So after my early morning shopping trip I had a few more hours sleep before people started waking up and demanding food, so I took them to the super market and we bought tour various breakfast foods. By about midday we were ready to go and off we went to the beach next to the port, which I had been told last week had load of fish and shellfish, unfortunately when we got there it was too rough, there was a typhoon west of Okinawa throwing up some waves. Kamiyama-san arrived with a sea-kayak in a truck so we all loading our bikes on it and hopped on the back, well actually I got to ride in the front. Matera beach (my fav. Beach) was also too rough so we went to a little beach near Izena beach. That side of the island wasn�t rough, but unfortunately the diving isn�t that awesome. But the scenery and beaches are stunning so it wasn�t all bad. We spent the day relaxing on the beach, swimming, snorkelling and toddling around on the sea-kayak. The rest of the Jets went off to get food at maybe 4pm leaving me and Kelly, so we took the sea kayak to a little rock just off the coast, it had the craziest rock formation, unfortunately I didn�t had my digital camera so you will just have to take my word for it. Once we were also hungry Kamiyama -san came and picked us up; he really is an awesome guy. We then all went out to dinner at the new restaurant at the port before going to lie down on the grass and watch the taiko group practice. We did that for sometime, although I was a little pooped for one reason or another, so when someone suggested getting drink I was all for it. So we cycled off to the little convenience store and for some reason decided to buy wine and not beer. MMmmm it was awful stuff so we decided to drink it all in 5 minutes, which we did, although it wasn�t pleasant. The rest of the evening was spend trying to make fire with two sticks, dashing off to get ice-cream three minutes before the shop closed and having the best night time swim of my life. All in all a crazy weekend and well worth it! On the Sunday morning Kamiyama-san came and woke me up, and with Bens Japanese skills we were told there would only be one ferry today and it would be at 9am! This was because of the bad weather, so all the ALTs had to get up nice and early and packed for the ferry. They just made it, which minutes to spare. But alls well that ends well, so thanks to all the wonderful people who came to my island, good times, very good times.
 

Wow! I just had a tickle fight with a whole class of 3rd year elementry school kids. I barely escaped with my life, they show no mercy. LOL, it was awsome though. Kids ARE crazy and they have soo much energy, I wanna be a kid again. OK time to go and try and sort stuff out for the weekend, dam not being able to speak Japanese!

Andy you are the coolest, this pic was taken in the Ryokan us islanders stayed in.  

Me and Kelly on Friday night

Dancing on the table with the Devil, ok it's Andy but look at his eyes! 

The islanders posing with the habushu.

Well I am back on my island now. I just spent a crazy 5 days on the mainland. Let me give you the details. I arrived in Naha on Thursday late afternoon and met up with Andy and Brett, the two other islanders who I had planned this trip with. We went to the Ryokan which we were staying at, just off Kokusidori (the main street in Naha). It was very nice and the women at reception had my key ready and waiting, I didn’t have to tell her I had a reservation or anything, I guess it was obvious that I was the third gaijin staying. The room was nice and large, and had a bed, awesome. I then went to take a shower and woah! It was a real Japanese shower room, with the little stools and the bath etc. So we all took a lovely communal shower and I won’t lie, there was a little bit of a towel/water fight. We then went out to hit the town, just us three islanders. After some HUGE and juicy steaks (don’t get them on my island) we tried to find some bars. The first bar we went to had a Japanese only sign on the door, grrrrrrrrrrrrr, that made us feel angry, but then the next bar (club really) we hit made up for that. We got given a free bottle of bourbon just because we were gaijin, well I assume that’s the reason, maybe they just liked us, but we were the only gaijin there and no-one else got free drink and I don’t think our dancing was that good. It is somewhat true that Japanese either love or hate gaijin/Americans. Oh yes we also played on arcade machines for sometime, as again they don’t exist on our island, until some very drunk and noisy marines came in, at which point we left.
During Friday we managed to get re-entry permits in our passports so that’s out of the way now. We also went to hand out with Eleanor at her school and she showed us a cool little cigar shop. And now onto Friday night. Things got a little bit crazy. We bought a bottle of habushu and brought that to Paul and mikes with us, were we met up with many other ALTs. Habushu is a drink made of oikamore which has a live Habu snake put in before the bottle is sealed up. The Habu snake is quite poisonous and of course its poison gets into the drink, giving that extra kick. Well not that I remember much of the night but it was certainly crazy and very fun, well I am assuming so by the pictures I took. We all woke up still slightly drunk and after taking our communal shower we went to visit the golden arches, mmmmmmmmmmmm that was the best breakfast ever. We each had two burgers and that first big mac I had tasted of heaven. I normally despise MacDonald’s but right then and there it was perfect.
We spent the rest of Saturday in our Ryokan mostly, although we did venture out and have ourselves some massages, very nice indeed. That night we went to Kerry’s house but unfortunately we missed Elvira’s Mexican food, we were messing about in a Mall, everybody said it was awesome, maybe some other time! We played some drinking games at Kerry’s before heading onto karaoke. We extended out time three times, so there was much singing and fun had. We three islanders decided to head home after karaoke as Brett had to catch his ferry at 9am the following morning. So we set off along the 330, I think, and none of the taxis would stop! They all had their lights out and were finishing work, but then one awesome dude stopped for us and saved out lives (or saved us from a very, very long walk) and he gained a bottle of oiwqmori for his efforts. We got ourselves some curry before heading back to the ryokan for all of 2 hours sleep before we got up and had breakfast together at the golden arches. So then Brett left, me and Andy then hung out until he had to leave for his flight at midday.
That afternoon I went down to Itoman with Chris, Kelly, Julie and Jashimin (I know I spelled that wrong) to see the festival there. We missed the festival but we had a good time and even went skinny dipping, although that was the worst skinny dipping I’ve ever done. The tide was way out and we had to walk for ages before the water was deep enough to swim in and to make it worse we chose a bit were the sea bed was sharp rocks and seaweed not nice soft sand. Regardless, good times!
I spend Sunday mostly on buses, although I did have the company of Kelly for part of my journey so that was nice. I managed to miss my ferry by about 5 minutes, OMG! I should really should stop doing that. Anyway I stayed in Nakijin, the little town right next too Unten port so I could get there for the early morning ferry. The taxi driver was really cool, he found the place for me to stay and sorted out booking the room and even got the owner to drive me to the port in the morning. Luckily I had no English classes that day and none of the teachers seemed bothered I was late.
I found I had more positive energy once I got back to the island; the trip to the main land had re-energised me. I also had forgotten some of the Japanese I had managed to learn so I guess it swung both ways, and for the first time in a while I was frustrated in not being able to talk to people, I guess I used again to being able to talk properly. Ah well, I’ll get round to studying Japanese.

Nakamura-san, me and Ruman-sensei 

Me doing Eisa dancing!

Me in action with the Bo

On Sunday I took part in Eisa (Okinawan traditional dance) and Bo (wooden staff) as part of a calibration for someone’s 88th birthday. 88 and 97 and important birthdays and the whole community (well village of nakada) gets together to celebrate them here. So for most of last week I and two of the junior high school teachers (Nakamura-san and Rumon-sensei) have been practicing eisa with the other men from Nakada village. So it has been a busy week, after school from 5-6 I run with the students (they are training for school sports day), then I play football with them until about 7, then at 7.30 its eisa practice until 9 and then I go and practice/hang out with the tiako group until late. So it's been hard to find time for dinner let alone anything else! But it was definitely worth it and I managed the Eisa dances with minimal mistakes. All the eisa dancers performed katas with the Bo, which I also did, with perhaps a few more mistake, I wasn't aware I was going to be doing that until the actual day! But anyway it was enormous fun and of course there was much drinking and dancing afterwards. So in other news apparently a Baptist church has opened in Izena village, and three young American missionaries arrived on Friday, I haven't had time to go across and see them but I shall in due course. I am not sure if I am happy to have other westerners on my island, or whether I want them to go away and leave the natives alone. As long as they are not to zealous I will be ok with them. Oh and also, I got a visit from two ladies from Tokyo in Saturday; they are running a very interesting project which will take place on Izena in November. Seven Japanese high school students and 7 foreign (American x2, British, Chinese, Korean Aussie and New Zealander) high school kids will come to Izena then and together do a project on island life. I will be among the people who will speech to them about my impressions of island life. Up to now they have been running the project on the internet, with Japanese and foreign people posting essays on their lives so they can learn about each other while learning japanese/english. Some of the first Japanese children (now young men) to be profiled were from Izena, the taiko group specifically hence the izena connection. It sounds very interesting indeed. Mmmmm what else... oh yeah, I have a dilemma. On the 15/6th of October the taiko group want me to go to Tokyo with them for a competition and perhaps play the narimono (like a the triangle) but the school sports day is also on the 15/6th of October. I am in two minds, although going to Tokyo would be awesome and I personally would want to do that, I feel that the school sports day is very important. It is quite a big thing here, with many groups from the community taking part and then children have been training very hard, so perhaps for me to leave then might say to them I have more important things than them. Nakamura san for instance will not attend the wedding of a friend of his because of school sports day. Anyway I am still thinking about it, it's a tough one!
Me and Nakamura-san posing with our Bos

Wow, I have just finished my first day at the elementary school; or rather I have finished all my classes. I had 4 classes on the trot with barely time to breath in between them, it was a lot of fun though, the kids are bursting with energy! All the lessons were very planned, with a different activity every ten minutes, and most of the activities had their own music too. I kicked off with the 2nd year class, they were probably the craziest and most energetic. After the greetings and good mornings I just spread all my pictures and flags and maps on the floor and had them gather round, the mostly got very exited about my house for some reason and they loved the world map as well, we spent quite a lot of time finding various countries, they were shocked and awed it seemed to find Japan on the map, go figure. You are part of the world Japan! Apparently a lot of them like chicken, or at least a lot of them came up to me proudly proclaimed so. One little girl kept saying ‘horse eat apple’ to me, very cute. Oh they also like the pictures of my dog. And as always I heard lots of Harry potters when they were looking at pics of Edinburgh. They also sang a song for me in Japanese, very loudly! At the end they had their fingers in their years and were shouting at the tops of their not so little voices, awesome. Next straight off to the kindergarten, here they had prepared a paper red carpet and little archway for me to walk along and under respectively. We did a dance which was cool and then I had shout out number while holding up flash cards, kinda boring, I tried to make it more fun by having them shout loudly but this is what the teacher had planned so. I left with much Hi-5’s and goodbyes, and kids climbing on me etc etc. I think they had just been waiting to let loose after the numbers game, one little group of boys followed me all the way back to the staff room, Hi-5ing with me all the way. So then a 2 mintues break, grab some ocha and then the 6th year class, these dudes were a bit more sedate, some of them a bit shy I guess, but it went well and they asked some good questions as the end, oh we played the murder game as well. They had all made nice name tags with British and Japanese flags, very nice. Then the 4th class, they were pretty much as genki as the 2nd years but they could also ask decent questions so that was an awesome class to, we played several games of murder and they went bonkers over all my pictures. For some reason on little boy was amazed that we kept goats at home, and when I told him we had 6 he was even more amazed and went off to discuss this at length with his friends. These kids were bouncing, when they saw they picture of the karate in Scotland they decide to have a go at that too. One boy then came back to the class after it was done and offered to carry all my pictures etc. for me, nice of him. That was my last class but the fun wasn’t over yet, oh no! I had lunch with the 2nd years in their class room, that was pretty crazy, I helped them clean up after, scrapping glue of the windows with a Stanley knife with a couple of kids, yep that’s right the kids here can use Stanley knifes unsupervised (well I guess I was there today). They had a free period after lunch so I got led (or rather pulled) by a bunch of girls (including ‘horse eat apple!’ girl) to the library, all very fine, and then they showed me a series of books on well sex, love and life in general. Ok so this was pretty surprising for me. These books are just sitting in the elementary school library for any kid to read, not on a high shelf or anything. I don’t think I have anything against it, maybe, but it’s definitely not what I am used to. The books were fully explicit, perhaps more than they needed to be. One picture which drew my attention was of a woman massaging some sort of foam into a mans back, he’s naked and she is in underwear, and in the doorway is what can only be described as a porn star type counting money and looking at the couple. The ‘porn star’ is wearing a Hawaiian shirt buttoned down, medallion on a hairy chest and sunglasses, and why is he counting money!! There were pictures of people actually having sex, pictures of little boys masturbating in bed, and watching porn. The books seemed to cover every area of sex and relationships. There is a picture of a yuppie in a flash sports car trying to get a girl into his car, pictures of young people gay and straight exploring their developing sexuality, pretty much everything from a young boy looking at a girl’s underwear to a picture of a woman giving birth, with the head poking out. These books seemed pretty comprehensive, I guess parents in Japan never had to give the birds and the bees talk, and kids here don’t ever ask question like ‘where do babies come from?’ I guess things are just different here, I mean I knew they were more open about sex here, but at elementary school, even the kindergarten kids could see these books! Well anyway, I then went off and played on the monkey bars with the kids, yeah I am a big kid myself. Oh then a group of kids, I think from the special needs class, gave me a card they had made for me, I was touched, I shall have to translate it later. The picture is of the card.

I had my last introduction class Today and I kind of ended on a high. The others had gone pretty well, round of applause when I take of the mask and the questions didn’t require too much prompting. The last class I introduced myself too were the second years at the junior high, and I had been warned that they were very shy, so I was expecting silent stares, sleeping and stubborn refusal to answer questions but they were awesome, the most animated of all the years I think. I had much laughter and pointing when I came in with the mask on, and they launched into asking the question with much more gusto than any of the other years, I had a small forest of hand wanting to ask questions. The rest of the lesson went well and quickly, so far they are my favorite class. Here is one amusing story from the class; there were two boys who decided to take a nap, I have to admit the girls of the class were by far the more enthusiastic, and the girls at that lunch table kept hitting them and saying ‘excuse me’ and ‘hurry up!’ (with Japanese accents of course). It amused me anyway ;). The JTE afterwards told me she was surprised the kids weren’t shy, well she didn’t figure on Scottish charm that’s what! Yeah Scotland! In general I find the students here much more relaxed and enthusiastic in class than I remember Scottish students as being. Although the class room is a more relaxed place in general here it seems, sleeping in class and refusal to answer questions are perfectly acceptable here. Anyway I am feeling very good about that class so I thought I would post my thought about it. I also had an english conversation class today and that was awsome too, I guess its going to be kids who like enligsh anyways but at the end a boy came up and thanked me for a fun lesson, that made me feel good. Ok I realise I may be gushing a little bit, but I kinda expected to kids to be like scottish kids and not very interested in class so I am kinda stoked at how cool they are. I have no picture of the class so I shall include one of when I was snooping around the coral rock when the tide was out, in the picture the tide is coming in and rushing between the gaps in the old coral rock. That’s Nagi, one of my taiko friends in the distance. Oh and the big pyramidal rock is called ‘Izena castle’, although I have no idea of the Japanese name.

The mask I wore for my first lessons, the pupils had to ask me question to fill in a sheet before I would take off the mask. 

Pictures of the sea as the typhoon aproached 

I had my first class last Friday. It was my introduction lesson, so basically lots of pictures of me and Scotland and me talking about myself. It went pretty well, I think, I came in with a paper mask over my head and they had to ask me some questions before I would reveal myself, I totally stole the idea from the Naha orientation but hey. They all had already seen me, but I think it's good to start of a little crazy/weird. It was the 3rd year class at the junior high school, so they were interesting in and pretty good at English; I suspect the younger years will be a bit more reluctant to speak out in class. So at this moment we are in the middle of a typhoon, luckily though it veered north at the last minute and so Izena was spared the worst of it. The waves around Izena were pretty impressive yesterday, it is windier today but its also raining allot, so no pictures. I didn't manage to go swimming as I had planned on Saturday as it was a bit too rough out at sea. It was also low tide so I and Nagi had a wonder around the exposed coral/rock and had a gander at all the things trapped in little pools. I am amazed at the amount of stuff living in the sea here. I also had my welcome party for the junior high school on Friday night, so food, drink and lots of speeches! I had Natsu-sensei help me make a longer speak which I read off a piece of paper, but it went down very well indeed. It is true that some Japanese will only become your friend after you have been drunk with them I think. There are two teachers in the school that rarely talk, one I think hadn't talked to me at all, but once they had drunk a little, wow, different story. I and the two previously tight lipped teachers stayed up the longest drinking, talking etc. good fun! I then got together with them and a few others for a game of touch rugby the next day also very good fun! I managed to put on a reasonably dazzling display of quick feet and speed, one of the teachers seems keen to organise some touch rugger for the junior high school kids, definitely looking forward to doing that. Sunday was mostly spent indoors due to the typhoon, although I did pop out to take the pictures of the sea. I also managed to practice a little on my keyboard which was good as I haven’t had enough free time to do that yet. A couple of my Taiko friends are keen to play some music with me so I must dust of my ancient and dilapidated piano skills soon! Well take care y'all, I have TWO classes today! Busy Busy Busy ;)

Me in front of whale shark 

So I escaped my island again this weekend, naughty me! There was an Orion beer and Eisa festival in Okinawa city so I though I would go through and hang out with other JETs for that. I took the ferry through on Friday and stayed with David, an awesome guy from Colorado, which is an awesome state too. On Friday night we went to an Izekia for some JETs birthday, I sat down next to some US Marines and I pretty much talked to them all night. They were pretty cool guys and I had a good time talking to them, they seemed pretty decent sorts. We hit an arcade after that and me and David owned the taiko drumming game. On the Saturday we met up with Rodger and went to the Ocean expo. Park in Motobu (David�s home town) which boats the worlds second biggest aquarium! It was amazing, huge whale sharks and manta rays, although I think my favourite was the manatees, they are so slow and serene, I liked 'em. Later that afternoon we started off towards Okinawa city, and boy was that an adventure. We got so lost numerous times, we were literally bouncing from one site of the island to the other, it's only a few miles wide at some points. Eventually we got to Okinawa city where we were supposed to meet up with Kelly and Kerry but even that was hard, it took us three hours +. They were next to a Family Mart and Hot Spar, so four Family Marts and three Hot Spars later we finally find them, that was a good feeling. So we basically missed the festival but no worries, we had a wonderful drunken night with a bunch of other Jets. I had to then wake up horrible early on Sunday to get back unto Nago to catch the last ferry at 3.30 or so I thought. I managed to get back up, using public transport in about an hour! So I then had several hours in Nago to burn, no worries, I had recently got paid and there is nothing to spend money on in Izena so time to shop! I bought much randomness and had a darn good time doing it :). Time to relax on my little island and dust of my piano playing on the keyboard I bought. Oh I have also started playing basketball on my island, it's tiring! But fun, even though I suck not really having done it before.

 

I love how random things are here. I had just gone upto the board of education to give my supervisor a form I had filled in and as I was about to leave the head of the BOE asked me if I was free, so I said 'sure' and he whisked me off to the Tomb of King Shoen's family (mother, father and brother). King Shoen was perhaps the most imporant Ryuku King, he united the three kingdoms and founded the longest Ryuku dynasty. And he was born on Izena! Bit of a local hero, his image is everywhere. We go up to the tomb with a bunch of non-islanders armed with many cameras etc. I assume they are tourists. So anyway they pray and offer sake and I kneel and try to appear respectful. And then alll of a sudden a chap takes out a couple of small rock hammers and starts chipping away at the mortor! I have no idea whats going on. It turns out to be an archeological dig, the first time the tomb has been opened, ever. Quite exiting! They only opened the East tomb, tommorrow they will open the West tomb which contains the remains of King Shoens family. I unfortunately only had my phone with me so apologies for the tiny pics.

Naha too