Okinawa...the island is your urinal...

I mean, it must be! When we first moved here I knew that modesty was not at the forefront of a regular Easterner's mind. In a week and a half I'm driving along and on three separate occasions I see three men standing on the side of the road just...just... Well, let's just say there aren't a plethora of restrooms around here. Vending machines, yes. Bathrooms, no.

But why, when you have these...

...would you not answer nature's call at the nearest one? It's in McDonald's for heaven's *sake!

(*Sake - not to be confused with the aforementioned sake [sock aye] in previous blog.)

I mean, c'mon...heated seats? A button you can push to make a flushing sound when you're not even flushing. A bidet? A spray button? A VOLUME button? Why doesn't every household have one of these? Before we leave I'm going to ship a couple of these back for *posterity's sake.

*Posterity - not to be confused with "posterior". Could potentially be misleading.

When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine that's...awamori...

You gotta lean in close for this one.

A little closer...

There ya go!

Awamori...nectar of the gods or, as some people (namely people like me) would consider...an alternative form of petrol...a gasoline-derivative.

I asked myself why in the world I would want to drink something with this...or...these in it. I couldn't even come up with a bad reason. The best way to describe this is "liquid Viagra" and that's all I have to say about this subject. It's made from rice and is a sake (sock aye) NOT sock eee! It is made from an extract of the Habu snake. Wikipedia doesn't have pictures but...you just saw mine. Those are Habu snakes...Okinawa's native pit viper. Habu + venom = you prolly gonna die! This is NOT something I would want to cross paths with. It's also something I wouldn't want to cross my lips.

They're packaged nicely. After all, presentation is everything! You can ship these bad boys back to the States. I don't know why you'd want to do that...but you can. I mean, what do you do when the only thing left is the snake?

By the way...Happy Father's Day! :)

Vending with no ending...

I haven't done a blog on vending machines yet. Let's just say they're everywhere and when I mean everywhere...I mean everywhere. They also sell just about anything you need. Take this one at Shuri-jo Castle, for instance. Granted, we've had torrential rains but I never thought I'd ever see...

The scream heard 'round the world

Yeah, it was me. Last week I knew there were two members from the Gecko Special Forces Unit that used their tiny battering ram to get through my front door. I was outnumbered. My defenses were down, namely...I was barefooted. What was I supposed to do? Jenna and I were on our way in the door. Yoshi met us there and to my utter amazement...ushered one of those insurance salesman right through the threshold. What was he thinking?!

Today I was cleaning the kitchen and decided the plant in the corner needed some lovin'. I started pulling off the old leaves at the bottom and was about to water it when out of nowhere I was ambushed! There he was. I was eyeball to eyeball with the GEICO spokesman. Hanging onto the rim of the planter he finally gave up and let go. He bounced on the kitchen rug a few times and then, startled, ran for the...ran for the...well, he didn't really know what he was running for...he just ran. Yoshi thought that today would be a good time to catch him. He cornered him by the dishwasher (me) and the actual appliance. By that time I had shamelessly bounded onto the stepstool in the middle of the floor that Jenna had so graciously left out for me to trip over only hours before but...I digress. I was screaming. Why? I don't know! They aren't going to hurt me. I know that. I just don't like surprises...or being surveilled in my own kitchen. All I know is that my vocal cords have been happier and, fortunately, the solo I did in church was last Sunday and not tomorrow.

Special thanks to the SOLO plastic cup company for providing the means to escort the suction-footed fast-moving gecko out to the yard so that he may, at the time of his choosing, lay in wait to cross the portal of our concrete double-wide and, once again, compromise my homeland security.

And then, there was one...

At least there's only one left that I know of!

I'm back & I'm tired...

After a slightly longer than two month sabbatical (I've just always liked that word) I think it's time to get back to writing. With good intention I had started a post about a month ago. There's a gremlin living inside of my laptop and I've gotten so frustrated I've wanted to pitch this thing right across the room of our concrete double-wide. :)

There's been a change in the family here. We are one less member on the island now. Lonnie has completed the Stateside deployment training and is headed over to you-know-where for we-don't-know-how-long for why-we're-not-sure. So, for the past oh, I'd say since the last post...our little island world has been turned upside down. Jenna & I will stay here. She will be attending East-West Montessori School through the summer and the next year. Since she misses the kindergarten cut-off date by 72 HOURS she'll have to "repeat" a year of the Montessori school. It's either that or I keep her at home and that just doesn't make sense since she's been in school for two years now.

My friend that was killed last month would've been 33 today. I know I've mentioned him to a lot of you. Tripp was a very special guy and touched the lives of many. His accident and Lonnie's deployment have been two reasons I haven't written in awhile. I have several new posts that I'll write up soon that promise to be entertaining!

I do not like green eggs and SPAM. I do not like them, Sam I Am!

C'mon! You know you don't like it either! SPAM seems to be pretty popular around here. I mean, take a look at the first picture. Where else could you go and see so many square centimeters of space devoted to such a delicacy as SPAM? It was created in 1937. I've had it more times than I'm going to admit and I have to tell you I think I had SPAM from the original containers from back in '37! It lasts forever! You know how they say the only things to survive a nuclear bomb are cockroaches and Twinkies? I strongly believe that SPAM should be added to that list. With SPAM and cockroaches you have one source of sodium nitrite and one source of protein. And it goes without saying that most people could live by Twinkie alone...

I think I'm turning Japanese. I think I'm turning Japanese. I really think so!

Konnichiwa! O genki desu ka. Watashi wa Deanna desu. Anata-no namae wa. Watashi wa kangoshi to shufu. :) Yep. It's coming along.

I'm not quite halfway into my 3 month intensive Japanese course and it's going well! We learned colors this week. Yes, everything seems so elementary at the beginning. I can pop out some pretty long sentences though!

The great thing about this class is that we are learning hiragana and katakana characters. We are learning to read and write them. If you looked up "confusion" in the dictionary you would find my picture there. There are over 100 characters that we have to learn. At some point we will even learn Kanji. In the next week or so the sensei will not be writing in Romaji anymore. Romaji is how I started this post. It will all turn into hiragana and katakana.

Hopefully, I'll have LOTS of time to do nothing but study Japanese in the future. Sayonara!

Dewa kore de.
Bye for now!

Nothing could be funner than to be a red light runner in the...morning

.

Yes, I am aware that funner is not a word but, it rhymed! You know...nothing could be finer (feener) that to be in Carolina (caroleena) in the morning...yeah, um...it's a Daffy Duck cartoon.

Anyway, I've learned since we've been here that I will be coming back with at least two bad habits. The one that has the least amount of consequences is slurping your soba right out of the bowl and then picking the bowl up and drinking up what's left. Mmm mmm! The worst thing that could happen there is if you're doing this at the table with your mother. You know you're going to get the fast-as-lightning smack to the back of the head.

The second thing I'll leave here with is an impeccable ability to run red lights with the best of 'em. On Okinawa red lights are more of a...how should I say it? They're more of a suggestion. It's always good to count to 3 when your light turns green. You have to give those stragglers some time to finish racing through the intersection in their little cracker boxes they call cars.

I was thinking of trying red light running while slurping soba from a bowl just to liven things up a bit. What do you think?

What's in a (dog's) name...

On Friday we added a new member to our family. I was perusing www.okinawayardsales.com/ and found the cutest little dog! He's an Oki mix. That's short for Okinawan mix. That's the Japanese version of a Heinz 57, a mutt...whatever you want to call them. His birthday was actually on Christmas so he's one year old. He's been to obedience school and he's great with kids. He knows a lot of basic commands and won't snatch things out of your hands. He's the polar opposite of Millie, God rest her soul. :( He is so good with Jenna. She can play tug-of-war with him and hand him his bone...whack him on the head and do pretty much what any other 4 year old does to a dog. He doesn't do anything. He loves it!

Probably all of you know that we have a cat. Sidney's pushing 15 come April 1st. We brought The Dog in and he was less than pleased. The loud, low-pitched sound that came out of him was pretty impressive! They scrapped really good once. Poor Sidney was 4 paws off of the floor when he grabbed the dog's neck. He spun around him like the Tasmanian devil. It was hilarious!

The Dog (previously known as Roger) has now been given a Japanese name. Now he's Yoshi which means good luck and joy. It was the favorite one of three that I liked the most. The scary thing about it is I told my best friend, Jenn we were going to give him a Japanese name and she said he looks like a Yoshi. Hmm. That was too weird! Like she said, "great minds think alike!"

I'd like to buy the world a Calpis...

Well, we've found what seems to be our favorite drink on the island. It's called calpis and is an uncarbonated soft drink manufactured by Calpis Co., Ltd. headquartered in Tokyo.

It was first marketed on July 7, 1919. It quickly became popular in pre-war Japan as its concentrated form meant it kept well without refrigeration. The polka dot packaging used to be white dots against a blue background until the colours were inverted in 1953. It was originally themed on the Milky Way, which is in reference to the Japanese festival of tanabata on July 7, a traditional observation seen as the start of the summer. Calpis was first sold on this day.

Calpis has a light, somewhat milky and slightly acidic flavor, similar to plain or vanilla-flavored yogurt. Its ingredients include water, nonfat dry milk and lactic acid. It is produced by lactic acid fermentation. It is sold as a concentrate which is mixed with water or sometimes milk just before consumption. A pre-diluted version known as Calpis Water (カルピスウォーター), or its carbonated variety, known as Calpis Soda（カルピスソーダ, are also available. It is also used to flavor kakigori (shaved ice dessert) and as a mixer for cocktails and chuchai In English-speaking countries the beverage is sometimes called "Calpico," because "Calpis" may sound like something else that doesn't sound so nice. I edited it for you. Quite frankly, the first time someone told me what it was and asked me if I wanted to try it I was shocked at what I thought they had said. :)