The Opposite of Marlin Fishing

Miki's voice shouting up to my open windows from the street below is one of the sweetest sounds. Not only is she beautiful (and single) (and not interested), but she only shouts up when there's marlin fishing to be done. So yesterday she shouted, I sprinted to the window, and committed to today's marlin fishing before considering if I had any prior commitments (not that it would matter).

But plans changed. Apparently now is the season to catch these tiny, 1" fish that are worth a lot of money (2.2 pounds = $30). They are Okinawa's equivalent of the Aomori bluefin tuna. I'd prefer marlin fishing, but I was up for the adventure.

[the fish travel in large 'bait balls', so we look for moving black balls]

It turned out not to be very adventurous. We cruised the shallows in the morning for two hours, then again for three hours in the afternoon, but we never found any fish.

[it's serious business - there were people up at that observatory serving as spotters who called down to report where the fish were - and these guys made about $10,000 last year off these fish in only a couple weekends!]

[a small piece of Zamami's north shore, only accessible in three places by trails]

[wouldn't make a good marlin fisherman]

[Amuro Island, next door to Zamami]

Picture 20,000

Recently I took my 20,000th picture since arriving in Japan. I got it in a full month and four days before my two-year anniversary.

[take lots of pictures, get a few good ones! (this was not a good one)]

Writing English in Japanese

Yesterday I was allowed a rare exception from my duties at my scheduled school to make a guest appearance at Aka for a visitation of some Pacific Islanders (one from Kosrae, which is in Micronesia, which is where I served in the Peace Corps).

Our junior high kids all gave short two/three-slide presentations on Aka's points of interest. It's rare for our kids to have a real-life chance to use English, so this was a big deal. Though I am often proud of what my kids know when we're in the classroom, making a speech is a much larger test of their reading and pronunciation. They failed pretty badly. Only because I had read their speeches beforehand did I understand what they were saying.

One of the reasons for failure was that many of the students wrote their speeches in Japanese. They initially wrote them in English, but, fearful of reading slowly, they cheated and wrote the corresponding Japanese characters. Unfortunately for them, the Japanese alphabet doesn't correspond with the roman alphabet (though it works in reverse). So trying to listen through their bad and wrong pronunciation was too much; thankfully there were pictures.

[I crossed out the katakana with my weak orange pen to show my disapproval]

Here is how the original English excerpt sounded when this student read his passage:

Daa are faibu beachizu arando Aka airando.
I wouldo raiku to toku abouto Nishibama.

Did you get that?

Remembering and Forgetting the War

A couple weeks ago we had an Okinawan holiday to recognize the day the war officially ended. There isn't much hoopla surrounding this, but on Zamami all the kids went up to a memorial we have in the woods and cleaned it up, then held a small ceremony where they listened to a guy [who didn't serve] give a speech about the war.

Mostly, the kids here see the war in the same light I do: something that happened long ago, hard to connect to except through the few pictures and relics that exist. There isn't any animosity I feel as an American citizen and the war isn't even discussed. There's also the fact that, from what I can gather, Okinawans place more blame on their own Japanese troops for war atrocities than they do on Americans. (The shameful behavior attributed to the Japanese troops includes using civilians as shields and convincing many thousands of civilians to leap off cliffs to their death.)

On Aka this week I was walking back to the teachers' room after class and happened to notice these pictures on the wall:

I really like that last one. The students don't seem to connect American Dave with Japanese Them to the days long ago when our countries briefly hated each other, but I can't help but think that the JET Programme helps heal whatever slight wounds may still exist from the blood of sixty years ago. The kids growing up today are exposed to the occasional military family walking through - and lots of really fun English games with me.

Scenes From My Balcony

Pictures taken from my balcony during the last week:

[Every windy weekend, the kids (as young as 6!) take out the sailboats]

[I took this picture for the unusual greenness of the water, but can you tell me why the water has that white blotch? Leave your guess in the comments section]

[A very expensive yacht mooring for the night]

The Fruits of My Vegetable Garden

This winter my balcony planters were successful in growing tomatoes, carrots, green peppers, broccoli, cilantro, lettuce (tons), spinach, and basil. Here are my green peppers, harvested this past week:

Adapting to New Foods

I think one of the largest challenges of moving to a new culture is the instant adoption of a new diet. During my two moves to foreign countries I have spent a lot of time in the first few months longing for familiar foods from home. But as life in the new country progresses and I learn to find comfort foods within that culture, my dreams of Mexican food and teriyaki hamburgers wane.

I recently got an offer from a friend who was coming to Zamami, and that friend has access to the American base. I had to actually think for a day, "what DO I want?" Most of the holes in my diet have found answers within the Japanese diet, so I rarely dream of unattainable foods anymore.


But there are a few things that are worth taking advantage of. I use the oats for granola and the butter for baking, and both of those items are really expensive in Japanese stores (~$18 for the equivalent in oats and ~$8 for a pound of butter). The cheese fits in the category of unattainable, especially Tillamook (and especially extra sharp). There is one more item - italian sausage - that I am so happy I got. I forgot how much I love the that flavor. The cheese is actually a little disappointing. Yes, I like it with fresh-baked bread and stuffed into omelets, but I think I am going to work on convincing myself that I don't miss cheese.