Snack Food

I have traveled to several countries with a friend, and when we travel we do something like a snack food marathon trying as many new foods (mainly snacks) as we can. France had great ice cream and cheese (of course). Spain had awesome hot chocolate (not the kind you drink). When we were on mainland Japan earlier this year we discovered the awesome variety of snack foods flavored with green tea. I have to say green tea Kit Kats were the very best. Unfortunately I have yet to find them here in Okinawa along with green tea Pocky.  

Next year this friend is coming to visit me here in Okinawa and I have been hard at work trying all the new snack foods available. I know, I know. I am such a good friend to be working so arduously to discover new gastronomical delights to introduce to my friend when she arrives next year.

Discoveries:

Pringles come in some unusual flavors here ranging from mild salt to french consomme to smoked salami, chicken teriyaki, and more.

Pan is Japanese for bread. For you speakers of Latin languages, you already know this. (I'll go into Latin based words borrowed by the Japanese, including the names of cars in a later blog entry.) However, bread for the Japanese, I think is like a hobby, a national past time of sorts. They have done some very interesting and quite tasty things with bread. A favored flavor is melon bread. Melon bread comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with and without chocolate chips, covering a croissant (one of my favorites), and on and on. They also have curry bread, which I finally tried for the first time this week. I waited so long out of fear, but it is really tasty. I think the weirdest thing I've seen and have yet to try is something that looks like a squished grilled hot dog, chili and all. I think I may be too timid for that. I love hot dogs and I would hate for that to change because of a bad experience here.

By far, my favorite snack food here is the goma stick. Goma is Japanese for sesame, and let me tell you, it is chou-oishiiiii!!!! (Super delicious) The creators of the goma stick have achieved the perfect balance of sweet and salty.  It's sad that I can't bring more home because the packages I do bring home never last very long. They are so tasty. If you come to Japan, be sure to track these things down, which you should be able to find in any convenience store or grocery store. I would even suggest checking out your local asian foods store for these things. It's totally worth it.

Internet Companies Are the Same the World Over

I was without Internet for the first two months that I was here in Okinawa. My neighbor, another JET, and I decided we would get WiFi and split the cost of the Internet, so, with the help of our supervisor he was able to make the call and get an appointment for them to come set up the Internet--a month later. Okay. Fine. I would live. Probably. Then I discovered that the manga house down the street had Internet, but I couldn't use my own computer. (In fact, I have yet to find an Internet cafe or any place with wireless so I can use my own computer, and if you're wondering what the big deal is, try learning how to use a Japanese keyboard on your own while trying to read Japanese web pages.)

A month passes. We wait with much anticipation for the delivery date of our connection to the world, and by world, of course I do mean America (says Anne). They don't come. My neighbor calls to find out why and is told that he didn't send in the required forms. My neighbor, very calmly, asks, "what forms?!?" To which the Internet company responds, "the forms we sent you." Again, "what forms?!?!?!?!" So, they tell him they will send the forms.  A week goes by without any forms arriving, so he calls again. Finally he gets the forms, sends them in, and waits for a phone call when they will ask when he wants them to come out. "As soon as possible! Are you kidding?!?!?! I am an American used to such necessities as Internet connection in my own home!!!! What is wrong with you people!?!?!?!" (No, he really didn't say all that...to the Internet people.) He finally gets a date for another month later, and it arrives. Yea! 

And there was much rejoicing...until the service becomes intermittent. WHAT?!? ARGH! (with much pulling and tearing of hair) he calmly calls the Internet company to say, "Dude!" To which the Internet company responds with, "dude. We'll get you a new modem in a week." So he sets the date to wait for the modem. They said they'd be there between six and nine on Tuesday, so he waits and waits and waits until...they don't show. Great. The next day we're both at our base school until late doing English conversation clubs. When we arrive home we see it. A notice in his mailbox saying, "dude, we were here. Where were you?" Really? Really.

Then, miraculously (his words) the Internet is working again. Yea! There is much rejoicing and the playing of Word Twist and anxiously typing this blog hoping it doesn't go out before I get a chance to post this explanation of why it has taken me so long to post new blogs: I haven't had Internet. However, I have been keeping a journal, so this blog might look a little funny for the next couple of weeks while I try to backtrack and enter all the stuff that happened between my last post and today. I will try to put dates in the titles to help or date the post itself. Does it really matter, though? I hope not as I tend to be forgetful. After all this, though, I will remember that all Internet companies are the same the world over.

Yes, I Still Love the Rain

I love the rain, so I was very happy when it rained all day and I got to sit inside the teacher's office at my school with not much better to do than turn and look out the window at the rain falling while the little sparrows hopped around looking for sustenance or shelter. The weather continued to cool, so I was feeling pretty genki all around. When it came time to leave I grabbed my pink umbrella and set off in the light shower toward home praying I wouldn't come across any habu sneaking out of the fields as I walked past. Then the rain started falling a little harder, but I was still happy it was raining. Then a car drove by splashing the water out of a pothole and soaking me with cold dirty water just as I had been looking at the little rivulets running under my feet and wondering what was mixed in with the rain water run-off as I walked by the livestock yards I pass on my way to and from school everyday I go to my visiting school. 

So now I was walking through the rain, soaked with rainwater and who knows what, but I was still happy, not as happy as I was before I was drenched by the car driving through the pothole, but happy nonetheless. Then I started wondering  why I had to get drenched by that car driving through the pothole. (I guess that comes from watching too much My Name Is Earl and thinking about karma.) As I reached the top of the hill I was able to see out over the valley and the river and saw heavier rain...heavier rain headed straight for me. Perhaps that was why I had to be drenched so I wouldn't be

 unhappy with the rain. (I know. I'm weird.) So I continue walking and the rain falls harder and then I feel a drop of rain on my back, so I look up at my umbrella to find a leak in my favorite pink umbrella.

Now I'm getting drenched because the rain is falling harder and it's coming in sideways with every huge gust of wind that's also trying to rip my favorite umbrella out of my hands. My shoes are soaked because there are invisible puddles everywhere. I'm getting drips of cold water down my back from my leaky umbrella, and the only part of me that isn't soaked with rainwater is my head, which is soaked with sweat because I'm walking as fast as I can uphill and down to try to hurry and get home faster realizing that I need to go to the grocery store because I have no food at home.

Then I get to the 11, which is the street I live on. The 11. My 11. My street riddled with potholes that haven't been filled because they're doing construction to widen the road. I want to take off running to try to get to the part of the sidewalk further away from the street not that I really think it'll do much good seeing as there are A LOT of potholes on the 11 with lots of water to splash far as the drivers forget they're driving on roads made with coral making them extra slick in the rain so they're ignoring whatever the speed limit is and driving really fast giving the water in the pothole the extra energy needed to reach me way over on the other side of the sidewalk. So, back to the running part where I think about running home to avoid being splashed any further and I realize that's not going to happen since I live at the top of a hill. 

But yes, I do still love the rain.

(By the way, genki means fine or healthy and energetic. The habu is a poisonous snake here in Okinawa. There is an alcoholic drink here called awamori and one version of it is made with the habu. It's quite nice and spicy.)

Cooler Temperatures (11/10)

It's finally cooler here in Okinawa. I can't say what a relief it is. Truly. The months leading up to the rainstorm preceding the cold front were sweltering. I keep saying the weather here is the same as Houston, hot and humid, but it seems so much more so here. I think that's really the lack of air conditioning. It is amazing to see the people here, though, living their lives without air conditioning, without sweating so profusely that their clothes do not show salt residue after the sweat has dried--even when they're wearing a shirt, running pants, a jacket, and gloves, as so many of the women here do even when they plan to be out in the sun--more so, in fact, as it seems they do not want to tan or burn, which I understand having been sunburned here just walking from my apartment to my school and back again.

No, I'm not exaggerating any of it. In fact, at school today it seemed so cool (temperature-wise) to the students that they had donned their winter uniforms, which consists of a long sleeve shirt and blazer. Meanwhile, I'm standing at the front of the classroom wearing a thin short sleeve shirt and a little open weave short sleeve summer sweater. Not even a whole sweater. It was one of those half sweaters (I'll have to look up the name. I'm so bad at keeping up with fashion and the names of different styles of clothing.) and I'm sweating. Although, that could have something to do with the fact that I had to walk to my visiting school today.

Usually I get a ride to my visiting school by my supervisor, but today she called to say she couldn't pick me up since she wasn't going to work. I told her I'd be fine and take a cab to which she replied, "It's raining." I said it wouldn't be a problem and that I'd see her tomorrow. Then I went downstairs and looked for a cab but couldn't find an unoccupied one. On the long half-hour walk to school I thought about what she had said. I learned in my JET training that Japanese do not typically directly say much. While studying Japanese I learned a useful phrase. When asked to do something you can't or don't want to do, all you have to say is "saa, chotto..." which essentially means, "hmm, it's a little..." I mean, you don't even have to say what it is. You could mean  "I'm really busy right now" or you could mean "heck no! There's no way I'd have anything to do with you!" So, back to the "it's raining" statement. I think what she meant was "It's raining so you're going to have a hard time finding a cab. Good luck and I'm sorry you're being so inconvenienced by my absence due to illness" or something very humble Japanese like that. But truly, it was actually nice to be able to walk in the light rain on the first really cool (again, temperature-wise) day in Okinawa--all uphill, of course, which brings me to another thing about Okinawa.

I live a the top of a hill on the top floor of my building, and from my balcony I can see the houses across the river set into tall hills, and, as I am driven to my visiting school twice a week, I see other parts of the city rising up in other hills, but it isn't until I'm walking that I realize, oh, wow. Okinawa is really hilly. This is a new experience for me, a native Houstonian. Houston, for those of you who don't know, is very, very flat. I think I lived in the only hill in Houston, although I'm not sure if it qualifies as a a hill or just a slight inclination in elevation. Still, it's new to me, not having lived around hills sine the ten months I spent in Raleigh about fourteen years ago, and the only memory I have of hills there was slipping down a pine coated one after a rainstorm and busting my tailbone.

Returning to the topic of this article, the temperature drop, I'm reminded of something that happened this weekend. I had dinner with three other JETs, and the one who was here last year tried to convince me that it does get really cold here to which I replied that I'd believe it when I felt it. Okay, I believe it.