About a week and a half ago, all of my students were cramming for semester final tests. In mid-January, the third years (seniors in American terms) will be taking the all-important (and that's an understatement....everything is leading up to this....everything is on the line) “Center Test” general college entrance exam (SAT/ACT on massive steroids—and then most universities have additional exams particular to each school).

Some of my classes are organized around preparing them for the English portion of this test. There are a variety of sections, from multiple choice to fill in the blank to read the story and answer the questions. And the answer isn't always as easy as you might think.

Anyway, the following is an excerpt from one of the short stories in the Practice Test booklet:

What I found out was very simple. It's that no one is ever really alone. There's someone who cares about what happens to you. You're never alone, no matter what you do. That's the secret of happiness, of doing things well, of everything.

Happy Holidays, from me and my young friend.

My Thanksgiving Week Recipe...this year

Start Sunday with an old fashioned American stomach busting Thanksgiving dinner including stuffing, mashed potatoes, bread, (very) wild rice, cranberry sauce, green beans, and turkey gravy. Replace turkey with giant square of tasty tofu. Invite loads of Japanese friends who cannot come. Eat it all with two Americans after thanking the low table and tall flowers and mini pumpkins for friends, family, and fun. Finish it off with Love Pie (complete with homemade cinnamon nutmeg whipping cream atop warm pumpkin filling) and movie.



Go to work. Teach. Talk to young and old and everyone in between in a variety of languages. Connect. Brush. Make mistakes. Make improvements. Make your way through the wondrous business of people.

Take a walk through the park Thursday morning. Jump on the monorail and then the plane and then the bus. Walk the last twenty minutes. Find lunch and books in English. Get lost at port. Get unlost at port. Take first ever ride on Toppy ferry, skimming the water's surface. Arrive in Yakushima around sunset. Enjoy a casual evening with friends in a happy little traditional Japanese home replete with sliding rice paper doors, tatami mats, and foot warming kotatsu.

Wake up at 4 am Friday. Drive up mountain to begin day-long hike. Be forced to take bus up mountain instead due to fallen rock. About an hour of windy bus mountain rides and somewhat nauseous stomachs. Disembark as the sky takes on hues of dawn. Start walking. Walk until lunch through ancient forests logged eighty years ago if not earlier. Giant house-sized life-filled stumps speak of yestercentury. Trudge up thousands of rocks. Lug over endlessly entangled exposed roots. Hike. Walk. Hike. Trees tower. Baby trees tower. Arrive at Jomon-sugi before lunch time, four or five hours later. Giant naked cedar high in the mountains. Altitude: 1300 meters. Height: 25.3 meters. Trunk circumference: 16.4 meters. Age: between 2710-7200 years old. Take pictures. Begin hike back down. Loping down old wooden causeways, slick rock steps, slithering root systems. Have favorite picnic-in-Japanese-mountain-forest ever. PBJ and Nihon tangerine. Water. Smiles. Stand up. Remain standing and moving for another four or so hours. Clouds move in over the ridges, begin to drool their cool mountain spit on us just as the final leg of the trip concludes. Bus. Windy road. Car. Drop hiking gear (water, heavy shoes) at home. Accidently also drop bodies and eyelids for a bit. Dark out again. Legs so sore. Make way to town onsen (bath house). Get naked. Shower off the days well-earned grime. Step into sulfuric hot tub with soft rock bottom in dim light surrounded by the normal nudity of every woman's evening bath. Grandma and kindergartner wash and soak beside each other. Drag tired body out into the moonlit night. Pile into car with friends. Everyone's hair is still wet with subtle sulfur scents. Head to nearby town's Euro-Japanese-riverside restaurant for great meal, warm music, finish with ice cream. Get home. Roll out futon on floor. Pile on blankets. Sleep the sleepy sleep of broken old trees.



Eat Saturday morning's french toast. Make way to waterfall. Sit and listen. Wind along oceanside roads. Macaques rest in packs across the road, listlessly grooming and being groomed. Arrive at beach. Walk barefoot upon the big grained sand and into the cool ocean waves. Sit. Listen. Watch. Talk with friends. Walk with friends. Feel the broken bits of earth and life press every surface that rhythmically pounds the general direction of the road and the little manual Suzuki with steering wheel on right, parts of thanksgiving dinner in back, and sweet sunglass, owner unknown, resting on the back seat. Make it to Stewart's house mid afternoon. Britt and Mary enjoy the big kitchen, painted living room walls, and nice conversation provided by Stewart. Grace and Paul take off up the mountain toward Shiratani Unsuikyo Forest in Susie Suzuki. Grace brushes up her nonexistent manual driving skills around steep hairpin turns, meeting more than one looming tourist bus coming down and around the one lane road quickly and carefully right for the little red compact car. Japan. Mountain. One lane. Stick shift. Buses and cars and construction. Mom, don't worry :). Paul provides superb support from the passenger seat. Numerous stalls and startups. We, Paul and Grace, arrive alive and no worse for the ware, having completed adventure number 1 (ichi ban) out of 3 for the day. Part 2, explore the bowels of the mossy magical moving magnificent mountain did i say mossy stony rooty green tree-y forest. Across suspension bridge. Over rivers and giant boulders. Slither through green and furry intestines. Trees, stumps, rocks, lichens, mosses, decay, sprout, young lonely gregarious hungry dear fawn reign. The sun set early with on fall's watch. We make it up to the ridge and Tujitoge Pass in the area known as Princess Mononoke Forest 2500 meters up and into the heart of the beast. The sun is just rolling down the other side of the mountain, shooting hot yellow good-evening fingers up the far side of the ridge at us, showering the trees with gold before we all turn around for the night. Slip, slide, sache all the way back. A few late fellow hikers with big packs. Nods and smiles exchanged. Cross the footbridge with just enough light left to see the path and the moon rise in the purple and pink milk of sky that the sun, now behind us and the mountain, had left as part of the usual passing of the torch. Stare, slack jawed, at the sight of it. Sit rears upon quiet, dusky bridge to continue to soak it up through our wide-open, moon sparkled eyes. Hop back down the last jaunt of trail, step, and path in near-dark to parking lot where Susie Suzuki and the final installment of this day's adventures await. Put her in first and roll out of now empty parking lot onto happy black windy mountain road. The moon is bright and round. Glowing white in the dark blue sky as we put her into neutral and ride the ribboning rode back down the mountain to Stewart's house. Whip garlic butter cream cheese potatoes with fork. Share chicken, brocolli, cheesy gravy, corn, mashed potato, rice pudding, warm roll meal with Okinawan coworkers Mary and Paul, Yakushima ALTs Brittany and Stewart, and Stewart's coworker, a young Japanese teacher, Noriko (face warm, cheesecake delicious). Return back to Britt's after a few more hours of lazy socializing.



Awake at 5:45 am. Pile into Britt's lovely little red car and the quiet dark ride back to the port. Hugs goodbye. The moon has made an arching journey and is now on its way brightly behind the mountains. Banana bread for breakfast made the night before in the rice cooker provided in heavy wedges. The sun begins to rise, peaking over the slick sharp line between ocean and sky, and continues its roll up the the blue as we speed over the Pacific waters back to Kagoshima. Back onto Bus. Back onto plane. Back onto monorail. Walk back through the park, where groups of laughing elderly people play some sort of croquet golf. Goquet. Kids swing on monkey bars. Silly little city trees, rare to my neighborhood, encircle the long narrow sliver of place to play. All shapes and sizes, these things, trees. Walk a couple more miles. Past the cemetery. Up the hill. Into the apartment. Tenth floor. Tired and happy. Happy and thankful.

Visuals from the weekend.



Thank you family and friends. Thank you chance and opportunity. Thank you America and Japan. Thank you earth, water, sky. Thank you legs. Thank you airplane pilot. Thank you student on corner. Thank you Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall and Spring Again. Thank you Minnesota. Thank you trees. Thank you breath. Thank you big things. Thank you small things. Things I know and don't know. Things I will know. Things I'll never know.

Sakamoto-sensei, a teacher in the Junior high school math department and mother of three grown yet childless boys, brought her adoptive American daughters up north this weekend. I've been hearing about up north since I arrived. Okinawa is a very small island/prefecture, smaller than the state of Rhode Island. Anyway, in all of my byciclitic travels, south has been the popular direction. But north has been the land of dreams. I heard it was green there and open spaces. I heard I should go and that was enough incentive for me. On our way to Onnasan (the final destination), we stopped by Yomitan, a town where many artists from the Tsuboya pottery district in Naha City moved when the old street became too crowded.

Yomiton pottery village rests in the rolling hills of west-central Okinawa. Large studios stretch like mouths, open-wide and always chewing, working. There couldn't have been too many more studios on these many hundred acres than there were on the cramped street in the city. Most had multiple buildings with wide open doors and windows through which one can easily see busy, clay-splattered potters and shelves upon shelves of many hundreds/thousands of in-process pieces, barrels of glaze, kilns, and so on. There was even an impressive and enormous noborigama (climbing kiln) humbly commanding the top of a good-sized hill. Another interesting note is the presence of a famous/rogue glassblower, by the name of Ican't Remember who has been making is works out of recycled glass bottles for decades now and is beginning to experiment with clay as an additional element. There are pictures of all of these things and more when you follow the "my photos" link to the right.



When we finally arrived in Onnason, we turned right after a strangely spiral shaped cafe (which I might tell you about someday) and continued up a hill to our penshion/minshuki (cheap place to stay, guest house, bed-and-breakfast style). After a spot of tea, we were quickly shown our tatami (traditional Japanese straw mat) room upstairs, which was one of four small rooms above the first floor. It looked over trees and off to the East, to the China Sea. We opted to have dinner out this evening, but before walking into town, we toured the small farm plots further up the hill. There were pleasant, but it was growing dark and I was growing hungry. Dinner, walk, shower, roll out our futons on the tatami, read, sleep. I awoke to early morning light and eventually made my way downstairs, through the dining room, to the porch. It was chilly. There was a small boy playing with my fellow travelers a game of sea shell and coniferous needle. Things started to feel familiar. I pulled on my long sleeve shirt to welcome the cool breeze that seemed to come straight from the Midwest.

We were served homemade bread, tea or coffee, and homemade soup. They call it 'slow food' here. The opposite of fast food and relatively rare. It was rounded off with a fresh salad grown just up the hill. Things seemed right. A husband and wife (mother and father of the little boy who played on the porch and disliked wearing pants) maintained the pension, maybe made the bread, and did some of the farming. They were pleasant, interested, and unbusied. The wife, Hiro, retained some English from when she sheep-farmed in New Zealand during a mid-college break, and she and I discussed organic growing for a bit.

After breakfast, we rolled up our futons on the second floor, put them back in the closet, and took a walk up the hill where many things flourished. We found some wonderful plants, many of which we consumed parts. The sister (Ms. Misako) of the owner of the hill (including cafe, penshion, and farm, who was a friend of Sakamoto-sensei's and never appeared) arrived and showed us how she spun the cotton that she grew. And then we headed out to clean up the beach (something we'd been aching to do) with a gaggle of young children and their mothers. A handful of men were heading out on a kayaking expedition, a couple more were fishing aimlessly off the shore, and we ran around all of them with big bags and giant-tweezer-things, grabbing every glass coffee bottle and aluminum beer can in sight. I even found two toothbrushes, a large computer keyboard in perfect condition, and three popped balloons. Then we all headed back through town and up the hill, a party of about twenty or so, to medium-sized, garage-type building that sat amidst the small fields. And here we made one of the best meals ever.

We peeled and cut sato imo (country, as opposed to city, potatoes), ninjin (carrots), tamanegi (big green onions), and nagai gobo (long Japanese root-vegetable-thing-maybe-related-to-radish). Tofu, miso, pork, koniaku (a jelly-type substance made from potatoes), and water were added, in addition to a touch of cooking sake. This was all cooked in a giant metal bowl nestled amidst the brick of a traditional wood-fired kamado (Japanese stove) just outside the meeting quarters (garage-like-building). It was a multi-hour, many womanned event, but lunch was ready just after noon. Tea, soup, and gohan (rice) were served on long tables surrounded half by toddlers, nearly other half by mothers, and two young assistant English teachers. Later, nine Koreans took part in the meal as well. There was plenty of food for everyone and it was great. With our best (poor) Japanese, we made Ms. Misako and Hiro aware that we would be back again.



And then we left, walked through the sea at low tide to an island, swam back, and concluded our weekend up north we sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and one large blue starfish.



Okay, we didn't swim, we waded. But it was really windy and there was all sorts of liquid resistance on our calves.

The smell of the fire wafting from the stove, the rows of growing edibles, the running young, and tender old, it all reminded me of different parts, kinds, and times of home. Which is a little bit here now, too.

Teaching & Learning.

Last week, after trimming the few pots I was allowed time to throw the week before, Mary and I stood around a sturdy wooden table (the same light, glowing color as the rest of the studio), loaded down with large, plastic covered logs of soft red clay, trying to communicate with the guys that hang out at the studio with us. Well, someone needs to supervise the Americans and they had about five hundred tiny vessels to throw before the end of the month and we're strange if not entertaining. Shouhei made iced Jasmine tea and brought over some little snacks in a bowl his father threw or his mother painted or someone related to him processed in some way. The flavor of the dark colored, airy cookies reminded me of hotcakes and then maple syrup and then trees and mud and boots and those parts of woods in Minnesota I came to know over years of sloshing around with fifteen to thirty sap fingered seven year olds waddling behind and around me. But this was brown sugar and sugar cane, Masashi indicated with his just-short-of-comprehensive and well-paced English. While communicating, we used our hands a lot (which I might do anyway) and Shouhei has kindly learned to supply me with paper and pen to take notes of Japanese words I would otherwise forget the moment they're spoken. Over the last few weeks Shouhei's English has improved immensely (from nothing our first visit to broken but understandable exchanges yesterday). Mary and I, however, have remained relatively stagnant with our choice phrases and confused faces. After our first cookie and before our second, Mary “let it slip” that I studied Japanese for more years than I care to mention here (mostly because all evening I had been subtly goading her to reveal her crush on a certain handsome twentysomething Japanese man sooner than later). I studied the language slowly in high school, but the program died by my senior year. A few rickety semesters at the beginning of my college career were as quickly forgotten as those of secondary school. The boys found this news both fascinating and hilarious, seeing as I had up till now said as much in Japanese, if not less, than my blond haired American friend, who had only studied for four months while abroad in Tokyo. But after discussing my reasons for long ago unusual studies and current country visits deeper than before, they lightened my embarrassment with one fact that held more meaning than intended: “It's okay. You know, we all have to study it for six years before we graduate high school and many of us as adults don't know any English.”



I'm doing my best to learn Japanese. The Vice President's wife has recently offered a weekly tutoring session that will certainly aid the process I had otherwise decided would happen through personal study and experience.

I'm doing my best to teach English, which has more to do with conveying the joys of crazy people (like me and my love of pockets and trees, which everyone learns during introductions), understanding the difficulties of teenagedom, correcting insightful extra-curricular essays, discussing cultural differences, pronouncing sentences translated into English from Japanese (which always retain a few beautifully foreign sentiments) slowly and carefully, and being the non-boring/friendly moment of the day (I'm not great at this yet, but I'm working on making the fool in me as public in school as it is outside of school. For example, they got a kick out of my ninja moves last Wednesday. One student helped complete my Halloween outfit with a throwing star (shuriken=“hand hidden blade”) origamied out of his homework paper, for which I repaid him (and the rest of the class) with a glimpse of my quick and stealthy/probably shameful skills.). Many of these kids work really hard. Many don't. Some of them will use English later on, but for those whose lives it trickles away from, as Japanese did from mine until now, I want to make sure they get something out of my part in their day.

Teaching and learning is about communicating, however it's accomplished. Especially for those new to the field(s).

A little boy and his mother stood beside me while we waited for our turn at the crosswalk as I was riding my bike through the city the other night. The boy liked the flashing light attached to my handlebars. A smile from me spurred his mother's inquiry. Between our broken uses of each-other's languages, it was made known that one could buy it at a bike shop and it is slightly expensive.

I met a junior high student named Hallelujah at the English Society Halloween party last week. He is very sociable and speaks better English than I do with a better American accent. His face is round and kind. Halloween is not a big deal around here, but it is a bit of American culture some people like learning about.

I visited a renovated Ryukyu Kingdom castle on Saturday (please see 'my photos' in the links section for visuals), located in Shurijo Castle Park. It is within biking distance, at the top of a hill, looking down at Naha City. On my way there I was stopped by a colorful parade. After making my way to the castle and walking around the complex (it was the royal and administrative center for many hundred years—starting around the fourteenth century—then it was nearly decimated during the second world war, and finally, reconstruction began exactly fifteen years prior to the day of my visit) for a few hours, I hopped back on my bike, excited for the smooth ride down the long hill. There was still music and dancing in the streets. I recognized a teacher from school, but I couldn't quite place him as I guided my bike around the crowd, so he initiated a wave and we smiled and continued on our separate but intersecting journeys. (We gave each other nods of acknowledgment at this morning's teacher's meeting. It was him afterall.) On the way home, I stopped by the Tsuboya district where they were celebrating a few hundred years of pottery business on the same cobbled street. There was also traditional music and dancing there and I exchanged some busied salutations with friends. Later that night, I could see fireworks emerging from behind some faraway tall concrete buildings out my apartment window. There was more drumming the following morning.





It's been great to hear from ya'll. Please keep me updated on your one wild and precious life.

“Just because he is good, it does not follow that he is wise.”

I do not pretend to be good (but I hope to), I do not pretend to be wise (but maybe when I have wrinkled hands, I'll hold a bit of sageness in them). I can only say that I am here, wherever here is at the time.

The quote above was one of the sentences we were going over in an English composition course this week. It reminded me of people I know. Yes, I am a teacher. I do not fully understand all that that means, nor do I embody everything (or part) of what that could aspire to imply. I know I'm new. I'm an “assistant” teacher, I “help”. I've never taught in a classroom before. However, I wish I had brought with me a few more tools for “touching” (as Kenney says) the lives of these students. High school students. A tricky age to experience, a tricky age to “help”. Everyone needs help, everyone can give help. It is one of those good and ever-present things. Perhaps I'll make the tools as I stumble along. Perhaps I'll brush instead of touch. Which one sounds creepier?

I'm that resident English girl that helps out with classes and has a few of her own. You can come and ask her to check your essay (usually pretty amazing—I'll share some tidbits soon) after school or just talk to practice your English. We'll chat about traveling and loneliness and family and boys and tattoos and aboriginal Australian art and stuff. I'm starting small. A few students have approached me to have one-on-one speaking meetings and are thoroughly impressive. I'm slowly finding ways to brush and touch. “Little by little,” was a key phrase in a lesson we went over this week. Gradually. This is how we make life out of days. This is how we make differences.

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I've still been pretty busy. Meeting new friends (Yuma, who is three and does the best kemushi (ke=hairy, mushi=worm, kemushi=caterpillar) impression I've ever seen and gives the BEST cheek kisses), having fancy dinners at hotels (that means two hours of speeches given by everyone present—some great moments where I laughed and nodded my head and held my heart—and some moments where I caught myself thinking about how the sushi could have used a bit more wasabi when I was supposed to be answering “Yes” to the president's question in front of everyone, “I think you made an impact and were a good influence,” in reference to a former student of the high school and dear college friend. No. Bad influence. Very bad. I didn't know it was a question.), making things, adventuring (ninjaventuring), and learning.
I have to get my Japanese language studies going. I get glimpses of what used to be familiar, but need to begin again from the ground up. Little by little. Gradually. This is how we make life out of days. This is how we make differences.

I've received some wonderful e-mails describing the autumn I'm missing, containing photos of giant golden trees and descriptions of tasty pumpkin muffins and lentil soup. Thank you, everyone. I miss you all and love hearing from you. Oh! And happy almost (okay, a week) 'dress up like a pumpkin and/or give & receive candy day'! Are you ready?

Chinese tourists taking pictures of American women in a Japanese festival. That was my Sunday.

A small community recently welcomed us in and allowed us to become one of their own. Apparently, this also means that during the down time between the most difficult, hot, drum-riddled parade I've ever taken part in and more drumming/cheering as the world's largest tug-of-war took place not twenty feet away, my friend Mary and I would be asked to perform in front of all of them. “Karate, do karate,” they coaxed, smiling and pushing us toward the center of the crowd. “But I've only been to san (three) classes,” we stuttered in broken English, “Iie. Iie. Sukoshi!” No. No. Only a little! They tried to pull us in two or three times and finally we couldn't avoid it any longer. We scouted out the two young women who we had met in karate class and had first introduced us to this happy group of families from the Tsuboya neighborhood (hidden down a cobblestone street in the heart of the largest city in Okinawa, Naha, the Tsuboya district has been the center for Okinawan pottery since the era of the Ryukyu Kingdom and is also the location where I currently throw a few pots a couple times a month). Maiko and Hiroko reluctantly joined us in the open circle as dozens of our new friends looked on, smiling and clapping.

The day began at 8 a.m., after the pleasant/death-defying/now familiar fifteen minute bike ride along the city streets connecting our neighborhood, near the school, and the aforementioned district o' fun. A few women stood at the front of the community center, below a curtain of white and blue uniforms, dressing young girls and boys. As they helped Mary and I into our traditional Japanese attire, I couldn't help but be reminded of the mothers that had helped me and my little ballerina friends prepare for the next dance competition backstage when I was a child. The longer I'm here (which hasn't been long at all), the more I realize how little difference there is between America and that foreign place of your choice (of course, not in all instances, but anyway). Besides signs I'm not sure about, a language I can barely understand, and a culture I'm still getting to know, it's like any other place at its base. So...I guess I might as well have moved to Tennessee.
At the other end of the day, after hundreds of thousands of people had pulled a forty ton, 200 meter long natural fiber rope for nearly twenty minutes, we won. The crowds lept onto the rope, cutting off good-luck pieces to take home, and dispersed. We jumped into the bed of a truck with twenty adrenaline-rushed children and ten or so festival-wearied adults. It wasn't your average truckbed, but we were certainly sardines for the short ride back to the community center on the other side of the city. I'd get into the story of the tug-of-war, the east and the west sides, with fourteen communities each marching toward Kokusai-dori (International Street) for the final celebration, the strength & skill required to perform the hatagashira (which the men did the entire walk from Tsuboya to the tug-of-war), or the ancient reasons for this post-harvest festival, but I wouldn't know where to start or what to tell. The parade had taken up most of the day and as I craned my neck around the little sleepy heads bobbing around the back of the truck, I could see the orange-pink-purple-and-blue sunset over the East China Sea as we passed Naha Port (despite the fact that I live on a very small Island, the city is busting at its concrete seams and there is very little as far as nearby beaches and ocean views go).

Two days later I asked one of my oral communication classes to discuss this festival, as it is the city's largest and most popular. These teenagers are spitting images of my high school classmates. Except if they aren't Japanese they're Chinese or Taiwanese, but anyway: bright, funny, tired, sarcastic, helpful...and often with too many other more important things on their mind (the test they just had or shortly will have, that guy or girl they ate lunch with, what their parents expect of them, the creeping closer college monster, etc.). No one had gone to the festival. Oh cultural paradoxes. They either live out in the suburbs, were hanging out with friends, or were studying to point of unconsciousness (which is usually the case, even in class). Needless to say, it was kind of a dud. But that'll happen now and again.

I went out to dinner a few days ago with some of my coworkers from the high school English department: Yukiko, Ken, and Trevor (beside Mary, Paul, and I there are two other foreigners teaching at the school, one being American Fad, and the other being Canadian Trevor). It was a Japanese buffet of soups, puddings, seafoods, meats, and vegetables galore and a low table at which we sat on tatami mats and talked for hours, chosen by dear Yukiko, my sister in small stature and dark hair (the students call us twins). Each dinner-mate taught me one useful Japanese phrase (I have so much to learn. Everything to learn.) and shared a story or two about their time at the school. At the end of the night, Ken (Kenney, 'cause he's cool) made the assertion, based upon everything I'd told them over dinner, that my three short weeks in Okinawa had been “dense” (I'm beginning to thoroughly appreciate the word-choices made by ESL speakers). And I would have to agree. I've fit well over three weeks of adventures and friends into my time here so far. I'd like to think my life is dense, has been and will be. Dense with good things. I'll keep working on that. I hope you get a chance to, too. Tutu. Toodaloo.

P.S. I love you. And more photos can be found in the links section to the right.

I've been in Okinawa, Japan for one week now. The first evening of my stay, I was greeted by two good friends and a midnight chat on my new balcony with local Orion beer, some wine, two cockroaches, and an enormous fruit bat. Tonight there was another chat on the balcony, a few more buggy friends, and a very large flying mammal, but I was able to fit a few things in over the last seven days, which include, but are not limited to:

-Meeting the President and Vice President of the Okisho school, and accidentally maybe crossing them.
-Hanging out with an old friend for the first time on her home turf.
-Going to the local dojo for a karate lesson, and making very good friends out of the sensei and a student.
-Registering as an alien and obtaining a foreign bank account.
-Having Orion and sushi with one of my supervisors and my friend.
-Visiting the World Heritage Shikinaen Royal Garden.
-Buying a bike and snorkel gear in a single visit to the sporting goods store.
-Riding said bike ten miles, from Naha City (my new home) to the southern tip of Okinawa (the location of the Quasi-National Park at Odo Beach), to use said snorkeling gear, swimsuit, and relativley unsunned skin. My friends, Paul and Mary, who have been here for a month already, have been wonderful fun and help.
-Watching local community men practice the art of hatagishira for the city festival this weekend.
-Throwing my first pot in almost two years on tsuboya street.
-Getting my drum on...rehearsal for said city festival.
-Oh, and learning how to teach, teaching, desk sitting, work conversing, and everything else that falls under the art of working in Japan's education system. I've even had one student approach me to tutor her/help her practice her English speaking skills (highly unusual for the generally painfully shy student population).



I was offered this position two months ago. I just received my visa a week and a half ago. I had my hesitations and personal ideals about what I would do abroad and when I would go, but from the looks of it, all will be well.
So what will happen next?