A Little Piece of Email

I just wrote this in an email to my friend and it sums up so much of something I can't put my finger on that I wanted to share it with more people. Here it is. For your reading pleasure:

Now. I'll tell you how I am. I'm in a bad way at the moment and probably not making much sense. There was an "enkai" last night. Enkais are dinner parties meant for one thing or another and they always include lots of alcohol. People don't drink a lot of sake here, which is contrary to what one would believe about Japanese people. Shouchu is the drink of choice and it's a beast. It's kind of like sake, but not as delicious. People mix it with water and it can be really easy to drink. However, it's a devious beast and it sneaks up on you. Take me for example. I was drinking, drinking and drinking last night and everything was fine. Then, all of a sudden, I woke up passed out on a little piece of grass in front of my house! OK, it wasn't quite like that, but that's the kind of thing that could happen with shouchu. There's always a definite line between coherent thought and everything going blurry. The great thing about Japan (Is it really a great thing?) is that when co-workers get together for these enkais and drink, what's said and done while drunk is never, and I mean NEVER, brought up or discussed again. You could have said or done the silliest thing, and the next day it's like your slate has been wiped clean. Japanese people are very forgiving in this respect. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that your inner personal shame and no-good-ness is forgotten. I had to call my friend this morning for damage control. I just had to find out if I said or did anything really stupid towards the end of the night, when I'd crossed that line into blurriness. She said all was good and that I'm a "happy drunk." When I asked her to tell me about any possible embarrassing actions, she said that I was just hugging people. That I remember and that I can live with. Well, there you go. The thing I fear most is possibly having said something along the lines of, "I want you to be my boyfriend" to my Japanese counterpart and English supervisor. That, by the way, isn't true, but I'm lonely. What can a girl do? So, here we are, sitting side by side (our desks are next to one another) with that heavy sentence plopped down between us, pretending like it's any other day.

So there you have it. そう言うことです。

Oh MAN!

My friend Jodi sent me a notebook in which she suggested that I record my life and surroundings. I've been taking mindless Polaroid photos and writing obsessive little captions since. These pages mean the world to me, but I feel ashamed to admit such a thing.

How could a three-inch by three-inch square of a dead and drying-in-the-sun-blowfish mean any more to me than a scrap of garbage?

Yet, somehow these photos and their scribbling reach a certain kind of profundity. I think I know that I'll leaf through the tiny book with bug smears and coffee rings over and over again come July and my life gets just busy enough to schedule, reschedule and reschedule again a visit to the island that was home to me for a handful of handkerchief-drenching summers and bubble bath-warming winters.

Field Day

One of my small elementary schools had their annual field day this morning. Because there is a total of eight students, the parents, teachers and community participate in the activities just as much (if not more) as the students. I showed up just expecting to watch, and ended up in most of the competitions.

The thing about Japanese field days, at least at the elementary school level, is that all the races are for fun. There are hula-hoop races. There are popping-balloon races. There are catching-basket-balls-in-a-basket-strapped-to-your-back races. And then, there's the PTA and their hi-jinks. (Take a good look at the "sumo" pictures that follow.)

It was a good Sunday morning. It was even better than sleeping late. Here are some photos.


Here's the principal of the school being teased by some of Madara's men. After riding a tricycle and walking across a balance beam, she had to crawl under the netting that these men were holding down. They made her try about three times before they actually let her pass. Before crossing the finish line, she had to stand on a podium and announce something embarrassing about herself.

Here are some members of Madara's PTA prepping for the hula hoop and balloon relay.

Here's Youichi, Kaori and Yuka before the first race of the day.

In the audience, I found these kindergartners. They little guy in the middle was way more concerned about getting the candy out of his sister's hand than he was with the photo being taken.

Here, the PTA moms put on a sumo show for the entertainment of everyone in the crowd.

A PTA dad got in on the act too.

Here, the students and staff preform the Soranbushi -- a traditional fishing song of Japan. It's also a traditional song of any field day.

This is the bridge connecting Madara island (where I took the photo from) to Ojika island. It's kind of an iconic place of the island. The sea under the bridge is some of the clearest, most beautiful green water I've ever seen. It takes me about 45 minutes to ride my bike from my house to Madara, circle it, and return.

Mukade

Oh MAN! I think summer has finally arrived. For one thing, the Ojika horizon has been so thick with humidity, everyday a haze hangs in the sky. For another thing, I contemplated turning on my A/C today for the first time today. (This may have been a bit premature, but I'd returned from a bike ride and I was HOT. I opted for a cold shower instead.) And finally, to my horror, I found the first mukade of the season in my house just now.

Mukade are the poisonous centipedes that often travel in pairs and scurry around in such a gruesome way that even tarantula lovers would wince at their creepy approach. They're the kind of house guests which leave you scratching all over at possible, invisible contact with your flesh. They're the kind of intruder which leave you shuddering from head to toe long after they've been sprayed to death with clouds of insecticide, or boiled to death with a splash of hot water. They're disgusting and never welcome, even if it means that summer is here.

I happened to kill this mukade without even knowing I'd done it. I was fixing dinner and had boiled some udon noodles to make a pasta salad. I'd left them draining in a sieve in the sink and went about cutting some veggies and cheese. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something kind of crumpled up in my sink. At first I thought it was a plastic wrapper of some sort that didn't quite make it into the garbage. Then I took a better look.

The deep green, sectioned body was twisted up like a cooked shrimp; it's orange legs and stinger rigid and forever posed in a last act of failed escape. Even thought I knew it was deceased, I couldn't bring myself to pluck it from it's resting spot and toss it into the trash. I used long cooking chopsticks to nudge it (with my eyes closed) an inch to the right where it plummeted down the drain, where I'm sure it's now on a journey out to the Ojikan sea.

Sayonara.

I don't even want to think about where it might be right now if I'd decided to make a ham sandwich for dinner instead.

Uni

People actually eat these. Ojikans love sea urchins. A lot of Japanese people love uni. They're actually quite a delicacy. I'm not actually sure how much the mustard-like meat of a sea urchin can actually pull in, but everyone keeps telling me they're quite expensive. I've eaten sea urchin rice and sea urchin sushi and sea urchin soup... and I hate it. I hate it all.

It just so happens to be shellfish season in Ojika and people have spent a couple days a week pulling sea urchins, turban shells and other nameless (to me) mushy, lumpy bodies held up in hard shells from the sea.

I had the opportunity to join Madara elementary school in their afternoon at sea.

Here's Nanami with her haul. A basket full of uni.

Here's Marino with the small octopus she dragged out from underneath a rock. I screamed when she convinced me to offer my finger to one of the tentacles and it compressed against my digit so severely I had to tear myself away.

These wooden boxes with plexi-glass at the bottom are used to see underneath the water's surface clearly. I was amazed by the simplicity and usefulness.

Are You Down With OPP?

A while back, I had a house guest for the weekend. It was pretty rainy and we didn't have a chance to get outside and see Ojika in all its sunny splendor, but it was a good two-day rest anyway.

He happened to bring his computer along and we spent a lot of time talking about and listening to music. He, being the awesome guy that he is, copied a lot of his tunes onto my computer. Among all the reggae and rap, he copied a mix of what was labeled "Old School Rap."

Along with everything else on my hard drive, Old School Rap ended up on my iPod right after I brought it home and unwrapped it. It wasn't until recently, however, I got a chance to give the OSR mix a proper listen to while cruising Ojika on my bike on a sunny day. That's when I heard "OPP" for the first time ever. I mean, really HEARD the song. I've hummed along to the chorus about a billion times and vividly remember the video with people all over the city of NYC raising their hands in unison, united together in the club of OPP. I mean that I actually listened to the lyrics for the first time this week and my jaw dropped.

Here are a few lines:

O is for Other
P is for People scratchin' temple
The last P...well...that's not that simple
It's sorta like another way to call a cat a kitten

And then later on in the song:

As for the ladies, OPP means something gifted
The first two letters are the same but the last is something different
It's the longest, loveliest, lean--
I call it the leanest
It's another five letter word rhymin' with cleanest and meanest

Uh... can I just say, "Oh my GOD!?!" I'm not shocked by the lyrics themselves; they're actually pretty timid by today's standards. It's the fact that I used to walk around in my little, white, suburban neighborhood, chanting to myself that I was in fact, "Down with O.P.P." I was twelve.

Ah.... these are constant reminders of how naive I actually am. I'm sure Naughty By Nature was pleased when the song hit the airwaves back in 1991 and became such a big hit. Hearing it makes me wonder how many songs I, and the rest of the world, haven't ever really listened to, but love just the same -- even if they are propagating infidelity in a crude kind of way.

There's something about songs which can cut across any socio-economic line and rest in the heart of any white, middle-class 6th grade girl -- especially something as classically (cheesily) raunchy as OPP.

Internet Candy

Russ emailed me with this information about himself and I decided to put my answers on my blog. It's just internet candy -- something that isn't substantial, but can be kind of tasty when you're looking for a quick, brainless fix.

Four jobs I've had in my life:
1. English teacher
2. Radio station promotions low-life
3. Nanny
4. Tax office staff

Movies I could watch over and over:
1. Beautiful Girls
2. The Three Amigos
3. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
4. HELP! (The Beatles)

Four places I have lived:
1. Lakewood / Denver, Colorado
2. Alamosa, Colorado
3. Kokaha, Republic of Cote d'Ivoire, Africa
4. Ojika island, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan

Four TV shows I love to watch: NOTHING NEW! (This is hard because I haven't had regular TV in such a long time. I'll watch anything, really.)
1. The Simpsons
2. Sex in the City
3. Futurama
4. The Osbourns

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Ghana (I visited the slave castles. I will go back someday.)
2. Paraguay (A PC trip to visit my friend, another PCV.)
3. Mexico (Cancun twice, Puerto Penasco once.)
4. Thailand (I was there, celebrating Christmas in a very hot climate.)

Four websites I visit daily - or almost:
1. Yahoo.co.jp (checking weather)
2. BBC.com (reading the news)
3. Google.com (searching, searching, always searching)
4. Blogger.com (bloging)

Four Favorite Foods:
1. meat (steak or hamburgers)
2. caesar salad with chicken and ranch dressing on the side
3. sauce-less extra cheese and black olive pizza
4. sushi

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. on vacation
2. in bed
3. in transit
4. in the US

More Golden Week Travel

Golden Week happens at the end of every April and beginning of every May. There are four national holidays right in a row, (Green Day, Constitution Memorial Day, National Holiday Day, and Children's Day) and depending on where they land on the calendar, people can squeeze up to a 10 day vacation out of their lives with taking only using a precious few days of paid-time off.
Like I mentioned a few days ago, my parents came to Japan for the holiday and we did some traveling around the Osaka/Kyoto area as well as a few places in Kyushu.

Here are some more photos of our trip.

Mom and Pop Carmin asleep on the Narushio Ferry heading to Ojika island.

Mom and Pop Carmin listening to a presentation of Ojika by one of my second-year students. My parents were invited to participate in lessons one day at the high school. They were the center of attention.

Here's Dad entertaining Mr. Kawabe (a fellow English teacher and my supervisor) and some of the ladies sitting across from him with tales of bears and rattle snakes in Colorado. We ate dinner at the yaki nikku (grilled meat) place on Ojika two nights in a row. The first night we had dinner with three of my young friends on the island. The second night, teachers from the high school joined us.

Here's mom at the roykan (traditional Japanese Inn) in Takeo. We had a catered dinner in our room, but before we dined we hit the onsen (hot mineral springs bath).

Tucked in -- Japanese style.

Shopping near Glover Gardens in Nagasaki City, Mom and Pop Carmin found a friend. This shop owner's English was pretty good and told us about how 30 years ago he hitch-hiked from New York to San Francisco. Pop Carmin got to tell him about how he came to Japan 40 years ago.

More shopping. We're posing in front of a "tori" honoring Nagasaki City's sweet pastry -- The Castella Cake. When I asked my friend what it was, she replied simply, "It's a joke.

Mom and Pop Carmin in front of the shopping street in Daizaifu.

At Canal City in Fukuoka. We caught a movie and ate sushi on their last night in town.

At the conveyor-belt sushi restaurant in Canal City. If there's one dining experience you can't miss in Japan, it's eating raw fish off of a belt that carries it around the entire restaurant.

Here they are posing in front of the airplane that carried them back to the US.

They enjoyed their time so much that there was talk of a possible second trip to Japan. I think that once anyone visits Japan, they'll be inclined to come back.

Next visitors: Jodi and KC. Two months and counting!

Once Upon A Time...

I just had my small group of seniors write collaborative stories in first period. I gave them the first sentence and let them write whatever they wanted after that.

Here's what they came up with. I think they're awesome.

Once upon a time, there was a teacher who disappeared from school. But, he was found. He was found in the forest. He was found with a fairy. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had 17 children. She loved every children. She children were all girls. Everyday, they spent a happy life. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a student who could talk to birds. She could talk to animals. She talked to many animals and they were good friends. They enjoyed everyday. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who ate bugs. She came to love bugs. She loved bees the best. It was a special taste, so she loved it's taste. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved chocolate. He ate chocolate everyday. He became fat. He did not work. The end.

Aren't they great?

I remember doing this in college, with friends at a local bar/eatery. Maybe I only did it once or twice, but having my students do this activity this morning flung me back to a time where I would have to peel the notebooks being passed around off of green plastic table cloths at St. Ives -- the smell of oily french fries and fingerprinted ketchup bottles laid thick in the air.

Back From The Great Beyond

My mother and father made the trek to Japan for the yearly festivities of Golden Week. It was their first time to the land of the rising sun, and they got a jam-packed extravaganza of temple-viewing, island-hopping, and chopstick-using.

Here are a few pictures of the highlights:

Dorothy and Bill Carmin, fresh of the plane and waiting in line to board a bus bound for Kyoto.

A friendly reminder from the Tour Club in Kyoto where we stayed for two nights.

Kinkakuji (or The Golden Temple) in Kyoto on our first day of sight-seeing.

Mom and Dad hanging high above Kyoto in the top of Kyoto Tower.

The garden of Nijo Castle in Kyoto.

Sunset over Kyoto, the Gion district.

Taken while walking through a Gion temple at night.

The A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima. This building was almost directly under the explosion on August 6th 1945 and because of the character of the bomb, the building's frame was left relatively in tact. At the time of the bombing, the building was functioning as Hiroshima City's Industrial and Cultural Center. It was preserved as a reminder of the bombing of the city at the end of WWII and is a part of the city's peace park and Atomic Bomb museum.

Near the HUGE tori in Miyajima. These ladies were out sight-seeing for the day and struck up a conversation. They had just started college in neighboring Hiroshima.

A very tall pagoda in Miyajima.

I'll post again soon with some more photos of the trip. Either the server at school is going crazy, or it's Blogger, but I can't seem to add more photos at the moment. These shots were from the first three days of our trip.