tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-173304292024-03-14T18:44:50.809+09:00The Far Side of the WorldUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-53710922200248689862008-05-08T12:28:00.030+09:002008-05-08T15:51:38.430+09:00Good-bye, Okinawa<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFFRmnSCWmXm0Cg_LMMmBj9sus8ZAEpakMW4xgeK5kuhi_BhyphenhyphenJL1FLavyDC_JQQsRfkEvECginFAupwGPN_cvlkm5_s8nJWtD-ZcpoBLyDJ1PGLlJVEg72ycAjqTLTLHcnUTF5/s1600-h/sbg+15.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFFRmnSCWmXm0Cg_LMMmBj9sus8ZAEpakMW4xgeK5kuhi_BhyphenhyphenJL1FLavyDC_JQQsRfkEvECginFAupwGPN_cvlkm5_s8nJWtD-ZcpoBLyDJ1PGLlJVEg72ycAjqTLTLHcnUTF5/s320/sbg+15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197888919057273858" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />When I first came to Okinawa three years ago, I was miserable. It was so hot. The enclosed breezeway that connected our wing of the hotel to the main building was always dripping with condensation and as thick as a sauna, and the weather outside was even worse. Relentlessly bright, stiflingly hot. None of the streets had names, it was nerve wracking trying to remember to drive on the left side of the road, and we lost both the Snow White doll and, far worse, Purple Scarf (Atanasia's security blanket) in the confusion of the trip. Even throwing something away was an ordeal --- why were there two trash cans? What's burnable and what's not? Where do I put the diapers? The empty cans of Diet Coke? All of our shipments were delayed for weeks, and I sat in this empty damned apartment as it got dirtier and dirtier (because a broom doesn't really clean beach sand, and my vacuum cleaner was somewhere mid-Pacific), surrounded by the ugliest damned government-issue furniture imaginable, and every day I wanted to cry.<br /><br />But, little by little, I found my way under the surface of this place. It turns out that, if you can get away from all of the Americans, the Alternate Okinawa that the Okinawans live in is a vibrant, laid-back, fascinating place. This is the tropical get-away of the Japanese islands, and the people who live here have almost nothing in common with the Salaryman and Office Lady from mainland. Nothing ever happens on time, and nobody cares. People make a living as starving artists here, playing music <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ42IN-lhGNSr7GDRPCHDVvNPgtQByu5PTddH0yaiDnqAaYU8IDes8YZdF_PuQN7mxvkTwHfu-gL_tdquanLr0BSPTGa6xy2k_MUbNyFbatHY_kO8V5VYk0LK9HPO2U1anbsrC/s1600-h/VFSH0018.jpeg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ42IN-lhGNSr7GDRPCHDVvNPgtQByu5PTddH0yaiDnqAaYU8IDes8YZdF_PuQN7mxvkTwHfu-gL_tdquanLr0BSPTGa6xy2k_MUbNyFbatHY_kO8V5VYk0LK9HPO2U1anbsrC/s400/VFSH0018.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889077971063842" border="0" /></a> or throwing pottery or making jewelry or carving wood --- plus, of course, the occasional seasonal stint in the bamboo fields or apple orchards. People from mainland move here because they want to opt in to the funky, artistic, deliberately underachieving lifestyle. And I got to be a very peripheral part of that, be the only goofy gaijin shopping for handmade goods on the beach or sitting in the rain listening to Okinawan folk music or feeding my kids pieces of green tea cake <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7xQ1HyfhLsn9fwE92Rt9f2oQq2dt5OC6wN2bn1moTiF1jEcNzqg1psAHmbg4_6KwqsyEI9Gpk8oz2UrlC9vP_vJY99Ce4KQhVvb8WPKPnnHvvEH51HAyouheU3V6w5ROnwR7N/s1600-h/women+fest+5.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7xQ1HyfhLsn9fwE92Rt9f2oQq2dt5OC6wN2bn1moTiF1jEcNzqg1psAHmbg4_6KwqsyEI9Gpk8oz2UrlC9vP_vJY99Ce4KQhVvb8WPKPnnHvvEH51HAyouheU3V6w5ROnwR7N/s320/women+fest+5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889348554003538" border="0" /></a> and letting them run around with all the other Okinawan kids and dogs<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsnJsii3vRYOLLmIpiQ0HTFrJfe9oQHIgkRj8Whv0qOz2X5jY1bunSVIk6KBUw13zv5_d341BjkifGQCiGQu7FmtlpdpCStdGw_GqImeJXZbk7TAeU_tUnK51BjhZLt5Uxb_To/s1600-h/women+fest+8.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsnJsii3vRYOLLmIpiQ0HTFrJfe9oQHIgkRj8Whv0qOz2X5jY1bunSVIk6KBUw13zv5_d341BjkifGQCiGQu7FmtlpdpCStdGw_GqImeJXZbk7TAeU_tUnK51BjhZLt5Uxb_To/s320/women+fest+8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889417273480290" border="0" /></a> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeCkItUH-O1v98W-z-BvwZ9QVWWm_mXOB7SXidcn5NER3um0l-G7xV0GOZxhbeYuXbmXsb7hJcvhiOGJkDooO0YyDWhCZse5VIEr-OJt94mcjPqZt_M82VvDBqVkrSRWgvRTk5/s1600-h/women+fest+1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeCkItUH-O1v98W-z-BvwZ9QVWWm_mXOB7SXidcn5NER3um0l-G7xV0GOZxhbeYuXbmXsb7hJcvhiOGJkDooO0YyDWhCZse5VIEr-OJt94mcjPqZt_M82VvDBqVkrSRWgvRTk5/s320/women+fest+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889249769755714" border="0" /></a><br />while we wait for the festival to start (because the start time on the flyer isn't really the time things start, it's only a suggestion).<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUHQhIvvETHLbpajJzcTe399RcGE5bNXXLWc7EndiSoHLrgBT5xtxqhX1fbsdT2CZZPehtXwi5FbrpeTH5H5pCWeqUNeLs43ohGu05SEivDBjwBGvboXZMUr6ZGrokAXNyDyvs/s1600-h/women+fest+13.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUHQhIvvETHLbpajJzcTe399RcGE5bNXXLWc7EndiSoHLrgBT5xtxqhX1fbsdT2CZZPehtXwi5FbrpeTH5H5pCWeqUNeLs43ohGu05SEivDBjwBGvboXZMUr6ZGrokAXNyDyvs/s320/women+fest+13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889481697989746" border="0" /></a><br />I've developed a craving for cold jasmine tea and hot cans of Georgia coffee, and I've finally figured out how to unwrap the cellophane on those triangular rice balls without tearing the seaweed. I can eat anything with a pair of chopsticks, and I automatically reach for the kleenex when I need a napkin. (That's an inside joke: if you've ever lived in Okinawa, you'll know that you generally don't get paper napkins, you get a package of kleenex at the table.)<br /><br />Now that I've learned all of these West African djembe rhythms, and a lot of excellent technique, from Daiki-san, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9VXqqIkGc5X74qTfEwb-UYEMqBztGoUqrGBPc0b2CnjlSEVcmvR64zEfosv0jjNDtn57_HTih8fmCVVBIpwcIReAGFQtygCfskdAfkgdM0l3L7DUesPmsA_sEbc6RCmhWvlmE/s1600-h/P4240121.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9VXqqIkGc5X74qTfEwb-UYEMqBztGoUqrGBPc0b2CnjlSEVcmvR64zEfosv0jjNDtn57_HTih8fmCVVBIpwcIReAGFQtygCfskdAfkgdM0l3L7DUesPmsA_sEbc6RCmhWvlmE/s320/P4240121.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887965574534018" border="0" /></a> and contributed an idea for one of the t-shirts Mitzu-san silkscreens, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiguGnSlXEvpM1qhQ5ZA4SnjsaWH1RAlcTz6Bxd83YUEnaTrK8n08LKwE1yaJ4t7PAXPaQUhiA7lIpNcPyCl1Cyg6A4-TWvIjX_MLGdMA-UrEStaRmHs3khrNKXk_YpYCM5hfyA/s1600-h/P4240119.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiguGnSlXEvpM1qhQ5ZA4SnjsaWH1RAlcTz6Bxd83YUEnaTrK8n08LKwE1yaJ4t7PAXPaQUhiA7lIpNcPyCl1Cyg6A4-TWvIjX_MLGdMA-UrEStaRmHs3khrNKXk_YpYCM5hfyA/s320/P4240119.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887810955711330" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWTyNhzCp70NLIIdh9mMXWHBQKPF9StNt9xM2Lg9fSyJdYIxAK67Q1JmOBEkn_nFacfuwW1HUxUnQ1yjJ7S0A5d9xw7EM4BuxjCfQMOXBQQKZdflRXcDtGzHwG4-rS7z31MMT6/s1600-h/P4240120.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWTyNhzCp70NLIIdh9mMXWHBQKPF9StNt9xM2Lg9fSyJdYIxAK67Q1JmOBEkn_nFacfuwW1HUxUnQ1yjJ7S0A5d9xw7EM4BuxjCfQMOXBQQKZdflRXcDtGzHwG4-rS7z31MMT6/s320/P4240120.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887892560089970" border="0" /></a> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRsmxXA8eb17tdLG9NLkQ7Xq7_iQJi0JN4AuH4Oy_TPFPJ_UZGQ9oBHZNu-yS5O3XrZBIFcFab0rKtAk4ujO9Ot3HBTLA_lxNo1k7PttpmDdUQM08Q0gGveUQv89g3cAOTMHla/s1600-h/tshirt+1.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRsmxXA8eb17tdLG9NLkQ7Xq7_iQJi0JN4AuH4Oy_TPFPJ_UZGQ9oBHZNu-yS5O3XrZBIFcFab0rKtAk4ujO9Ot3HBTLA_lxNo1k7PttpmDdUQM08Q0gGveUQv89g3cAOTMHla/s320/tshirt+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197888987776750610" border="0" /></a> now that I've learned all of the choreography for Marco Polo, Amira, <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> Veil (which I swore I hated, but, well, it's grown on me) from Etsuko-san and Sugako-san,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQV46_2RaHQBpdRR43rG9bMKMlU8f6V5l_XsZS2AdryPSUidasEMAlzgd2LiPkCXJoPKMeqZgd8vmyzut9tB8n8aUy0QE6i6ct3AfK8t4FEKu_wR2LK1NfbcKD6HkYeE-8eBGT/s1600-h/wedding+2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQV46_2RaHQBpdRR43rG9bMKMlU8f6V5l_XsZS2AdryPSUidasEMAlzgd2LiPkCXJoPKMeqZgd8vmyzut9tB8n8aUy0QE6i6ct3AfK8t4FEKu_wR2LK1NfbcKD6HkYeE-8eBGT/s320/wedding+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197889150985507890" border="0" /></a> now that I've filled my closet and my incense drawer with something new every week from my friend Mr. Victor's Indian store,<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKwOljJ8fLI7LsSjJf3lB-kdw0a4I_BafO0RGgiTNxBm5lclshHQfJYyP8r4ZhxeNSstViC3QS9JWzwrrnuCIky-_vosWgOod11JbEHc0G1bZJyjqPNsT_GoihwRKgykGroNwd/s1600-h/P4260128.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKwOljJ8fLI7LsSjJf3lB-kdw0a4I_BafO0RGgiTNxBm5lclshHQfJYyP8r4ZhxeNSstViC3QS9JWzwrrnuCIky-_vosWgOod11JbEHc0G1bZJyjqPNsT_GoihwRKgykGroNwd/s320/P4260128.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197888717193810914" border="0" /></a> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBxVMJFh2rvisgVi0eoOT5KbBw1VnBE0lqQDhA3ycxmJf_d_e0g5QSp2SzckmwWxo4IvVTM_F-V-wke07_I7WRrY-pJfTvFmGj8qZ8Lb0JcNDOw0b5Ll4VdpmAkiu-H4Xmvvn/s1600-h/P4260129.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBxVMJFh2rvisgVi0eoOT5KbBw1VnBE0lqQDhA3ycxmJf_d_e0g5QSp2SzckmwWxo4IvVTM_F-V-wke07_I7WRrY-pJfTvFmGj8qZ8Lb0JcNDOw0b5Ll4VdpmAkiu-H4Xmvvn/s320/P4260129.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197888790208254962" border="0" /></a><br />now that I've made all of these drummer <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEp8H4AMDqd6uhznpFKmoK_o6g9cdkibhGYssZphYJRUaqahpvXcGxKBy-SpF4-X2FMjOEEv77QrzrVj-5t8GWKlsqaIpyhs9Bu_I9IjKsp58MiHJ5rdxvpt7-o4Z6uFS93u3/s1600-h/DSCF0244.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicEp8H4AMDqd6uhznpFKmoK_o6g9cdkibhGYssZphYJRUaqahpvXcGxKBy-SpF4-X2FMjOEEv77QrzrVj-5t8GWKlsqaIpyhs9Bu_I9IjKsp58MiHJ5rdxvpt7-o4Z6uFS93u3/s320/DSCF0244.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887579027477314" border="0" /></a><br />and dancer <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBZWpA0w5D9Yj_MeSWjW1hcLrsGfhnUd2C8pnFQZRMjnjJVl2O6bfSTo8mvTmtUF4q1PxO80wohf-s0UWr1r4bEwH-FM1R4trLnJxwmvJRZQI8DhbUzdH4WdB-fgl49pzYfRe/s1600-h/DSCF0192.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWBZWpA0w5D9Yj_MeSWjW1hcLrsGfhnUd2C8pnFQZRMjnjJVl2O6bfSTo8mvTmtUF4q1PxO80wohf-s0UWr1r4bEwH-FM1R4trLnJxwmvJRZQI8DhbUzdH4WdB-fgl49pzYfRe/s320/DSCF0192.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887368574079794" border="0" /></a> and general free-spirit friends, I feel.... Well, not that I don't want to leave, because I do. This past winter was very hard for me, it was so cold and rained so constantly. I was always cold and damp, and mold grew on everything in the house. And in another month, it'll be hot enough to knock you down. Although, strangely, it doesn't bother me now in nearly the same way it did on the day we arrived. And it will be nice to finally be someplace where I can read the street signs and the yellow pages, where I don't constantly feel the pressure to demonstrate that I am not a Damned Gaigin (spit on the occupying army!), I'm a funky laid-back peace activist just like you.<br /><br />But, once again, I'm so sad I could cry.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAVXrac_SIt_uf7jz30RZ0AJYvPIJQde_WL4lelZ0gkDzcmpsRn_HNRPLus8eSO_OEUudDrDutlOGV7n9T4MlXD8gK-ubFOWdsomwHoaS05uwL-rq-P_-y17Dhkmv8kVwVIzru/s1600-h/comp+park+8.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAVXrac_SIt_uf7jz30RZ0AJYvPIJQde_WL4lelZ0gkDzcmpsRn_HNRPLus8eSO_OEUudDrDutlOGV7n9T4MlXD8gK-ubFOWdsomwHoaS05uwL-rq-P_-y17Dhkmv8kVwVIzru/s320/comp+park+8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197887261199897378" border="0" /></a><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-64426145759545408962008-02-28T14:10:00.008+09:002008-02-28T15:52:32.643+09:00A Period of ReflectionNews of the misdoings by Americans here on Okinawa lately has made it as far as CNN on-line (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/19/japan.military.ap/">http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/19/japan.military.ap/</a>), so I'm not going to go through the sorry details here. For anyone who is interested, the BBC website has some very thorough coverage: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7254105.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7254105.stm</a>. An "alleged" rape case started this meltdown --- "alleged" in the sense that the 38-year-old Marine responsible hasn't yet been convicted, but "alleged-in-sarcastic-quotes" because no matter what the details of the incident turn out to be, he's 38 and the girl is 14. Let's be blunt: there just aren't any benign interpretations for a 38-year-old man having a 14-year-old girl alone in his company unless he's her parent, much less driving her around in his car for several hours in the middle of the night.<br /><br />This incident alone was more than enough to strain U.S.-Okinawan relations, which were already stretched pretty thin by the continued wrangling over the relocation of the Futenma landing field (which, in a horrible irony, was initiated as a result of the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three American servicemen). But then, despite mandatory briefings about not causing any more incidents, two more Marines in two separate incidents got drunk and then stupid (although I suppose they must have been stupid even before they got drunk). One Marine got arrested for DWI, a hugely big deal on Okinawa, where the laws have recently been tightened and police are vigorously enforcing them in an effort to reform Okinawa's reputation as Japan's drunk driving capital. A second candidate for Idiot of the Year went out the same weekend, got blind drunk, walked into a local house, and passed out on the sofa. It's a little funny until you imagine waking up to find a gigantic drunk American has broken into your living room. Then there are the Marines arrested for trying to pass counterfeit bills, and the Army sergeant accused of rape.<br /><br />So we're grounded. All of us: Marine and Air Force and Army and Navy, all of the civilians who work directly for the Department of Defense, and all of their spouses and children. All 45,000 of us.<br /><br />Traffic patterns are different, since the Americans have to stay home (or on base) --- you can tell who we are because all of the license plates issued to anyone connected to the American military start with "Y." The parking lots at the 100 Yen store and at the Indian imports store and the drive-throughs at McDonald's and Starbucks are mostly empty. All of the little restaurants along the highway that passes the major bases must be hurting, not to mention the bars and tattoo parlors and nail salons. I hear that last Saturday, the wait for a table at the only civilian restaurant on base was an hour and a half. I can't even get a phone call through to the base beauty salon, and until last week you could practically get a walk-in pedicure. People waiting in line for lattes at the on-base Starbucks concession are starting to get snappy.<br /><br />Strangely, instead of easing tensions between Americans and Okinawans, I have the feeling that things are getting worse. There are rumors that locals have started calling the police if they see Americans in public (maybe true, maybe not --- it's hard to credit that the Okinawan police would actually have the authority to enforce American military regulations). There are rumors that base MPs in civilian "plain clothes" are patrolling popular local spots like the 100 Yen store and the San-A grocery store, looking for errant Americans (probably true). There are rumors that some services (nobody <span style="font-style: italic;">said</span> it was the Air Force, but everybody's <span style="font-style: italic;">thinking</span> it) were so lax in their interpretation of the restrictions that within a few days they were back in the drive-through lanes of McDonald's and Starbucks on the theory that they weren't actually <span style="font-style: italic;">in</span> any local establishments. (<span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> think this one is true --- you'd have to see what passes for Air Force uniforms to appreciate the difference in attitude.) There are rumors that "someone high up" (variously identified as a colonel or a master sergeant) decided that the restrictions didn't apply to him, was caught doing business off-base, and processed through a disciplinary action and thrown off the island in record time (probably apocryphal, and maybe even planted).<br /><br />What I notice is that, despite 2 1/2 years of being attentive to Japanese culture and making a conscious effort to be respectful of it, of taking dance and music classes for two years with Japanese teachers and students, and of experiencing nothing but politeness in return for my efforts to be a "good" (as opposed to "ugly") American, after a week of being lumped in with the worst of all possible Americans in the public eye, the public is eyeing me askance. Suddenly, I'm not myself: I'm "one of those Americans." And I feel guilty. I feel like apologizing to every Japanese person who will meet my eyes (which, right now, is pretty much restricted to the gate guards and the people working at the various base concessions). And I feel people looking at me as I wait for the children at the bus stop, as I drive from my apartment to the base library --- looking at me and wondering what I'm doing out, and wishing me hastily back into whatever hole I crawled out of. I know it's not "me" --- but it <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> "us."<br /><br />Once again, I am deeply ashamed to be an American.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-59029893192848453882007-11-28T14:42:00.002+09:002008-02-22T10:19:20.756+09:00I'm Going to HellI was at the Commissary yesterday on my weekly supply run for string cheese, hot dogs, and Diet Coke when I saw that someone had wedged a flier under the windshield wiper of my car. Fliers are a very popular form of advertising here in <st1:place st="on">Okinawa</st1:place>. Every time a new apartment building opens in the neighborhood, someone sticks a flier under your wiper just in case you’re in the market to trade up. I’ve gotten so many rain-sodden cards reminding me that there’s an <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Easier Way</st1:address></st1:street> to Get Your Car Inspected (Just Call Kinjo!) that I sometimes drive around with one stuck to the windshield for most of the day before I’m bothered enough to pull it off. It looked as if mine was the only car in the Commissary parking lot to have one, but I really wasn’t paying that much attention. I didn’t even look at it until I’d gotten the groceries put away.<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ah, but it’s a pamphlet, not a flier. The cover was no clue: “Party Girl.” I’ve seen posters lately for a new adult novelty shop carrying a line of “Women’s Lovely Friends” (whatever that is!) --- could be a promotion for that. Or maybe another of those “home party” schemes where you go to a friend’s house and buy stuff you don’t really need so that she can get a hostess gift.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5NoTId0WF4bfheU6ZwrvBsQetgE2PnGy9_CQIzIrtgbi5hnnIyQLbXQ2lwl10z80FU7EFb_FHbBn2l7XUUHXa5SBgymPkZdGxlTu5rOPOHhCQ21E0wuO4_SQEcPya3xpAnAtA/s1600-h/bs9.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5NoTId0WF4bfheU6ZwrvBsQetgE2PnGy9_CQIzIrtgbi5hnnIyQLbXQ2lwl10z80FU7EFb_FHbBn2l7XUUHXa5SBgymPkZdGxlTu5rOPOHhCQ21E0wuO4_SQEcPya3xpAnAtA/s400/bs9.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137766000381689922" border="0" /></a>Imagine my surprise when I realized what it was: a handy, pocket-sized tract warning me of the dangers of immoral behavior!<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghFkExhHjNr3jDb7A0EqAyAlXHJtJ1QaHJwjXcAR782HcvDNUCgmGI6sb_hUJsQpVMz283TT7PvlsxDy02dRkDKOOW6tepaxVqL6W1TAB5MI6zl0y9N6nnY7GJu-OCdoOuUPJD/s1600-h/bs10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghFkExhHjNr3jDb7A0EqAyAlXHJtJ1QaHJwjXcAR782HcvDNUCgmGI6sb_hUJsQpVMz283TT7PvlsxDy02dRkDKOOW6tepaxVqL6W1TAB5MI6zl0y9N6nnY7GJu-OCdoOuUPJD/s400/bs10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137766283849531474" border="0" /></a></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozLLOzLCfqcXsAxO-z7IghsBpUrXEnwYDOdF4HSXeMNzJzhHddLIAusM0Ekh1AjugZZhNP-QY_Rg7F1t0sM-rh7p3o5Is9Nuqbf6yvU_WzPkhsb09eMn9qR6h6QahofNj3W5d/s1600-h/bs11.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 582px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozLLOzLCfqcXsAxO-z7IghsBpUrXEnwYDOdF4HSXeMNzJzhHddLIAusM0Ekh1AjugZZhNP-QY_Rg7F1t0sM-rh7p3o5Is9Nuqbf6yvU_WzPkhsb09eMn9qR6h6QahofNj3W5d/s400/bs11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137766511482798178" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Why, I wondered, was I singled out for this timely warning? Then I remembered the bumper stickers.</p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnMAlSt0L3sBKibbaNf5kfb1aQgPiqrSmmavSlxqm2rjDjO_AYNIDtRW2KLW2Ek6cO5bBoEnUk5ndkbrGsuC5CzhOuGECSCoYxen9DVkwmuMc_qOgyaYQK98p2bTURSuXPfmAd/s1600-h/bs2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnMAlSt0L3sBKibbaNf5kfb1aQgPiqrSmmavSlxqm2rjDjO_AYNIDtRW2KLW2Ek6cO5bBoEnUk5ndkbrGsuC5CzhOuGECSCoYxen9DVkwmuMc_qOgyaYQK98p2bTURSuXPfmAd/s400/bs2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137766855080181874" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When, against all of my single-girl oaths, I first found myself driving a minivan (you just can’t wedge three car seats into a sports car), I decided that if I was reduced to driving a Housewife-mobile, I would approach it as a giant canvas. So I started plastering my outsized, coolness-deficient vehicles with a rotating display of liberal iconoclasm. The current collection must have inspired this concern for the state of my soul. (I’m betting on the bellydancer sticker; everyone knows that belly dancing is only a step away from prostitution.) So, let’s examine what my car says about me:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ub1cB1xoRZwdarT7bzpNxi9okN5sd6sbBpoVUT732bNFDHROXtP94R0Kmx5zPtVeUr7Sxo2xCwzmTBu4AWSi2MOIshhEWyceqU-L9t2ryeWeLAlCh3DIxxlHTgAQ1wmRbVFQ/s1600-h/bs5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_ub1cB1xoRZwdarT7bzpNxi9okN5sd6sbBpoVUT732bNFDHROXtP94R0Kmx5zPtVeUr7Sxo2xCwzmTBu4AWSi2MOIshhEWyceqU-L9t2ryeWeLAlCh3DIxxlHTgAQ1wmRbVFQ/s400/bs5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137767271692009602" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">Well, there’s a Japanese kanji that says “peace,”a sentence suggesting the practice of kindness, a sticker for a local group called “Hug the Earth” (self-explanatory, I think),<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 239px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBHS9qR26JtvrIxtSsuffiCZWJnl5UyP0XrORnBPqXful3mqL72SVYEXTGTziOlanPY_oQ4TSdhYNfwHo_vobP9c4ATJ2AfUVkMP48hsdM92uoRWrbcFfhtNgAIOwlu2X_KxG6/s400/bs1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137767649649131666" border="0" /></p><br /><br /><br />a symbol for Gaea (more Earth-hugging!),<br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpc1n2j1ITImfIfibjOkWGAFTXGxPiSeP6sJlxlCbF8qBuO5_3exheNoN4Sk6VsZvkLxR9eTJHU4Mf_aYibp5GcGdjdIw-j7Z3XqjDSrhcoyg0u-ggCv_Hh8FPNZS59EiNvPv/s1600-h/bs3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 259px; height: 195px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJpc1n2j1ITImfIfibjOkWGAFTXGxPiSeP6sJlxlCbF8qBuO5_3exheNoN4Sk6VsZvkLxR9eTJHU4Mf_aYibp5GcGdjdIw-j7Z3XqjDSrhcoyg0u-ggCv_Hh8FPNZS59EiNvPv/s400/bs3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137768083440828578" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">a Sanskrit word for tolerance,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">two drumming stickers, the word “bellydancer,” and the outlines of a family (with parents of opposite genders).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqvI8lUzHPNDVZeSfyIRuscwEcE3J_Z3UeN00HfoRVKezbmGbT3byby9VQGDB7_QsnqJx4RRRrTr7LT1VDfxHJECm3731-sOkxyu2H0QdEWfNhgkM0b6yKCa_Ws2zry4b5AI1/s1600-h/bs4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 257px; height: 192px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqvI8lUzHPNDVZeSfyIRuscwEcE3J_Z3UeN00HfoRVKezbmGbT3byby9VQGDB7_QsnqJx4RRRrTr7LT1VDfxHJECm3731-sOkxyu2H0QdEWfNhgkM0b6yKCa_Ws2zry4b5AI1/s320/bs4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137771532299567346" border="0" /></a></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPRpzq2U_ua16jpYrwcUe6zR95_hvic_1RRsss9M671lXmEv6LhE36UshvLIv3J1naM9D4an8s5QRYGWkYDFQxwHxQ4-m4A-acxjufTZ2brX0UuGftOzmS-r47t1CqAGsNeX29/s1600-h/bs6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 165px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPRpzq2U_ua16jpYrwcUe6zR95_hvic_1RRsss9M671lXmEv6LhE36UshvLIv3J1naM9D4an8s5QRYGWkYDFQxwHxQ4-m4A-acxjufTZ2brX0UuGftOzmS-r47t1CqAGsNeX29/s400/bs6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137768474282852546" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;" class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bsV3MeXiiHOvBhbRhSHHSavxJU9X8YqWgAPqRZ9r4Ch3LaigpWb0BZvLQ0lSqDmRopboNHPtkF3vvr1tdvkzWdt53cOoxnMeGURfjeB2VVDvoIdDMcuXK7aeZL6NNm7XA884/s1600-h/bs7.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 208px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6bsV3MeXiiHOvBhbRhSHHSavxJU9X8YqWgAPqRZ9r4Ch3LaigpWb0BZvLQ0lSqDmRopboNHPtkF3vvr1tdvkzWdt53cOoxnMeGURfjeB2VVDvoIdDMcuXK7aeZL6NNm7XA884/s400/bs7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137768543002329298" border="0" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Clearly, this says …. no, wait …. I <span style="font-weight: bold;">am</span> going to hell! How could I have missed this before? Thank God some vigilant Christian pointed it out to me!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Now I have the opportunity to reform my life, so that I can later join all of my intolerant, environment-hating, rhythmically challenged friends in heaven.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Hang on ---<span style="font-style: italic;"> those </span>aren’t my friends. These are my friends.</p><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGyaE5pvGbNDzXZzPVFPz1SHJx1uOQkkXJw_m2WrI3OnXxxewGer9E-JfKfY-dK4YMvdzLgBUOdcdKDGkTqfD5RFMT7aZO0TNaeGTb4UyWaFtgG6_jBd_dsh4uxxbQFXXPqqk/s1600-h/DSCF0192.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGyaE5pvGbNDzXZzPVFPz1SHJx1uOQkkXJw_m2WrI3OnXxxewGer9E-JfKfY-dK4YMvdzLgBUOdcdKDGkTqfD5RFMT7aZO0TNaeGTb4UyWaFtgG6_jBd_dsh4uxxbQFXXPqqk/s320/DSCF0192.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169607531173695810" border="0" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnjkRWFP4YqEAcb_sXk5gQkI3AXZQ-26YmSb63pi-1ZtmuC5cj3Z4TbHbUHyyEBTZHXXSTTya57r0L1c_5ILZodm1NZWIYUWSgOPijlLmtq7-7jbrf6Kviq1z2Z_FgAGl84YA/s1600-h/DSCF0244.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnjkRWFP4YqEAcb_sXk5gQkI3AXZQ-26YmSb63pi-1ZtmuC5cj3Z4TbHbUHyyEBTZHXXSTTya57r0L1c_5ILZodm1NZWIYUWSgOPijlLmtq7-7jbrf6Kviq1z2Z_FgAGl84YA/s400/DSCF0244.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5137769084168208610" border="0" /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGyaE5pvGbNDzXZzPVFPz1SHJx1uOQkkXJw_m2WrI3OnXxxewGer9E-JfKfY-dK4YMvdzLgBUOdcdKDGkTqfD5RFMT7aZO0TNaeGTb4UyWaFtgG6_jBd_dsh4uxxbQFXXPqqk/s1600-h/DSCF0192.JPG"></a><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLZngIDCJF_E2NAgV33RUvHvLdA2p7aNMje3eGb-5m-EcrO0gr_QY0z-0D_3I1MZuFQi1zhLXMv9ho8T-o3Rq57AjmIrWjhskVLdjcOn1W0fFZDyLATO3gNZbM8XeGZcOpKZ2/s1600-h/Japanese+bellydancers.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLZngIDCJF_E2NAgV33RUvHvLdA2p7aNMje3eGb-5m-EcrO0gr_QY0z-0D_3I1MZuFQi1zhLXMv9ho8T-o3Rq57AjmIrWjhskVLdjcOn1W0fFZDyLATO3gNZbM8XeGZcOpKZ2/s400/Japanese+bellydancers.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169597390755909922" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYjiRTDDihmQei2fG92dEDfbCi5qvRPBabmq_An7aTFxj-8fCav5CCD0yE_NE0Hq8QQXnQHTkSC_Bl9y8wWeTgC2nUhb4O4yCZPzv3ZljH8j9pYtoLtQypHQYSM3c810tjHg-/s1600-h/coffeegirl4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYjiRTDDihmQei2fG92dEDfbCi5qvRPBabmq_An7aTFxj-8fCav5CCD0yE_NE0Hq8QQXnQHTkSC_Bl9y8wWeTgC2nUhb4O4yCZPzv3ZljH8j9pYtoLtQypHQYSM3c810tjHg-/s400/coffeegirl4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5169597081518264594" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span class="title"><br /></span> <p style="font-style: italic;">In heaven all the interesting people are missing.<span class="title"><br /></span></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><span class="title"> ----Friedrich Nietzsche</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-65975809806816546312007-09-13T11:08:00.002+09:002008-12-20T17:01:22.289+09:00Nothing Ventured<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNciRMEScSEQH7sYhF-CgG7egesKhdTm5J1B1pAItNI5oMR5AdrXBV0aKdTWQek2qZk9banNHghfFN1Y9iymvXHrYdDLNE5zB5VXX-8u9oeJx7VygXUKmiHTcU8cdi6v_E1WtO/s1600-h/Sep07Cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNciRMEScSEQH7sYhF-CgG7egesKhdTm5J1B1pAItNI5oMR5AdrXBV0aKdTWQek2qZk9banNHghfFN1Y9iymvXHrYdDLNE5zB5VXX-8u9oeJx7VygXUKmiHTcU8cdi6v_E1WtO/s400/Sep07Cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5109519479780373330" border="0" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal">In spite of my misgivings, I accepted the job at Venture Magazine. “You’ll love it,” said the woman at Human Resources. “They’re a very close group in that office.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well, she was half right.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I found the job by reading the Jumbotron on Kadena Air Base as I drove past at 50 kph. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">WRITER/EDITOR WANTED.....CALL 634-1234….WRITER/EDITOR WANTED……</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There’s probably a lesson to be learned here, about the advisability of taking jobs advertised on large electronic devices. But I didn’t have my Hindsight Glasses on that day and so, balancing a piece of paper on the steering wheel, I jotted down the phone number.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In amazingly short order, I’d had an “informal” interview and an “unofficial” job offer. (You’re right. Both of those terms should have told me something.) The job was at something called Venture Magazine, generated by the Marketing Department of Kadena Services. The use of the word “magazine” implies that the publication involves actual journalistic content. In reality, the product is a 48-page glossy advertising supplement designed to attract members of the Air Force community to on-base locations at which they can spend their money. There was no actual writing involved, and precious little editing. My job was to take the material forwarded to me by the account reps (a handful of 20-something young women kept constantly busy making phone calls and generating email and promotional posters and buying each other lattes at Starbucks), edit it minimally to match the format of previous issues, and proofread the final product. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The work turned out to be a lot more interesting than I’d guessed, although the magazine only took up about half of my time. I could occasionally actually write something for the Services segments in the base newspaper, even though it had to involve selling a Services event. Every week, I also put together the Weekly Highlights email: truncated slugs of text headed with clip-art animation. I had great success with the blurb for a Seafood Spectacular dinner, which I headed “Bite Me!” with an animation of a crab. The Officer’s Club manager liked it so much he wanted to print it on paper lobster bibs, although I believe he was talked out of it. But into every happy marketing garden a little rain must fall. My particular cloudburst was the oldest of the Account Rep Girls.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Maybe you recognize her?” the manager said to me when he introduced us. “The host of the Services Highlights television show?” Um, no. The show doesn’t run off-base. But she was obviously the Big Fish of the staff (every office has one). And it was pretty clear that she didn’t exactly warm to me. Surreally, during my second week in the job I was talking to a manager at one of her accounts who said to me, “You’re a lot nicer than I thought you would be. When I asked about you, she said, ‘Oh, her, nobody likes her.’” Really? It took me a lot longer than that to realize that I didn’t much like her, either, and even then I omitted the step where I spoke badly of her to people with whom she worked. Maybe that was in the Phase 2 Customer Service Training class that I didn’t get to. Ah well, I thought. I’m 15 years older than she is, I didn’t go to either of the drink-until-you-puke celebrations after work, and I’m not all that interested in the affordability of plastic surgery in the Philippines. We just don’t have a lot in common. Foolishly, I relied on my previous professional experience, which led me to believe that you don’t have to be best friends with your coworkers as long as you conduct yourself professionally and courteously. What was I thinking?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>My eminently sensible plan of doing my job well and treating my coworkers like professionals was completely derailed by my ignorance of the Avoid Conflict at All Costs school of management. As it turns out, in the metrics of the office as high-school microcosm, one irate Girl Bully outranks a newly hired pseudo-writer/editor, no matter how professional. With a refreshing lack of ceremony, I was fired. Here are the official reasons: I didn’t consult sufficiently with the advertising reps (well, it’s true that I did decline to let Fish Girl decide how to do my job as well as her own), and I wasn’t creative enough (I’ll let you be the judge of that).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So. Did I gain valuable real-world experience from taking this job? Truly, yes, I did. I learned a lot about how a monthly glossy magazine-substitute is made, about format and layout and graphics. I also learned a lot about what an office looks like in the absence of actual managerial oversight, which is not a pretty thing. And I learned that being good at your job is often not what, in the end, you may be evaluated on. Now there’s a Real Life lesson worth the pain of admission!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-89845452179494052282007-07-15T10:55:00.001+09:002007-07-17T19:10:23.331+09:00Typhoon Man-Yi<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVH_D-oEDPPP0QeL0JAljztbL8UeJkLwQjfsBsS1mktBdcANBNivA2p-5rYv7aDd5xMXrD78EdmBQ_w_SttuiIRuB0WS6TAX_VKZV2gU_O3sjSI4RZdaip_OAZinZ1_iffc8ro/s1600-h/typhoon11.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVH_D-oEDPPP0QeL0JAljztbL8UeJkLwQjfsBsS1mktBdcANBNivA2p-5rYv7aDd5xMXrD78EdmBQ_w_SttuiIRuB0WS6TAX_VKZV2gU_O3sjSI4RZdaip_OAZinZ1_iffc8ro/s400/typhoon11.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087236649337086386" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Typhoon Man-Yi is the first big storm in two years to actually hit Okinawa. We've had so many distant misses in the past years, so many false alarms, that there was some question whether this one was worth all of its press. Well, Man-Yi was pretty spectacular. It took close to 20 hours to pass completely over us, and the rain continued for another entire day after it was gone. The Japanese meteorological agency recorded wind speeds of 100 mph on Okinawa, with gusts up to 145 mph.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxra4hyphenhyphentDAv8YlfDKKiulfYcz0tzzIBm2FjNtD-nqixpUUk9qZ9BwwdLRWF3x1jwfGZZk9j-Y71BNVsEFw6MStXihrRjIafV3TMruwvl-EmOC4Co81QsjpcI8aq91JozbvjtE/s1600-h/typhoon12.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxra4hyphenhyphentDAv8YlfDKKiulfYcz0tzzIBm2FjNtD-nqixpUUk9qZ9BwwdLRWF3x1jwfGZZk9j-Y71BNVsEFw6MStXihrRjIafV3TMruwvl-EmOC4Co81QsjpcI8aq91JozbvjtE/s400/typhoon12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087272087112245746" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The great thing about typhoons, as opposed to tornadoes, my personal least-favorite disaster, is that you can see 'em coming. We knew Man-Yi was on its way for several days. Other storms in the past two years have veered before hitting the island, dumping a lot of rain on us but not really inconveniencing anybody all that much. But by Thursday morning we all knew we'd better get ready. Since my new job is located on the air base, I have access to better weather updates than offices on the Marine bases (military weather information for the Pacific comes from the air force "weather flight"), so we knew by 9:00 Thursday morning that Man-Yi wasn't going to slide around us. Some of the air force weather maps are great --- in the hemispherical satellite capture, you could see Man-Yi like a smudged fingerprint in the Pacific. By lunchtime, the rush to the commissaries was on, as everyone suddenly realized that they didn't have enough diapers or Diet Coke to hold them through the storm. (Liquor sales are halted on the bases once you go into TCCOR-2, I think it is, in an effort to prevent bored, drunk servicemen from doing stupid crap like something I just heard of: squirrel surfing, where you lay on your back in a flooded field with a blanket tied to your ankles, holding the top corners in your hands, and let the wind pick you up and literally fly you. Until you hit a rock. However, the smarter squirrels among us know that Japanese stores will sell you alcohol, too, and they don't close for bad weather. Not that I'm condoning drinking your way through natural disasters!)<br /><br />By 10:00 on Thursday, the schools dismissed kids in summer school classes; at 3:00, government employees were sent home. We were in pretty good shape --- we happened to have a full fridge and pantry (and freezer) and we were stocked on diapers and toilet paper, so Ed ran to the Commissary for more apple juice and milk, and to the PX for a dozen new videos, and I ran a tub full of water when I got home. We brought in all of our outside things (the patio furniture, the kids' bikes, the sunflower plant Atanasia grew for Mother's Day and the bean plant Sebastian grew for his last science project) and made sure all the windows were closed. I pulled both cars into our space under the building, thinking that they would be more sheltered from flying debris there. And that was pretty much all we needed to do.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaH3MVo-6yM3wY-RrYHI2aOiytbEERZCpghM1jxAJakKL2h6bkCenwKRCe6w6BV7fQEtXTv5BMoiNPYj1FQ_XDVvtTIzSUL5lMk2W6O_kPrUpb2932YTAA3N2xETxErHzKfwPH/s1600-h/typhoon10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaH3MVo-6yM3wY-RrYHI2aOiytbEERZCpghM1jxAJakKL2h6bkCenwKRCe6w6BV7fQEtXTv5BMoiNPYj1FQ_XDVvtTIzSUL5lMk2W6O_kPrUpb2932YTAA3N2xETxErHzKfwPH/s400/typhoon10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087271941083357666" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Other than the adrenaline rush of knowing the typhoon was coming, Thursday was a regular day. The sky was a solid pack of clouds, and the wind was already strong enough that it was hard to walk through, but once we'd finished our storm-prep chores, things went on as usual. We had dinner, watched the Disney channel, and put everyone to bed at the regular time. I woke up at about 3:00 Friday morning to that freight-train sound I remember from the last, nearest miss --- it's the sound the wind makes as it smashes against solid objects like the building you're sleeping in. But by the time everyone was awake Friday morning, the rain was slacking off and the wind wasn't as strong, and it seemed as if we'd slept through it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjavuM5tQ7ncdXIHWyl-mC9zCJ-FXdytv1N8OHaL8rBiMv40D3WaLXCPO7tdtGBOCNtpD3A5OAiRRGHvYJdsxvQcZrqX0eNyqMKc0cg-elOTgOr75d82QNth7tN4zBm5hRJiIpg/s1600-h/typhoon3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjavuM5tQ7ncdXIHWyl-mC9zCJ-FXdytv1N8OHaL8rBiMv40D3WaLXCPO7tdtGBOCNtpD3A5OAiRRGHvYJdsxvQcZrqX0eNyqMKc0cg-elOTgOr75d82QNth7tN4zBm5hRJiIpg/s400/typhoon3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087271438572184002" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Turns out, this was the eye, and in another hour the back wall of the typhoon passed over. I'd wanted to see how high the surf got during the typhoon, but there was so much rain, all slashing through the air sideways, and the wind was thrashing the trees around so violently, that really you could only see maybe 30 feet into the park across the street, and not as far as the ocean.<br /><br />We didn't lose power, although since you don't have "cable" tv service in Okinawa but satellite service instead, you lose that in any moderate rainstorm, so we lost television reception most of Friday and part of Saturday. The armload of new videos kept the kids happy, but they were pretty tired of being stuck in the apartment by Friday afternoon. We let them go up to the 4th floor to see if they could visit a friend --- turns out, the 2nd floor gets a lot more shelter from nearby building than the higher floors, and they got some flooding in the upstairs apartments.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkisifaTe3VX2sqNNJjGWcNQS88ZeN5yKp_1_BXYp1ziaIp6q1Pfibl5eFK6iw1zhuu-jPKV7XWVvww7kFgnS6F3rjX8tgkPhn9oiNQPrrTCWvPIDrR9UAO-q20ju6vD1tn23n/s1600-h/typhoon1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkisifaTe3VX2sqNNJjGWcNQS88ZeN5yKp_1_BXYp1ziaIp6q1Pfibl5eFK6iw1zhuu-jPKV7XWVvww7kFgnS6F3rjX8tgkPhn9oiNQPrrTCWvPIDrR9UAO-q20ju6vD1tn23n/s400/typhoon1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087272490839171602" border="0" /></a><br />By Friday night, Man-Yi was past us and on its way to mainland, where a lot of people got stuck at Kansai airport. We still had a solid mass of clouds all day Saturday, and so much rain that anything that had already started leaking got a lot wetter. As I drove to Okinawa City on Saturday morning, most of the storm damage I saw was broken tree limbs (now I see why they keep the trees so severely pruned here --- they keep the branches trimmed so that the tree is compact) and some smaller trees uprooted.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyoAkgpAAxueMSM_fuhT93_gyyytHX42QFn8dNY6xHH5_jFCtKHbFIBv9y9dGgCfMM-9AyiYhDxTRJAkNmhrnoAR6FpBkSUX4R6SV5xIdJK2ifCrTs513on_i-RMNdPbs2opx/s1600-h/typhoon7.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyoAkgpAAxueMSM_fuhT93_gyyytHX42QFn8dNY6xHH5_jFCtKHbFIBv9y9dGgCfMM-9AyiYhDxTRJAkNmhrnoAR6FpBkSUX4R6SV5xIdJK2ifCrTs513on_i-RMNdPbs2opx/s400/typhoon7.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087271743514862034" border="0" /></a><br />A few businesses that left their awnings out had them shredded, and the places that left their advertising banners out had some of them tangled, but apart from one light truck that Ed and the kids saw flipped over, and the damage that some cars got from being parked under trees (silly Americans), the damage here was very light. Okinawa has a system of "rivers" (concrete-bedded streams) leading from further inland to the sea that channel storm surges and prevent New Orleans-style flooding. All of the coastlines near urban areas are studded with huge concrete breakwaters (they look like 10-foot-tall concrete jacks), and most of the beaches have artificial breakwaters further out in the ocean, as well. The expression "safe as houses" could have been invented to describe modern Japanese architecture --- even during the occasional earthquake, our building is flexible but solid, and it didn't so much as budge under 100-mph winds. All we really needed to do was come home, close it up, and stay inside.<br /><br /><br />But finally, this morning, it's all blown away and we woke to another startlingly perfect island day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnBpEZp2IS4PyyPc-1k0O7a0CsxTTs5j7ZNjpw3_pM06impJcffeCwkhBGlTwh0mq41SN6tW7qBRRAWgaeVu09We6QWB_VHHeCIsk8F0aoc7qZQ1Tw0dD_IpKepw3n4yG5YZxd/s1600-h/typhoon13.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnBpEZp2IS4PyyPc-1k0O7a0CsxTTs5j7ZNjpw3_pM06impJcffeCwkhBGlTwh0mq41SN6tW7qBRRAWgaeVu09We6QWB_VHHeCIsk8F0aoc7qZQ1Tw0dD_IpKepw3n4yG5YZxd/s400/typhoon13.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5087272164421657090" border="0" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-84426365069212790812007-05-22T11:42:00.000+09:002007-07-02T14:36:17.923+09:00What the War Has Cost MeMy husband has been an active-duty Marine for the past twenty years. Last year, a week before Christmas, he was deployed. I was lucky: my husband’s field is finance, and he ended up in a support billet in the Gulf instead of on a patrol in Baghdad or Al Anbar Province. Although his job has taken him to the Green Zone twice so far, I don’t have the daily fear of his being shot by a sniper or riddled with fragments from an IED, or of his vehicle or helicopter spiraling through the air trailing smoke. I can’t complain. I don’t. Military wives (and husbands) live in an atmosphere of unrelenting stoicism. But I’m not writing about my fears or my rage or my politics. I’m taking stock of what this war has cost my family.<br /><br />This war has cost my children the joy of sharing Christmas and each of their birthdays with their Papi. My son turned 9, and my daughters 6 and 3, while their father was away. This war has cost me the help of another parent when all three children had the flu at the same time, and the level head of my husband when the little one was vomiting so severely I took her to the emergency room. This war has cost my children 200 days of playing Ride the Horse and Gotcha and What’s That on Your Shirt? and The Ceiling Fan Is a Tornado with their Papi. We will have missed 200 dinners together by the time he comes home, and all of the pancake breakfasts he would have made. I will have missed all of those nights of hearing my husband breathing next to me, those mornings watching him brush his teeth, those evenings laughing over a bad movie or planning our future after he retires. And all of the times I’ve been tired, or sad, or lonely, the war has cost me the comfort of my partner, and the advice of my dearest friend. It has cost my husband his son’s school awards ceremony, the chance to watch his daughter wiggle her first loose tooth, the elusive moment when his toddler stopped being a baby and became a kid. As great as the effort he puts into staying in touch by phone and web cam, he will still have missed 200 days of coming home after work to the excited yells of “Papi!” and the sound of running feet.<br /><br />Worst of all is the price that we will continue to pay after my husband returns. Even if, through great good fortune, he comes home never having been shot at and never having had to try to kill another person, my husband will still not come home the same person who left. War changes those who experience it, from whatever perspective. How could it not? The question is only in what ways, to what extent. The Marine who comes back won’t be exactly the same friend, the same husband, the same Papi who left. Our efforts to find ways to make ourselves into a family again are the last, unknown costs of this war for us. Others have paid prices even higher, and I grieve for them. <br /><br />I suspect that people reading this may be saying to themselves, “That’s too bad, but this is what she signed up for when she married someone in the military.” And of course that’s true although, from the time we were married until now, my husband has never served at a duty station from which he could be deployed, so we never prepared ourselves for it. We simply never imagined a conflict lasting this long, one that would dig so deeply into the heart of the Corps. At the end of January, the Commandant of the Marine Corps issued a message, ALMAR 002/07, saying that the Corps intended “to allow every Marine [the] opportunity” to deploy and “to identify Marines who have not yet deployed…and facilitate their reassignment to rotational units.” Marines with various non-combat specialties --- food service, finance, logistics --- are finding themselves deployed as frontline troops. After all, “Every Marine a Rifleman.” But even families who have known from the beginning that their Marine would deploy are not less affected by it. In ALMAR 008/07, the Commandant wrote, “The current operational tempo of the long war has resulted in strain on our Marines and on the Corps as an institution…. I am…concerned with the stress of multiple deployments on our Marines and their families.” <br /><br />So far, the war in Iraq has cost the United States around $700 billion in direct spending, meaning not counting things like the lost productivity of deployed reservists, or how much that money would have improved the U.S. economy had we spent it at home, or the war-related increase in the price of oil. Divided by the current U.S. population, I get $2,320 per person. Of course, my pocket calculator’s screen can’t show 700 billion (a 7 and 11 zeros), so I rounded. Even if you never know someone who fought in Iraq, this was has cost all of us. I believe that General Conway already knows what the war has cost my family. I bet Mrs. Conway knows even better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1170748558418886702007-02-06T16:21:00.000+09:002007-02-06T17:04:28.096+09:00Heart and Star: A Romance<em>Once upon a time, two beautiful girls, a Heart and a Star, both wanted to marry the same Heart boy. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/956090/heart%20and%20star%201.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/521146/heart%20and%20star%201.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />So they had had a competition, and the Heart boy picked the Heart girl to be his wife. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/594018/heart%20and%20star%202.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/628141/heart%20and%20star%202.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />But the Star was very angry, and she and the Heart had a fight (there was smoke).<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/269136/heart%20and%20star%204.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/678347/heart%20and%20star%204.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The Star tried to marry the Heart boy and he didn’t know it was her, so the Star married him. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/272124/heart%20and%20star%203.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/328143/heart%20and%20star%203.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Then the Star mixed up a potion and pretended to be nice to the Heart. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/232595/heart%20and%20star%205.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/690205/heart%20and%20star%205.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The Heart drank the potion when she was at the beach, and the potion turned her into a mermaid. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/685816/heart%20and%20star%206.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/789919/heart%20and%20star%206.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The Heart was sad, but then she met a mermaid boy and she wasn’t so sad. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/610920/heart%20and%20star%207.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/221953/heart%20and%20star%207.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/504230/heart%20and%20star.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/453633/heart%20and%20star.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />He showed her a room she could sleep in, and she went to bed and went to sleep. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/982375/heart%20and%20star%208.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/997900/heart%20and%20star%208.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />When she woke up, she found the potion that the Star gave her, and she thought about who it belonged to. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/151197/heart%20and%20star%209.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/590089/heart%20and%20star%209.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />She had an idea that it belonged to the Star, and she was very mad. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/3432/heart%20and%20star%2010.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/131066/heart%20and%20star%2010.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />So the Heart made her own potion, and drank it. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/618125/heart%20and%20star%2011.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/23476/heart%20and%20star%2011.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Her potion turned her back into a human. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/411808/heart%20and%20star%2012.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/378415/heart%20and%20star%2012.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/653115/heart%20and%20star%2013.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/468508/heart%20and%20star%2013.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />She went back to the Heart boy’s house, and they hugged each other. (The Star was so mad, she had a volcano coming out of her head.) <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/960043/heart%20and%20star%2014.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/975659/heart%20and%20star%2014.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/342636/heart%20and%20star%2015.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/859502/heart%20and%20star%2015.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />And then the Heart girl and the Heart boy got married. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/906853/heart%20and%20star%2016.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/686464/heart%20and%20star%2016.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The End.</em><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/284108/heart%20and%20star%2017.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/200/299414/heart%20and%20star%2017.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Pictures and story by Atanasia Rives, age 5-but-almost-6. Here's what the whole thing looks like.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/1600/373623/heart%20and%20star%20all.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4119/1668/400/443078/heart%20and%20star%20all.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1167781801722745512006-12-20T20:48:00.000+09:002007-01-03T08:50:01.740+09:00City of LightsI am sad and tired and angry and determined. <br /> <br />I knew I was going to have to do this impossible thing, like walking through a stone wall a mile wide, and I decided that the only way to get through to the end was to start out with as much momentum as possible. So I ran at the damn thing as hard as I could, because I've got to get as far as I can before I really feel the impact, so that momentum can carry me through to the other side. If I stop now to understand just how bad it feels, I'll never be able to take another step. <br /> <br />I read today that Bush was floating the idea (which I think McCain originally thought of --- I generally respect him, but this was truly stupid) of bulking up troop level in Iraq by another 20,000 or so. Damn these stupid feebs, troops are not rifles or field packs or MREs, troops are PEOPLE, wives and husbands and fathers and mothers, or daughters and sons and brothers and sisters. Every single person who is snatched up out of their lives and thrown into that maelstrom is beloved of someone, and the sacrifice of this time from their lives and of their safety and the wholeness of their bodies, the sacrifice of the bleeding holes each of them leaves in the lives of the families they left, HAS to be for some purpose. Right now, there is no plan, no mission for the Americans who are deployed, fulfilling the promises made by their president. There HAS to be a workable plan, first, for the way that these extra lives are going to make the lives of the people in Iraq better, before the sacrifice of their time (and blood) in Iraq makes sense. <br /> <br />I want this to end well. One of my favorite Arabic language teachers was Iraqi, and (many years ago) he described Baghdad as the Paris of the Gulf, full of cafes and artists and intellectuals on the banks of a river from the morning of human history. Palm trees and cool evenings and endless lights. I so much wanted to see this Baghdad; if I believed that the wall I am fighting through now would ultimately restore that place to the world, I could swallow my sadness because I would be thinking of my teacher and his brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, finally able to rebuild their city of lights. <br /> <br />This is my demand. For my heartache, I want the city of lights. I want to mourn the absence of my husband, my children's father, knowing that I am letting a woman in Iraq sleep knowing that her husband, her children's father, is safer. I demand this. And this is not what is happening. So I demand a better solution, a new idea.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1164676340639017672006-11-28T10:08:00.000+09:002006-11-28T10:12:20.650+09:00Ed Is Deploying to IraqMy husband is going to Iraq because he's an officer in the Marine Corps, with 19 1/2 years of service (which means he's very, very close to retirement), and he made an oath to obey the orders of his commanders. And because, despite EVERYTHING I've done, all the letters I sent to Congress and all the protests I went to and all the petitions I signed and all the money I gave to other candidates and both times I voted --- despite working every day to stop this misguided war, my country is being led by a stupid, lying rich man who doesn't care that what he's done is a mistake that's being paid for with the blood of our husbands and the blood of Iraqi women's husbands. I am so angry I could spit. I hope one day the people of Iraq will forgive us, and realize that there were many, many of us who were happy to see Saddam go but devastated to see what happened to their country because of decisions our president made that we had no control over. George Bush is a blight on our country, and for many years I have been ashamed to call myself an American. <br /><br />Ed leaves in two weeks, and he'll be somewhere in Baghdad (we don't know where yet) for 7 months. He'll miss Christmas, and all the children's birthdays. It's going to be so hard for them, they're so close to their papi. Hard for me, too. Hardest of all because it's for something I think is terribly wrong. He's not a combat officer, he's a finance officer, so he shouldn’t be going on patrol, he should be in an office somewhere. They issued him his gear last week --- he's keeping it in his car so I can't see it, but I know it's there, the kevlar vest, the helmet. The thought that someone might look at him and see an Evil American (instead of the man who loves falafel and knows to eat with his right hand and what Ramadan means, who liked being in Saudi Arabia and took a vacation to Yemen of all places) and that something might happen to him is honestly more than I can even think about. I will make myself strong enough to take care of our family while he's gone. But how could I live if half my heart were ripped out?<br /> <br />I can't imagine how all of this looks to you, to anyone looking at us from the outside. I'm so sorry. I wish I could make an apology loud enough to be heard in Iraq.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1161251174542087102006-10-02T18:44:00.000+09:002006-10-19T18:53:17.743+09:00Studio Alice<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/Studio%20Alice%20logo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/Studio%20Alice%20logo.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The guy who does repairs for the company I rent my satellite dish from (who's been to our apartment a couple of times, because satellite tv is buggy, especially when you live in a place with half a dozen typhoon hits a summer) told me about a photography studio in the big mall just down the seawall from here. He said they had taken their little girl for her one-year photos (must be a milestone in Japan) and that they turned out really well. So as a surprise for my husband's birthday, I took the kids to Studio Alice at the Jusco mall in Mihama. What an adventure!<br /><br />The whole studio photography thing is big in Japan, and I'd seen some people's photos of their children in which the kids were dressed like "Gone With the Wind" and wearing senior-prom levels of makeup. I had already decided, before we went, that we weren't going to do that, so I made sure the kids were wearing nice, everyday clothes when we went. But the lovely ladies at Studio Alice (only young women were working there ---- the photos can include adults, but the studio specializes in children's photography) talked me into letting the kids wear traditional Japanese kimonos for some of the pictures, and the result were amazing. The children had a BLAST! The ladies dressed them from the undies out in traditional robes and socks and belts and props (a sword! an embroidered ball! a fan!). They brushed and styled the children's hair. Atanasia even got the delux goes-with-the-kimono hairstyle, complete with extensions. You should have seen her face --- she was, so clearly, a princess for that half an hour while she was being costumed and photographed. (No makeup, though!)<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/Studio%20Alice%20Atanasia.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/Studio%20Alice%20Atanasia.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Sebastian had a big, goofy, happy grin the whole time. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/Studio%20Alice%20Sebastian.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/Studio%20Alice%20Sebastian.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Even Indiana, who refused to be separated from me by the two feet it took to take the street-clothes pictures, warmed up to the Studio Alice ladies so much that she not only let them dress her in a kimono (although she drew the line at socks, my only-bare-toes girl --- no socks!) but let them sit her down and take a few dozen pictures. In several of them, she even smiled!<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/Studio%20Alice%20Indiana.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/Studio%20Alice%20Indiana.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Just seeing how much the kids enjoyed it made it a wonderful thing just as an experience, but the pictures turned out to be very nice, too. So if you're ever in Japan, I recommend Studio Alice highly! One thing, though: wait for the annual sale.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1150624936290569002006-06-18T19:00:00.000+09:002006-06-18T19:02:16.306+09:00An Expectation of GratitudeI want to start with a disclaimer: We don’t have a lot of money. <br /><br />We have three children. Surprisingly, a career in the military doesn’t pay very well, even though my husband has devoted the last 18 ½ year of his life to it. Because our children are still so young, it would cost as much to pay for daycare as I could earn at most of the jobs I can find in the various places we’ve lived in the past 12 years, so instead I do freelance work at home. I like the work, it’s been portable (which is fortunate, since we move every three years), and it’s let me stay home with the children. But most years I make between $6,000 and $8,000, so my job carries more of an intellectual reward than an economic one.<br /><br />Having said that, though, I also want to say that we have everything we need. There has always been enough to eat in our house (even if our pickiest eaters would disagree ---- “What’s THAT?!? I can’t eat THAT!!!”). We each have drawers full of clothes that we like and that don’t embarrass us in public. Every Christmas I have to beg the children’s grandparents not to send quite such a huge mountain of toys. Although it never really covers all of the expenses, the military housing allowance has always helped us find places to live that have kept us safe and comfortable. And, perhaps most important, we have adequate health care. <br /><br />Best of all, we have each other. We play games together, pretending we’re astronauts or butterflies or a marching band, we go places together, to the park or the bakery or the swimming pool, we read books together and dance together and sing along to “Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom” together (there’s a wonderful DVD with a song by Crystal Taliefero). We don’t take vacations to Disney World or (god forbid!) own a PS2, but we look out for one another, and drive each other crazy, and bicker and complain and sometimes whine, and we kiss one another good-night, every night. All in all, we are incredibly fortunate.<br /><br />Every year, during the holidays, I start to think about how very fortunate we are, and try to find ways to give some of our good fortune back to the world. This past year, I was doing some research about charities (which I’ve written about before, so I won’t repeat) and decided that, in addition to our other one-time donations, I would commit myself to supporting two of the groups year-round. I chose Save the Children, because it has a great institutional record of channeling most of its donations into the field, and because it doesn’t push a religious message with its aid. Why should a child be forced to choose between her own religious traditions and the chance to learn to read? So now I’m sponsoring a little girl in Nepal who is the same age as my middle child. The money doesn’t really go to her, individually, but towards a project in her village, but having a specific child as a point of contact makes your donation feel a lot more personal (which is why, I’m sure, Save the Children does it this way). As a donor, you’re encouraged to correspond with the child you’re sponsoring. At first, I thought this was a little artificial. After all, would a 5-year-old want to write to an American woman no doubt older than her mother? What would we have to say to each other? But, surprisingly, it’s been very rewarding. I write to her about once a month, and usually try to send a small present (like hair bands, or a coloring book, or stickers --- things my own daughter likes), and after the initial transit-time delay I started getting heavy handmade-paper envelopes with beautiful stamps from Kathmandu. Someone from the Kathmandu office takes my letters (translated) and gifts to the village of Asanpur, and writes a letter back to me “from” the girl (since she’s too young to write yet, it’s a smoothed-out version of her answers to my questions, and her comments about the things I send). Sometimes they send print-outs of digital photos the field worker has taken of the little girl. I have about half a dozen of these letters, with Nepali script on one side of the page (Nepali is written with the same characters as Sanskrit) and the English translation on the other. Of course I save them. Wouldn’t you?<br /><br />At the same time, I chose a second organization. I’d read an article in National Geographic that described how much more effective aid was when it was given to the women of a community rather than to the men. (Again, I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into the details.) So I looked for a place that would channel my donations into the hands of a woman who could use them to improve her own life and the lives of her children. Women for Women International is a remarkable organization (www.womenforwomen.org --- you should look them up). They have programs in places where women have been most seriously affected by war or internal violence, places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Colombia. This program also matches a donor with a “sister” who will be receiving the program’s rights-awareness training, vocational and technical training (to help women find ways to become more economically self-sufficient), perhaps a microcredit loan, and a monthly stipend. I started writing monthly letters to my sister in Rwanda at the same time that I started writing letters to the little girl in Nepal. This time, I thought I would have more to write about: we’re about the same age, both mothers with several children, both recently moved away from our homes. After writing the first two letters, I started using the organization’s email feature, thinking that the mail time to Rwanda might be extremely long and that email, while less tangible, would be faster. But although I have half a dozen messages from a remote village in Nepal, I haven’t heard a word from Rwanda. <br /><br />And so this is the question that I’ve been asking myself: Is gratitude, or even acknowledgement, a necessary part of the act of charity? I think about how busy my life is, how much I have to do every day, and I haven’t been forced out of my home by the economic hardships created by genocide. I don’t have to try to take care of my children on my own, in a strange place, and I’m not trying to balance all of those things with the additional time it must take to go to all of those rights-awareness and vocational-training classes. So I wonder, if I needed a loan to get a small home business started in order to take care of my children, or if I needed some extra help in a new town to feed my children and get them clothes to go to school in, and some women showed up and said they could help me as long as I agreed to go through their training, wouldn’t I agree to whatever they wanted? And if they said, here’s the person on the other side of the world who has so much that she’s giving her money away, and you’re supposed to write to her, what would I think? Would I resent the letter-writing chore? Would I resent the rich woman who felt that she needed something from me, when my days were already so full with just the effort it takes to keep my family together? Would I think that rich people can’t give anything for free, but always ask for something in return? Would I feel disdain for this “sister” and her pretence that she and I have something in common?<br /><br />Is it wrong of me, to value these letters from Kathmandu, and to wish that a woman in Rwanda would talk to me? Is it symptomatic of some latent colonial mindset that I wasn’t aware I had? Do I need for my gifts to be acknowledged in order to feel good about having given them? Certainly, the other donations I make to organizations that make no promise of “sponsorship” don’t raise in me any expectation of thanks, apart from the official letter from the home office thanking me for my money and asking me for more. And I wouldn’t stop sending money to Women for Women, just as I wouldn’t stop sending money to Save the Children if I didn’t get any more Sanskrit-etched envelopes. Maybe what bothers me is the possibility of disdain, the idea that my act of compassion has become something selfish, seen from another perspective. Should I stop writing letters to her? Or have I imagined this all wrong --- is she, for whatever reason, unwilling or unable to answer me but still finding some comfort, or at least a momentary distraction, in these messages from a woman in another world? If that’s true, and I stop writing, would it seem, not as if I’m removing the implied demand that she reply, but as if I’m giving up on her? I don’t know how to accomplish what I want to do, which seemed so simple when I started: to share what I have with someone else.<br /><br />Does it matter, when you stop to give a homeless person a couple of dollars, if he (or she) says “thank you” or gives you, instead, a stony stare? It shouldn’t, but I think it probably does. Instead of walking away with a warm feeling of having done a good deed, we walk away feeling a little irritable and disconcerted. But maybe that irritation is a good thing, as long as we don’t allow it to discourage us from offering our dollars the next time. Maybe we SHOULDN’T feel satisfied after having done something meaningful, yes, but small. After all, that person doesn’t cease to be homeless after our act of generosity. Even if we were all Bill Gates (for whom I have nothing but admiration), we still shouldn’t feel as if we’ve done enough while, clearly, so much of the world is still suffering. What if the thanks just allows us to salve our conscience, and to do so cheaply? What if all we’ve done is purchased a feeling of happiness for ourselves from a homeless person for a few bucks? Maybe we really do deserve the disdain, for allowing a world that includes homelessness (and illiteracy, and genocide, and violence against women and children) to continue without working actively to change it. But it’s very hard to behave with perfect compassion, to meet indifference or disdain (even if it’s deserved) with greater effort. I feel it, too, the urge to walk away from that feeling. After all, I was trying to do something nice; if the poor expletive-deleted doesn’t have enough sense to be grateful for a little help, then expletive-delete him (or her). But even as I say it, I know that’s wrong. No doubt, I’ll never really be able to do enough. Even Bill and Melinda won’t be able to do enough. But I have to continue to believe that even doing a small thing is better than doing nothing, and to believe that the act of doing is the important thing, and the reward.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1145800806446529942006-04-23T22:57:00.001+09:002006-04-27T09:39:16.630+09:00Hamauri<div id="WVMp3Player"><br /><br>Use this to hear my WildVoice podcast!<br><br /> <embed src="http://memberdata.wildvoice.com/torahc/media/Hamauri.mp3" autostart="true" loop="false" width="300" height="42" controller="true"<br /> <bgcolor="#ec008c"></embed><br /> <br><br /> <a href="http://www.wildvoice.com/People/torahc.aspx">Hear me at WildVoice.com</a><br /> <br><br /></div><br /> <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Mitzsu-san, a drummer and teacher who is married to my djembe teacher, Daiki-san, <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago8.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago8.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />told me about an event she was involved in, to celebrate Women’s Day. <br /><br />On March 31, I drove north up the coast of Okinawa to Shiokawa Beach, on the outskirts of Nago City. Although the trip was only about 65 km (about 40 miles), it took me almost an hour and a half to get there. Okinawa is a long, narrow island running north and south, with one main road running the length of the island. Route 58 has four lanes through its most congested areas, but it’s also the major commercial artery of the island and runs through the middle of most urban areas. The only alternative is to take the Okinawa Expressway, 50 kilometers of something like an American toll road. It cost me roughly $8 each way to use it, but the expressway is the only good way to cover any great north-south distance on Okinawa. The expressway has two lanes going in each direction. The left-side lane (because in Japan we drive on the left) is the doing-exactly-the-speed-limit lane, while the right-side lane is the light-speed lane. You can’t drive the “gentleman’s speeding” pace we’re used to in the States --- where you’re within maybe 15% of the speed limit and figure you’re not going fast enough to be worth stopping. Nope, in Okinawa it’s either 80 kph (the speed limit) or 120 kph. I tried driving around 90 kph, because it didn’t feel too too-fast, but it wasn’t really possible. Every time I moved into the passing lane to go around some law-abiding citizen, an impossibly tiny car trailing a sonic boom would Doppler into my rear-view mirror and I’d barely have time to move my pokey self back into the slow lane before its rear window was winking at the top of the next hill. <br /><br />The expressway only got me part of the way there. After the expressway ended, I still had half an hour’s drive through the tangle of Nago’s streets and across to the west coast, then north through a maze of redirected roads, huge construction trucks, and jagged landscapes of raw dirt, onto a narrow blacktop road winding between the hills and the sea. The flyer for the Women’s Day beach celebration is written in Japanese, so I was navigating by some directions scribbled in the margins and the map that comes in the English-language yellow pages. I missed the entrance to the beach, but realized where I was when I saw a woman in a bright sarong walking along the side of the road. After some confusion about parking (no matter where you are in the island, a parking space is the most rare of commodities), I found the place. Finally, I had come to Women’s Day in Nago.<br /><br />In Okinawa, time is somewhat more flexible than many of us are used to, so although I arrived 20 minutes after the festival was supposed to start, things were only beginning to get set up. I spent some time walking around to get a feeling for what was going to happen. The organizers had spread banners around part of the back <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago15.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago15.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />walkway and stairs of a row of shops to make a pretty effective stage, with a sound system and a guy under an awning actually making it work. They’d scattered plastic milk crates in an arc below the stage for audience seating, and to one side of the impromptu amphitheatre a dozen or so artisans had spread blankets. There was some <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago11.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago11.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />amazing stuff: jewelry, hand-painted shirts, pottery, organic baked goods, lavender water and resonant crystals and found-wood art frames and a homemade Okinawan condiment that can remodel the roof of your mouth. I tried to buy as many things as I thought I might actually use, because several of these people were my friends and because I think you should spend your money locally, with the people who actually make the things. <br /><br />And, throughout everything, there was constant music. Not all of the vendors were women, not all of the crowd were women, but all of the musicians and performers were <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago13.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago13.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />women. Women played the most amazing variety of instruments, and sang, and danced; mothers with their daughters, women with their friends. It was all so unstructured --- people would play, or dance, and feel their way into new music, and drift from one song into another, and stop and talk to the audience. For part of the afternoon, a large and delicate woman accompanied by several beautiful girls who may have been her daughters taught as many of the audience as would try to dance a hula dance. As they taught, they sang the story song, and after a while a young man with a guitar <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago19.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago19.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />got up and accompanied them. Later, they performed, and it was like nothing I’ve ever imagined. These dances were nothing like the thing we think of as hula (shaped by commercials for resorts and from reruns of Fantasy Island). Watching them, I suddenly realized --- Hawai’i is as close to Samoa or Tahiti as it is to Los Angeles, and their culture owes no debt to Europe. Those women danced something solid and powerful, graceful but not lissome; their feet were flat, their heels pounded the ground, their elbows and knees made precise angles. And instead of Don Ho and ukeleles, they danced to the pounding of a closed cylinder of wood that could have been a tree stump, rhythmically pounded into the ground or slapped by the women <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago28.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago28.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />who were singing for the dancers. Hula is tribal. (But of course, it can also be ballet, as my amazingly talented friend Sofuku demonstrated later that evening.)<br /><br />So I walked around for a while, and waded as far into the ocean as I could without soaking myself for the rest of the day, and bought what I could and then hiked my purchases back to the car, and drank a bottle of cold jasmine tea. For a while, the people I knew were too busy to socialize with (and I’m not very good at that, anyway, except with people I’m very good friends with), and except for me and, later, maybe one other women who looked Western (but I didn’t go ask), everyone there was Japanese. But I’ve had four decades to get used to feeling alone in a crowd, like the "just one thing that’s not like the others," so that feeling doesn’t hurt the way it once did. Now I just live through it, because the alternative is never to do anything new, and I love to see the world like an addiction. That’s worth any amount of feeling like the gorilla at the party. And suddenly I realized, I have a recorder and a camera --- and for the first time in my life, the old familiar feeling of being the person on the outside looking in made PERFECT SENSE. I’d found what I was meant to do: to talk and listen and look, and use my long-angle perspective to recreate it all to tell other people about, later.<br /><br />I found Okako, who speaks wonderful English, selling crystals and semi-precious stones, and even though I didn’t know her I thought, she has such good English, I can start by talking to her. And she told me about what Women’s Day in Japan means <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />(a day when, traditionally, women go to the sea to purify themselves). In the process, I discovered that she works at the Star Rose Café in Okinawa City, which I’ve heard a lot about because it’s a combination of local artists’ gallery and visiting performers’ workshop space and, I think, also a place you can get something to eat. So she told me about the henna workshop and I asked her if the African dance teacher was going to do another seminar, and suddenly I had a concrete connection to something that was already part of the peripheral landscape of my life, and I started to feel more comfortable. Then I saw Sofuku, who sometimes takes drum classes and who not only speaks English really well but wears the most creative <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago1.0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago1.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />jewelry. She’s an amazingly talented woman, an artist and a dancer and an environmental activist. I’ve heard about the “Hug the Earth” project for a while now, but because I can’t read the Japanese fliers I never realized that it’s Sofuku’s work. She photographs people holding a replica of the earth, and asks them to write in her notebook a message for the earth. As she says during our interview, <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />she wanted a way to bring the idea of the earth down to a scale that people could relate to in a personal way. What she’s done is take her photographs and add to each the quote from the person in the photo, and blow them up and frame them in a gallery of eco-consciousness. It’s an amazingly creative idea, and she’s such an energetic, positive presence that her idea is contagious. <br /><br />I listened to a lot more music, and spent some time being amazed by the <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago23.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago23.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />kaleidoscopic interaction of the sky and the sea. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago20.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago20.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />I watched the daylight fade, and found myself standing further and further away from the lights of the stage and the <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago25.0.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago25.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />murmur of people. And, yes, I did: I walked into the warm living sea and brought it to my hands, my eyes, my hair, and offered my hope that what came from me in the coming year would be an echo of the calm and powerful sea in which I stood. I even sang, but oddly the audio of that part has been lost.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/nago27.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/nago27.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />ALBERT'S WEBSITE IS UP!!! If you'd like to hear my recordings of the music and the people at Women's Day, go to www.WildVoice.com and look for my show, Hamauri, on the New Shows list. If you don't see it there, click on "People" at the top of the page and look for me under "torahc" and from my home page go to "Shows." GO TO WILDVOICE!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1141175984222865252006-03-01T09:49:00.000+09:002006-03-02T12:01:27.203+09:00Miscellany of the New YearWorking freelance must be something like Inuit whale hunts. For infinite lengths of time, you float on the surface of the ocean, alone in the vast grey plain of the sea, under the chill grey dome of the sky. And nothing happens. You watch your breath hang on the air before you, and nothing happens. Maybe the wind blows. Maybe it doesn't. And nothing happens. And suddenly into the middle of the empty grey world bursts a dark, living mountain, and between one breath and the next you become lost in the struggle simply not to drown. Whatever uncounted amount of time follows is consumed in the struggle to convert something almost inconceivably huge into something that will feed your family. So here I am, spattered with blood and stepping carefully around the random pieces of blubber that still need to be put away, exhausted but satisfied in the knowledge that I've stockpiled what I can against the empty days ahead, before the next hulk breaks the horizon.<br /><br />So here's a quick recap of what's been happening since the sighting of the whale:<br /><br />>>> Christmas was very nice, and once again thanks to all who honored our request to send only a few gifts. I understand exactly that sending armfuls of wonderful things is a way of reminding the children that you love them even if you can't see them, <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/P1010002.0.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/P1010002.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />but for several years now I've been concerned by a few things. First, I don't want the children to focus so exclusively on the piles of loot that show up at the end of each year. The moment one of them counts the number of presents they each got and complains about injustice, that's the minute I'm instituting the one-gift-per-child-per-relative rule. Secondly, and on a much more subterranean level, I'm concerned about fostering this kind of secular, cultural Christianity where children are encouraged to fold their hands piously and talk about the Virgin Mary every year. Yes, I tell Sebastian (the only one old enough to ask, right now) that Jesus was an important teacher who taught that people should be kind to one another, and that some people also believe that he was the son of god, but that other people believe other things. Sometimes we talk about some of the things that other people believe. I don't have a problem with Christianity (although I have issues with some Christians), but I deeply resent the assumption that everyone is, and should be, Christian at Christmas. Honestly, I would much rather settle on some other winter holiday, since it does feel hypocritical to celebrate the holiday of a religion to which I do not subscribe. Of course, I don't want to be one of those funky commune mammas who don't let their kids watch TV or taste Oreos or get presents at Christmas, either. And I don't want to put the children in the weird position of having to explain to classmates that they don't have Christmas in their house. But every year I come closer to comfort with the idea of celebrating the winter solstice with a tree and a (very) few gifts.<br /><br />>>> Ed enlisted the children in a big New Year's house cleaning, and we did indeed <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/P1010033.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/P1010033.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>clean the house "from top to bottom and side to side." We all helped, and it took the whole day, and it didn't stay clean for very long, but we had fun. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/P1010036.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/P1010036.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>It really did feel auspicious to start the fresh year with a fresh home.<br /><br />>>> Drum class continues to be one of the high points of my week. Often, I make the 30-minute drive into Okinawa City in a foggy mood, my thoughts a little blurry and sad. But it is impossible for me to feel anything but joy, once we start drumming. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/DaikiSuga.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/DaikiSuga.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />It doesn't really matter to me, whether I'm playing well and the rhythm is carrying me away at a gallop, or whether I've fallen off and am running along behind as fast as I can --- it's all good. It bubbles up inside me all sharp and sparkling, and sometimes I can barely keep from laughing aloud while we play. And while I still haven't had that "Thirteenth Warrior" moment, when all of my intense concentration pays off and suddenly I understand what people are saying (thank you, Jennifer, for putting into words the feeling I've been trying to explain!), after six months I feel more relaxed in my little bubble of occasional incomprehension, and I think the other students are warming to my enthusiasm even if they despair of understanding a thing I say. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/NobuReiKai.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/NobuReiKai.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Finally, here are some pictures of a few of the regular students, and of Daiki-san our teacher. Last month, we learned a modern Guinean rhythm, "Liberte," that is so compelling stones would dance to it. As soon as my friend Albert gets his podcasting site up and running, I'll take my blog over there so that I can record some of what we're doing for you to hear.<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/SunDrum1a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/SunDrum1a.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Nobu, the guy wearing the hat, makes djembe drums. Most of them are made with the wood of the 100-year-old "lucky tree" that was felled in his neighborhood for new development, but he also made the Sun Drum. It started its life as a very small Indonesian hand drum, before Nobu added a goatskin head and djembe cording. Suddenly, the drum has a surprisingly deep resonance, a lovely full-bodied sound. But the really inspired part is the base he added, which lifts the drum head up to playing level and transforms a little decorative drum into a musician's instrument. And look --- he shaped the circle on which the drum rests into a sunburst. It's beautiful. Beautiful to look at; beautiful to feel, silky smooth; beautiful to smell, either the wood from the lucky tree or the oil he used is very fragrant; and beautiful to play. I bought the Sun Drum as a gift for my dear friend Elaine, who took care of the ladies during the interminable quarantine, and it was hard for the drummer who'd been using it to practice to give it up, as it was a little hard for me to send it off. <br /><br />>>> The ladies finally arrived, after much complexity and delay. The government of Japan changed their pet-importation policy weeks before we were scheduled to leave the States, and the new regulations took 8 months to follow from beginning to end. So, very sadly, we had to leave the ladies (Sadie, who is 18 years old now; and Shemal, practically a kitten at only 13) and our Good Dog Chance in Kansas City with my dear friend and Woman of the Drum Elaine, and with our new friend Doggy Godmother Jane. Ed went back to Kansas City in December, just as soon as the quarantine period was over, to bring everyone here, but a winter storm hit the day they were to leave, and it was too cold for the airlines to allow pets to board. We tried again last month with more success, and although another storm whipped through Kansas City only hours after Ed's plane took off, he and the ladies made it to Japan safely. After a few days of sleeping off the jet lag, Sadie and Shemal have adjusted to our new home with apparent happiness. As I predicted, the window seats are cat magnets, and both ladies have taken the children's enthusiastic interest in stride.<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/CatsArrive1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/CatsArrive1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/CatsArrive3.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/CatsArrive3.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/02072001.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/02072001.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Sadly, Chancie couldn't come to Japan. He's 12 years old now, which is really quite old for a dog as large as he is, and Ed said that Chance was looking more elderly now than when we left the States last summer. Travel is always risky for animals, and far moreso when they're older. And Chancie is so happy with Jane: he has a big doggie door so he can go outside whenever he wants, he has two comfy napping spots, and Jane not only gives him a lick of peanut butter for a treat every week but even bakes special dog treats for him. If dogs had an organized religion, Jane would be a saint. Although perhaps she <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/02072006.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/02072006.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />already is, and we simply haven't translated enough of the Canine Canon yet to be aware of it. We had planned to bring Chance with us because he's our family and we love him, and also because he may not have many more years left with us, and we wanted him to feel safe and comfortable and loved for all of them. We could never have guessed that we would find Jane, who loves him, too; we are indescribably fortunate, and thankful.<br /><br />>>> I never thought, when I started to sit in on the belly dance troupe's rehearsals in the hopes of having another opportunity to drum, that I'd become so excited about dancing. I've always felt like a complete bear, stumbling and uncoordinated, but after months of watching the dancers in the long intervals between the minutes I could drum, I started to think that maybe I should learn how to do that, too, if for no other reason than to have something to do when I wasn't drumming. The troupe's leader taught me how to do a skirt dance, and I was hooked. Have I mentioned the addiction of costumes? Before I knew it, I was taking beginner's classes, and getting dvds to learn from at home, and buying and making costumes. I've learned, surprisingly, that dance is like drumming --- once you embrace it, it's part of your creative repertoire forever. <br /><br />I really love the idea of combining superficially disparate things. Our drum class had a session last week where trios were supposed to develop variations of the same rhythm, with different signature "breaks." I misunderstood our trio's discussion on this --- one of the drummers wanted to do a humorous dance in between our solos --- so instead of "we're doing a funny solo here" I heard "do a wild, crazy solo," and while I usually try to follow the lead of the more experienced African drumming students, or Daiki-san, when I play the solo improvs we sometimes do in class, this time I didn't restrict myself to the "traditional" djembe that the other players were doing. I played the music in my head: I used the cupped-hand slide from Arabic drumming that gives you the "doom-dum-do-di-DI" shift, I used the drop-pop conga technique that Regina taught us, and the high metalic ting-ting-ting sounds you can get from Caribbean drumming that African djembe doesn't use --- and this one time, it was MY music. I got the wriggly tangle in my head out into my drum so other people could hear. It would be fantastic to be able to do that with dance, to be able to combine different things I've learned so that I can get what's in my head out where other people can see it. I hope this dance troupe can be the place for that, because they're great women, and I have so much more to learn. But I've discovered something from drumming: if one outlet is closed to you, and what you have to say needs to be said enough, another path will appear. <br /><br />>>> Sebastian told me at dinner a few weeks ago that he got his first K-I-S-S on the N-O-S-E from his friend Summer. Now that I think about it, I got my first kiss when I was about 7 years old, on the cheek, from David Bryant. See? No matter what, Sebastian will never forget Summer Jackson's name. Although more recently he asked me how you decided who you were going to marry. I told him he would just know, when it was time, but that he wasn't going to need to worry about it for a long time because nobody in our family was allowed to get married until they were older than teenagers (Sebastian's current understanding of "really, really grown-up"). He seemed a little relieved that he didn't have to take the plunge right away, but told me that he already knew who he wanted to marry: Celine (his newest classmate). Did David Bryant go from first kiss to just another boy in class so quickly? I don't remember that part.<br /><br />>>> The first birthday of spring has arrived for our family: Atanasia is five years old. She had a big party at her school, with pizza and princess cake and a<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/DSCN1653.0.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/DSCN1653.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />bouncy castle, and every one of her 20 classmates gave her a really good present. As you can see from the picture, Indiana is deeply convinced that she can do anything Atanasia can do, and she's so observant that she can usually do it, too. She ate her party pizza and drank her juice box just like the big kids, and had to be dragged out of the bouncy castle protesting all the way, even though the turbulence created by half a dozen bouncing preschoolers was enough to keep her off of her feet.<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/DSCN1663.0.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/DSCN1663.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> Indiana is a very tough, determined small person who is also one of the happiest people I've ever met. I attribute that to the potent influences of prenatal drumming and yoga. On the actual day of Atanasia's reaching the majestic age of five, she had another party at home, with homemade pizza and cupcakes with candles and yet more fabulous presents from her adoring public, er, family. Sebastian picked out a present for her, after looking at all the toys in six stores, and bought it with his own allowance money. Through no virtue of my own, I have been given the great honor (and challenge, and frustration) of parenting three of the most wonderful growing people on the planet. Atanasia told me that she knows what she wants to be, now that she's grown up: a mermaid and a rock star. "Not at the same time. First a mermaid. Then a rock star." Go, girl, go.<br /><br />>>> Finally, I want to tell you about something that I saw yesterday. All week, a crew of men in light blue coveralls, white hard hats, and white rubber boots has been working on the power lines along our street. Two men with safety orange batons stop and start the traffic in a single lane past the big utility truck. Yesterday morning, I was the first car stopped going one way. I watched one of the men as he stopped traffic coming the other way so that I could pass. He's an older man, old enough to be a greeter at WalMart if we were in the States, and slight. A commercial van was coming towards him as he waved his orange baton up and down in the everyday way that means "Stop." But that part of the street has several sharp curves past a not-quite-two-lane bridge and other obstacles that require a driver's full attention, and the van did not slow down. The signal man made larger waves, semaphoring both arms above his head "STOP," but still the van didn't slow. I was waiting for the signal man to step aside and let the van pass, and to have my turn afterward. He didn't step aside. After his largest gestures weren't seen, the signal man stepped into the center of the lane, in front of the oncoming van, and bowed.<br /><br /><br />It took my breath away. Not because of the physical danger, although my heart was beating wildly for him, but for the amazing courage, the strength of the signal man's belief. And I am lost in imagining a world in which a gesture of respect is a thing that cannot be ignored.<br /><br /><br />With great love, and apologies that the wish is so belated,<br /><br />Akemashite omedeto gozaimas'Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1135136710518499672005-12-21T12:20:00.000+09:002005-12-21T12:45:10.530+09:00Letter to Santa.<br />.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/Santaletter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/400/Santaletter.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Dear Santa Claus,<br /><br />Sebastian says, I want to give Atanasia tons of ponies. I want Papi to have some of his family culture and some stuff from his family. I guess he misses them very much.<br /><br />Atanasia wants a dog for Christmas. A puppy is her favorite. And a special new pony.<br /><br />Sebastian wants to give Indiana tons of baby toys that make sounds she likes. He wants to give Mommy a brand new drum, a mini-sized drum. And he wants a kitten. And he wants something really special for Cousin Rosa, maybe the same kind of thing as for Indiana.<br /><br />Atanasia wants a sword and a shield.<br /><br />(signed) Atanasia and SebastianUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1134881089268724262005-12-18T13:34:00.000+09:002005-12-18T13:44:49.286+09:00Charity: Saving the World One Life at a TimeI've been thinking about two things this year. One is a news blurb I saw, that said that the most effective way to give money to families and communities is to give it to women. Apparently, women are far more likely to spend the money in ways that benefit their children and families in the long term than men are. Men, it seems, use the money to buy the community a round of beer, while women are more likely to buy a cow. Gender stereotype or not, it stuck with me.<br /><br />The other thing that's stuck with me this year is a <em>My Turn</em> piece in "Newsweek" written by a young Haitian woman, who wrote about how difficult it is to be the child of a parent with AIDS in the developing world, how she became the only caretaker for her father, in a community in which AIDS was so stigmatized she couldn't say why her father was ill or why she couldn't go to school any longer. Since reading that article, I've been more aware of similar reports; there was a program on National Geographic (I think, but it could have been Discovery) about how very young children in Africa find themselves the heads of households full of younger siblings, following the death of their parents. <br /><br />So, as I was thinking about what charities I wanted to give money to this year, I started looking for organizations that addressed those specific problems. And ran into a problem of my own: how can you tell if a charity that isn't well known is legitimate, or a scam? I've found three websites that evaluate charities based on how much of their money goes to the causes they address (instead of as administrator's salaries or toward fundraising expenses). I found CharityNavigator.org to be the most useful, but I also looked at the American Institute of Philanthropy and the BBB's Give.org site. If you haven't yet decided how to spend your charitable dollars, browsing any of their lists is sure to give you plenty of ideas.<br /><br />This is where I decided to donate: Toys for Tots (of course; it's a USMC charity), Doctors Without Borders (a Nobel Peace Prize is credibility enough for me!), the Save the Children HIV/AIDS fund (which helps communities of children orphaned by AIDS and provides assistance to child-headed households), and Women For Women International (which provides micro-credit loans to women, job skills training, rights awareness programs, and helps women register to vote). The life that Ed and I have lead for the past fifteen years has maybe made us feel more like citizens of the world than many Americans feel, which is why most of our money is going to help people outside of the U.S. But I don't think it matters the nationality of the person you help, as long as you help someone. After all, we Americans are among the most fortunate people in the world. Every year, I find myself realizing how very lucky our family has been over the past year, to have good health, to have each other, to have all of the necessities of life, and of course to have the love of our friends and families. <br /><br />Did you know that the average American this year will donate 2.2% of his or her income to charity, and that the average American living during the Depression donated 2.9%? I made a rough estimate of what 3% of our income would be, and was ashamed at how much more that was than what I'd donated. When I thought about how little 3% is of every month's pay, I realized that I could probably do more. So besides this holiday's donations, and the times during the year when we all sent money (for the hurricanes' victims, to important campaigns like Cure Autism Now), starting now I'm also sponsoring a woman who's been displaced by conflict, through Women For Women, and a child's community in Nepal (the choice of place was random, although I guess I could have specified) through Save the Children. Yeah, I only just started working again after a gap of seven months, but even so I know I spend that much a month on things I don't really need. This way, I can make a little headway on giving my 3% and know that I'm making a real, immediate, measurable difference in at least two people's lives. How cool is that? Something I do can absolutely, clearly make another human being's life better. It's an amazing ability.<br /><br />I hope all of you have had an equally fortunate year this year, and are having an equally joyful and inspired holiday.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1134378321213915942005-12-12T16:29:00.000+09:002005-12-20T22:34:37.316+09:00There Are Many Ghosts in Okinawa<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/incense.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/incense.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />We were fighting.<br /><br />We never fight. Sure, during the first year we lived together we had our clashes, some epic. We were 30 years old and trying to get used to living with someone else, butting heads over territory like a pair of mountain sheep. After we knocked each other silly (figuratively) a few times, we worked it out. So no, we don't fight. Over the eleven years we've been married, we've polished the code of our disagreements until a rolled eye (me) or flared nostril (him) can contain the sum of our frustrations with one another. But that weekend, we were fighting.<br /><br />And we were fighting over not very much. A misunderstanding. A gallon of milk. The holiday blues. A bad mood. I'm not even sure where it started, but with startling speed a minor breach of the usual happiness in our house descended deep into some bubbling pit of anger. I had a vivid image of myself throwing a dozen eggs at him, one at a time. He had a flash of absolutely startling fury. We went to bed riddled with anger, and woke to a fresh day without speaking.<br /><br />He was taking the older children on a day trip, and after they left I took Indiana and went to have some photos developed. Of course, that takes an hour whether you're in Japan or Jerusalem, so I wandered the PX annex killing time. The annex is an adjunct to the base shopping center, where independent vendors have small shops and kiosks to sell not-terribly-expensive items from several parts of Asia to an American audience held captive by their fear of walking into a Japanese store where people may not speak English. I looked at all of the titles on the sale table at the bookstore. I admired the embroidered tablecloth, but decided it was too small. I watched the Hello Kitty clocks wag their tails. Even so, I still had 40 minutes until my pictures were ready, and Indiana had fallen asleep in the stroller. <br /><br />After the great explosion of anger had passed and all the fires had burned themselves out, I found myself settling into depression. And so I wandered in and out of the annex shops, tired, hungry, depressed, wheeling a sleeping toddler. In one store, I read the cards next to the displays of little Chinese zodiac symbols carved out of various stones. One of the cards read: "Jade --- for happiness in the house." My fog lifted, slightly, and I thought, jade . . . maybe I need some jade. But none of the little carvings seemed like quite the right thing, even though I circled the aisles three times (keeping the stroller in constant motion). But at least now I had a goal. Jade. I needed to find some jade.<br /><br />Nothing seemed right. None of the jade zodiac symbols were our signs. The dragon balls seemed too intricately twisty to promote family harmony. Jade bracelets didn't seem helpful. Finally, I wheeled cautiously into a store overflowing with Asiatica, from the great (gigantic enameled vases, statues of Kwan Yin almost as tall as I) to the small (lotus flowers carved out of semi-precious stone, tiny golden dragons).<br /><br />"I need a piece of jade," I told the woman busily trying to bring some order to the chaos. And then I recognized her. She also ran the "good jewelry" kiosk, and she'd helped me before. In the disorder of our first weeks in Japan, my amber bracelet had broken. I never take it off; it was the last straw in a difficult week, and I'd been near tears then, too. She restrung the bracelet, and so I associate her with both kindness and a change in luck. "I need a piece of jade. There's some bad luck in my house."<br /><br />"What kind? What you need depends on the problem." So I explained. "Oh," she said, "you need something with a lotus flower on it. You know, Buddha is often shown with a lotus flower..."<br /><br />"And Kwan Yin," I said.<br /><br />"and Kwan Yin, too. It's a symbol of peace. Let me look in the back and see if I can find something."<br /><br />I looked around while I waited, and found a little, disk-shaped jade perfume bottle with lizards on each side. It was almost invisible, displayed on a shelf behind a pillar, crowded in with a hundred other things. The price sticker was so yellow and faded that it was hard to tell what its original price had been. Not a lotus blossom, but already I felt better. It felt like that perfume bottle had been there for ages, on that shelf or others like it, waiting for me to see it. My advisor came back with a jade charm with Kwan Yin and a lotus blossom carved on one side and said, "This was the in the first box I opened, and I have a good feeling about it."<br /><br />As I was paying, she offered me some advice. "There are many ghosts in Okinawa. We have the highest divorce rate in Japan --- Japanese people, not just Americans. We have people who go crazy, kill each other with knives." This I knew --- the local English-language paper carries stories every week of sons killing fathers for beating them, grown brothers stabbing brothers for shirking the burden of caring for older parents, husbands beating their wives because dinner was late. "But," I said, "our building is new. It can't have any ghosts." <br /><br />"Oh, sure. It's the ones who used to live where the building is, they come back to see what's happened to their land. They see people living there, and they cause mischief.<br /><br />"Some people," and here she was being cautious, in case I was likely to be offended by non-Christian advice, "some people say that the way to get rid of ghosts is to sprinkle salt in the corners opposite all of your doors --- don't forget the sliding doors. You sprinkle salt, then you light incense or candles and say some prayers. Japanese people believe that on New Year's you should clean your whole house and sweep all of the dirt outside, to get rid of the past year's bad luck, and open the windows to let in good luck for the new year." This reminded me of something my husband told me once, about his mother washing their home with holy water. It all made perfectly good sense to me. There are some times when it seems obvious that something is not as it should be, and if it takes jade or holy water to set it right, that's what you need to do. "But don't forget the salt."<br /><br />As soon as I got home, I sprinkled the salt, burned the incense (and carried it into every room, including the showers and closets, just to be on the safe side), put the jade on the alter between Buddha and Kwan Yin, and spent some time meditating on the four immeasurables (<em>May all beings be endowed with happiness/May all beings be free from suffering/May all beings never be separated from happiness/May all beings abide in equanimity, undisturbed by the four worldly concerns</em>) --- which seemed to apply equally to family harmony and to soothing restless ghosts, and opened the windows to blow away the old air. <br /><br />Who knows? Ed and the children came home, we stared at one another for a minute, and made up. The gallon of milk had turned back into a gallon of milk instead of looming on the horizon like a harbinger of doom. We've been fine ever since. Was it the jade, the incense, the salt, the four immeasurables? Did jealous ghosts stir up whirpools of anger with their insubstantial fingers, or was it only low blood sugar and the holiday blahs? It hardly matters, I think. We've been returned to ourselves: best friends, lovers, twin pillars holding an endless golden sky over our children. <br /><br />But you know, at New Year's I think I'll get out my broom.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1135084164683287632005-11-29T21:52:00.000+09:002005-12-20T22:22:57.470+09:00JOY, JOY, JOY.<br />.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/family.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/400/family.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />We wish you all of the happiness of the season!<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/xmascard.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/xmascard.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />It’s not going to snow in this part of Japan. It may not even get very cold, as former Midwesterners understand cold. This makes it a little hard to believe that the holidays are bearing down on us like an overloaded sled. Last weekend, we spent an afternoon building sandcastles on the beach and trying to explain to our young natural scientists what coral is. Indiana doesn’t care what coral is --- she’s too busy becoming one with the beach. She eats the sand, enthusiastically, face first. She drinks the sea. She stands in the mild surf up to her chin: she’s a happy, beachy baby.<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/girls.1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/girls.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> Atanasia wants to know the origin of every seashell and coral bit, and examines algae and seaweed minutely. Sebastián spends his time experimenting to find the perfect level of sand dampness for constructing crumble-resistant towers. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/seb.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/seb.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>He also rescues hapless tiny clams and jointy hermit crabs who find themselves unwelcomely dry. Nobody ever wants to leave, although as we put on our shoes often the youngest young people find themselves completely unable to walk and must be carried home like the princesses they are. <br /><br />Indiana has become convinced that being asked to share her Papi with other family members is deeply unreasonable. Apparently, we’re rubbing all of the affection off every time we touch him. So she defends her exclusive rights by yelling indignantly and swatting us with great vigor and accuracy any time any of us comes within arm’s reach. Fortunately she has other things she needs to do, besides being carried around by her Papi and keeping the rest of us love-stealers away, things like seeing how many small toys she can cram into the VCR, and hiding her brother’s toothbrush, and turning off the computer while her siblings are in the middle of a game. Indiana is absolute proof of my theory that you get the child you’re ready for, because if she’d come any earlier we wouldn’t have had time to develop these vast reserves of tolerance for the antics of bright, energetic children. Sebastián is, as always, the most thoughtful and best behaved young man any parent could hope for. Sebastián feels things very deeply, and we worried that this transition would be hard for him, but he’s doing so well! He’s got a great teacher, new friends, a huge playground for recess, and a whole lot fewer teeth than the last time you saw him. He’s even trying new food --- this week he actually said he liked the quiche (which, as any parent of a picky eater will understand, we sensibly renamed “cheese pie”). Beautiful, temperamental Atanasia is also busy being smart as a whip; we’ve been very fortunate with her school, as well. She didn’t want to move to the 4-year-olds’ class when the fall session started, so she’s stayed with the older kids and has already mastered the alphabet and counting to 100, and has moved on to phonics, human anatomy, and addition and subtraction. All three of them are becoming more themselves every day. What more could we wish for our children, or for ourselves? <br /><br />Health and happiness to you and yours in this season and always!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1132657155293615412005-11-22T19:33:00.000+09:002005-11-22T19:59:15.306+09:00Too Much HaikuI'm trying to create Christmas cards. It didn't seem right, to send traditional snow-and-fireplace cards from Japan, and I can't find the Japanese equivalent of a box of Christmas cards. (I think they're bought individually here, like birthday cards, not sent <em>en masse</em>.) So I'm making my own --- we'll see how successful my attempt is. Similarly, I came up empty from a Google search for traditional Japanese poetry with a theme of happiness suitable for the inside of a holiday card, so I decided to try to write one of my own. Perhaps this was a mistake; haiku are, apparently, revoltingly easy to write badly, and I can see why. Suddenly, every stray thought suggests itself in 17 syllables ("Crumpled grocery list, I see you and I wonder: what did I forget?"). But, you know, I made these things, and misshapen or not they belong to me. And since this is the repository of all of my random writings, I think they go here. Oh --- haiku aren't supposed to be titled. It probably leads to cheating on the syllable count.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Grey sea meets grey sky,<br />the waves flash in long white rows:<br />winter elegance.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Small world, gem glowing<br />against the infinite dark ---<br />what is mere distance?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />My child is singing ---<br />forget the cold rain, blue mood.<br />We embrace; she laughs.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Joy does not leap out<br />in a shower of fireworks.<br />It gathers, like fog.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Against the white wall<br />my friend's painting, luminous ---<br />a memory jewel.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Here it will not snow.<br />But breathe the joy of winter,<br />the wind from the sea.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Indiana shrieks<br />as if she sees the world's end.<br />I'm tired. I love her.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A flash of bright fins,<br />sleek golden scales, still water ---<br />joy reveals itself.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1131882673479648532005-11-13T18:57:00.000+09:002005-11-14T09:33:53.823+09:00Food, Wealth, and Consumption<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/P1010002.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/P1010002.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />At the end of last week, I heard part of an NPR segment about a pair of photographers who have put together a book of pictures of families from all over the world, standing behind a table holding a week's worth of their groceries. I should go look up the transcript, because I missed parts of it, but the photographers commented about the ways that the food choices of families in less-developed countries differed from the tables of food spread before the families from wealthier countries. No surprise --- the family from Guatemala ate a rainbow of fresh fruit and vegetables in their week's worth of food, the table of the family from China contained only one processed and packaged food (beer), and the family from the U.S. candidly showed the pizza boxes, Burger King wrappers, and bags of chips that came into their house in a week.<br /><br />That was the day that I did our grocery shopping for the week, and I was thinking about the NPR segment as I put away what I'd bought. Overall, I was proud of the amount of fresh produce we were going to eat in the next week, and suddenly aware again of how expensive fresh produce is here in Okinawa. There doesn't seem to be a lot of local farming outside of the sugarcane and pineapple cash crops, and a lot of what we buy must be shipped from outside the island. Tomatoes were about $1 each, and three (admittedly large) leeks rang up at $7.50. Even Japanese apples, beautiful giant Fujis and Worins, cost more than $1 each. But after I had finished tallying the cost of eating a healthier diet, I noticed that the only processed and packaged foods I'd bought (with the exception of frozen vegetables, and I don't think they count as dietary Trojan horses) were for the children. Fish sticks, hot dogs, frozen chicken nuggets, corn dogs, bologna --- I swear, I spend a lot of time in the grocery aisles reading the labels, trying to find the best alternatives. The hot dogs are mostly chicken, with about half the fat of the premium brand. I get the trans-fat-free chicken nuggets, the turkey bologna. And the apples were almost entirely for the children (green Worins for Sebastian, red Fujis for Atanasia, whatever she can grab from a sibling's plate for Indiana). But still, still . . . .<br /><br />I told Ed about my train of thought, later that evening. We both know how it happened, and it seemed inevitable at the time. Sebastian, who is now 7 and our oldest, has always had an extremely delicate sense of what goes into his mouth. Only in direst instances do we insist that he swallow medicine, because even though he realizes that he needs it to get well, even though he's been persuaded to drink the dose from his own hand in his own time, even with the best effort on his part, most of the time it comes right back up because Sebastian can only eat a very, very few things. He's always been this way, from the time he started to eat solid food. He can go all day without eating, without complaint, if he's not offered one of the twelve things that make up the lexicon of acceptable foods. When he was 4 1/2 and started Montessori preschool, I eagerly waited to see the gastronomic expansion that I was sure would take place once he started to encounter very lovingly cooked school lunches in a situation involving at least implied peer pressure. Sebastian came home pale and tired and cranky, having quietly refused to eat a morsel of any of the food he was offered in a month's lunches. The same thing happened the following year in kindergarten --- his teacher finally sent a note home asking me to pack lunches for him because he wouldn't touch anything served at school. And so, in school lunches as at every meal at home since 1999, I've made separate "kid meals" out of the dozen things that Sebastian will eat. My joy was inexpressible the day he said, "Fish sticks? I like fish sticks!" When Atanasia, who is now 4 1/2, started eating solid food we offered her what we were eating, and for a while she ate it, but gradually she, too, settled into the tiny orbit around the dozen food items, and she, too, consumed nothing (but chocolate milk) at school for a month, and a long, tiring habit was started. <br /><br />Every day for six years, I've made one set of meals for Ed and myself, and a second set for the children. Once Atanasia was old enough to have opinions, it soon turned out that she did not have the same acceptable-food list as Sebastian. She won't eat a fish stick if it's the last food for a day and a half, although she'll eat a peanut butter sandwich (but not the crust) where Sebastian not only doesn't eat peanut butter (has never consented to let it cross his lips) but won't eat a sandwich, not even one constructed solely of items on the edible list, not even by pulling the bologna, cheddar (and no other kind) cheese, and bread apart to eat it by constituent parts. If each thing is packaged individually in his lunch box, he can eat it, but folded together between two slices of bread it is beyond the pale. Sebastian will eat white rice, as long as no other food is touching it, while Atanasia consented to it for a while but for the last year or so can't let it touch her plate. Now that Indiana is feeding herself actual people food, the complications are enormous --- we don't usually eat out, as a family, by choice. It's a nerve-shattering affair that we resort to only when the hunger pangs in the back seat are too severe to endure until we can get home to the relative safety of hot dogs, cheddar cheese, and the apple variety of choice. Trying to find something that each of them will eat (something for each --- three somethings, at least) is not just a trial of ingenuity but sometimes an impossibility.<br /><br />There was never a time that Sebastian would eat the meals that Ed and I shared, and while there probably was a moment when Atanasia could have been persuaded to do so, by then we were already used to the separate-meals routine, and the children were already accustomed to eating at least an hour earlier than Ed and I did. Atanasia would often be interested in what was on our plates, and would eat some herself, but by then she'd already had a meal, and Atanasia has never, ever consented to eat leftovers, even if it's the same food that she ate from her Papi's plate the night before. Even more challenging, Atanasia won't eat non-kid food if it's offered separately from the adults' meals. If we have spaghetti, she enjoys it, but if I make her her own fresh (not left over) plate of spaghetti at her regular dinner time and we're not eating the same thing at the same time, she'll have nothing to do with it. <br /><br />So, over the years, we've just become accustomed to making not only separate meals for the adults and the children, but separate meals for each of the children, as well. Last weekend, for example, I made 20 different meals --- three different breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the children plus one meal a day that Ed and I shared. Of course, this is frustrating and time-consuming. By the time I'm on my 9th and 10th lunchbox lunch of the week, I feel resentful and imaginatively exhausted. But it was really looking at the things that I was buying for my children, the score of things that they had preferred themselves into eating, that I realized that by trying to do what was best for my children I've probably done them a greater disservice than if I'd been inattentive to their refusals to eat. From time to time, I'd take the hard line, tell them that this was the food I'd made for them and anyone who had suddenly discovered an aversion to things they'd eaten for the last three years could be hungry, that no new meal would be prepared. And neither Ed nor I could stand firm against the 10:00 sobs of "I'm hungry" coming from the beds of children who are strong-willed enough to refuse to eat something that doesn't appeal to them. Did we do something wrong? I mean, obviously, other people's children are eating foie gras on toasted rounds of baguette right now and you're thinking to yourselves what a fool I am. Other people have given their children scrambled eggs and strawberry yoghurt for breakfast since they were old enough to swallow, and I envy you and I swear, I made the eggs, I offered the yoghurt. I breastfed; I steamed and pureed fresh baby food; I offer new foods regularly and repeatedly; I purposely enrolled them for school lunches and kept exposing them to the foods that every other kid their age found perfectly acceptable for a meal. They never capitulated; they were never hungrier than their convictions. In suffragettes, we find this admirable.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/halloween2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/halloween2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>So I told Ed about my disappointment that I was offering my children food that floundered on the shameful end of the food quality scale when healthy, whole foods are an issue of importance to me. And as we talked I realized that, of course, by this age every other child we know has been (as we ourselves were) eating a family meal, that we'd carried the "kids' meal" tradition several years too far. Maybe because Sebastian was our first, we just missed the transition point where kids begin to eat the same food that adults do, and so we didn't know where to look for that point with his younger sisters. Tonight was our first attempt at a family meal. Snacks were handed out to tide the early eaters over, dinner started cooking an hour earlier than usual, and everybody helped set the table (finally cleared of crafts projects). Surprisingly, Sebastian was more easily convinced than Atanasia to take a taste of a single grain of wild rice, a single dice of ham, a bite of chicken that hadn't been breaded and oven-baked in imitation of deep-frying. While Indiana displayed commendable enthusiasm and unexpected accuracy with her "spork" for a 19-month-old, and cheerfully ate (and occasionally wore) a little of everything, Atanasia found the idea of chicken cordon bleu (modified for kid presentation) and petite green beans with butter sharing a plate with the only thing she liked (a biscuit) so offensive that she rushed to her room in tears. She was eventually enticed into eating a dozen green beans when we let her add extra butter (well, really fat-free margarine) and promised another biscuit if she'd finish five more beans. And Sebastian, whom we thought would be most resistant, actually tried a bite of everything, even foods that were touching each other before he separated them for taste-testing. No doubt everyone except omnivorous Indiana will wake up very, very hungry in the morning, and Ed ate nothing but what the children left, while I have indigestion that I doubt just one little purple pill can handle, but overall it was one of the best meals I've ever had. I hope to have another one just like it tomorrow.<br /><br />Here's a link to the NPR segment on food:<br /><br />http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5005952/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1131540147969538982005-11-09T20:43:00.000+09:002005-11-14T14:19:46.556+09:00Along the Seawall<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/400/walk1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk6.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk6.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I've been walking. A Japanese woman told me, right after we moved, that if I wanted to meet Japanese people I should walk along the seawall. People walk their dogs, their children, themselves along the seawall that runs from the breakwater in front of our building for five kilometers north, past Araha Beach, past the wind turbine and the Justco shopping complex, to Sunset Beach. It's a good walk. You only have to venture into the street once, to cross a somewhat-less-than-two-lane bridge, and you can see the full spectrum of Okinawan life in those few kilometers.<br /><br />In fact, once Indiana and I are past the narrow bridge, the first place we pass is a place its graffiti labels "Wadi Street." This is one of Wadi Street's few commercial establishments.<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk11.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk11.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>You can tell it's a bar by the beer sign. Look at what it's built from.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk10.0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk10.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk9.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk9.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>The house on the corner has devoted years and all of its yard space to an Escher array of scrap metal, for no immediately obvious reason. Once we turn the corner, we're on the street where they fix cars. It's a street you can find from Appalachia to Amman, Ireland to India --- women with not quite all of their teeth watching the legs of boyfriends in oil-dark army surplus sticking out from under cars. <br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk3.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk3.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>We cross a bridge and start down the Chatan Town beach walkway (in the middle east, they'd call this the corniche) --- it's wide, well maintained, paved with mosaic bricks instead of pitted concrete, lined with decorative plantings. I think this is the fruit a Japanese lady gave me at dance class; she told me it was called "Buddha's head" fruit (because it's bumpy all over, like the traditional representation of Buddha's hair).<br /><br /><br />At each sidewalk's entrance, a pair of lion dogs stands guard. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk8.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk8.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The owners of real dogs, however, are admonished by signs every 100 meters that it is their responsibility to pick up and take away any droppings of their pets.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Especially at low tide, we pass a lot of fishermen on this part of our walk. They aren't, of course, commercial fishermen (who were out in their boats at the first grey of the morning); I think that most of them are older men, probably retired, who spend some comfortable hours a day surf fishing or net casting for the fish lured toward the estuaries by the outgoing tide, which brings delectable strands of algae from the island's interior tumbling downstream.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Native Okinawans, unlike Asian tourists or short-term American transplants, have a very serious approach to sun protection. We've been here four months, and have gone through several bottles of SPF 50 sunscreen, and we're all (well, obviously some more than others, but yes even I am) noticeably browned. A lifetime of this is <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk4.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />clearly risking skin cancers and eye damage, not to mention that particular leathery aged quality that used to be the purview of peasants and farmers but is now apparent on aging American beach bunnies and tennis and golf enthusiasts. Okinawans approach this problem by swathing themselves from head to toe every time they leave the house. Women, in particular, are vigilant; I have seen women walking on the sidewalks in the grinding heat of summer wearing huge hats, cotton sweaters, and opaque tights. Women drivers wear opera gloves or cut-off shirt sleeves to keep the sun off of their right arms. If I were likely to look like a polished walnut by the time I was 50 from half a century under this sun, I'd be doing the same thing.<br /><br />As we near the turn-around point of our walk, we pass Araha Beach. It's technically closed to swimming for the season now, and a bicycle policeman with a brass whistle patrols the seawall walkway, tweeting vigorously at the waders who have been tempted by the still-mild sea into reclining for only a moment in its embrace. On the weekends, though, even the most conscientious public guardian has to give way to the <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk5.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/walk5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>inevitable; he stops patrolling, and we all, in return, wear shorts instead of bathing suits and pretend that we're only wading. A Japanese friend told me that the cost of living in Okinawa is high, and that women in Okinawa can't usually afford to stop working and stay at home with children. In fact, when I see young children during our walks they're almost always with a grandparent. So these bathers (who are certainly <em>not</em> swimming, despite appearances) represent the wealthier few who can afford to spend their days at the shore with their children. Plus some grandmothers willing to sacrifice their skin condition for the amusement of restless children, and a few American women like me, unmoored from our regular lives, watching the tide.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/walk7.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/400/walk7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1129641368757900172005-10-18T19:31:00.000+09:002005-10-23T21:43:01.083+09:00BelongingThis may seem an odd point of contemplation for the knee-jerk nonconformist that I am, but I've been thinking lately about the urge to belong, and the search for a place to make a Torah-shaped space. Up until two months ago, I never thought about this, although if I had I would have said that I was never very good at fitting in and never much wanted to (chicken or egg?). Almost 11 years as a military wife has certainly cemented that opinion: once you're digested by the guts of this machine, you discover pretty quickly that you're either a joiner or a loner. While I've made friends with other military wives (I hope you're reading this, and I hope you know how much I've valued your friendship), it's almost always been with other loners. Joiners almost always get caught up in the farce known as "wearing your husband's rank." In a nutshell, WE aren't the ones in the military, and WE don't have a rank. WE'RE supposed to all be equal; it's only our husbands who have to know to a hair's-breadth who outranks whom, who salutes first. As we all know, it doesn't really work that way --- generals' wives have personal secretaries, chair committees, and host teas to which corporals' wives don't get invited. Lt. Col.s' wives are certainly aware that the impressions they make and the networks they develop will have a slightly-greater-than-butterfly-effect on their husbands' chances of promotion. You can't take a tae-bo class at the base gym, or join the PTA (in some places, even the KIDS wear rank), or even go to Sunday brunch at the officers' club without tripping over all of the joiners grooming and nipping at each other. It's worse in some places than others, and I remember Quantico as being the most rotten with rank. When my husband was made Warrant Officer, I was summoned to a coffee at the base general's house and made to tour the residence while a volunteer personal secretary/docent delivered herself of a stream of absolutely numbing detail on the not-particularly-unusual antecedents of every duvet cover and china ornament in the place, following which the general's wife (a former elementary school teacher) gave a sitting room lesson on how to behave now that we were officers' wives. I tried to ask pertinent questions about exactly when one begins to hand-over-heart salute a moving flag when one is stationery, and the appropriate time to leave one's calling card in the cleverly disguised calling-card holders that certainly weren't ashtrays scattered throughout her house (and one can only assume the homes of all flag officers). But I was also thinking some things that no longer fit in with my philosophical goals of right thought and right speech, but which in outline went something like .... nope, can't work even the outline into good Buddhist practice.<br /><br /><br /><em><strong>Good-bye</strong></em><br /><br />So after almost four decades of adamantly not fitting in, I was sandbagged by Kansas City. No one who hasn't lived there would believe it, but Kansas City is seething with nonconformists. From the moment I went to a friend's potluck dinner and realized that almost everybody there had renamed themselves --- T'gallen, Phoenix, Astral ... only Wolfgang still had the name his mother gave him --- I realized that finally I had found the place where nonconformists, in the process of backing as far away from the groom and snarl crowd as possible, had simultaneously backed into one another. And once you've met one, it's like dominoes falling and you've met a dozen. T'ger gave me comp tickets to hang out at the KC Renaissance Festival, where I first encountered and fell deeply in love with the djembe. Ed gave me a djembe and told me to go to Sacred Earth Arts to learn how to play it. The woman who owns Sacred Earth Arts introduced me to the sisters who help organize the Gaea Goddess Gathering, and invited me to the benefit where I met the editor of "Redfruit" ; before long I was learning to drum with Women of the Drum, and that led to the war protest rallies that I know they're still having every week at the J.C. Nichols park with the horse fountain, <img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/cpeaceFlag.jpg" border="0" />and to playing to support Take Back the Night and the Quaker Friends peace benefits, and before you knew it we were all drumming around a fire with some groovy, semi-naked heathens at the Heartland Pagan Festival. I bought books and traded books with The Right Duke at Prospero's Book Store, and got overflowing boxes of organic produce from Local Harvest, which Gambit helped me load into my liberally (in both senses) bumper-stickered car. Our son found a Sebastian-shaped place at City in Motion dance studio. <img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/cityinmotion.jpg" border="0" />I've never been anywhere with so many artists, dancers, and musicians all feeding one another creative energy. And I thought that we would stay. We were supposed to stay --- Ed was supposed to be able to extend his tour there until he retired, so we bought a house, and for the first time maybe ever, I made a space for myself that was bigger than my corner of the couch with a book. This was my home. <img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/yard2003.jpg" border="0" /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/2yard2003.jpg" border="0" /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/womanintree.jpg" border="0" /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/GoingToSchool.jpg" border="0" /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/PapiSleeps.jpg" border="0" />These were my friends. This was my place.<em></em><strong></strong><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>What's Your Favorite Place?</strong></em><br /><br />Sebastian, our son, is seven years old and going through that time where you're becoming aware of your parents as individuals in a world full of people, and you become obsessed with discovering all of the details about them that make them unique. What's your shoe size? What do you do at work? What was your favorite toy when you were a kid? What was your most embarassing moment? (We decline to answer that one.) What's your favorite place? Ed and I field the barrage as well as we're able, so when Sebastian asked me a few days ago about my favorite place, I answered, "My favorite place is where my family is." Given our peripatetic lifestyle, this is not only the best answer but also the right answer. Even before I married the military and started moving every three years, I don't remember having lived in the same place for more than five years (and, I think, that was from ages 5 to 10). So from the beginning, I've been a hoarder of symbolic objects, a saver of special rocks and ribbons used for the funerals of pets and gifts from 4th grade boyfriends and pieces of rough art crafted by the friends I most hated to leave. After all of these years, my collections are more presentable: Ed and I picked up river rocks from places we lived or visited the first several years we were married, and I made a fountain with them. We have a LOT of original art from people we know. We save clothes and jewelry and photographs from four continents' worth of travel. But I know what I'm really doing --- I'm hoarding a cigar box full of totemic objects, things that will have to stand in for the people and places I've had to leave. My box has just gotten bigger. My sense of home has never been fixed on a place --- imagine my wild envy of my best friend, who grew up in a home that has been in her family for generations, who had her wedding on its lawn, and can bring her daughter there to see where her family has lived, longer than the past century. I'm a snail, a hermit crab, and because I have to carry every memory's object, I also have to cull, ruthlessly, every three years. The baby swing that rocked all of my children to sleep has gone to Major Thrift, and I cried as I set it out. Prospero's got all of the books that everyone outgrew; I gave away the club dresses of my 20s, still faintly perfumed with memories, the wool suits that my grandmother made for me 20 years ago, the crib that my stepsister's children slept in before my children did, the sectional sofa that I got from a friend in Jordan ten years ago, that drove me to distraction because my children loved to make ramps and towers and tents with the seat cushions. But this endless distillation of meaning into fewer and fewer objects only brings into the harsh light what I already knew was true. Home is not, after all, the place to which you are accustomed, no matter how well you know its random noises and odd corners, no matter how long you've had to feel as if familiarity means possession. I must remember, whenever I begin to grieve for places lost, that my home has always been wherever the immensely precious, fragile, obliviously bonky heads of my children rest, dreaming, before another contentious, busy day, wherever my best friend, my husband surrenders his watch over us all to sleep (where he and whoever happens to be The Baby usually end up snoring in bass-and-soprano tandem). We possess nothing. Everything can, and sometimes must be, left behind; where you really belong is never determined by an inventory of items, but by the presence of those to whom you, yourself, are indispensible.<br /><br /><em>Wisdom comes from seeing your Self clearly.<br />Compassion comes from seeing your Self in others.<br /><br /> ---- posted on Meditation Circle at tribe.net</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1128479978576478792005-10-05T10:51:00.000+09:002005-10-05T13:57:41.480+09:00Pictures!<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/IndianaInJapan.jpg"></a><div align="right">As promised, here at last are pictures of some of the things I've found most striking so far about living here.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/MysteryBoat1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 301px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 209px" height="150" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/MysteryBoat.jpg" width="200" border="0" /></a> I see this boat twice a day, I think at high tides, and I have no idea what kind of ship it is. It has a tall gantry-like thing at the stern, but no obvious cargo on deck, and I've never seen nets. Ed thinks it might be a dredging ship working to deepen the port. </div><div align="right"><br /><strong><em>mystery ship</em></strong><br /><br /></div><div align="right"><em><strong></strong></em></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/VendingMachine.jpg"></a></em></strong></div><div align="left"><div align="left"></div></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em><div align="left"><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/VendingMachine.jpg"></a></em></strong></div></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><div align="left"><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/VendingMachine.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="200" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/VendingMachine.jpg" width="151" border="0" /></a></em></strong></div></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><div align="right"><strong><em>vending machine</em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right">Here is one of the ubiquitous Japanese vending machines.</div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="left"><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/VendingMachine.jpg"></a></em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/BuddhistMonk.jpg"></a></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="left"><strong><em><div align="left"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/BuddhistMonk.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/BuddhistMonk.jpg" border="0" /></a></div>Buddhist monk</em></strong></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">This is not, of course, a picture of</div><div align="left">the actual monk I saw walking</div><div align="left">down the sidewalk with a tall</div><div align="left"><div align="left">wooden staff, last week. (no camera!)</div></div><div align="left">But, as I was trying to puzzle out</div><div align="left">what sort of person he was, Ed brought </div><div align="left"><div align="left">home the October issue of <em>Okinawa</em></div></div><div align="left"><em>Living,</em> and I saw this picture of</div><div align="left">a Buddhist monk. One mystery solved!</div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"></div><div align="left"><p></p><p></p><p>This is one of the banyan trees in Isa Park, a little park next to the seawall, right across the street from our house.</p><p><strong><em>Isa Park<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/BanyanTree2.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/BanyanTree1.JPG" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p></div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/BalconyView1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/BalconyView1.JPG" border="0" /></a></p><p></p><p>This is the reason we chose this apartment.</p><p></p><p><strong><em>view from our balcony</em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/HambyTown1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 228px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 162px" height="135" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/HambyTown.jpg" width="243" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p>Here are two views from the seawall.</p><p><strong><em>Hamby Town and Mihama</em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p align="right"><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><em></em></strong></p><strong><em><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 256px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 173px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="170" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/200/FishingBoats1.JPG" width="256" border="0" /></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><strong><em><p align="left"><strong><em>Fishing boats anchored behind the breakwater</em></strong></p><p align="left"></p><p align="left"></p><p align="left"></p></em></strong><br /><br /><br /><p></p><p>Here are a few of the small things that make me happy:</p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/JasmineTea1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="195" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/JasmineTea.jpg" width="166" border="0" /></a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><em>jasmine tea</em></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/BlueTabiSocks2.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="197" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/BlueTabiSocks1.JPG" width="179" border="0" /></a></p><p></p><p><strong><em>blue tabi socks</em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/MyDrums1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="248" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/MyDrums.jpg" width="201" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em>my drums</em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And here are the three things in Japan that make me the most happy:<strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/SebastianInJapan1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/SebastianInJapan1.JPG" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Sebastian</em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/AtanasiaInJapan.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/AtanasiaInJapan.jpg" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Atanasia</em></strong></p><p><strong><em><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/1600/IndianaInJapan1.JPG"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/IndianaInJapan1.JPG" border="0" /></a></em></strong></p><p><strong><em></em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Indiana</em></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Many thanks to Buddy, for pointing out that almost no one was allowed to post comments the way I had the defaults set. I've fixed it now so that everybody who visits can post a comment, and I wish you would. :)</p><p></p><p align="center"><strong><em>In Passing</em></strong></p><p align="center"><em>Waiting for words to come from the moonlit sky . . .</em></p><p align="center"><em>Suddenly, dark clouds drift across like chilling smoke</em></p><p align="center"><em>But don't let your heart be darkened like them ---</em></p><p align="center"><em>The moment always passes and gladness will return.</em></p><p align="right">----- Kwan Yin</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1128154924934413422005-10-01T17:21:00.000+09:002005-10-14T11:43:08.013+09:00Cultural ImmersionI've been in Okinawa now for ten weeks, and events have been overtaking me with ferocious regularity. We live in a Japanese apartment (although admittedly one constructed to take advantage of the housing allowances of Americans), Atanasia is going to a Japanese Montessori school, I've already done my first gig with the drum group Afrikasia (of which every member but me is Japanese), and I've gone to my first month of djembe classes (ditto). I'm past the stage of large surprises, mostly --- I no longer walk to the passenger side of the car when I intend to drive, and I almost never try to signal a turn with the windshield wipers anymore. I know how much the coins are worth, including the two that look almost alike, and I can do the rough yen-to-dollars conversion in my head. Right now, 100 yen are worth about a dollar, so everything is priced in pennies. My rent is 255,000 pennies, a bottle of water is 110 pennies, and enough Chicken McNuggets and french fries to feed all three children is 14,500 pennies.<br /><br />I've figured out some of the small stuff, too. In Japan, there's a vending machine on every OTHER street corner (which is efficient, since everybody is willing to cross the street and still find it convenient). They can be anywhere --- at the beach, set into people's garden walls, outside trendy little boutiques in pastel shades to match the signs, right next to restaurant doors, out in the middle of a stretch of road with not much there but a streetlight. Somehow, they all have power, because the drinks are always beaded with condensation. They have names like Dydo, Boss Coffee, and Pokari Sweat (something like colorless Gatoraide). The drink in the taxi-yellow can with black kanji and a small white flower is jasmine tea, and it really does smell faintly floral. I crave it; I have a stash at home now. The drink in the taxi-yellow can with the brown kanji and the faint outline of a Chinese lion is NOT jasmine tea, and makes my stomach feel a little knotty. I know there's mint tea in there somewhere, but the cans with the green leafy plants on them are full of green tea, which of course makes sense in retrospect. I haven't actually tried Pokari Sweat.<br /><br />I own three pairs of tabi socks already, and I'm not afraid to wear them. I bought them because they have a beautiful orange koi fish centered over your foot as you wear them, and the fish are so vibrant and elegant. But it's still too hot to wear tabi socks with your sandals and not look like the most gooberish of tourists. Right now, I'm developing the callouses between my toes --- everybody wears thong sandals, EVERYBODY (except the people who work outside for a living, who wear white rubber boots). But these are not the flip-flops of summer-camp bath houses; we wear thong sandals with sequins, gilt sandals, clear plastic high-heeled sandals, carved and painted wooden sandals, somber sandals and sparkly sandals and the funky functional kind with the ring around the big toe. Of course, many people in Japan wear other kinds of footwear, but we all walk with a slight shuffle, because we're all wearing shoes that can be slipped off whenever we go inside. I have been able to purchase shoes in Japan, but my outfitting adventures ended there. My feet are size 6 1/2, in the U.S., and at home it's sometimes hard to find shoes because stores don't usually carry a lot of stock in the smaller sizes. Here, as I discovered after much experimentation, I wear a size LL (that's "double-large"). And although I really have plenty of t-shirts to last me through the apparently endless tropical summer (it's still in the mid-80s here and very humid), styles here are different: women layer the shirts that we would wear alone, at home, to create an effect that's substantially more conservative. But my efforts to buy clothes here haven't yet resulted in my owning anything I can actually wear. I've tried to explain this to the women I drum with, but I don't think I've really gotten the extent of my sense of dislocation across. I'm 5'2" and this morning I weighed 120 lbs. At home, I'm a small person, although granted not among the most waiflike. Here, surrounded by Japanese women, I hulk, I loom, I spill out of my clothes and my chair. My biceps are the size of their calves, my sarongs could wrap around any two of them. While there are Japanese women my size here, I have no idea how they clothe themselves.<br /><br />My drum classes are exciting, challenging, very informative. I've learned more about African-specific djembe technique in three classes so far than I have in two previous rounds of workshops at home --- but to be fair, the classes here are smaller and the teacher has more time to offer individual comments. But I'm wrung out by the time I make it home (Okinawa City is about half an hour away). Daiki-san speaks a whole lot more English than I speak Japanese, but it's not enough for complete sentences, and everybody else is Japanese, so I spend two hours a week staring intently at his hands while he's playing, and at his face when he talks so that, through the gestalt of brain-numbing levels of concentration, body language, occasional words of English, and demonstration, I can sieve fragments of meaning from the incomprehensible whole. Actually, drum is as good a way as there may be to communicate with other people who don't speak the same language. I don't have to understand most of what he's saying to understand when Daiki-san tells me that I've got the timing slightly off in the second half of the phrase, or that I need to make certain tones brighter than others. He's really very encouraging; I had imagined Japanese teachers would be more remote, more formulaic. He's concerned that I'm too tense, that I'm not enjoying playing enough. Which is ironic, since people who have watched me play have sometimes commented on the huge silly grin I wear. It's just the effort of focusing, I think, and the realization that in this style of drumming I lag behind the rest of the class in technique. But I'm learning fast. :)<br /><br />This week, I've crossed the line from drummer to drum geek. I think the difference is that a drum geek is someone who not only owns several different drums but is actively attempting to learn how to play them all. You may know how attached I am to my one and only djembe, the one with the huge deep voice. I've heard that, to make a djembe, the crafter has to take the wood from a living tree, and the tree has to remain alive or the wood can't be used for a drum. Probably apocryphal, but still a good metaphor for the way I feel about this drum. It's too big for me, objectively, I wrestle with it in order to play it, but I've decorated it with ornaments from people I treasure, I swaddle it in layers of padding as I labor to carry it from home to practice. I bought a special drum-geek stool to make it possible for me to get high enough above the drum to play it. I feel as if I'm not the owner of an article, but the custodian of a relic or a fetish, as if I'm charged with keeping this drum as well as I'm able, but that its story only intersects mine. I love my drum in the same way that I loved my century-old house in Kansas City, the way I love a particular stretch of bottom-land outside Eleanor, West Virginia, the way I love the family grave site some Appalacian family tucked inside iron-fence walls on the side of a hill that now overlooks Interstate 64 but once had nothing but the glaucous curves of hills between it and the approach of evening. But my drum, my charge, is more than half as tall as I am, it weighs 30 lbs., and it's hard to carry and almost impossible to play with a harness (while standing and carrying it, that means). *** The following is drum-geek-speak and may be skipped by my many non-drummer friends and family members. *** I've pulled it to tighten it once, and wrapped it several times on top of that in the attempt to tune it tightly enough to play the style of African djembe we're doing in class, and I feel like I'm trying to make my drum into something it's not --- it has its own voice, and in trying to turn it into a vehicle for another kind of sound I'm afraid of losing the thing that makes this drum unique. So, after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to buy another drum for performances with Afrikasia (our next gig, next weekend, is among a roster of a dozen or so groups, in a club roughly the size of an RV) that I can not only play with a harness but can keep out of the way of a club crowd. It's made in Bali (Indonesia) and has a carving of a long-necked, long-winged, long-tailed bird that wraps all the way around the body of the drum. The wood's dark and has a hard shine, although I don't think it's been varnished. I can lift it with one hand. I can lift it with a hand that's already holding a child. :) It needed only a very little tightening to make that bright, crackling, ozone-charged sound, and the head's much smaller, so I don't have to reach so far for the bass. It feels a little like, well, not like having a second child, because of course you already love a new child as completely as the ones you already have, and not like having a new love, because there's already a tinge of finality to whatever feelings you have about your old love, and a swell of excitement and intoxication about the unknown new. Perhaps it's more like getting a new coworker after someone you were close to has left --- you want to like the newcomer as much, but you still feel a little standoffish, and maybe disloyal, too.<br /><br />So there's a new djembe in my life, but the real geekiness is just developing. I've also joined a belly dance troupe as a drummer; my first gig with them is in two weeks; I'm doing an African rhythm segment that the dancers will dance to. But being a belly dance drummer means you really need to play the doumbek; I've been practicing with a borrowed one, so I've ordered one of my own, plus a kind of middle eastern tambourine called a riq so I can be the designated percussionist. Yeah, I'm a drum geek, and I'm proud.<br /><br />I've unpacked and put away four thousand pounds of our household goods shipment, but of course the most essential ephemera is still lurking in the half-dozen boxes I haven't gotten to yet because the packers, according to some arcane formula, labeled them "knick-knacks" and "decor" but which (one can only hope) apparently also contain the cord that connects the digital camera to the computer, as well as other small but essential items of electronic paraphenalia. Ergo, there are still no pictures of our stunningly larger and somehow ever more beautiful children, or of dozens of other things I want to show you --- the view of the sea from our windows, the fishing boats tied up in the tidal estuaries, the Buddhist monk I saw on the sidewalk last week, the inside of a Japanese public bathroom (turns out women CAN pee standing up --- the toilets are like horizontal urinals set into the floor), trees growing green bumpy fruit called Buddha's head that are marvelously white and sweet and creamy inside, and the particular shade of mauve that Japanese drivers are partial to this year. There's a long list in my head of things to show you, although I'm not much of a photographer, so I promise to try to have pictures ready for my next post. What do you think of the blog idea? I wanted a way to let you all know what's happening without clogging your inboxes with long messages and multiple attachments.<br /><br /><br /><br />May all beings be endowed with happiness;<br />may all beings be free from suffering.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Torah<br /><br />This is a link to Masahiro's weblog. He's a member of Afrikasia, and a far better photographer than I'll ever be. If you scroll down to the entry for Sept. 11, you can see a photo of Afrikasia (including me) performing at an outdoor festival.<br /><a href="http://yaplog.jp/masahiro0821/">http://yaplog.jp/masahiro0821/</a><br /><br /><br /><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/afrikasia1.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br />And for those of you who haven't already seen them, here's a link to my artist friend Vickie's web page. If you open the "Coffee Girl Opening" gallery and go to page 2, there are pictures of my Kansas City drum group --- Women of the Drum --- performing (me, too) at Vickie's art opening at the Coffee Girl.<br /><a href="http://www.kisstheskystudio.com/">http://www.kisstheskystudio.com/</a> </p><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/coffeegirl3.jpg" border="0" /><br /></p><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/coffeegirl2.jpg" border="0" /><br /><br />Here's a link to T'ger's home page --- the best in peasantwear! Go to the "T'ger's Toggs" gallery, and on the second page is a picture of Salen and me working in T'ger RenFest booth (that was two years ago, I think, when I was pregnant with Indiana --- can't tell in that dress though, can you!?!).<br /><a href="http://www.tgertoggs.com/">http://www.tgertoggs.com/</a> </p><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 122px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 160px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" height="153" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4119/1668/320/tgertoggs.jpg" width="119" border="0" /></p><br /><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1128401263695386212005-08-25T13:59:00.000+09:002005-10-29T11:26:57.486+09:00East China SeaI don't think culture shock is really the name for what life has been like for the month since I was last online. Culture shock seems to describe when you're disturbed by the jarring unfamiliarity of your surroundings, and although Japan is certainly a new experience, it doesn't feel like trying to get used to Saudi felt. That sort of hurt --- many days, I felt like the magician's assistant, trying to contort myself to fit into half of the magic box so that I would appear to have been sawed in half. This, though, living here, feels a lot like the way we all should have been living all along. Everyone, with the exception of some American base employees, is polite, to everyone else, all of the time. There's a slight hint of competitiveness, as we each try to demonstrate better manners. The cashiers in stores smile and bow and hand you your change with both hands (the way you present someone with a gift), and honestly it's as if a huge weight has been lifted from me; it's a true pleasure to perform the American bow (because we don't really know the social distinctions necessary to do a real bow, we've all been given cultural permission to use an abbreviated version that's like nodding your head taken one degree further) and to smile at everyone, to say "excuse me" as we make room for someone to pass in the aisle while shopping, to give pedestrians and the elderly the right of way. I don't find it confining at all, I find it very restful. The maps are good, the roads are well marked, and there aren't any "bad neighborhoods" to find yourself in, so I'm also confident about being able to go out and do things. Japan, oh, Japan is wonderful.<br /><br />However, our "air freight" (which was supposed to be delivered in around 30 days) ended up being trucked to Travis Air Force base in California before it ever got airborn, although why this should have added an extra three weeks to the shipping time is still a mystery. So we ended up living on the contents of our suitcases and of the boxes we mailed ourselves from Kansas City before we left, for almost two months. It took a week to get television service; the only type available here is satellite, which is every bit as bad as the commercials for cable tell you. If it rains, we can't watch tv. It took three weeks to get connected to the internet, and as it works out, the only phone in the house that will work now is the one plugged into the computer. Meanwhile, no air freight meant no drum (for six weeks --- it was very hard), and no spices (it was almost impossible to think of things to cook that didn't call for anything but salt and pepper), and no tea pot. For 50 days, I boiled water in a sauce pan and poured it into a coffee cup with instant coffee. I like instant coffee; it was the sauce pan that was the problem. The sauce pan that was in our loaner kit here didn't have a lip, and sure as hell one morning I poured boiling water all over my hand. So now I know that the Naval hospital's phone numbers are all answered by computers that won't connect you to a nurse, and also how to find the emergency room. And finally, to add insult to injury (literally --- how rare is that?), while the Dept. of Defense is glad to loan us furniture since it wouldn't pay for us to bring our own, it can supply vast quantities of chests of drawers that are too bulky for the size of Japanese bedrooms, but can't locate a desk chair in the entire Pacific theater. At the moment, I'm sitting on the "desk chair" provided with the "student desk," and I can comfortably rest my chin on the desktop while I type this. And, after carefully asking me to describe the number and ages of my children, the housing office issued me an apartment-sized refrigerator, along with helpful advice about how growing children need to eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, which I guess I'm supposed to purchase daily since there isn't room for any of it in my fridge. Maybe culture shock IS the right term ---- it's just not Japanese culture that's the shock, it's the miseries of military culture that are getting to me.<br /><br />The connections from our digital camera to the computer are, along with our other possessions, still being guided across the Pacific by intrepid Samoan navigators aboard a recreation of the Kon Tiki, so pictures will be delayed a little further. You'll be amazed at the golden brown-ness of our children --- only their butts carry any reminder that they're related to one of the melanin-challenged, and even I have developed the scattering of freckles on my arms into a galaxy so closely packed that, from a distance, they almost resemble a tan. And that's despite conscientious application of SPF 50 :)<br /><br />But even when the children are overtired and shouting, while I'm sitting in a room full of nothing but white walls and clunky furniture (because my things are apparently being delivered by outrigger canoe), crumbs and sand (because it's truly impossible to keep vast expanses of tile clean while three children eat nine meals a day, not to mention go to the beach, with only a broom), while attempting the disarm the toddling artist of the crayon her siblings have so helpfully given her ....... even then, I can look through the balcony doors and see, just past the trees in the park across the street, the first leap from the seawall to the horizon --- the East China Sea. At dawn, the sky heats from grey to red, the clouds brighten to white, and the sea gains color last of all, from iron grey to shivering blue. At noon there's often haze in the distance, and the ferries and fishing boats and dredging ships appear and disappear like guests in another room, while the waves at the breakwater run in long, white lines. But dusk is the best, as the sunset pulls the light from the sky but, for a few minutes, still glows on the water so that the sea is a lighter silver than the sky. The water itself is blue, and warm, and clear. By the time we leave here, the East China Sea will no doubt be burned onto my retinas, and I'll carry the image with me everywhere I ever go.<br /><br />Peace, and the blessings of your chosen deity ----<br /><br />TorahUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17330429.post-1131536061368116872005-07-25T20:30:00.000+09:002005-11-09T20:34:21.380+09:00KonichiwaOhayo gozaimus, everyone! At the beginning of our second week in Japan, things are going pretty well. We have a green minivan, the name of which I haven't yet learned how to pronounce. :) It looks generally similar to the ones we're familiar with in the States, but a lot more angular --- sort of like a shoe box on wheels. The nose is really flat, too. I think that's because there's a lot more of the car inside the car than we're used to; a lot of the front seat area is taken up by a carpeted mountain that I suspect of being integral to the drive train. Apparently, Japanese people aren't too concerned about seat belt use in the back seat. None of the cars I've been in so far here have a full set of functioning seat belts. It was a sweaty, frustrating half hour the first time we put the car seats in the van, trying to locate all of the seat belt components and match them to one another. After we bought it, we discovered that the radio quits working once you turn the steering wheel. However, the a/c works, which is several orders of magnitude more important! What the hey --- the used cars being swapped back and forth among arriving and departing American families here are generally pretty cheap (we wrote a check for this one), so as long as the important stuff works, we can always buy a car stereo later. The streets are pretty narrow off base, and of course you drive on the left side of the road (and the driver's side of the car is on the right --- you can tell new arrivals by looking for the people sitting the the passenger seat with keys in hand and a look of bewilderment), so it's a challenge to maneuver the big green machine. I haven't driven this paragon of family transportation yet. I take my driver's license test tomorrow. What an adventure: trying to learn how to drive by memorizing the shapes and colors of the street signs because you can't read the words. (!)<br /> <br />In addition to a car, we've also found a place to live (although we won't be able to move in for perhaps another week --- what's a government job without red tape?). Ed and I looked at 8 or 10 places, separately and together, before settling on one. Actually, Ed demonstrated once again his ability to keep his family happy in difficult circumstances by telling me that whichever place made me happy would be fine. :) The place I liked is an apartment; I'd thought I'd rather have a house, but this was a lot better than the houses we saw. Houses in Japan don't usually have what we'd think of as a yard (because of the very limited living space), so no matter what, we'd end up having to take Chance for walks instead of letting him out into a yard. This apartment is on the second floor, across the street from a small oceanfront park (a double bonus --- walking space for Chance and swings and a slide for the kids) and a walking path along the seawall. From the apartment, we'll have a view of the ocean (and a balcony to admire it from, too, when it gets cooler). One of the advantages of being so close to the water is the sea breeze. It's not that it's so horribly hot here --- Saudi was much hotter, and even Kansas City probably has warmer temperatures right now --- but the humidity is really high. Having a place that we can open up to a good breeze after the hottest part of the day will really help us manage the utility bills, which can be very high. We'll have four bedrooms (VERY difficult to find, here) and two baths, and a walk-in closet in the master bedroom (too late! I already put most of my clothes in storage). All of the windows are bay windows with dark-stained wooden window seats that match the molding. The floors are a pink-beige stone, and the walls are covered in grass-textured wallpaper with a white-on-white bamboo design. The kitchen has dark blue counters and cabinets, and the upper cabinets that separate the kitchen from the living room area have glass doors, so the light passes through. The building's only two years old, so everything is new and in very good condition. It's so full of light --- we were very lucky to get a unit facing the ocean, because buildings here are very close together and the windows on the side of the building face another building only a few feet away. Of course, all of this loveliness is reflected in the rent. Thankfully, we're getting a housing allowance to help --- the rent is twice as much as the mortgage for our house was (yikes!). But I've had many years of experience making every penny squeak as it leaves my hand, and I intend to apply this expertise to the yen.<br /><br />I've been practicing my limited Japanese on the hotel staff and anyone else who will stand still long enough. So far, I've found the stereotype to be true: the Japanese people I've encountered so far have been very friendly and very polite. For example, after the gruelling transcontinental flight, we landed in Osaka very tired and disoriented, with our hands full of children. And, of course, we had to trek across the airport, collect our half-ton of luggage, and go through immigration and then customs. But even the immigration and customs agents, although obviously exhausted, were polite and efficient (imagine!). And as soon as we got into Osaka airport proper, we were showered with help from the airline staff. They located a forgotten bag, insisted we take a loaner stroller, sought out all of the families with children in the waiting area and got us on the airplane first, took the bags and car seat out of our hands --- it was amazing. And very welcome: Ed and I were past exhaustion, since the children did sleep on the never-ending trip, but never all three at the same time. :) OK, granted, these are people whose job is customer service, but it's still fairly representative of the way we've been treated here. I flatter myself that it helps that we're interested in the culture and have tried to learn how to say at least the essentials of politeness. The base offers Japanese language classes, although I may have to wait until Sebastian and Atanasia go back to school to start (we'll see), so I'll be able to expand on my five phrases!<br /><br />We're doing fine, although already Ed's working his usual (e.g., very long) hours and the kids and I are pretty tired of being cooped up in hotel rooms. But we went to brunch at the club yesterday (all the bacon the kids could eat!) and then to the pool. Atanasia loved the water slide --- I finally had to make her stop when I realized that she was so tired she could barely climb the steps to the top, and she was still trying to talk me into one more slide as we left. Sebastian is getting more and more confident in the water, and surprisingly the baby who can't be bathed loves the pool! We're going to have to get her her own vest, because she wriggles for us to let her go, and entertains herself by putting her face into the water just like the big kids. You know, we've always said she's a grown-up trapped in a baby's body. ;) So we're well on our way to settling in, although we won't really be at home until we're all back together again. Walking through the pet food aisle of the Commissary almost brought me to tears. The ladies are going to LOVE those window seats, and there's a beach within evening-walk's distance for Ed and Chance, and an elevator in the building for the days when he doesn't feel like tackling the stairs. I'll send pictures of the house (apartment), car, and Okinawa-tanned children as soon as we a) get a computer (can't use the lodging computer for pix), and b) find the camera-to-computer cable that I'm almost positive I put with the stuff to be packed. Hope everyone's well and happy. More later.<br /> <br /><br />Love, TorahUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0