripheral shock?). I have no idea, but I'm going to guess and say at least 3.0 to be felt. What I do know is that the Richter Scale is logarithmic, meaning a 4.0 is 10 times as powerful as a 3.0. Therefore, I can only begin to imagine what a 7.0 must be like. Waisu desu.

EDIT: Yep! Here's the info: http://www.jma.go.jp/en/quake/

Region Name: Near Okinawa Honto (main island). Under Okinawa, in the magnitude 2 category (this is the JMA Seismic Activity scale - not Richter), you'll see HIGASHISONTAIRA. For a visual reference, the X is the epicenter. I'm the closest blue dot, on the eastern edge of Okinawa. Wow...

Validated

I did some downloading today. There's a quarterly newsletter put out by some of the ALTs here in Okinawa. It's called the YAK and it covers all kinds of things, from restaurant reviews, to poetry and other various articles, doing its best to portray the practical and creative tendencies of the participants of the JET Programme. One of the features of this quarter's issues was health.

In the article, our P.A. explained a bit about some of the things that Okinawa can do to you regarding getting sick. She even mentioned that the first-years are more susceptible to falling ill due to the large number and substantial nature of the changes in lifestyle. This then explains a whole hell of a lot for the past two weeks I've spent with varying degrees of discomfort, from debilitating stomach pain to a persistent and annoying cough down to the minor eye infection (which I got from just being stupid by wearing an old pair of contacts for too long).

But I'm on the right track now! The stomach pain passed that day, my foot is healing from the slippery fall I took a few weeks ago, my cold is wrapping itself up in the form of expectorated (didn't even have to look that one up) goodness, the over-the-counter eyedrops (Japan has everything!) are taking care of that issue, and I just took my first pill for the toenail growth that I decided to stop ignoring. In a weeks time, I should be as good as if I never had any of this wrong with me in the first place.

The lesson, the realization of the reason for the sickness - not that I have to justify it, rather it's just fact - is that I've just been going too hard for the past couple of weeks. Elina had told me many weeks ago not to get too busy or too involved right away, because the body's doing a lot more work that it was doing before, even if unnoticed. It's true - attempting to understand Japanese language, kanji, and customs in a day can be quite draining; spending days around children as they develop their immune systems will also knock you out. It's all a lot more draining that one would think (I still love it!!). So this week is 体調 たいちょう taichou (bodily condition) week, one spent to relaxing, recovering, and of course, badminton and drinking...but not until the latter half.

I'll start by finishing my green tea. Waisu desu.

PS - The diving trip to the Keramas was awesome. Three great dives, great weather, numerous sea turtles, and a good group of people.

Rhythm

I had a series of thoughts about what I wanted to write today. They all have successfully left my head and left me with nothing to say. This is my fourth or fifth attempt at the start of an entry, and I've still got nothing.

Hmm, what to mention. Perhaps that I'm going to embark on a cultural exchange next week? That's the plan anyway. There are many reasons why I think this will be a good idea, all of which I won't tell you until after the fact. I'm being reserved - having worked myself up already, I don't need to start getting other people excited. Besides, I hate getting in touch with people when things are about one to two months out of date. I guess all the pent up questions are good for starting conversation, but sometimes it's better to just to keep it steady and not get too far ahead of myself.

I'm going diving this weekend. A small group is heading out to the Kerama Islands - some for snorkeling, some for diving. I'm going to try and get three in on Saturday, putting a few more hours in the log book. I hear it's beautiful, and since there appears to be clear weather coming for the next few days, I'm excited!

It would be too easy, however, if all I had to do was go diving. No. The night before, this Friday, is the night that two of my schools chose to hold their 観月会　かんげつかい moon-related party (exact definition escapes me at the moment). I'm at a loss, however, to describe how bowling and drinking and eating have anything to do with the moon, other than the fact that the moon will exist during all of these moments. Regardless, my goal is not to get drunk - in fact, not to drink at all since I've got to get home to sleep - and be rested enough for a long day on the boat.

So maybe this week of feeling like crap and hacking a lung into hand towels will give way to something a little more pleasant - some time to kick back with the teachers, a beautiful day spent above and below water, and a nice Sunday of nothing to relax, nurse the sunburn, and watch a few DVDs.

All this followed by a full five days at my first school. Don't tell anyone, but I think it may be my favorite. Waisu desu.

Slammed

I think I'm going to be okay.

This week was by far the most stressful on my body and mind. Starting with the indescribable stomach pains I had on Tuesday (a day off nonetheless!), I forgot to mention - did I? I can't remember that now - that I had injured my foot last week at a secluded swimming spot in southeastern Kunigami. I also had a migraine on Thursday and caught a cold on Friday. None of this, however, prevented me from taking full advantage of all that was going on, including attending a sports day last weekend, heading to Nago on Wednesday to practice with Higashi Junior High for their rikujo, or track & field event (which occurred yesterday), doing karate on Friday, actually heading to the track & field event on Saturday, and then of course following it up with a night of drinking with some teachers from Takae.

I slept in today, Sunday, and am blessed with the Japanese decision to make tomorrow a holiday for the purposes of Health and Sports Day. Ironic that on a day celebrating the fitness of the human body, I'm wallowing in its weaknesses. Though the nature through which the body heals and maintains itself is simply amazing, so I take the day off knowing that by resting, I'll eventually get back into a shape that will allow me to be healthy everyday. Yay, optimism!

To kick start that healthy trend, I did manage to go shopping today and loaded up on fruits and vegetables. Fruit is expensive here. Vegetables seem to be priced appropriately - at least they didn't make me stumble, like when I saw a watermelon for 1280円, or a little more than $10. By American standards, it would have seemed quite small. Regardless, I went for the cheaper stuff and browsed for the 20% items, fruit quite fit to eat but blemished in such a way as to make it undesirable. Items that "expire" within a day are also marked down quite a bit, allowing for major savings if one is willing to purchase and cook or eat items the same day. Why not?

Despite the illness, the news in Higashi-son is good. I've got plenty of food and tea for a relaxing evening, my first Japanese movie rental (review to come), and a book or two to finish out the night. Nah, scratch that. I'll be studying after the movie. I only have to learn about 14,030 more words to have a vocabulary considered on par with fluency. Grammar and sentence creation are a whole separate issue. And then there's the kanji 漢字 (for your reference). Waisu desu.

Doubled Over

I woke this morning to intense, sharp abdominal pain. I wondered if it might be hunger, so I ate a bit of food, though the pain didn't recede. I settled back onto my futon, attempting to make the time pass by studying some Japanese, but every time I moved, the pain shot through the left side of my abdomen, preventing me from moving quickly, for some moments at all. After a few hours and a failure of self-resolution, I called Chinen先生.

We started with the Higashi clinic. After some basic tests, the doctor decided to send me down to Nago City Hospital for more - blood-drawing, urinalysis, CT scan. I was put through it, still hurting, though hoping for something. Well, the tests passed, I think they dripped me a medicine, and then the pain went away. After a fulls days agony, it just stopped. Was it the medicine? I don't know. Will it come back tomorrow? I don't know.

They didn't find anything, so there's nothing to report. It just sucked to spend a day, and 20,000円, for something that doesn't even seem to have existed. But at least it's over. I hope it stays that way. I would like to teach tomorrow. Waisu desu.

Empty Handed

Another first, this time a day. October. My third month in Japan, though just the start. I cannot believe that two months have passed, a full sixth of a year! I imagine the people who've come on the JET Programme to spend only a year as Assistant Language Teachers, looking at their calendars, wondering where the time went, why it passed so quickly. "On to the next adventure," they may say, yet why be in such a hurry? There's plenty to learn right here.

Such as 空手　からて　karate. I started about two weeks ago, ending my first class in a sweaty mess. The combination of physical exertion and humidity caused my pores to open up in ways I have rarely before experienced. While at first I found my foot pivots somewhat difficult to achieve due to the friction on the gymnasium floor, I then cursed my inability so stand on a turn because of the thin layer of sweat emerging from my feet. I enjoy it, though, the feeling of strain and quickness, the successful completion of my first kata, the time spent with fellow ALTs.

Time spent, back to the beginning I suppose. I've noticed this phenomenon before, the increasingly fast passage of time. I attributed it to the fact that every new day is less a part of my life than the previous, so relatively, my days are "less" than the others, hence the "where does the time go?" feeling. I'm sure someone put this much more eloquently before. Regardless, I am determined to conquer this feeling of helplessly speedy days, though I'm not quite sure how. Unless you're moving at ridiculously high speeds, time isn't going to change for you or anyone else. So is it a state of mind? How does that work, the perception of time versus the passage of it? Isn't time imaginary anyway? So what's there to worry about?

I have no idea. And at this point, I'm lost in a disinteresting ramble, but it still ties into my amazement at having been here for a good amount of time already. I've spent time abroad before, three months of traveling last fall, but I knew when it was ending, when I would be back to work, that I couldn't make any solid international commitments. I had a very clear idea of my post-travel life. Now, I could be here for two, three, maybe even five years if I really impress someone (longer if I REALLY impress someone, like a female). Of course, the makes me think about what next. What next...

I don't know. I don't really care at this point. I've only been here two months and I can't say where I'll be in 20. The only thing I can do is live well; I could also write a better post next time. Waisu desu.