People in my Neighborhood

There was a time last year when I was the most fearsome creature in all of Ehime. I would walk down the street in my town and the neighbors (with the exception of the softball team and the Shinto priest) would immediately look straight down at their feet and walk past me as quickly as possible, presumably to avoid any awkward English conversations.

Luckily, due to a combination of factors including my growing pop star fame* and the fact that I speak a little Japanese, I no longer appear to strike fear into the hearts of my neighbors, so we're getting to know each other a little better.

Last week, I was talking to Tyler for a minute outside of our Japanese teacher's house when I noticed this older man staring at us from across the street. I bowed to him and expected him to nod back and keep walking, but a few seconds later, he strode right up to us, whipped out his camera, and ordered us to pose so that he could take pictures of us and finish off his roll of film. After he had finished with his camera, he apparently had a thing or two he wanted to tell us, and proceeded to give a lengthy (~30 minute) lecture on topics including orchids, film cameras, old-school vacuum tube speakers, the war in Iraq, and his personal collection of fake American rifles. I don't think I ever quite understood what the point of all this was, but it was entertaining.

After I extricated myself from the man's lecture and said goodbye to Tyler, I walked back towards my apartment, and two minutes later, found myself being waved towards the cigarette vending machine** on the corner next to my apartment. An elderly lady from down the street was standing there, and she told me that she needed to buy cigarettes for her son but didn't know how to use the vending machine. She thrust a thousand yen bill into my hand and asked me to figure out the machine, so I helped her buy a couple packs. It wasn't until she thanked me and walked off down the street that it hit me -- she had been talking to me in mad Japanese the whole time like she didn't even notice that I was a foreigner. Perhaps I am starting to blend in...or perhaps she was just really frustrated with the vending machine.


* I sang in front of a pretty big crowd at the American Idolish singing contest last month, which was great fun. Unfortunately, I didn't place this time, but I did win an honorable mention coffee gift certificate from the judges. Also, at dinner after the contest, this random lady came up to me in the restaurant, told me she enjoyed my song, and gave me a box of fruit jelly. :D

** Yes, they sell cigarettes in vending machines here. I can't quite figure out why they even bother to make cigarettes illegal until you turn 20...

Death of a Goldfish

Hi again! Since my last post, there's been good news and bad news. The good news is that I've finished writing essays for all ten of my medical school applications. Also, I got one invitation for an interview last week, so I'm coming back to Seattle for a week in the end of October. :)

The bad news has to do with the nine goldfish that I got at the festival last month. (I guess I spoke a little too soon in my last post.....) Last weekend, I came back to my apartment from a lesson and was about to feed my goldfish when I noticed that something didn't feel right. On a whim, I counted the fish and found that there were only eight in the tank. At first, I figured number nine must be hiding in a plant, but after a quick inspection, I realized that this couldn't be true. At this point, I happened to look down at the floor and saw number nine lying on the tatami. He was very dry and very dead. :( :( Apparently, he had been feeling a bit too frisky and jumped clear out of the tank. I wish I had been there to rescue him. :(

I think number nine must have had a girlfriend (boyfriend??) in the tank, because the next day, another poor goldfish started swimming in corkscrews on its side and was dead by the next morning. Probably of a broken heart. Poor kid. :(

I didn't really think that I would get so attached to the goldfish, but I must admit that the bottom dropped out of my stomach when I saw number nine on the floor. It really was an awful feeling to see him lying there and realize that he's never going to move again. *shudder* Guess I've never really had a pet die before. :( Wish me luck with the other seven fish!

More Than Halfway There

After two more weeks of writing essays for medical school applications:

Number of essays finished: roughly 18

Number of essays still to write: roughly 9

Number of goldfish still alive: 9/9 (!) Aren't they beauties??



I think I know why a bunch of the world's greatest authors went crazy at some point in their lives. I'll bet you they all sat alone in their hot, muggy apartments grouchily writing medical school admissions essays and talking to goldfish all day.

On a related note, it's that time of year again when the high school next door starts preparing for its Field Day. This means that the students are at the school at all hours of the day and night running laps around the soccer field, beating drums, and chanting things that sound strangely like, "This is a cat! Foul ball!! This is a cat! Foul ball!!" This may be another sign that I am slowly going crazy, but I've heard them do the same chant every morning, and no matter how many times I hear it, it sounds the same....

Something to Talk About

In another week or so, I'll be halfway through my stay in Japan. (In case you haven't heard, I extended my contract another year, so I'm going to stay at the medical school until August of 2008.) Over the next couple of days, things are going to change a bit. Tyler is leaving Ehime and the new teacher is coming sometime next week. Of course I'm excited to meet the new teacher, but also a little sad to see Tyler go -- it's been fun working together and nice to hang out with someone who shares my love for karaoke. :D

Let's get one thing straight, though -- although Tyler and I get along well, contrary to popular belief, we're not married, dating or otherwise bound by vows of eternal gaijin love. Despite this, I think we've both become resigned to the fact that everyone in Toon city thinks we're married. The softball men, the shinto priest, and various other people in my neighborhood have asked me how my husband is doing so many times that I've lost count. And yesterday, at dinner with two of our students (both exchange students from China), I realized that the medical students also appear to think that we're a couple.

Student 1: So you want to learn Chinese?

Me: Oh yes, please teach me!

Student 2: Ok. Do you know any words already?

Me: Well....I can say 你好 (hello) and 我愛你 (I love you.)

Student 1: Ooooo, you can say 我愛你??? Good! Now say it to Tyler!! (The two students look at each other and giggle. wink wink. nudge nudge.)

Tyler and Me: ???

Student 1: We've actually been wondering if you two have any good stories to tell us.

Me: Stories?

Student 1: Yeah, like...you know...stories about the two of you...together....

Me: haha. I don't think I could tell you anything very interesting.

Student 1: Oh....so you mean he didn't propose to you???

Tyler and Me: ...


Really, it doesn't bother me that everyone here thinks I'm married to Tyler. I actually find it quite entertaining. But I do wonder what will happen when the new teacher comes, as he just so happens to be male. I can only imagine the scandal. It'll probably make the front page. (TROUBLE IN PARADISE??? GAIJIN LOVE TRIANGLE IN TOON CITY.)

Yikes...who knew I would get married, divorced, and remarried in just one short year.

Festival Day II

The softball team invited me back yesterday for the second day of the Obon festival. Here's a quick summary of what went down:

Number of boxes of kleenex won: 0 (The two day total stands at 21. Not too shabby.)

Number of goldfish I managed to catch at the goldfish carnival game: 0 (Very poor showing...wish I could have better represented my country....)

Number of goldfish the softball team gave me to take home anyway: 9 :D

Number of days the goldfish lived in a pot in my kitchen because I didn't have a better container to put them in: 0.5 (I bought a small aquarium for them today. Hopefully they're happier now.)

Number of reporters from the Ehime prefectural newspaper who came to interview me for some kind of human interest article: 1 (笑)

Probability that I will become an international celebrity before I leave Japan: 0.5 (and rising rapidly with all this extra publicity I'm getting ;)

Number of public baths visited last night: 1 (That makes a total of two visits in the last two days. The people who work the night shift at the bath recognize my face now. I am thinking of moving out of my apartment and into the bath. I seriously could live there if I wanted to. The bath is open twenty-four hours with a restaurant, a room with comfy looking recliners, air conditioner and of course, a bath. If only it were in biking distance of work...)

Octopus Balls and Tired Feet

The last week or so, I've been waking up really early, probably because my apartment faces east and gets like an oven as soon as the sun comes up. Yesterday, I woke up at about 5:30....which doesn't fit my theory at all since the sky still looked like this:


Anyway, for whatever reason, I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. And so began a very long day of randomness.

Monday through Wednesday of this week are a Japanese holiday called Obon. During Obon, people believe that the souls of their ancestors come back to earth for a few days. Many people go back to their parent's house, eat special food, and visit their family's grave to honor their ancestors. (I tried to ask where my grandma's soul would go. Do the souls of non-Japanese people or Japanese-American people come back to earth too? Would my grandma's soul come back to her grave in Seattle? To her house? To her relatives' house in Okinawa? Nobody really seemed to know. Anyway, it was interesting to think about it.)

Many towns also have festivals for Obon with food and traditional dancing, and in my town, the festival's organizational committee happens to be run by.......my softball team! One of the softball men called me yesterday afternoon and asked if I would make food at one of the booths, so I rode my bike over to the festival to help out.

In the middle of this little park, they had set up this tower thing with a drum inside:


and tents with grills and deep-fryers to make soba noodles, fried chicken, french fries, udon, and octopus balls.


I was given my very own apron and towel and recruited to work at the octopus ball grill where I greased grills, poured batter, sprinkled cabbage and bits of octopus, and turned balls for three hours. It was fun to learn something new, but reeeallly hot behind the grill.

Meanwhile, lots of people from town came to the festival dressed in yukatas (a kind of light summer kimono) and danced in a circle around the tower like this:


Sorry, I'll have to work on my taking-pictures-in-the-dark skills, but oh well. The blurriness gives it character. :)

After the festival, there were some raffle prizes leftover so the whole kitchen staff was invited to draw tickets. Curiously, everyone drew prize number 4, which happened to be three boxes of tissues, and on top of that, everyone decided to give their tissues to me. I'm pretty sure that unless I catch pneumonia and am sick in bed every day until I leave Japan, I won't use 21 boxes of kleenex by myself, but they insisted on giving them to me so I graciously accepted them. :D

After the raffle, we grabbed some udon:

(Me and the first baseman, who gave me an apron from his sake factory.)

and then the softball men went off to the community center to have a post-festival party. We were sitting at the table snacking and chatting when the first baseman and the manager decided they wanted to go to a public bath and invited me to come. On one hand, it was already 11 PM and I had been up since 5:30 that morning, but on the other hand, I was pretty sweaty and greasy from grilling octopus balls, so I decided to take them up on it.

By now, I've gotten over the weirdness of bathing naked with a bunch of people I've never seen before, but I still don't quite understand the social side of the public bath thing -- lots of people go to the bath with friends or their family for fun, but of course, men and women have separate baths so they can't really hang out together. It doesn't seem like the best way to have a group outing. At any rate, last night, the two softball men went to their bath, I went to mine, soaked for awhile and met up again an hour later. The water felt really nice after standing in the hot octopus ball booth all day. I guess last night's bath was less about bonding and more about sweaty, tired feet. That was cool with me.

Art

This is a self portrait of Mai, one of the girls who I teach on Friday. She's 11 and wants to be a comic book artist when she grows up.



Yurie (12 or 13, I think) drew this picture during class a few weeks ago. Apparently this is what I look like during the lesson. :)



Actually, this one isn't from my students. It's from Maiko, my dad's cousin's daughter who lives in Okinawa. She drew a shisa, a traditional Okinawa guard dog-lion thing that is supposed to keep bad luck away from your house. It says, "To Big Sister Lindsay. This is a happy shisa. Don't you think so? From Mai Nakamura." There's kind of a Japanese pun in there that I can't translate, but it's very cute.

デンジャラス・ジャパン

Summer in Japan is not for the faint of heart -- an assortment of perils lurk right outside my apartment door. Today, I stepped outside my apartment, and after a thirty second walk down the stairs to my bike, I was already dripping with sweat. By the time I arrived at work five minutes later, I had a rather unattractive stain down the front of my shirt. Ugh.

It is really hot here.

Along with the recent heat wave, the two flights of stairs up to my apartment have suddenly become quite perilous. Since the exterior of my apartment building is bright yellow and brightly lit, every night, every single bug in the whole city comes flocking towards my building. When I come back to my apartment at night, I have to duck and dodge various critters, most of which are at least twice as big as any bug I have ever seen in Washington. Sometimes I feel like I'm living inside a video game:

Level One: Duck the spider webs on the first flight of stairs, and be sure to jump over the two gigantic beetles patrolling the second story landing. Don't let them spear you with their fearsome antennae and eat you, or you'll lose one life and be sent back to start.

(This one is actually one of the smaller beetles. I dropped my keys right next to him and dreaded picking them up, but fortunately, he was a rather sluggish type so I was able to retrieve my keys unscathed and pass on to Level 2.)

Level Two: The second set of stairs are relatively easy to negotiate, but beware of the occasional spider webs and purple lizards climbing up the walls. The lizards won't hurt you, but they can sure freak you out if they jump onto your head.

Level Three: On the third floor, keep low and time your dash to your apartment door carefully to avoid being dive-bombed by small birds which fly back and forth across the walkway frantically trying to find a way out of the netting that surrounds the apartment. When you reach your door, open and close it as quickly as possible to avoid letting in any unwanted guests.

***Should an unwanted guest enter your apartment, (e.g. a gigantic green bug with wings) nervously watch it fly circles around your light fixture, try to ignore it for half an hour, and finally trap it in a cup and take it outside in order to avoid accidentally inhaling it in your sleep.

----

Two Sundays ago, I discovered yet another peril of living in an old apartment in the heat of the Japanese summer. I had been working in the next city every night from Thursday to Sunday, so I had been eating out and hadn't used any of my kitchen appliances for almost a week. When I came home on Sunday night, I opened the refrigerator and was greeted by the most disgusting odor I have ever smelled in my life.

My ancient refrigerator had succumbed to the heat and quit working at a very inopportune time. In the sweltering heat, the leftover noodles, frozen hamburger, and the veggies in the crisper did not fare too well, and there was black mold everywhere. Fortunately, I eventually managed to clean out the fridge and freezer without dying from the fumes. The mold was pretty terrifying, though.

After a week with no fridge at all, my office ordered a new fridge and sent it to my apartment on Monday. It is hands down the most beautiful fridge I have ever seen in my life. Big, clean and cold inside. I love it. If it were human, I would marry it.

On a completely unrelated note, I have just noticed that the brand name of the new fridge is "it's," the brand name of my microwave is "Love and Rest," and the brand name of my toilet paper is "Mrs. Wisely."

Career Change

I think I'm going to give up this medical school business after all. Or maybe become like Patch Adams or something....because I swear that by the time I leave Japan, I will have become some type of celebrity.

I was walking down the street in Matsuyama with a friend the other day, when a man came up to us and asked if he could take a picture for a magazine. A picture? Of me? For a magazine? Surely, I must not understand his Japanese, I thought, but since we had nothing to do that day, we had our picture taken and went off to karaoke.

I forgot all about it until three or four weeks later. This medical student, who I had never met before, came up to me in the hallway at school and said in an excited whisper, "Town Jouhou!! Town Jouhou!!" (Town Information! Town Information!) She was looking me straight in the eye with this huge smile like she expected me to understand exactly what she was talking about, but I had no idea. Finally, I asked her what was up, and she told me that she had seen a picture of me in the Matsuyama Town Information magazine. In the next few days, a whole bunch of random people -- medical students, secretaries, one of my bosses -- showed me the magazine, so I guess it's a pretty widely read publication and my beautiful picture must be all over Matsuyama by now. Perhaps I will become a model.

(Click on it to enlarge it.)

...Or perhaps I will become a pop star after all. One of my students brought me a flier about another American Idolish singing contest the other day. This one is a little bit smaller than the last one and probably won't lead to any big television appearances, but I figure I have to work on my publicity in any way that I can. ;) I sang in the preliminary round of the contest the other day, and found a postcard in my mailbox on Friday saying that I made the first cut, so in two weeks, I'll be singing at the semi-final during a festival in the middle of downtown Matsuyama. Watch out Kelly Clarkson! Watch out Clay!!

Oh, yeah. I was on TV again the other day when our jazz band's concert was locally televised. You can check out video of my guest vocal appearance here if you like. :) I was pretty nervous singing with a big band for the first time but didn't do too bad....except for a little part at the end when I ran out of air and was dying...and the part after I finished singing when I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to leave the stage. I kind of looked at the emcee and bowed a bunch of times because I wasn't sure what to do. It sorta looks like I was doing an impression of the bowing lady from the contest at the end of the Sound of Music (>_<);;

Back

Hi!!! How have you been? Have you been taking your vitamins? Sleeping 8 hours a night? Eating breakfast?? Doing your homework??? I hope you're all doing well! Don't be fooled by the lack of blog posts -- I'm still alive* and enjoying myself in Japan. :D

For the past month and a half, I've been all over the place. I went to Kyoto, Himeji, Oita, Hiroshima, Ehime, Okinawa, and Nara with my family, and then to South Korea with my friend, Chris. After that came another round of essays for medical school applications, and then the final exam for the medical English class. The time has flown by so fast that sometimes it seems like there's hardly been time to think, let alone write blog entries. Things never get boring, though, and hopefully life will stay that way. :D Anyway, on to my (very disjointed) impressions of the last few weeks...

My family came to Japan in the end of June, and in the middle of their trip, we all went to the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. Even though it was my third time at the museum, it was still quite intense. Inside are a variety of exhibits about the atom bomb victims: a lunch box full of charred food that a junior high school girl never got to eat because she was incinerated by the heat from the bomb, a drawing of a husband peering helplessly through the ruins of his burning house at his wife who is stuck inside, a picture of a man so badly burnt that his face, back and legs are completely covered with blisters/charred skin(??). Really awful stuff.

In South Korea a few weeks later, Chris and I went to another museum where I saw more of the same. This museum was about the prisons that the imperialist Japanese army ran while it occupied Korea from the early 1900's until World War II. I had known that the Japanese army committed war crimes in Korea and China, but the museum was still pretty shocking. There were lots of really graphic displays showing how Koreans who protested against the occupation government were thrown into jail and tortured in all sorts of despicable ways. What struck me the most was that the tortured Koreans in the pictures looked just as awful as the a-bomb victims in Hiroshima. There's really not much difference between a back covered with blisters and a back covered with long gashes from a whip. Different means of violence, but the same horrible result, at least on the level of the individual victims.

All of these awful, awful pictures were, of course, depressing and left me thinking some pretty dark thoughts. How can human beings do such horrible things to each other? But throughout the rest of the trip, people did so many kind and good things for my family and me that it was difficult for me to be pessimistic for long. While this blog is not exactly the best place to make any big claims about the goodness of human nature, I have found lots of reasons to be optimistic. Here they are in no particular order:

-- Chris's friend Jin, who let us stay in her apartment even though I had never met her before. She was a fabulous host and showed Chris and me all around Seoul in between studying for her midterms and working at her part-time job.

-- the Korean guy sitting next to me on the plane back to Korea, who realized that I couldn't eat my sandwich because there were nuts inside and kindly offered me his yogurt. :)

-- my friends in Kyoto. My folks came to Kyoto on a Friday night, but my ferry arrived there much earlier that morning. I thought I would call up some of my friends in Kyoto to see if they could meet, but figured that it might not work out since they have classes on Fridays. Surprisingly enough, they all managed to reschedule somehow or other and took me out to lunch, dinner, and fireworks. One of my friends had a test in Osaka in the morning and her part-time job in Kobe in the afternoon, but still took the forty-five minute train ride out to Kyoto to meet up with us for an hour or so before running back to Kobe. Talk about going out of your way!

-- all of the Japanese relatives. In Oita, my dad's aunt Toshiko reserved our hotel for us, took us around in taxis to the best restaurants she could find, and fed us until I thought I was going to burst. :)


Our relatives in Okinawa were equally hospitable. My dad's aunt rented the biggest van I have ever seen, and her son, Dai, chauffeured us all over the island for the whole weekend.

(They also covered us with a tiny umbrella to make sure we didn't get sun burnt.)

-- the people of my town. Four of my lady students invited us over to one of their houses for lunch. They had mentioned that they would prepare some sort of light lunch, but I should have known better. When we got to the house, we found an absolutely gigantic spread of salad, okonomiyaki (a Japanese style pancake kind of thing), sausages, rice balls, cake, Japanese sweets, and several other dishes. It was delicious, but certainly not a light lunch.


That night, the softball men had a welcome party for my family. They started by driving us out to the first baseman's sake factory for a tour, and even enlisted an interpreter to come along and help explain things. After the sake factory, they ushered us over to the local shrine where more softball men and the Shinto priest/piano player were waiting to receive us. At the shrine, they had arranged for a shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and koto (Japanese stringed instrument) concert:


and a performance of shishimai, a traditional dragon dance:


We watched the show from the seats of honor, well-supplied with tea and mosquito repellent.


Then we set off to a restaurant for dinner. At the door of the restaurant, the softball men gave all of us happi (traditional Japanese summer jackets) and had us participate in a traditional welcome party ceremony where you break the top of a sake keg with big wooden hammers.


Dinner was huge and delicious, (in hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have scheduled lunch with my students and the softball team's party on the same day, because we were all quite full) and in the middle, all sorts of little surprises kept popping up. At one point, the shakuhachi player gave Steven his very own shakuhachi to take back to America. A little bit later, several softball men stood up to make speeches about how happy they were to have us in their town, and then requested that each of us get up and make a speech of our own. And in the middle of the speeches, the mayor of my town entered the restaurant and presented all of us with towels as a gift from the City of Toon. I felt like a diplomat or a movie star or something. It was all pretty great.


-- my family, who came all the way to Japan to see me! I had such a good time seeing you again!!

It's hard to recreate the last few weeks in a blog post, but the general feeling of goodwill and hospitality that I encountered everywhere I went was just incredible. Sometimes, back at work, I have these moments where I remember a funny moment with all the great people I hung out with during the trip and find myself smiling. Ikuko thinks I'm crazy, smiling for no particular reason in front of my computer screen, but I think I'm probably just happy. :)



* Still alive, but covered with mosquito bites. I think a small family of mosquitoes has taken up residence in my apartment.... (>_<);;

Nail Biters: Working, Waiting, Expecting (??)

The last few weeks here have been a little hectic. I've been teaching classes as usual, reserving hotel rooms for my family (coming to Japan today!), and finishing off my medical school application. By the time I turned in the application last week, it was easy to tell that I was a bit stressed out.

Exhibit A: My apartment, which I had cleaned so beautifully two weeks ago, once again became a wasteland of dirty clothes, yogurt containers, and cold medicine wrappers. Fortunately, on Tuesday night, I successfully carried out an emergency cleaning session and order has once again been restored.

Exhibit B: I now have (almost) no fingernails. There is something about the incredibly anal med school application system that makes me doubt every move I make. (Did I send in the right transcript? Did I format that paragraph right? Should I enter this in all caps? Where is my legal residence again??) And as I flipped through the 100+ page AMCAS (American Medical College Application System) Manual the other day trying to decide how to input my transfer credit, I slowly and unconsciously picked every single one of my fingernails off. I definitely need to stop that. On the bright side, my application apparently cleared the preliminary processing step today, so I guess I entered everything right after all. よっしゃ！

----

At the medical school, every where you go, there are guys in suits and ties standing in a line in the hallway with briefcases. They stand there all day doing absolutely nothing (as far as I can tell) besides smoothing their ties and looking at their watches. For the first few weeks I was here, it kind of creeped me out a little bit, because they would stand there and stare at me every time I walked by. I spent a lot of time speculating about the mysterious men (inspectors?....but what are they inspecting besides the gaijin walking down the hall?? yakuza [Japanese mafia]?? naw...no tattoos...hosts??) until I finally asked Ikuko, who told me that they are representatives from pharmaceutical companies waiting to meet with professors in the medical school. I guess if the professor's not in, the men in suits just stand there and stand there and wait for him to come...

By now, the men and I have gotten used to each other. Actually we're pretty good buddies. We nod to each other as I pass them in the hallway. But I still can't help but wonder why they stand outside the professors' doors all day instead of just going in and making an appointment. It seems like the most inefficient and boring job in the world. :(

----

The other day, on the way to the copy machine, I ran into a student of mine in the hall. At the beginning of the year, all of the medical students were terrified of being forced to speak English with me, so most of them would pretend not to see me if we happened to pass each other. But now, I am proud to report that they have gotten used to me, and so we have conversations like this:

Student: Hello. What are you doing?

Me: Oh, hi! I am going to the copy room to prepare for my lesson. Today, I have a lesson with three children.

Student: .... ?

Me: (gesturing and speaking more simply....or at least trying to....) I have three children...my students. I will teach them English today.

Student: (She thinks and then her eyes get absolutely gigantic. Points at me and gestures in the shape of a pregnant belly.)

Me: ... Huh?

Student: You have a baby???!!

Me: Hahaha....no no no no. I have students. I teach them English!

Student: Oh, oh, oh. I see. I see. Sorry, sorry!!

MD In Training

A few weeks ago, I saw my very first case of debrachiosis. I wasn't quite sure how to handle it, though...


Maybe I should actually go to medical school before I see my next patient...

Toon Town (東温市）

My town (click on it to make it bigger):


The big white buildings in the center are the medical school and the hospital where I teach. One of my private lessons is at the house just to the right of the blue netting on the left side of the picture.

蝶々

I almost stepped on this butterfly on my way to the dining hall today :( but saw it just in time and missed it. It started to fly away just as I took this picture. Hopefully it landed somewhere safer.

Idiot in a Blue Jacket

This year, during Golden Week^ I went to Kyushu (the island west of my island) with Tyler, Shisei (aka Fake Japanese Girl 2), and Shisei's friend, Nell. We were all so busy with work right before Golden Week that the trip almost didn't happen, but in the last few days, we made a mad scramble to book hotels and everything worked out.*

Shisei and Nell live in Kyoto, which is on an entirely different island, so Tyler and I met them halfway in between in the ferry. Before the trip, I had actually never met Nell before, and Tyler had never met either Nell or Shisei, so we quickly introduced ourselves in the ferry's lounge, and then jumped on a bus to spend the next five days together. Fortunately, all four of us are pretty flexible and laid-back, so we ended up getting along really well and by the end of the trip, it seemed like we had all known each other much longer.

Our first stop was Yufuin, a little town in Oita famous for hot springs and chicken tempura. The hot springs had a really nice view of the mountains and felt quite nice after three or four hours on the ferry and bus. After hitting one of the hot springs, we went to a little restaurant that served famous pudding. The pudding was all right, but a bit disappointing because it was so expensive.

Tyler's holding 500 yen and I'm holding about 720, I think
(120 yen ~ $1):

In the evening, we checked out the shops on the main drag, grabbed dinner, and then tried to walk back to our hotel. The hotel was theoretically only a ten minute walk from the middle of town, but Yufuin is a bit out in the countryside so the roads are very narrow, windy, not particularly well-lit, and not so pedestrian friendly. We ended up trudging up one very dark road in the pouring rain for what must have been half an hour. After twenty minutes or so, it occurred to us that maybe we weren't walking in the right direction, so we brilliantly decided to check a map.

And luckily, it turned out that we had been walking the right direction after all, so we continued down the road and made it back to the hotel without incident.**

The next day, we got on another bus to go to Mt. Aso, a famous volcano in Kumamoto. The bad weather continued all that day, and the top of the mountain was really cold and foggy. Fortunately, it was also super windy too, so sometimes the wind would blow the fog away and you could suddenly see down into this huge, steamy caldera filled with bubbling turquoise water. It was pretty cool looking.

Tyler and I bravely attempting to avoid being blown into the temporarily invisible crater full of boiling water:

At the bottom of the mountain is a huge plain with a small lake in the middle. All of the touristy pamphlets showed people horseback riding around the lake, so we decided to head over and try it out. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the lake, apparently the horses had gotten wise and gone inside to avoid the wind and cold, so instead of riding horseback, we did the next best thing and took pictures of each other jumping over a ditch...


...and preparing to do back flips (??).


Then we jumped some more...


...and went back to the ditch again.


This time, no one fell in the ditch.***

That night on the way back to the hotel, I had my first idiotic moment of the trip. For some reason which I can't recall at the moment, Nell and I decided to race down the road towards the hotel. I was running down the road when I heard something fall out of my bag and hit the ground. I ran on for several feet before it registered that I had dropped something, and then stopped and checked my bag. Fortunately, my wallet and camera were still there.

Unfortunately, the key to our hotel room was not. I felt like the biggest idiot in Japan.

The road was pretty dark by then so I highly doubted that we had a chance of finding the key again, but miraculously, after five minutes or so, Tyler found it in the grass by the side of the road. I still felt like an idiot.

Idiotic moment number two happened the next day on the train to Fukuoka. We got off the first train to transfer and walked halfway around the station before I realized that something was missing, that "something" being a certain gray duffel bag with all of my clothes and toiletries.

I quickly ran over the station office to ask if they could look for my bag, and the people in the office called and asked someone to search the train, but couldn't find anything. There wasn't really anything I could do so I left my contact information at the station office and got on the next train toward Fukuoka.

On the bright side, there was nothing valuable in the gray bag and losing it meant that I had less baggage to carry around, but even so, it was a bit annoying to have no clothes. For the last three days of the trip, I wore the same t-shirt, jeans and socks, bought a toothbrush at a convenience store, and mooched off of Tyler and Shisei's toothpaste.

However, I couldn't quite deal with the idea of wearing the same underwear for three days straight, so Shisei, Nell and I made a quick side trip to a mall. I don't know why, but the underwear trip was strangely awkward at first. Maybe it was because up until then, I had never shopped for underwear with anyone other than my mother. But thinking back on it now, I realize that it was a little ridiculous of me to be embarrassed, considering the fact that we had all just gone to a public bath together and seen much more than each other's underwear.

Anyway, two days later, I asked about my bag at the station in Fukuoka and the (very grumpy) people at the lost-and-found finally helped track it down and shipped it back to my apartment, so everything ended well. My wardrobe is still intact with a net gain of two pairs of underwear (!).

Fukuoka is famous for ramen, so we stopped at a shop there for lunch. The ramen was good but the most interesting part was the odd, antisocial layout of the shop. The counter was partitioned into little private booths so that you couldn't even see the person sitting right next to you. Also, you couldn't see the staff behind the counter either, because there was a curtain in front of you with a little gap at the bottom where they passed you your ramen. The menu explained that the little booths were designed to give you privacy so that you could properly concentrate on your ramen....I guess they're really serious about their food there. Still, the atmosphere seemed a little weird to me. I felt like a criminal huddled in my little secret booth, and half expected one of the ramen chefs to slip me some kind of contraband through the slit under the curtain.

Here's Tyler caught in the midst of some shady ramen dealings.


I was very tempted to peek over the partition like this at the unsuspecting Japanese person on my left, but finally figured that I had done enough stupid things on this trip and restrained myself. It would have been kind of funny though....





^ Golden Week = a random week around the beginning of May where (almost) everyone in Japan gets time off and goes on vacation

* Well, almost everything...on our last night in Kyushu, there was a big festival in Fukuoka so there was not a single vacant room in the whole city. We ended up going to karaoke from midnight to 6 AM that night and slept for maybe an hour in the karaoke box. It wasn't so bad though, because I slept the next day on the bus and ferry back to Ehime. :)

** Well, almost without incident...all except for the part when the sidewalk dropped off suddenly and Tyler fell in a small ditch.

*** Really. No one fell this time.

Warm and Fuzzy

A few months ago, I started teaching a new kid lesson on Friday nights, and it is the greatest lesson in the world for at least two reasons:

(1) Every week, the kids' grandma makes me real dinner (and dessert!!) before the lesson. If you recall a certain previous post, you'll probably understand why I'm so excited about dinner. :)

(2) The six little girls at this lesson have got to be some of the cutest kids in the universe.

Today, while I was eating dinner, one of the girls tapped me on the shoulder and showed me her notebook. Scrunched in the corner was a list of her four favorite things. It took me a minute to make out what she had written, but I finally realized that the list went like this: rabbits, octopuses, Lindsay-sensei, and learning English. These kids are the greatest. :D

----

Several weeks ago, at the same lesson:

Me: Would it be okay if we ended the lesson five minutes early today? My friend is in town from America this weekend, and I need to run to the train station to meet him for dinner.

Grandma Hashimoto: Sure, no problem! (to the girls) Ok, everybody, let's start the lesson on time today. Lindsay-sensei has specials plans tonight.

Yurie: Ok! Come on, guys. Sit down! Let's go!

Ayaka: Lindsay-sensei has special plans??? Like what??

Mai: What could they be???

Aiko: Oh, I know!! Lindsay-sensei, are you getting married tonight???

Coming Soon to Your Local Bookstore....

Being a stingy, penny-pinching miser, I booked the cheapest youth hostel I could find for my Okinawa trip. I figured that all I needed was a place to sleep for a few nights -- nothing fancy -- so I was quite surprised when I found that my bargain five-night stay came packaged with a magic show, an ethnic music workshop, and a philosophy lecture.

On my first night in the hostel, I went downstairs to the common area to check my e-mail and noticed a rather large, middle-aged man napping on the couch with his mouth wide open. Just as I started to wonder why he hadn't passed out in the privacy of his own room, one of the hostel staff members looked over and said, "Oh, you're wondering about Ken-san, huh? He owns this place." So I guess he was in his own room after all. Mystery solved.

I was about to finish e-mailing and go to bed when Ken-san woke up and spied me across the room. Still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he waved me over to the sitting area, and said in English, "Hello! Magician! I am magician!" In a few minutes he was wide awake, apparently beguiled by my gaijin charms. He eagerly whipped out a deck of cards, a rope, and a bouquet of flowers, and proceeded to show me a variety of card tricks, some more successful than others... :)

After an hour or so, I was about to excuse myself and head up to my room when Ken-san decided it was time to bring out his collection of small African hand drums. He talked me into trying one out, and after a mere fifteen minutes, he proclaimed me the best African hand drummer he had ever heard. Sweet. (I'm not sure exactly how Ken-san became an expert on African hand drumming, but hey, I'll take what I can get...)

A few nights later, I ran into Ken-san again in the lobby. This time he insisted that I join in a discussion he was having with another guy on the hostel staff:

Ken-san: Oh hi! Hey, sit down. I've been thinking and there's something important I want to tell you.

Me: Um.....oh? What's that?

Ken-san: Well, you see, it's like this. I realized when I was meditating in India that the world we live in is breaking. (other hostel staff guy takes this opportunity to make his escape from the lobby)

Me: Uh huh.

Ken-san: People are taking too much from nature and not giving enough back.

Me: mmm, I guess a lot of people don't have very sustainable lifestyles.

Ken-san: Yes! Yes! We are destroying the earth so quickly that it is losing its natural ability to heal itself. Actually, it might be too late to save ourselves even now. You see, there's this species of grass in India that has the life force to single-handedly stop global warming....

Me: mmm hmm....

Ken-san: Yes, the gods told me that this grass is the key, but it's slowly going extinct.....

[half an hour later]

Ken-san: ...so I sat under a waterfall in India, and after two or three hours, I finally realized something amazing. You won't believe this.

Me: (nodding and nodding some more)

Ken-san: Few people know this, but there are gods above the regular gods. And once we hear
these higher gods, we can discover the key.

Me: Ooohhh....really? The key, huh??

Ken-san: Yes. Yes! So now that I've finally been able to commune with the higher gods, I've made an important decision. I'm going to write a book! It should be done in three years, I think, and I'm going to call it 自然 25 (Nature 25). Pretty catchy, huh?

Me: Yes. Yes.

Ken-san: This book is going to be ol' Ken-san's way of saving the earth. You see, I must spread the word about the other gods, because if we take action now, we can heal the earth in just 25 years. Thus, 自然 25. Pretty slick, huh?

Me: Er, yeah. Um, wow....so...um how're we supposed to save the world?

Ken-san: Well, I'm going to sell the book all over the world, in America and especially China. And once brilliant young people like you read the book, they'll realize that it is their obligation to take action. The gods are calling you!

Me: (Captain Planet theme flashback) Ah...yes....er, well I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your book.

Ken-san: Yes, yes. Truly brilliant and talented people like you and my daughter need to hear the message. You guys will have to get in position to influence government decisions and make changes.

Me: Right. Right. Well, I'll definitely get a copy.

Ken-san: Good. I'm not worried about you. I am a little anxious about my daughter right now, though. Not really sure if she's hearing the message yet. She's taking her college entrance exams right now, but I can't quite tell if she's on the right track.

Me: Oh really? What is she studying?

Ken-san: Oh, law, I think. But I'm really hoping that she'll change her mind and become a dolphin trainer.

Me: ...

Ojisan, Fake Japanese People, and Sneaky Mutts

Can you guess which of these people are actually Japanese? I'll give you a hint -- two out of the four possible Japanese people in this picture are real. The other two are imposters! Choose wisely.

Have you figured it out yet?

While you're thinking, I'll go take a shower.



Lalalalala.....



Ok, I'm back.

If you guessed that Japanese Girls 2 and 3 are the fakes, you are exactly right! You deserve a fabulous prize.* For those of you who don't know them, Fake Japanese Girl 3 is my friend Kat from Stanford, and Fake Japanese Girl 2 is Shisei, Kat's cousin from Taiwan who's studying business and commerce in Kyoto.

This spring, Kat and Shisei came to my island to visit for a couple days and one afternoon we all went to Dougo Onsen, the oldest hot spring in Japan and the most famous tourist attraction in my city. Dougo is a three-story wooden building with several different public baths, and a bunch of tatami rooms where patrons can sit and drink tea. If you pay for a private room there, I think you can even have your own personal tea ceremony, which is supposed to be way cool. The only difficult part of the ceremony is sitting seiza (on your knees with your legs tucked under you) for the whole ceremony. My feet fall asleep after about ten minutes, so standing up at the end of the ceremony without looking extremely silly is a little difficult. Anyway, I digress....

Kat, Shisei, and I were sitting and chatting in one of the public tatami rooms in Dougo when a Japanese ojisan (old man) peeked in the door. He turned, frowned at Kat, who happened to be sitting cross-legged, and said in Japanese, "Hey, you. Why are you sitting that way when even that foreigner next to you can sit seiza?"

Unfortunately, Kat doesn't know too much Japanese (she was just visiting Japan), so she had no idea what he was talking about. There was sort of this odd moment where we all just looked at each other, and then finally Shisei said, "Sir, she's a foreigner. She can't understand your Japanese. Although actually, we're all foreigners...." That just about knocked Japanese ojisan's socks off. I think he was a little embarrassed to be fooled by the two fake Japanese people, (if only he knew that the girl he had called a "foreigner" was actually the only semi-Japanese person there....heh heh) but in the end, I think he was more excited to meet such fascinating foreigners, (he kept asking us over and over again which countries we were from :) and so, before we parted, we took a picture with him and his very embarrassed granddaughter(??) to commemorate the occasion.

The End

* Please send a self addressed envelope to me (KSS 302, 1533-2 Minara, Toon-shi Ehime-Ken, JAPAN 791-0211) and I will send you back something amazing...and thin. I'm serious. Send me an envelope! And a letter too if you feel so inclined. I like real mail. :D

Classy

At dinner tonight after the softball game:

Kosaka: So are you ever lonely living in Japan by yourself?

Me: Oh, sometimes, a little bit. Oh, but my family is coming here to visit me in June!

Everyone: Oh really!! Oh boy!!!

Kosaka: Hmmm....we should throw some kind of welcome party for them!!

Shimada: We could schedule a special softball game so they could watch!

Shinohara: I don't know....that might be kind of embarrassing. I'm not sure if we're up to American standards....

Shimada: Oh, you're right....we should do something high class! Takada-san, you can play your shakuhachi. (shakuhachi = Japanese bamboo flute)

Kosaka: Yeah!!! We can introduce them to Japanese culture.

Shinohara: Right, right. Japanese culture. High class.

Shimada: Yeah, high class.

Kosaka: Oh! Or we could have a barbecue.

Everyone: Ohohoho...a barbecue...yeah, yeah, yeah....

Okinawa: Gaijin in a Blue Jacket II

It has come to my attention that almost every photo in this blog is a picture of me in the same blue jacket. And unfortunately, dear readers, the Okinawa post will be more of the same. (On my next trip, I'll try my hardest to vary my wardrobe a bit...) I feel a little odd posting all these pictures -- kinda like I'm erecting a shrine to myself/blue jackets or something -- but Mom and Dad, I figure you would rather see a bunch of pictures of me instead of my attempts at taking artistic pictures of stuff, so I'll post them anyway.

＊＊＊

In the beginning of March, I found cheap plane tickets to Okinawa and went off to visit my dad's family there. I had met Ritsuko, one of my dad's Okinawan cousins, once about ten years ago when she flew to Seattle to help take care of my grandma. But that was ten years ago, and at the time, I couldn't speak any Japanese at all, so we didn't exactly talk much. All I have are these hazy memories of folding paper cranes with this silent Japanese lady.

And so armed with only a vague impression of my Japanese relatives, I really had no idea what to expect of the trip, but it ended up being amazing. Over the five days I was in Okinawa, I had dinner with a different "cousin" every night and met probably 15 or 20 different people. They were all very kind to me and took me all over the island. I enjoyed the touristy stuff, but actually I think the most exciting part of the trip was chatting with everyone and finally being able to put faces and personalities to the amorphous group of Japanese relatives I had heard about as a kid.

After arriving at the airport, I went straight to the youth hostel I had booked so that I could drop off my luggage. (By the way, the youth hostel was amazing and deserves its own post, which will be up shortly, I hope.) Anyway, I was walking down the hall of the hostel towards my room when I noticed a lady at the other end of the hall standing completely still and staring at me with her mouth wide open.

Now, people in my little town stare at me all the time, but when they stare, they do it carefully -- if I happen to look back at them, they quickly avert their eyes or pretend to look behind me. This lady, on the other hand, was making no attempt to hide the fact that she was gawking at me, which really weirded me out. After a rather awkward moment (Why are you staring at me?? Do I know you from somewhere? No, of course not....gah, now I'm staring at her. Ok, Linds, try not to look like you're staring....gah, she's still staring...what's going on???), I realized that she must be Ritsuko, the cousin who I had met in Seattle ten years ago. After I finally introduced myself, she explained that she had been really confused because I look nothing like I did when I was thirteen. (She has a point. She showed me a picture that she took on her trip to Seattle, and I was this super skinny kid with hair down to my waist wearing a backwards baseball cap and a Mariners t-shirt. Pretty different....although my fashion sense hasn't changed much. :)

Ritsuko is in her fifties, quite serious, organized, kind and very concerned that I enjoy my trip to Okinawa. Before I came to Okinawa, I had reserved myself a dorm-style room in the hostel, the kind you share with a few other complete strangers. I figured that I might as well get a cheaper shared room since I wasn't planning on spending much time in the hostel anyway, but when Ritsuko heard that, she wasn't too excited about the idea. She insisted that I sit in the lobby while she changed my reservation to a single room and paid for the upgrade herself. I tried to argue that I really didn't need the nicer room, but since it's impossible to argue with a Japanese obasan, I eventually gave up and just said an embarrassed thank you.

The next day was Ritsuko's day off, so she drove me around the main island.

This is the park around the Peace Memorial Museum where the Battle of Okinawa was fought during World War II. I've read stories about Okinawan civilians who jumped off the cliffs behind me to avoid being killed by American and Japanese soldiers. (More civilians were killed in the battle than Japanese soldiers, I think, possibly up to a third of the population of the island.) The park is a very pretty place now, but there are also huge lines of graves. It's pretty somber, but I suppose it ought to be. People should know what happened there, and it's sad that most Americans (and probably most Japanese) don't.



Next, we went to Okinawa World, a park with interesting exhibits on traditional arts and crafts and Okinawan culture. They also had a short show featuring singing, dancing and Eisa, a style of drumming that I had studied a very little bit back at Stanford, so it was cool to see it in person. At the end of the show, the performers invited the audience to come down to the stage and dance. Although I would usually rather die than dance, it actually wasn't so bad this time, probably because it was low key and most of the other Japanese tourists there were just as stiff and awkward looking as I was. :)



Ritsuko and me with the drummers.



Me learning another percussion instrument from one of the other drummer guys. I am a music nerd so I really got a kick out of the show and all of the instruments, but especially the sanshin, a Okinawan style banjo-ish instrument with three strings. By the end of the trip, I ended buying my own very cheap sanshin and now I sit in my apartment and mess around with it all day instead of writing blog posts. Fun for hours. :D



The next day, I met Ritsuko's son, Dai, and his girlfriend, Kiriko. In the morning, we drove around to try to find Dad's old house in Kiyuuna (my dad was born in Okinawa and lived there until junior high), but after driving up and down the same street several times, Ritsuko decided that it had probably been torn down. (The last time she had seen it was about ten years ago when Grandma and Karen came to visit.) We tried to take a picture of the view of the ocean from the spot where Dad's house would have been, but it's sort of at a weird angle so you can't see the ocean too well. :( Anyway, do you recognize the view, Dad?



Ritsuko, me, and Dai at a very cool restaurant near some pineapple fields. They seated us in this balcony outside, so it was very breezy and nice. :D



Ritsuko, me, Dai, and Kiriko outside a big aquarium overlooking the ocean. I should have taken more pictures of the ocean, because it really was amazing and postcardish, but sadly my camera was broken at the time, so I had to bum off of Ritsuko's when I could.

Dai and is a high school teacher and Kiriko works as a representative for some kind of education consulting company, I think. They were very laid back and big brother/sisterish towards me, which was fun. They're in their late twenties/early thirties and have been together for ten years, although Dai still lives with Ritsuko and Masako (his mom and grandma.) (Ritsuko kept saying, "I think they'll probably get married next year....well, I hope they'll get married next year." :)

At night, we had dinner with more relatives, Ritsuko's sister, Hiroko, half-sisters, Kumiko and Ikuko, and their families.


Whereas Ritsuko dressed fairly conservatively in pantsuits even on her days off, Hiroko was completely different. She's late forties/early fifties too, but every time I saw her, she was wearing serious nail polish, very high heels, and clothes that reminded me of a Japanese teenager. She is funny and more on the outgoing side though, so she can pull off the look somehow. I enjoyed her.

Kumiko is the cousin who is closest in age to my dad, and she told me that she still remembers playing with him when they were little. I guess they couldn't talk to each other because of the language barrier, but they ran around, and apparently Dad also threw a ball at her and hit her in the head once. :) (Sorry to digress into these little profiles. These are more for the benefit of my parents, but you can read on if you like as I will try to make it as amusing as possible.)


I also met Hiroko and Kumiko's children, and this is where it got a bit confusing. The three oldest daughters are named Ayano, Sayano, and Asano. Apparently, when they decided on names for their children, they didn't consult with each other much...

Fortunately, by now, I'm pretty sure that I have the three of them straight. Ayano is Kumiko's oldest daughter. She's a couple years older than me and went to college in Tokyo. When I came to Okinawa, she had just come home to look for a job after working in Tokyo for a few years. Since she hadn't been back to Okinawa for seven years, she was just as lost as I was in the city, but she still offered to take me around one day and we had a good time. Pictures of that in a sec.

Sayano and Asano are Hiroko's daughters, and they are absolutely hysterical. Apparently, they had been briefed that their distant quarter-Japanese American relative would be coming to visit, but hadn't actually seen me before. So when I walked into the restaurant to meet them for the first time, Asano turned around to look at me, looked completely baffled, and then finally said, "へ～、本当に外人さんみたい。。。" (Wow, you're really just like a foreigner...) ...And I am indeed a foreigner so she was right, but that's probably the weirdest response I've gotten yet to my gaijin-ness. Made me laugh. I think it is safe to say (in the most affectionate way) that Asano and her sister are a bit on the ditzy side. Sayano was late for dinner because she was doing her nails.


Their grandma, (and Ritsuko's mom) Masako, also came to dinner. She is a dear, sweet elderly lady, who unfortunately has some hearing loss, so sometimes she would say cute things out of nowhere that had almost nothing do with the rest of the conversation. Between Masako-Obasan and Asano and Sayano, that night's bizarre dinner conversation was probably the ultimate test of my Japanese listening skills because nothing quite made sense to me..... (Please don't misunderstand -- the following reenactment is not meant to be mean spirited. This is almost exactly how the conversation went and it was so funny.)

Asano: Oh! I should ask you questions about English... All of these foreigners come into my nail salon, and I can never understand what they're saying.

Me: Oh, that's too bad. Maybe I can help.

Asano: Oh good! Thank you!! Sooo...um...oh! I know! What does [unintelligible word] mean?

Me: Um...could you say that again? How were they using the word?

Asano: Um...let's see. It's..uh..well, you know, it's [unintelligible word.]

Me: Uh huh. (nodding gravely) Can you say it in a sentence?

Asano: Hmmm...well it was from some kind of magazine about...um...lions or Africa or something.

Me: Um....ok. It's...uh...the name of an animal??

Masako: Oh, there's no wild animal park in Okinawa, dear. Maybe if you went to Kyushu, though....

Me: Huh? Um, oh...really? ...

Dai: (laughing) Grandma, she's not talking about a wild animal park. She's....

And on it went. I loved it. :D



On Monday, Ritsuko had to work, so Ayano went with me around Naha and Shuri. It was fun to hang out with someone my own age. (Don't get me wrong -- I still love the old men of Ehime too.)

Here's us at Shuri-jo, the castle for the king of the Ryukyus back when Okinawa was its own country.



We also went to a big market in Naha. There were rows and rows of stands with huge mountains of boxes of candy and herbs and things I couldn't read.



The seafood part was also amazing, although I couldn't capture it so well in this photo. But the lobsters and fish were the hugest ones I have ever seen. You can see the lobster antennae poking out of that tank. I was a little afraid that they were going to pull me in with them.



The pork section was by far the most amazing. I guess they have a saying that in Okinawa, you use every part of the pig except for the squeal, and it's so true. Thankfully, I never did try pig face, but I did have sliced up pig ears one day. I guess they're a delicacy in Okinawa, but I wouldn't really recommend them. For me, they were somewhere down there with turtle hand...



After the market, we came across a shop where you could try making your own Okinawan pottery. We made plates with shisa, traditional Okinawan guardian dog-lion things.



On my last night, Ritsuko took me to a restaurant where they had live performances of Okinawan folk songs. At this place, the performers invited audience members onto the stage to sing in the middle of the show.

The guy in the white shirt was from Tokyo and was soooo excited to be on stage. He basically yelled into the microphone while sanshin man on the left looked on in amusement. After white shirt guy was finished, sanshin man asked for a female singer from the audience. At first, he kept looking back at a group of young Japanese tourists in the corner, but they were too embarrassed and wouldn't come up on the stage. Finally, since I knew the words to the song (涙そうそう -- it's really popular here), I ended up raising my hand to sing. Sanshin guy was really surprised and yelled "Stand up!" in English, while the rest of the Japanese tourists ooed and awed and snapped pictures of the gaijin who was going to try to sing in Japanese. I think that makes my fourth or fifth Japanese pop star moment. :)

Here's me, sanshin man, and the lady who played the drums after my Okinawan club debut.