Leadup to the Naha Marathon

A few nights ago I followed up on my earlier promise to run my heart rate monitor all night while sleeping. Looking at the graph the next morning was very fun (I had some good dreams, apparently), but I was most excited to see that my nightly range dipped down to 32bpm three times. It's impossible to know how long I spent at that rate (though it was less than two minutes because the watch registers every 60 seconds and the surrounding readings were 33), but it's good to have a goal now.

Another morning this week I noticed my monitor was calmly settled on 34bpm. So I took a picture.

The Naha Marathon is this Sunday. I am nervous on many levels: (1) All of the boats were canceled yesterday and today between Zamami and Naha due to high winds. (2) Tonight it's really windy. (3) The winds aren't supposed to die down until Sunday. (3) My muscles don't feel very loose yet. (4) I'm well into my tapering and it isn't making me feel like Superman yet, like it did leading up to the Kume Marathon. (5) I just started running in a brand new pair of shoes two weeks ago and I'm not completely sold on them yet. This is a terrible time to not be confident in my shoes. (6) While the taper is great, the premise is to gradually dwindle my running down so I have lots of energy. But I also get lots of doubts about my abilities when I go so long without a long run. (7) I can't figure out the bathroom situation on the marathon course (are there places where I can just hop into bushes? is the first bathroom stop at 7km loaded with porta-potties or will there be a line?).

Military Brats

Last night was the finale of Zamami's November weekend concert series. The last show included new acts and costumes by the taiko drummers, hula, eisa, a firedance, a traditional mainland Japanese dance, some comedic skits, and a concert by our local band, The Mammy's. (I know the grammar is incorrect, but it's not my band.)

The show lasted five hours and there were probably 3-400 people in attendance, which is a significant percentage of our island's population.

It was a great time but unfortunately I left terribly embarrassed. For the second time in three weeks a delegation of six military folks from mainland Okinawa have ventured out to Zamami for the weekend. The previous group started a[n illegal] bonfire on one of our famous beaches and camped there without paying. The American whom I had befriended that week reported to me that a local had referred to this group of miscreants as 'friends of the English teacher.' So there is possibly an assumed association between us English speakers.

This group included black, hispanic, and white skin colors which wouldn't be relevant except that Japan has so little immigration that anybody not of Japanese descent is noticed. So without their excessive beer and loud voices, they already stood out. I am unsure if the two girls were gay, but they acted it. Public displays of affection are frowned upon by male/female couples, so you can imagine how a gay couple is viewed in this conservative society. The group often bellowed out marching commands (followed by everybody counting off) at inappropriate times (when is an appropriate time?). They actually sat on the stage when The Mammy's started to play, which prompted a difficult gesture-based request for them to move back (two remained on the stage, apparently protesting their rights). The highlight of disgraceful behavior was when the entire hula group formed for their final performance and the military people jumped up and broke into a swing dance to the hula music, just left of the stage. They were so drunk, loud, and animated that they distracted all of the hula girls on the near side of the group.

This event reminded me of an interaction I had with a Taiwanese tour guide in Palau. The tour guide was about the same age as me and he worked for a group similar to Club Med. He told me that when the Taiwanese tourists came they felt entitled to do whatever they wanted since they had paid for their trip (it was rumored that only 17 cents on the dollar stayed in Palau for tour group trips). That, along with a cultural element, prevented the tour guide from asking his guests not to walk on the coral and pick up creatures off the sea floor.

So, entitlement. The military people had probably hatched this 'drunken vacation weekend' while back on base. They'd paid their boat fare, were renting a room, bought their beer, and were going to have a good time. Unfortunately, when they left the base they were in another country. Further, they were representatives of America whether they wanted to be or not.

I think I did a good job of disassociating myself. Though I debated heavily over asking them to calm down, I decided that would probably have the opposite effect I intended. So what can I do? Only improve myself. Be aware of my actions and remember that I am both a member of this society and an ambassador of another.

Buy Nothing Day

Here is a quote from the Buy Nothing Day Japan website:

Once upon a time, we used to buy what we needed, period.

Now that we have all we need, we buy for other reasons: to impress each other, to fill a void, to kill time. Buy Nothing Day is a simple idea: try not to shop for a day, and see how your view of our world changes.

Where does all this stuff come from?

Where will it go?

Why do we buy it?

Aren't there better ways of spending our time?

In 1992, Buy Nothing Day started in Canada, and quickly grew into a "festival of sustainable living" celebrated in at least 35 countries.

This Friday is the single biggest shopping day in the United States. The premise behind Buy Nothing Day is to eliminate all non-necessary shopping for one day. The goal is not to send a message, but rather to increase personal awareness of what and why we are buying.

Think about celebrating the aptly named Black Friday (the black is supposed to mean that retailers will go 'into the black' but we all think a different thought when we hear 'black' in front of a day of the week) as both a day off from work and a day off from spending. BND is honored internationally on Saturday, November 24.

Here's the link to the United States' Buy Nothing Day website.

The Numbers

A fun tool I used while blogging my Pacific Crest Trail hike was to keep track of things in terms of numbers. I guess it says something about my brain and that is supported by my habits of keeping lists, tracking all of my expenses, and disliking dancing, but I think it also makes an interesting post.

The number of...

palm trees in my yard: 2
banana trees in my yard: 3 (and one's producing bananas!)
cats I've seen at my neighbor's door at one time: 19
books I've finished: 2 (Collapse and Mountains Beyond Mountains)

bags of burnable trash I've taken out since August 10: 1
shoe boxes of cardboard/paper I've taken out: 3
bags of cans: 1
bags of plastic or glass: 0

fish I've caught: 3
fish I've kept: 1
t-shirts I've acquired: 3
t-shirts I've worn out: 1
cockroaches I've killed since arriving: 39
cockroaches that have escaped: 6

letters from my Peace Corps South Africa friend, Erin: about 9
countries I've received mail from: 4
kilometers I run, on average, per week: about 78
hours I listen to NPR every day: about 3
uninhabited islands in the Kerama chain that I've seen goats roaming on: 3

Engrish Shirt #2

Brown Sugar [does not equal] Nuka

Last Thursday and Friday I attended the Okinawa JET Mid-Year Conference in Okinawa City. Yes, I've only been here three months and that is not the midway point of any year.

I've been working on a solar oven for two months (look forward to that post), but have been anxious to get baking. So when I found an oven for sale on the English language Okinawan classifieds site, I made an offer.

My friend Shu was kind enough to fit the oven pick-up into the schedule at 6:30am on Friday morning. That afternoon another friend, Jaimee, was nice enough to haul me and the oven back to Naha. Then a taxi driver was nice enough to accept my money to get me to the port.

Today I made my inaugural cinnamon rolls and cookies. You can see in the picture that the cinnamon rolls got a little dark, but the cookies are the real story. The brown sugar had a strange consistency when I packed 3/4 cup and mixed it in. The color was right, but the sugar was almost spongy. Certainly not sticky. Lacking curiosity, I didn't taste it. But I did taste the finished dough, which was pretty tangy. I wrote it off as the result of using all foreign ingredients (me thinking globalization of food hasn't hit Japan yet...). When I was preparing the cinnamon and brown sugar for spreading on the cinnamon rolls, I licked my finger and realized that my brown sugar was in fact something opposite of sweet. I instinctively looked at the package, which initially brought no help. But on the back were pictures showing this substance being poured into a pot of water, then adding vegetables and cooking.

My friend Amy looked it up and here's what Wikipedia says:
"Rice bran finds particularly many uses in Japan,
where it is known as nuka (糠; ぬか). Besides using it for pickling,
Japanese people also add it to the water when boiling bamboo shoots,
and use it for dish washing."

She-Men

Twice in the last week I have been tactfully corrected on the gender of my students. There was never a question in my mind that two my Zamami fifth-graders were girls. One has long hair and a feminine voice, the other only hangs out with the girls and has a hermaphroditic name and haircut.

I have been living on Zamami for over three months! I was so blown away to find out about the first mistake (from a teacher) that I started analyzing other students. I came up with a fourth grader that looks boyish but dresses with a lot of pink (I still don't know..). But I wrote an email to my predecessor a few days ago detailing my problems with one of the fifth graders and I consistently referred to that student as 'she.' He wrote back with the correction and right now I am sitting here in shock.

It would be like learning all the numbers as a child and then at age 8 somebody telling you that you're one off. How do you look at the numbers again without feeling betrayed - and how long does it take to relearn? At the end of last week I was still unable to see the masculine traits in my first mistake.

How many other students am I wrong about?