Summer is Coming

I can't wait for more of this pretty turquoise blue water:

My MRI

Remember the Tokyo Marathon?  Remember all that pain I had in my right leg that I complained kept me from achieving my goal time and put me in a wheel chair for my Disneyland visit?  Well, it didn't go away.  Last weekend, three weeks after the race and still hobbling around, I took a visit to a Naha sports doctor.  He immediately recommended me for an MRI.

Here is what it looked like:

[this was about midway up my leg, right in the middle of my calf]

To imagine what you are seeing, pretend I am laying on a table and you are looking up at my body from my feet.  So in the picture, my right leg is on your left, and my left leg is on your right.  The black spots are bone, the white are vessels/arteries, the rest is muscle.

Now let's look at the problem area down by my calf, from knee to foot:

 

The doctor described this as inflammation between my muscle and bone.  I'm sure there's a more correct clinical term, but I wasn't worried about it.  He did say that this is what happens just before a stress fracture (in my bone), so I guess it's good I wasn't running an ultra-marathon.  The doctor told me he could start me rehabbing with therapists on Monday, until I reminded him I live on a small island.  Then he said "Ahh.. yeah, hmm.  Okay, I'll prescribe you some cream." (Thanks!)  He said I'll just have to wait this injury out, but eventually it'll get better. 

Leaving My Mark

[If you only saw 50% of this post the first time, here's all of it.]

Every year at Geruma the students get to do a little seascape mural on the sea wall between the school and the ocean. It lasts about ten years until it gets painted over by the ensuing generation. It's pretty fun to track back the paintings of some of the older students to when they were 1st and 2nd graders.

[the 6th grade and junior high paintings]

[elementary]

[me and the fish most associated with me, the Giant Trevally]

Moving On (But Not Quite Yet)

I was watching a young student practice his baseball swing during graduation rehearsal last week and it got me thinking about daydreaming. When I was in grade school I spent any down time at school dreaming about what I'd do in the woods with my friends after school. In high school, as I approached adulthood and independence, my daydreams gained steam into trips I would go on or places I would find myself. In college there was a disconnect between what I wanted to do - spend every September-December in the woods hunting - and what what I was schooling myself to do - work in New York. Just in time, I cured myself of those New York ambitions and proceeded to graduate then go into the woods. It was my first taste of independence and I did exactly what I'd daydreamed about during so many years in a classroom.

Less than a year later I found myself on an adventure that solidified the importance of 'adventure' in my life going forward: Peace Corps. But restlessness set in even there, and during my second year I began dreaming in earnest about subsequent adventures. For three years after Peace Corps I didn't stay in place more than three months at a time (and those three months came 30+ miles from the nearest road!). It wasn't a rule of mine to keep moving, but rather I kept finding interesting things to pursue.

The theme here is that when I get restless or bored with a place, I begin to think about what I would do if I didn't have responsibilities. Invariably that thought process takes me to a new location. When watching that boy practice his baseball swing, undoubtedly wishing he were 100 other places than that gymnasium, it got me thinking about why I haven't yet started daydreaming here. I certainly have plenty of "stuck in a gymnasium" moments. I'm not sure that I came to anything solid enough to write out as a conclusion, except that I've only (!?) been here 2.5 years. I have no doubt that at the end of my fourth (or fifth, should it come to that) year I will be ready to go. Right now I still have some adventures yet to accomplish here but I can see the end of the list. That's not to say I won't rewrite the list, but I also understand the novelty of the place will wear down. And I'm pretty sure I won't ever be satisfied staying in any one place forever.

Foreign Policy

Sakura

Sakura is Japanese for cherry blossoms. They bloom in Okinawa earlier than the mainland of Japan, where they are famously popular. We're closer to the equator, so everything blooms earlier here.

Photographing them is tough because our winter weather is gray. I only managed one hour on one day to photograph this year. I wasn't pleased with my shots, but I wasn't disappointed either.

A Cave

I woke up early and kayaked over to Aka this morning in search of some of the island's deer. Other than tons of scratches, some cool birds, and a pretty stream, the highlight of the 2.5-hour hike occurred in the first five minutes when I found this cave:


It was clearly man-made and I am making an educated guess it is from the time of the war.

My light, which I coincidentally had along, barely allowed me to determine this right branch went about 20 feet before stopping (or continuing underwater! oooh...).

So I went left.


The end, where I was hoping I would find skeletons or relics or something (like a land mine?). I was slightly unnerved about being this deep in a cave alone so I didn't stay long, but I'd like to go back and dig down under that loose soil and see what's there.

[see the entrance way out there?]

[oh, and I found a large glass fishing float! (and some small ones, which I promptly lost when a big wave crashed over my kayak on the return trip)]