August 31st, 2008 Scott
Saturday evening, my bicycle riding partner Colonel Marchioro invited Gina and I to his place on Camp Courtney for a dinner party. He has friends from far flung places so I knew it might end up be an interesting evening…and it was. In the picture from left to right is a translater (born and raised in Peru, Spanish is first language, English and Japanese second and third but is third generation Japanese immigrant to Peru now living and working in Okinawa. Next to her is one of two ladies I didn’t meet so I don’t know her story. Seated in front of her is a Buddhist Monk from Thailand who just finish US Navy boot camp and is about to start his first duty station. He will be the Navy’s second Buddhist Chaplin and joined so that he can go to college in the states at the end of his commitment. He is now a Buddhist Priest because Monks are not even allowed to step on a military base let alone join the military so he downgraded his status to priest. Sitting slightly behind and to his left is a woman from Mongolia who is studying at Meio University in the graduate school of social policies and systems in Nago, Okinawa. Japanese is her second language and English is her third. She met the two ladies to her left in her English class. The woman sitting second from the right end (behind my wife, Gina) is a windsurf instructor in Nago and my understanding is that her husband competed in Beijing for the Japanese national team in windsurfing. Needless to say, it was a most interesting evening and many of them enjoy speaking with us to practice their English. I enjoyed speaking a bit of Spanish to the Peruvian woman. As weak as my Spanish is, I felt so empowered compared to my exchanges with Okinawans where I can’t speak virtually any japanese. I couldn’t understand her very well because she spoke too fast, but I could communicate with her for sure.
I put in 10 hours of riding, running and swimming this week which is about 4 – 5 hours more than I have been doing but is similar to the workload I had when I was bicycle racing regularly. Well, between those extra hours on
the bike and the workload of fulltime school again, I trashed myself. Steve and I did a really easy ride out to Big Time Resort at the end of Ikei Island Saturday morning, but I really had no zip in my legs and decided to do a short run on Sunday instead of a long ride. Again, I had no zip in my legs so today I am taking the day off from riding or running. If I’m up for competing with the jellyfish in the bay here at our apartment, I may go for a swim later. Box Jellyfish are a concern here during the summer and a neighbor was swimming in our bay last week and swam right into one. He has huge welts across his fore arm from it and I have no desire to see for myself what a jellyfish sting feels like. I went snorkeling yesterday afternoon and was hyper diligent about watching for them. I saw a Picasso trigger fish and another type of trigger that I’ve never seen before. It was a good session in the water.
Gina and I went car shopping on Saturday and I’ve decided the car she wants doesn’t exist. She’s a little freaked out about driving here and wants maximum visibility out the rear side windows (blind spot checking). When we finally found a car that had that, she felt like it was too big inside (even though the car was a yellow plate which means it’s a very tiny car…but this particular model has very tall windows inside). We stopped by a hardware store to look for pots to plant a garden on our deck and took this picture of the type of broom you see all the locals using. It’d be the ultimate halloween prop for any witches out there. We’ll keep looking. I’m sure we’ll find something for her that feels a little more secure than the somewhat worn out car she’s using right now.
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August 29th, 2008 Scott
It’s Friday and I’ve just finished the first week of school with students. Here in DoDDS Pacific we started the Monday before Labor Day which makes for a long first week back. I’ve always been a fan of starting the Wednesday before Labor Day and building up to that long five day week slowly by doing three days the first week, four days after Labor Day, then finally hitting stride with five days after that. The other component that made the week long is I hit the training hours a lot harder than I had been this summer. After taking Monday off (after an 85 mile weekend on the bike…first one in a long time), I rode to school Tuesday & Thursday and hit the pool at Camp Hanson on Wednesday and today, Friday. Between the stress of work and the stress of training I am drained.
We did meet one of our Okinawan neighbors last night while walking Graycie. There is an interesting business right next door to us, although we couldn’t ever tell what it was. They have several large stainless steel tanks around the very small building and the letters “FBM” on their sign. They also have a sign on the main road to direct traffic toward the building. I’ve never seen traffic there though. They have a beautiful large yard that abuts the seawall walkway that goes by our apartment and they have a golfing green set up on it as well as a tee box about 60 yards away. They spend a great deal of time out there chipping and we introduced ourselves and they took an immediate interest in Graycie. It’s been our experience that most locals do not want anything to do with Graycie as she is considerably larger than your typical Okinawan dog and they seem to be intimidated by her size. At any rate, one of them spoke pretty good English and we started talking about the fisherman who had been out on the rocks near by for over seven hours. He said they were fishing for a long nosed blue fish. I suspect it may be a Parrot fish, but I’m not sure. He said they make good sushimi. I asked his name and told him mine then said “Urushgo Onaigoshimas” which translates roughly into “Please be kind to me”. More properly translated, the phrase means, “Pleased to meet you”. It was interesting how properly they snapped to a attention and did bows to me as they returned the line. There was a definite change in body language as we traded that formality. It was most interesting to observe. He asked which base I worked on and where I lived. I should’ve written his name down because I can’t even begin to remember it now, but I’m sure we’ll chat again soon.
Gina signed us up for a four week Japanese class on Courtney, a Marine Camp about 15 minutes away from our place and it starts in October. Between it and JapanesePod101.com we feel like we can start getting into learning the language.
We found a great restaurant off base last week that is run by an American who’s been here for a few years. It’s called Stacks and is GREAT Southern Barbecue. Go figure; I have to move to Okinawa to get good Southern Barbecue
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August 23rd, 2008 Scott
It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve been back in Okinawa for one week now. It feels good to be back, even though it’s really hot and humid here. I’m amazed how much less stressful it is to arrive here the second time having my home, car, and work environments already in place before I get here. The spectacle of living in another country is still amazing, but it is much easier to integrate having done it all once before.
Graycie is happy to see us again. We had to leave her here for the summer at a dog sitter since travelling with dogs in August is nearly impossible. Airlines will not fly with a dog if the take off site or the landing site are predicted to exceed 85 degrees. That’s pretty much assumed for Naha and a great possibility for Seattle. The 10+ hour flight from Seattle to Tokyo isn’t much fun, but at least it isn’t the Washington DC to Tokyo flight….that one’s much longer. We did have some joy at the airport though because of my bike. We were put into the “problem” line because of the overweight baggage. However, there were a lot of people in this line and only one very slow person working it. We stood in that line for about 90 minutes while he helped ONE person. She had 6 pieces of overweight baggage and it took him that long to get things done. By contrast, an entire group of 27 Japanese students were processed by his colleague (each with one overweight bag) during the time he spent working with ONE person. I really wanted to vent by the time a supervisor showed up and did a good job of getting everyone to relax. We eventually made it through and didn’t even get charged for the overweight suitcase or for the overweight bike box. United allows up to 70 pounds if you are on military orders, but the guy said I didn’t qualify because my ID said “DOD Civilian” and I wasn’t military. I didn’t need to argue though; he let it slide. We were very grateful.
Some 23 hours after we left Wenatchee, we walked into our apartment here in Yaka and collapsed. I recovered Sunday and went into school on Monday and Tuesday. The rest of the week was meetings and more prep time. The students start tomorrow (Monday, August 25) and I’m nearly ready to go.
We hit the japanese supermarket this week and I took a couple of ‘mystery’ food pics for you. Enjoy. If anyone can tell me what this fruit is, please let me know. I’m most curious.
I’ve already put about 150 miles on the bike since I’ve returned and am happy to report the heat isn’t bothering me too bad. I’ve only run once and haven’t swam yet. I can’t swim here at low tide and high tide has always been during my work hours. However, a neighbor was stung badly by a box jellyfish last week and I’m not so anxious to swim in the ocean until jellyfish season ends in September. I did find some anti-jellyfish lotion that is supposed to work very well. I’ll wait til it arrives to get into an ocean swim.
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August 1st, 2008 Scott
This post is happening back at the house in Wenatchee because most of the second half of our trip was not within the boundaries of accessing the Internet. We did get to the ‘net on occasion, but only after long tiring days and blogging wasn’t my priority.
Looking over the gas receipts, we travelled a total of just over 2500 miles driving from Washington through to the East side of Montana and back again. It’s time to change the oil already.
An amusing convienence store name
We did manage to fit a couple of tourist activities amongst all the relatives scattered throughout the state. These stops included Pompey’s Pillar, Red Lodge, and parts of Yellowstone.
I didn’t have my camera at Pompey’s Pillar, so no pictures of it, but it is an interesting stop just East of Billings. It is a large rock formation along the Yellowstone river that Clark (of the Lewis & Clark Expedition) stopped at on the way back. He carved his signature into the rock. I stopped there about 25 years ago and they have added a very nice visitor center since then. We arrived on the eve of the 202nd anniversary of Clark’s presence there (he signed it in 1806). They had a multitude of events scheduled for the weekend, but we couldn’t stay. NOTE: there is a $7.00 fee to park in the new visitor center lot. However, if you go past the ‘official’ looking entrance with the fee gate, there is a small gravel road and a sign that reads: “National Monument Ahead”. This takes you to the original gravel lot near the base and is likely free or less expensive. However, the visitor center is well worth the fee and the time. They’ve done an excellent job putting it together.
Next, we spent the night in Red Lodge. It is a small mountain town that has turned into a mini-Aspen of sorts. It is full of antique dealers, real estate offices, restaurants, real estate offices, art galleries, real estate offices, lodging facilities of all kinds, and (you guessed it) real estate offices. We planned our assault on Yellowstone for the next day by finding the top ten places to see while in the park. We knew it would be busy so we vowed to get an early start. Unfortunately, the check engine light came on on our way out of town and we had to spend about two hours waiting for it to get checked. Turned out to be nothing, but the car was acting odd after following the line painting truck at slow speed for a few miles so we thought it best to have it checked out.
Gina and I in front of Beartooth Lake
The entrance to Yellowstone from Red Lodge is via the Beartooth Highway. This is similar to the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park. Having never been there, I can’t compare the two but many people have told me that the Beartooth Highway is more impressive. This 60 or so miles of driving took us two hours because this highway has several miles of which are essentially a large, paved packbacker’s trail high above the tree line. We were in amazing high alpine meadows that typically one doesn’t see unless they’ve spent several days hiking to them. We were above 10,000 feet in elevation for much of the trip after switchbacking up the side of the valley. I can’t stress enough how you must visit this stretch of road if you are in the area and have the time to do so. In many respects, it was more impressive than the parts of Yellowstone we got to see later in the day.
Artist Point
Due to the late start and the amazing Beartooth Highway, we had to cut our visit down to: The Grand Canyon, Artist Point, Norris Basin, and Mammoth Hot Springs. The upper and lower falls of the Grand Canyon were incredible, as was the hike down 300 or so metal steps suspended in mid air along the canyon wall to a place called Uncle Tom’s Canyon. Not a good place to be if you have vertigo. Next, we went to Artist Point and after circling the parking lot twice, found a spot amongst the throng of people to park. I’m glad we did. The view was surreal to such a degree that it looked fake. You have to see it in person to understand. Norris Basin gave us our only views of geo-thermal activities on the day and it worked out well. We saw small geysers, steam vents, mud pots, and interesting sulfpheric odors to go along with the unusual landscape. We ended the day at Mammoth Hot Springs were a small city of Yellowstone workers lives and a large resort brought us back to modern commercialism at it’s finest.
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the bike and the workload of fulltime school again, I trashed myself. Steve and I did a really easy ride out to Big Time Resort at the end of Ikei Island Saturday morning, but I really had no zip in my legs and decided to do a short run on Sunday instead of a long ride. Again, I had no zip in my legs so today I am taking the day off from riding or running. If I’m up for competing with the jellyfish in the bay here at our apartment, I may go for a swim later. Box Jellyfish are a concern here during the summer and a neighbor was swimming in our bay last week and swam right into one. He has huge welts across his fore arm from it and I have no desire to see for myself what a jellyfish sting feels like. I went snorkeling yesterday afternoon and was hyper diligent about watching for them. I saw a Picasso trigger fish and another type of trigger that I’ve never seen before. It was a good session in the water.
