Well I am afraid to say there won't be any posts until the 5 or 6th of January. On friday I leave for India and will be there until I fly back to okinawa on the 4th of Jan. I am going with a bunch of other JETs from okinawa and we will be meeting even more JETs (from mainland Japan) about 6 or so days into our trip to volenteer at an orphanage, teaching english mostly. Why we are going to torture the wee mites with our terrible langauge I am not sure, but hopefully we will make it fun and do some Christmas stuff for them. Well here's hoping I'll make it back disease free, with my ass relatively intact and with lots of stories and pictures to share with you.
Have a Good o'l Christmas and a Happy New years
Craig

I hope this 'making craig be a pink fairy' is a tradition that is nipped in the bud.... or do I, maybe I kinda secrety enjoy it. Maybe...

The message on my cake made me smile alot, thankyou all involved!


I and David enjoying the cake

I arrived back on my island today (Wednesday) having missed two and a half days of work and wearing the same clothes I had been wearing for the last five days. Also I was a year older. What on earth had happened to me to bring about this situation? I was also the happiest I have been since I got to Japan. The best bit was that when I rocked up to school, no-one batted an eyelid. Well not true, I got some smiles and even an ‘otskaresama desu’ (good job!). Of course you are going to be disappointed when I describe how this situation came about but I don’t think I can leave you hanging. The simple truth behind it all was that I went to the mainland to spend my birthday with my good friends there. But once there terrible storms descended from nowhere and caused my ferry to be cancelled three days in a row (Sunday through Tuesday). I was perhaps a tad worried that I might face some trouble, but all is quiet so far, it is quite possible my supervisor does not even know. I baught them some pretty nice chocolates as omiyage and they have just decended on them en mass as I type and seem very happy with them. I also noted with a little relief that there were some other BOE employees also on the ferry, I was not the only one stranded on the mainland. Stranded on the mainland trying to get to a small island, a reversal of the usual position. So there we go. I had a wonderful birthday weekend and I say thank you to all those involved in making it so. I also thank the gods of the weather for whipping up those nasty looking waves and having the ferry cancelled for me. I had a jolly good time on the mainland and even accomplished some useful things. That is to say I got my vaccinations for India completed, that was due to another serendipitous happening! On the Tuesday because my phones battery was empty I had to take the bus up to nago on the speculation the ferry was running, it wasn’t but as a result I bumped into Elina in the Nago Jusco just before she was off to meet Ben to go down and get their vaccinations in Naha. I also made a Christmas wreath but that’s by the by. Ah yes we also went to the peace park but I don’t have anything to say about that, it was quite nice. Oh and then the icing on the cake, when I got back to school on my desk was a parcel. Always fun but especially when it’s a birthday present and a graduation present, joy joy happy happy joy joy. Ahem yes well. Anyway it was an awesome gift which has heightened my admiration of the Japanese. It is a marvellous example of technology fused with art, and innovative technology at that. The Japanese do make good stuff, they really do.

Look Mum I finally used the finger puppets you sent although at the junoir high not the elementry school. I had the students in my english conversation class act out some little plays I had writen while the others filled in sheets with questions based on the plays. It was pretty amusing, so much so that the my Japanese english teacher ran to get her camera and another teacher to watch. I am still not sure how to use them in the elementry school. Any ideas?

Ach! Have a pretty sunset picture, I've got lots.

Another delightful weekend on Izena. Again nothing which was planned happened and much which wasn't planned did. I had planned with Teru to play the keyboard with him but this didn't quite happen. It seems to me things randomly happen on Izena and I think the same may be true for the natives here too. I had definitely planned to play keyboard with Teru on Thursday, then on Friday he called me and said he would be round in an hour to pick me up and then we could go play. When he arrived he told me we were going to do the some sea rangers dialogue instead with Kaich. However when we arrived at the Stagi Kaich was spreading out some food and awamori and we got drunk and watched a DVD instead. Anyway my point is there is little point in planning things on this island and you have to be prepared for anything at a moments notice. Again on Friday we were going to do the keyboard thing but Teru got a call from Yoshiaki-san (Mr Christmas music) to come to a fish party. Yes a fish party. You heard. Yoshiaki-san has got some fish from Sendai (just below Hokkaido) which he was very exited about. Anyway we had a barbeque and ate his fish amongst many other things. We were told that the next day 30 odd senior high school student from Kyoto were arrived and enlisted us to help. Help with what I of course had no idea but it sounded fun. So Sunday I had a very leisurely and large breakfast of pancakes and then went for my long run. Once I had recovered from that I called Yoshiaki san and he sent someone to pick me up and take me to the beach. It seemed a barbeque and several traditional okinawan performances were being stages for the students. After a stunning sunset the students arrived and we got the barbeque underway. My goodness they were a hungry lots, I was hoping for leftovers as I had not had dinner, but no such luck! I was hanging with the eisa crew and asked the chap who usually plays the Chondera (or is the Chondera) if he was performing tonight. He told me no, his knee was hurting, then asked me if I would take his place. I wonder if his knee really did hurt but regardless it was too good an opportunity to miss! The Chondera is a sort of clown who leads out the eisa dancers and then dances around and is generally goofy. So that’s what I did and it was great fun, the students got into it too and even tried to copy my okinawan dancing. After the tidying up we did the usual all sit in a circle on the ground and drink. It transpired that a number of other people had not had dinner either and had also hoped for leftovers so we made our way to Fuckasushi (my favourite eatery) and had a hearty meal. After that I was pretty tired but managed to hold on until there was enough of a group consensus to head home to sleep. Drink plus lots of carby hot food equals sleep. Just found out my English conversation class today is cancelled as they have exams this week, that frees up my evening. Wow I could finish tidying my house; I actually busted out the Hoover on Saturday.

The Sea Rangers performance and the Taiko workshop with the international students.

Be careful what you wish for! I had expressed in my post yesterday that I wouldn't mind if my JTE didn't make it in today either. As it turn out she has a fever and won't be in for a few days, and being a Japanese worker you have to be pretty ill to not turn up to work. Regardless I have been having fun playing with the kids. Although this morning was a little harsh, last night was the last night the foreign students and the whole language forum team where on Izena. It seems they have been involved with Izena for years and emotions where high, lots of laugher and some tears. A good time though. I spoke some with the Japanese girl who had masterminded the litter presentation. She had some good ideas, a little ambitious I thought but I am going to try and come up with some ways to educate the kids on litter. I think that’s the best way, I expect the grown ups will be set in their ways.

This past week, Tuesday to Saturday, I have been in Naha for the Mid Year Conference. As with all JET conferences it was as much a lesson in drinking and sleep deprivation as anything else. Certainly is you are a crazy islander that is. This said the seminars were in the main super useful and fun. Each night was completely different but equally crazy and fun, although I must say Friday night was pretty much the best. It all came to a climax when I had to get back to my island to give a speech on saturday afternoon. This meant catching the 10.30 ferry from Unten port which in turn meant leaving naha at about 7.30. I think I got about 45 minutes sleep on Friday night. But mostly due to David being a freaking Hero I made it back in time. The speech I was to give was on my impressions of Izena to a group of high school kids from all over the world plus some mainland Japanese kids too. I think it went pretty well and I got lots of good questions from them. Afterwards we also did a taiko workshop which was interesting too. They chose some random piece to teach the students which I hadn’t seem before and after a few failed attempts they decided I should be demonstrating the piece. EEEEEEGGGGGHHH (if you don’t know what sound that is then you’re not an islander from Okinawa)! But I used my ninja powers to do the piece (they come in so useful) and the kids then 'got it' enough so that we could all have a jolly good time banging our drums. There was a festival at 6pm that evening and I did plan to go but I passed out and slept soundly until 10am the following day. I needed it. Sunday was a rainy cold day, just like home! I had planned to quietly study Japanese and get my lesson plans down for my Monday English conversation class but I got a call from Kamiyama-san. And that only means fun stuff (and drinking) so off I went. We set out crab traps in the wind and the rain and then had warm sake afterwards which felt wonderful. The day was finished off with some sushi from my favourite izekaiya ‘Fukasushi’ and naturally orion beer. One interesting titbit thrown up in my discussions with Shunichi (a shoen tiako member from naha) was that the Japanese don’t really use the word commitment (in personal relationships). Or more specifically they don’t use it in spoken Japanese. There was some confusion as to the point so I looked the word up and he thought about it for a while and then told me people would not say this but it might be used it written Japanese. Seemed a little odd to me. I would have asked Natsu sensei about it today (my Japanese English teacher) but she is away. I took both my classes by myself today but that was no problem I am a pro at that now, maybe. Maybe I just get them to play games and don’t really teach them anything. Just before lunch today we had a presentation by the foreign students and their Japanese counterparts, a lot of trot about how pretty izena was etc. however they did bring up the issue of litter in a little presentation called ‘Keep Izena Beautiful’. I think I have harped on about the litter problem here before and it is definitely a problem. The British girl was one of the students who gave that presentation I am proud to say. She’s going to study chemistry at Edinburgh university and wants to do JET after, just what I did more or less! Unfortunately I will not be able to go to the beach barbeque with the internationals tonight because my English conversation class is on at the same time. Not sure how I can get around that one. Oh! a couple of students said ‘cut cut!’ to me today while miming hacking motions at their faces. Also during lunch some of the teachers were asking me if I was going to cut my beard and telling me I looked like father Christmas. Oh they are a fickle lot! Last week they were giving me compliments left right and centre about my beard. Humph. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it. I suppose it is getting a little bit straggly now. Apparently it was pretty lucky of me to have come back on the first ferry on Saturday as on Sunday the ferry was cancelled and all the teachers had to pay 15 thousand yen to take the plane back (that’s about 75 pounds) except my English teacher who didn’t. Actually I kind of hope she doesn’t make it tomorrow either so I can do the classes again by myself and this time I will have more than 25 minutes time to prepare before the class.

-I am in the distance in this picture, sorry! But it does show how the fishing worked very well-
This weekend I stayed put on my little island and what a good decision that turned out to be! As most of my friends where leaving Izena for various reasons that weekend I was looking forward to spending some down time and chilling by myself. I also had a number of things to do; planning lessons studying Japanese and such like. I also planned to get round to some painting and keyboard practice. However one should always expect the unexpected here. On Saturday morning as I was outside my house stretching in my skimpy running gear, about to go for a run. I had pegged this weekend to try for the full 20k, up to now I had just been doing 10ks as my long runs. As I was about to set off Kamiyama-san my neighbour trots up saying “cycling now! Come!” I managed to gather he wanted me to take part in something called the ‘Tour de Izena’ and to do this on my granny bike (no gears and a basket)! Well that sounded like a lot of fun to me so we popped my bike into the back of his van and off we went. It turned out not to be a race but rather a sort of bike tour of the island but that didn’t stop lots of Japanese turning up in lycra on racing bikes. There were a lot of people from off island included a cute American couple (air force) as well as a number of Izena people. The tour/race was already underway by the time we arrived so Kamiyama san just drove to the middle of the main group of people and dumped me out there, I am sure this shocked the Japanese riders, having a gaijin suddenly dumped in their midst (wearing my red jump suit none the less)! After we had completed the tour we took part in some kind of harvest ceremony which involved everybody taking it in turn to go out into a rice paddy and cutting a bushel of rice with a kama (sharp knife on a stick). My friend Kaiich took some pictures of me doing that so hopefully I can get them from him at some point. After that was done I managed to squeeze in my run (but only 10k) before the barbeque and after party. We enjoyed performances by the junior high girls (dancing to techno music with pom poms) and of course eisa. The highlight for me was a dance to a Japanese version of an Abba song. I had already had dinner but I sat with some older people from Okinawa honto and the old lady next to me kept bringing me more food and an old man kept bringing me more beer, not that I was complaining! The following day I got up at 7am to go fishing, urgh! This fishing involved herding the fish into a long net. Everybody walked in a long line making as much disturbance in the water as possible driving the fish into the waiting net. Along the way a poor lady got attacked by a tiny octopus, it attached to her foot, but always at hand in times of need our island police man whipped it off. He then dismembered it then and there and I had the pleasure of a tentacle. I quite like octopus but perhaps not so early in the morning. After the fish herding a number of us went out onto some exposed sand (it was low tide) and dug for shell fish (cockles I think). After about 20 minutes we had a whole tub full! And back on the beach the older people got stuck in with relish. I tried to hang back but the ever enthusiastic cook from my junior high made me have some, it wasn’t bad, quite sweet but as with the octopus it was a little early in the morning. It was interesting to note some of the younger kids (15/6 at a guess) from the Okinawa mainland wouldn’t try the cockles. Tastes are changing! After helping clear up some things from the night before with Yoshiaki-san I had lunch with the Tour de Izena people before they took the ferry to the mainland. After digesting I went off on my run and did the 20k for the first time. It was actually pretty good. It's going to be a long slog but I will crack this endurance malarkey, well I suppose I better if I am planning to do a triathlon next year. And I am.

No comment!

I had a most pleasant weekend. Teru and band were once again playing on Okinawa honto so I went across to see them again. This time it was a slightly larger venue and a number of other bands were playing. Teru’s band definitely got the crowd going way more than any of the other bands, and I gave my all in the head banging and moshing. For the rest of the weekend I hung out with some of the Okinawa honto JETs, and had a bleedin’ good time too! Aside from seeing the other JETs it was mildly shocking to see so many foreigners around. Although I was in Okinawa city with has a large population of US military so I should have expected it. The one upshot of this was that I was able to buy a number of English books, yippee! Until that moment I was rapidly finishing my last novel and facing a bleak bookless future. Back on the topic of seeing so many Gaijin (foreign people) around, I do feel that I am leaving Japan and entering some weird Japanese American hybrid country when I come to the Okinawa honto from my island. There is American food, signs in English, shops catering for American tastes, menus in English (English in the broadest sense of the word) and of course hoards of Americans. It is nice though, it lets me take a break from the Japaneseness of my island, pollute my body with fast food and partake in any other western delights I had been missing. Back on the island I got back into the rhythm of running and hanging out with the taiko crew down at the stagi. Next week we have seven international high school students coming to Izena as part of a cultural exchange and language learning program. The students will be from the US, UK, Australia, china, Korea and New Zealand and will stay on Izena for 4 days during which they will complete some sort of project on island life. On the Saturday I will give my speech to them, my speech which I have yet to write. There will also be a taiko workshop and a performance of SEARANGERS! This is the marine equivalent of the power rangers performed by the multitalented Shoen Taiko group. They tried to do an English version on Monday but I couldn’t be around as I had my evening English conversation class so I spent yesterday going over that and today we will re-record sections. They did pretty well but I think someone has been teaching them some swear words which they had incorporated into the dialogue. And before you ask I did not teach them! We have also been working on a TV commercial promoting Izena island for some sort of small islands festival which will be held sometime later this month on Okinawa honto. It is surprisingly tricky to make even a simple commercial but we are making progress and I am now the voice of ‘WELCOME TO IZENA ISLAND!’. This Monday was my first evening English conversation class, I take 16 of the 1st years from 6-7 and 8 2nd and 3rd years from 7-8. The class is voluntary and they actually pay a small fee to take it, I think it is supposed to be something like an English club in a senior high school. I take this class by myself, i.e. with no Japanese English teacher to help translate so I was a little nervous as to how well it would go. Especially with the 1st years as their English is not quite brilliant but it went swimmingly and was great fun. The class with the 2/3rd years stretched on for half an hour extra before the JTE came and broke up the fun as they were turning off the lights and locking up the school. Admittedly I did use sweets to help motivate the pupils but I felt it was justified. The one down side of the class is that it overlaps with the teacher’s basketball practice so I cannot take part in that which is a shame. I also have an English conversation class with ten of the 3rd years for one period during school hours on a Wednesday, I have just finished taking that today. One activity I did today was to give them Calvin and Hobbes cartoons with some or all of the text blanked out and have them be creative and create new dialogue. It was hilarious! Perhaps I can scan them in and show you the best ones, they made me laugh allot!

If any of you remember when I got wierded out when I was at this chap's house drinking and he starting playing a Maria Karey Christmas album. Well I was at the same guy’s house last night and he put on another Christmas cd!! And then they were talking about how they were going to have a big party at Christmas, a carnival even. I think they should leave Christmas alone, they have enough festivals as it is. Anyway it was a trying night as I still haven't caught up with sleep from Saturday night, oh it's a hard life! Peace

A scene from the play, when one of the lovers get a letter from the other....lover.

Some people can't handle the late nights, poor lads.

Me as Obi-wan, I am having fun honest! I was just trying to look serious and Jedi like for the photo.
Wellllllllllllllllll....it’s the beginning of the week and time to blog about my weekend! I was once again off to the mainland to party with the other ALTs. Although I did stay on Izena on Friday night. I watched a traditional okinawan play; it was all in Hogan (the old okinawan language) so even the young people on Izena couldn’t understand it. It was pretty easy to follow that it was a love story and that both lovers die, and there was quite a lot of physical comedy to keep me going. I had missed dinner though, and it was a bit torturous towards the end, it lasted three hours!! With no interval. It was worth it afterwards when a few of the old lady’s gave me, ‘otsukaresama deshita’ (good job!) and one said ‘thank you’ to me, in English. I am not certain but I think it is the same old lady I said, Niheydaiburu to a few weeks back at the undokai, after her family invited me to sit and have lunch with them. If I am correct then that’s pretty cool. Oh Niheydayburu is Hogan for thank you. After the play I got drunk with Teru, Nagi and Kiichi while watching some old Jackie Chan movies, awesome. So I then got up bright and early for the 9am ferry and went off the mainland. While waiting at the port of Elina who was kindly giving me a ride, I sat and watched some mudskippers and fiddler crabs doing their thing in a little patch of mud next to the road, it was good fun and they are the silliest creatures. I played some ultimate Frisbee in the afternoon with other jets, our team won of course. We were quite clearly superior throughout, and the fact we only started winning when Big Ben joined out team is by and by. After that it was off to Naha for Halloween fun!! And it was fun, many awesome costumes and very good to see some people I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. After having woken up painfully early, well only 8am BUT this is after 3 hours sleep, I did some shopping and then took the bus up north. This time I was about 2 hours early for my ferry, but I suppose that is better than being 5 minutes late. I’ll get it right one day! Once back on my island I planned to sleeeeeeeeeeeeep but I noticed Teru’s car outside the stage, so I showered and popped down to say hi. We watch a couple of movies before heading to a restaurant for dinner with the rest of the taiko group. It was actually dinner and drinks, and we stayed up until 12 drinking, that wasn’t fun as I was fighting to keep my eyes open! It was a blessed relief when they decided to call it a day at 12 but I almost got hysterical when they cheerfully asked if I wanted to have the 2nd party at my house. Japanese tend to split the night into two parties, the second one being more relaxed and at somebody’s home usually. I’m afraid I had to kill that plan, and headed home to sleep.

Having my T-shirt signed by Masa, the lead singer in Teru's band

The islanders ROCKIN' it in our jump suits

What a crazy weekend! On Friday night the three islanders were reunited and boy did we hit mainland Okinawa in style! We threw caution to the wind and bought retro adidas jump suits; I wore the red, Brett the blue and Andy the yellow one, complete with colour coordinated head bands. They cost a silly amount of money but they were utterly worth it. After making our purchases we heading up to Ginowan with Nick my predecessor to see my friend Teru’s band play. Teru is from Izena, he’s the chap with the long bleached ‘blonde’ hair you may have seen in previous pictures. The band is called Tetsukabuko and are an Okinawan Metal band. Anyway so we rock up to this Japanese metal concert in our outlandish gear, quite in contrast to the black and denim worn by everyone else! It was a tiny venue, can’t have been more than 50 people and the band was wicked (I bought their cd the very next day). After wards we had the band members and general people from the audience write stuff on the white t-shirts we were wearing. We then went to an Izekai with all the band members, it turned out although they are very Metal on stage and definitely looked the part they were in fact all the nicest, sweetest guys. Much fun was had, and Jasmine and Chris turned up for a bit as well. I think we left the Izekai at 3am but then hung around outside chatting until 5am. We then headed to Naha and swung by Paul and Mikes. A bar run by two Canadians and often frequented by ALTs and other gaijin. I met somebody else who was born in Zimbabwe there which was cool. We chatted for ages with Paul and some other dude behind the bar and got given a bunch of free shots, good times. Then we went and got curry at a 24hr curry house near to our izekai before heading back to the izekai at about 7am. Unfortunately Andy had to fly back to his island on Saturday because he had his school sports day on Sunday. So sadly bereft of a member of our trio, I and Brett headed north to Bens party with Teru. Bens party was awesome and again I only had a couple of hours sleep but it was worth it for sure. On Sunday after fun on the beach with the other ALTs and a crazy Japanese dude I accompanied Elina and Kelly on a wee road trip upto point Hedo, the northernmost point of the main island of Okinawa. It was super pretty, cool rocks and the clearest ocean I have ever seen. I made it back to my island with Teru and after having some soba in the cashinoshima we headed our separate ways to sleep mostly! I slept at least 11 hours!

Pretty views 

I encountered fearsome beasts! 

I am ready for an adventure!