Recently in Travel Category

My sister Merin sent me this picture of a tank full of habu in awamori that she took while on vacation to Okinawa this weekend, in a place called Gyokusendo Kingdom Village. I wrote all about habushu and mamushizake in a previous post, and thought that they made this liquer with one snake per bottle, kind of like one worm per bottle of tequila. Sad, isn't it?

But let's end this post on a lighter note. Let's enjoy some potty humor, again thanks to my sister:

Okinawa is, indeed, a place full of wonder...

This thing made me want to put on a blindfold, spin around ten times, let the force guide my bat straight and true, and smash it open to get to the candy.

These were taken at Zamami (jima, I think) at Dragon Lady point.

Have you ever seen a sea cuke eviscerate? Not pretty...

These pictures were taken by our guide, a cute 24 year old Okinawan. This one is of some kind of grouper. I want a pet grouper one day that will live under my private dock.

These small silver fish moved as if controlled by some hivemind. Seeing them move as one really hits home the elegant simplicity of the lateral line. Their mass coordinated movements look so complicated, yet are controlled by a really primitive organ that senses differences in the pressure of the surrounding water.

These dogs are Shisar, the guardians of the Ryukyu (Okinawan) Islands. You see them all over the place in Okinawa, on keychains, t-shirts, and anything else that is sold on the Kokusai-dori (the main tourist street in Naha).

Of all of the Shisar statues that I encountered, I especially like these. They remind me of our Pekingnese dogs, especially Jane. That was one cool dog.

I just watched Kill Bill vol. 1 two days ago for the first time, and spotted Shisar in two different scenes. When Black Mamba is purchasing tickets for Okinawa (one way) a pair resides on the back shelf, over the shoulder of the booking agent. The more obvious scene, of course, is when Hattori Hanzo's steel is unsheathed for the first time. That's Shisar, imprinted on that legendary blade.

On that note, I am looking forward to part 2. I think I may have to brave first night crowds tomorrow, because I don't want to wait to see it!

This weekend was just what I needed. I took a roadtrip down to Miyazaki City for the Cheesy Disco Party with Mark and Joe Fingerhut to meet up with the usual suspects. To say that things got out of control would be an understatement, and there are many good stories from Saturday night, but I will limit myself to posting an email I got from Joe Debiec:

Dude, shit is natural.
Mine is toxic. God speed.
I am nasty. Please forgive
it was funny at the time,
but now I feel like crap...
no pun intended.

I will let you ponder the meaning of this email, and give you some pictures from Yabe in Southeast Kumamoto to look at while you're thinking.

This is Tsujyun bridge, famous for shooting sustained arches of water out of both sides, just above the apex of the stone arch. On the day we went, they had turned the water off...

They're pretty good at making things out of wood. I'm good at burning things, but unfortunately I didn't have any matches.

Musashi has two wooden swords, like one that you start out with in the very beginning of The Legend of Zelda.

Hey, watch where you point that thing!

This guy has a serious tanuki boner.

OK, back to the story. Admittance to the disco party was 2,500 yen, and it included unlimited drinks for the night, "a bargain!" I thought. We knew it was going to be "one of those nights" right away when we ordered our first round of screwdrivers. The girl behind the bar (calling her a bartender would be streching the truth a little too much) took out some plastic bottle vodka, mixed in some generic orange flavor beverage syrup, and added soda water. It tasted like orange flavored pediatric flourinated mouthwash with carbonation. Seeing as the only liquor available came in large plastic jugs (as do Popov, Lucky Charcoal Filter Vodka, and other forms of rubbing alcohol), I stuck with shochu and tea for the night and was content.

The night got pretty wild, and eventually we made it back by 5 in the morning. At 11:05 A.M., Joe D calls me up apologizing profusely, and I thought that it was just a joke. I was mistaken. After a nice breakfast and checking out "Ed from Miyazaki's" nice collection of vinyl, his Technics, and GTA Vice City, we finally got to my car. Sitting on top is a paper bag from McDonalds. Just as he said, he had done a bad job of wiping, and there were finger-smudged bits of feces on the edge of the bag. Inside was a full loaf, and spent napkins. This pile had been allowed to bake in the sun all day, and was so toxic that it left a small stain on the roof of my car. I didn't "Just drive off really fast..." so that "...it will fall off the back." as he suggested. I was shocked to hear Joe tell me that he had left a bag of his own shit on my car, but I wasn't really surprised. Ah, what a good weekend, even if I did have to deal some shit. The only thing is that I don't really know how to one-up him. I could always wipe some crap on his face when he is sleeping, like that guy does on CKY2K, but maybe I will just pee on him... My friends are a bunch of disgusting degenerates, heh.

A unwilling visit to the Monterey branch of the Bubba Gump Shrimp franchise.

The "butcher/deli" section in a market in Shanghai.

Shopping for ingredients in Shanghai is an adventure of sights and smells. We wandered in a large, grey, hulking building and found each section of the two floors packed with a huge variety of food in its virgin state (more or less). Nothing is nicely packaged here, there is no celophane wrap or styrofoam (Chris, does this ordinary word conjure up any memories?) and everything sits out in the open. You can tell things are pretty fresh, because the air is balmy, and there is no stench of decay, just the odors of vegetation, spices, blood, dirt, slime, and slowly decomposing generic cellular material.

Hah, people in California think that shopping at Trader Joe's is supporting struggling co-ops and individual farmers and craftsmen while supporting the organic farmers of the world. Shop at a real Chinese market and you know that your cabbage was Certified Organically Grown with the contents from that farmer's outhouse. It don't get much more organic than that. There are no processed foods here. And you won't be asked "paper or plastic?"- they will simply take a sheaf of yesterday's newspaper and reuse it to tie up your package of meat. If you don't bring something to put your purchases in, then you will carry them in your arms.

What kind of "meat" is that, do you ask? Dunno for sure, but it sure looks like it would make for some kick-ass barbecue. If you really want to eat disgusting meat, I don't think it can get any more mysterious, unsanitary, or unidentifiable than the "meat" found in the common taco of Tijuana. Tu quieres carne de gato y perro?

Nam is chasing the sea gulls next to Huntington Beach Pier, on a fabulous afternoon in January. Justin is sitting on the pale sand smoking a cig, and I am taking pictures. This was exactly what we wanted to do on our Winter vacation.

Today the weather is excellent. The sky is a clear blue- the kind of blue you only see in the deepest reaches of the country when there is a stiff wind blowing. A good day to fly a kite, or to go sailing. And my work for the day mirrored the weather.

Soon all three hoikuens will become one, under the watch of the windmill. I have enjoyed working at the smaller hoikuens because I have gotten to know the little kids one on one. I am closer to the little ones than almost any other JET in Japan has ever had the opportunity to be, I think. So I am enjoying the last of our time together, before I must divide the time among all of the kids in a huge group as impartially as I can. My successor will never be able to connect with the kids as I and my predecessors before me, but then again working at only one hoikuen will make the job much easier. For me, the extra work was well worth the opportunities and experiences.

Today, we all played outside, everyone shoveling sand in a pile to build a huge mountain. Everyone pitched in, and we had a small hill built in ten minutes. I taught the preschoolers about volcanos and lava, by pouring bucketfulls of water in the caldera and breaching the side to let the slurry wash down a curvy channel, filling a lake. Thats what I did for work today- playing with sand and water- I mean, who else gets paid to do things like this? It's strange teaching English to such little kids because they are probably learning concepts and symbols in English at the same time or even before they learn them in Japanese. I only wish I could teach them every day...

At the shogakko, I made a huge mural with the 5th and 6th graders of Kumamoto city, complete with a street, buildings, cars, people, and anything else that they wanted to make. Giving the kids open reign on a large, communal canvas is a great way to get them interested in learning about things in English and you can feel their desire to learn English grow. Working interactively in a lesson really helps the kids to retain what they have learned well after it is taught, even without review. As of late, I have been more informal in class than usual, and this works with my students because we have developed a good balance between fun and learning, so that they make no differentiations between the two. Learning is fun, and fun is learning for right now. I hope that I have built up enough momentum in their interests so that they continue to pursue their current interests in English and the world outside of Japan.

I just stepped back into my apartment after a full day and two nights in Seoul, which I will write about later when I am not about to nod off. I just want to say thanks to everyone who made time to see me, and who did stuff to make my trip a great experience. Even repeatedly puking up partially digested medium-rare lamb and recovering for the majority of my trip home could not keep me from having a good time.

It was good to go home and to see that I was not as disconnected from everything as I had feared. Much has changed while I have been away, but the main things that I love about living in California pretty much remain the same, while my appreciation of them has grown extensively.

Much to write about, but I will wait until I am coherent enough to put together a cohesive sequence of verbage. Thanks to everyone who was there, you know who you are.

Don't ask me how, but I am traveling in N. Cal. with 4 family members, a family member's GF, and a dog. No one has gone crazy because we took 2 cars (this method is highly recommended!) and rotate its occupants frequently.

Today we visited Monterey Bay Aquarium, and it was bigger abd better than I remember it. My favorite fish of today was the wolf eel in the giant kelp tank. It decided to get some exercise and I felt a smug sense of satisfaction at hearing those around me trying to match it with it's informational plaquard as I, the uber-marinebionerd, was busy re-playing the experience of seeing the toothy yawn of a butchered sea wolf in the Northern Kyushu city of Hita resting atop a hill of ice cubes.
Anyhow the parents and Mika are heading home tomorrow and reservations and other preparations for New Years Eve have been taken care of. We are gonna rock in the 2004 in SF this year! Its good to be back in the States.