Free Stuff

Free stuff is the best. Especially when it's stuff you need. I try to avoid buying 'new stuff' when I can. There are things - like fishing hooks, garbage bags, and the 2008 Zamami school tshirt - that are just not available on the used market. But fishing lures and poles and clothes and camera gear are all selling right now on auction sites. A little more searching through second-hand shops and classifieds will often yield super deals (ask me about my yogurt maker and my oven).

I've had the word out on Zamami for months that I'm in the market for a used bike. And I'm willing to pay. Preferably something nearing the end of its life, both because I only need it for coasting down hills and I thought my chances of finding a discarded near-death bicycle were better. But nobody was in the market, despite the hundreds of bikes on Zamami. Finally fate relented and a rusty contraption came my way this week. The gears and brakes and wheels work, but it is built for a stature considerably shorter than mine.

I was also the recipient of a healthy contribution of fresh onions and garlic and a head of cabbage. Hurray for generous people!

Engrish Shirt #5

I'm unsure if this qualifies as Engrish, it's pretty cool.

Cockroach Season

This is my 103rd [dead] cockroach since August.

Super Ultra Man

Those Japanese... always one-upping us.

Relative Hardship

Yesterday I got my water back after it was mysteriously missing for 3.5 days. And I have those loud, smelly cats. And that barking dog. And those biting mosquitos. And cockroaches, which don't actually bother me.

[Not my friend]

This would be a typical, if not minor list of complaints for a Peace Corps Volunteer. I didn't have hot water or access to a refrigerator in Palau. My friend in South Africa is the target of racial attacks, both verbal and physical. I experienced a similar physical attack during my service. And all of that came with no paycheck. Hardship was an expectation of Peace Corps.

So why am I suddenly so entitled? Why do I, touter of the "Use Less Stuff" mantra (credit: Wren), feel like I deserve better than my 10+-year-old tatami? Why do I let these cats and dogs get to me?

I think it's because this is not an expectation I had of Japan. I didn't have many outward expectations, but I think 'first-world' would've been one of them and within that, channels for dealing with public nuisance problems would exist. I also think that my annoyances are really valid. As I type now (at 9:40pm), the dog is frantically barking just 100 feet away.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I am hyper-conscious of my paycheck. I don't want to let it dilute the 'below the poverty line' skills (and attitude) I've learned over the last six years. Relatively speaking, my pay increase puts me amongst the wealthy, but my hardships haven't been inversely reduced. Why am I correlating them?

Beachcombing

Beachcombing is awesome. Here's my haul over the last few months:

No, those planters didn't come with dirt and vegetables already growing, but most came with perforated bottoms built for drainage. There are six large glass fishing floats, three of which I found Sunday on one side of one island. There's a Nalgene bottle, a stainless steel insulated thermos (that had some ooold coffee inside), two smaller glass fishing floats, and a new baseball. Not included are the Darigold milk container (they are officially everywhere) and the new leather basketball I had to stash Sunday to make room for the fishing floats.

The "Beach Opening" Ceremony

This weekend was the official prefectural 'opening of the waters' to swimming for the summer. Aka and Geruma families came over for the day-long event at Ama beach on the west side of Zamami. The morning consisted of some droning old people singing and beating on a drum, then the requisite speeches, then eisa, then hula, then the showcase event: little kids chasing [mostly] live fish around an excavator-built pool.

Keiko-sensei prepping ichi-nensei (first grade) for their time in the pool.

Kindergartners go first, then 1/2 grade, 3/4, and 5/6. They keep dumping hundreds more live fish in as the event goes along. I was rather surprised at how tenacious and successful the kids (of both genders) were.

In the afternoon the students played games made for the beach, such as this awesome twist on tug of war. There are 5 ropes and about 20 members of each team. The first team to get three ropes back across their starting line wins. Usually one or two ropes were snatched up immediately, but the remaining three wars saw members continuously jostling between ropes trying to ally their strengths and give up hopeless battles.

I turned around once and saw this nice scene.