The End of a Culture

I make my own yogurt (more on that in a later post). But today I ate the last of the same culture I've been using since January 2nd. I have to make new yogurt, at a minimum, every three-four days to keep the culture alive and healthy. So this means I haven't been away from my yogurt for more than four days this year.

And in fact, I haven't been away that long since I arrived in Okinawa a year ago. I did some math a few months ago and realized that in my first year here, I haven't travelled more than about 45 miles/65km from my home. And without the fishing trip with my parents off the east side of the Okinawa mainland, that distance would only be 31 miles/51km.

This is a rather interesting statistic mostly because I can't imagine a circumstance where it could ever be duplicated again in my life. I will be breaking the streak next week when I travel to northern Japan to see my sister, then to central Japan to see a friend, then to Osaka for a two-week language course.

Engrish Shirt #8

Money in Japan

[but Japan doesn't]

One of those annoying things about Japan is the banking system. My finances are simplified by the fact that everything I do is through the post office. Japanese post offices offer banking, money transfer, and pension help in addition to traditional postal services. But the post office does present the same challenges that the rest of the Japanese banking system does, most notably ATM machines whose hours reflect those of the teller inside (including closure on weekends and holidays). Why ATMs close at night in Japan is an inconvenient mystery to everybody from a foreign country.

And Japan doesn’t accept foreign credit cards, either, for the mysterious and ubiquitous reason of ‘security.’ Seriously, are American credit cards not credible enough? This is almost entirely a cash-based economy. From what I hear, it’s very challenging to even get a Japanese credit card, so it’s just easier to carry huge quantities of cash around. The only way for me to pay my Yahoo! Auctions winning bid is through one of numerous bank transfer services. But it has to be the same one that the seller accepts, which means it’s far more complicated than the Ebay system of check, money order, or Paypal.

It’s annoying and makes me thankful that I don’t really spend money or travel much.

Updated Population Numbers

Everybody (including Wikipedia, until yesterday) says that Zamami has 1000 people. I regurgitated this number to those who asked because I had no reason to doubt it - the mayor even told me. Well, when my parents were here my mom inquired at the information desk and they gave her much more exact, lower numbers.

Recently the new census came out and here are the numbers:

Zamami Island: 608 (281 women, 327 men)
this is broken down between Zamami (447) and the smaller hamlets of Asa (79) and Ama (82)

Aka: 307 (145 women, 162 men)

Geruma: 69 (38 women, 31 men)

The three-island total is 984.

JET Calendar

You may recall last October when one of my photos was selected to appear in the JET calendar. This is my month!

Girlie Water

Is it just me, or is this water reminiscent of an American feminine product?

One of the teachers orders this stuff from France and raves about getting it online for only about $1.80/bottle.

I am reminded of that Eddie Murphy movie (I don’t recall the name) where he is the heir to a great fortune and he can either take $30 million up front or, if he can spend $100 million in a week, he will get $300 million. The numbers and reasoning are all a little fuzzy, but that was the idea. Anyway, he proceeds to buy really expensive rare stamps and use them for actual postage and pay exorbitant salaries to people for meaningless jobs. Essentially he’s really wasteful.

That’s what French water is to me: inventing the most ridiculous reasons (French water is good for you) to add as much carbon to the atmosphere as we can.

Girls and Friends

This morning I was riding the boat with Yuki, a guy who works at a coral-growing place on Aka. He’s in his twenties and says he has five girlfriends on the mainland (and he seems kinda serious about it). He was asking me if the letter I was reading (from Amanda) was from my girlfriend. I said no, it was from a friend. “Girlfriend?” he asked again. I explained, as best I could, that she is a girl and my friend, but not my girlfriend. Then I told him I don’t have a girlfriend. He asked the requisite question, “do you like Japanese women?” “Of course,” I said.

He proceeded to list off qualities of mine: running, fishing, cooking (he couldn’t think of more, but I provided some) and asked why I was still single. This is not an easy question for me because I get it a lot from men and taken women. I have flaws and good qualities, like everybody, but I don’t know what it is that keeps Zamami girls so disinterested.

Last night I was finally going to have the girl over whom I have a crush on. She had a rare day off from the busy life that is the dive industry and she seemed excited about making pizza and going to eisa afterwards. But she stood me up.

Sometimes I think Peace Corps was an easier experience for me because there wasn’t even the possibility of a girlfriend. It might be better to have an excuse than to be rejected.