Day 5 In Okinawa

Another vivid lesson I learned (in addition to the eternal flight thing), is that if you clear your plate while eating dinner at someone's home in Okinawa, they WILL give you another serving. "Food pusher" is the term, and it can rightfully be applied to every Okinawan host at a shokujikai (dinner party), especially if you clear your plate.

When you're a bean on a mission (especially on a foreign mission), you are especially vulnerable to pranks from more seasoned missionaries. Gaskill was my trainer, and was awesome in many ways. But he was not above having a little fun with his bean. (One might argue this was part of what made him awesome.) But, when I came out of a house and mounted my bike, after having been compelled to consume four helpings of food (very good food), I was reassessing my inital judgment of "Gas". He didn't tell me this rule of clearing your plate. He did, however, emphasize during the multiple rounds of servings that if I didn't eat the food the host kept heaping on my plate (and not his), I would be committing a severe faux pas. Since I didn't want to be rude, I kept eating until I was about to barf. (This dinner, by the way, was after we had already eaten dinner at our own apartment, not knowing that our visit with a friend would result in yet another meal.)

So there I was, sitting in Ishiki kyodai's home last night with several members of the Shuri Ward eating dinner. I well knew of the Clean Plate rule (in fact, I had recited it many times to friends as a funny - but true - story, over the years). However, remembering the rule as a matter of cultural academics, and remembering to apply it in practice are two different things. I cleaned my plate, and Ishiki shimai kept piling it on, insisting I eat more. After three plates, it occurred to me that I was violating the Clean Plate rule. So, I thought I would leave just a little food (two or three bite's worth) remaining on the plate (the way to escape the Clean Plate rule).

You see, I always had a sneaking suspicion that there really was no such thing as a Clean Plate rule. That somehow I was the victim of some vast conspiratorial conspiracy against gaijin. There was some doubt in my mind as to whether or not the rule actually existed, because it seemed so odd.

So there I was, finishing off my third helping, and I consciously decided to leave two or three bites of food on my plate, and just sit there and chat with folks. Sure enough, no one tried to push anymore food on my plate. Now, it could have been a coincidence that they just stopped pushing food on my plate at the same time I left some food remaining, but who knows? I, in the meantime, remain a believer in the Clean Plate rule.Shuri Ward got split in two, Shuri and Yonabaru. So, when I went to the Yonabaru Ward with the in-laws for church, there was little surprise that I'd bump into a few people I'd recognize. And, it was no surprise that the Bishop announced my attendance from the pulpit, indicating that I had served in the Shuri Ward 16 years - holy cow! 16 years! - earlier, when the Shuri Ward didn't have it's own building, but met above the Okii Mart.

I didn't realize this at first, but the Bishop had gotten back from his mission shortly before I arrived on Okinawa for mine. He remembered me, and after he filled in some of the gaps, I remembered him. He and I (today) got along great. I could see us hanging out together. There were a few others who remembered me vaguely, but most of them enjoyed reveling with me in the past about the good ol' Okii Mart days. It was a lot of fun.

Shuri Ward met next, and Miwa and I stuck around for the first part of that. What I was hoping to see, I saw. The Kinjo's. Kinjo shimai saw me first and had a stunned look on her face. I introduced myself, figuring she wouldn't really remember me. I was a bean then, and couldn't speak the language, so I didn't really have much of an opportunity to leave an impression. But she remembered me, and so did her husband. They had moved from Okinawa, but returned some recent years ago.

Miara kyodai was there and some other people that looked familiar. I bumped into one shimai who knew another shimai I was thinking of. You see, my haircut cycle dictates that it's about time I go in and get cleaned up. And there's only one sanpatsuyasan in Okinawa I would trust my melon with - Yonamine shimai. And the shimai I was talking to in the Shuri Ward knew Yonamine shimai, and had her phone number. I'll be calling Yonamine shimai for a haircut tomorrow.

All the activity at church, and socializing at dinner left my brain a little...what's the term...saturated. I knew I was toast when Ishiki kyodai said the words "ni ju ichi", and I heard them, knew I knew what they meant, but couldn't summon the energy in my mind to actually spit out a translation. My brain shut down.

Day 4 In Okinawa

The ghosts of me are everywhere. Everywhere I turned I saw myself walking down this street, getting a soda from that machine, and hearing kekko ("buzz off") from just about every door. But such was Shuri (and everywhere else I served). For reasons that are beyond me, my most vivid memories of Okinawa are in Shuri. If you've ever been to Okinawa, you know that the neighborhood roads are designed to confuse outsiders. If you don't live in the neighborhood, you're not supposed to go in. And if you get in, you're not supposed to be able to find your way out. Anciently, this is how varying villages defended themselves against raiding parties from neighboring villages - they'd confuse them.

Really, I think it had something to do with evil spirits having a hard time navigating crooked streets. Whatever the reason, very few streets make any sense. But I know them in Shuri. Yeah, I made a wrong turn or two, but I was trying to get lost. I intuitively knew where this road was going to go, and where that road was not going to go. I know, I know. You really can't understand how impressive it is that I redeveloped an intuition for Shuri's streets so quickly if you've never been there. You'll just have to trust me.

Miwa spotted a soda machine that sells hot chocolate, so we got a few and I rediscovered a sinister trait of Japanese soda cans - the bottoms are disproportionately heavy relative to the rest of the can. So, when you get to the bottom of the can, you still feel like there is more beverage left, because it is heavy on the bottom. But there isn't. It's empty. You feel compelled to buy another can because you anticipated having another sip or two, and now you've gotta have it. We didn't, though, get another.

We went through Shuri and got the hot chocolates as we were winding our way down to the Bridgestone bicycle shop in Naha - yes, the same one just about every missionary in Okinawa went to to get their Mudrock mountain bikes. I was looking for an Okinawan cycling jersey - having recently adopted cycling as a hobby in the States.

They didn't have one, but said their shop in Haebaru had one.

"Where is your store in Haebaru?" Miwa asked.
"Near Meikuman," said the cycling shop employee.
"I know it. I know where that is!" I exclaimed.

I, once again, got to play navigator. Miwa knew where it was too, but I think the location first registered with me because the Meikuman is near the infamous Haebaru McDonalds. We went over there and got the jersey. (For those of you who cycle the paths of Seattle, perhaps you'll see me wearing it sometime.)

We also hit a cookie store. I was hankering for a bit of a snack (no, not that kind of "Snack"), and stopped in a bakery on the ground floor of downtown Naha's giant Ryubo. We ordered 4 small cookies, and watched the employee proceed to wrap them each individually in cellophane, seal the bags, and put them all into another cellophane bag and seal that one too. Then put a sticker on it to make sure it stayed extra sealed. All the while I was holding my hand out palm up hoping she'd just put the cookies in my hand, without any wrappers. Of course not, I'm in Japan. And she was kind enough to inform me that the wrappers would hold the cookies for two weeks. That was good to know. We left the store and ate the cookies.

Perhaps the highlight of the day was the Okinawa Soba we had for lunch. That was great. It took a bit of work to find it (the classic, "when you're not looking for it, you see it everywhere. When you want to find one, you can't."). We asked the parking lot attendant next to Shurijo (yes, we went there. Touristy activity #2 for me on this trip), and she gave us a vague point in the general direction of "that way". We wandered around for some time looking for it. We even went into a Family Mart to ask the quickie mart lady if she knew of an Okinawa Soba place nearby. After consulting with her colleague, they had nothing to offer. So, we decided to (mostly on my inclination) wander through the neighborhood, and do a lap around the block like we would if we were knocking doors (I must say, here, that every door I saw cried out to me to knock on them). Coming to a near complete lap of the block to where we started (at the Family Mart), we spotted an Okinawa Sobayasan...two doors shy of the Family Mart. We went in, it was small, run by an Oba by herself, and the Okinawa Soba was great!

It felt like home.

Day 3 In Okinawa

I was so disappointed. I expected something, but got nothing. Absolutely nothing. No nod, no surprise, no compliment, nothing. Perhaps it was because I was kind of expecting one, but there I was in the middle of nowhere (Komesu), in an Oba store (a tiny store run by an old lady out of the back of her house) by myself with an Oba asking how much the senbei was. In my skilled and mumbled Japanese, I asked, and she answered...as if I wasn't a gaijin (foreigner) speaking in her native tongue, asking about a product no true gaijin would ever ask about.

She looked at me (if she even did look up) as if she had gaijin coming in everyday asking for senbei. Hanging my head just a little as I walked out of her shop, I turned to purchase a Dr. Pepper from one of the ubiquitous soda machines.

This was kind of a neat road trip for many reasons. We went down to the Itoman area to: 1) find my Itoman apartment (no, the "Elvis Van" - as named by Johnny - was not still parked there); 2) swing by a craft store (of sorts) to get some Okinawa-looking placemats; and, 3) go to the Ryukyu Glass Factory south of Itoman.

The best part of this swing through the southern part of Okinawa was that Miwa really had no idea where we were going. She didn't know the area all that well, and had to trust that I did. And I did, for the most part (excepting the part where I trusted a sign against my better judgment, and we spent about 15 minutes on a dirt road going through puddles and satokibi (sugar cane) fields. The picture of me standing there is of what we were looking for; a beach'ish spot south of Komesu - Mabuni Cliff behind me in the distance.)

We got the placemats, found the Itoman apartment (and I think we found the Tomigusuku apartment on our way down there - I can only remember the general neighborhood we lived in, not exactly where the apartment was. I had to guess.), we got some glass (beautiful pieces), stopped at the aforementioned Oba store, found a beach, ate some senbei, and mawaru'd our way around the southern tip of Okinawa, rounding past Peace Park, up to Ojima (getting some squid tempura there - soooo good), wrapped around the Chinen Peninsula, then back up through Yonabaru and Nishihara, passing the very McDonalds that Matsuoka and I found Hunter and Watson at.

(I must explain: So Matsu just transfered into Shuri, and we had to go down to Naha to get his gaijin card updated. On the way back through, we decided to raid the Yonabaru apartment of any good food it had left - both of the Elders had been transferred out until later that afternoon when the transfer van dropped off two new choros - Atagi and Covino. However, from the Yonabaru apartment, neither of us were quite sure how to get back up to Shuri, without going all the way back through Naha. That was no good. At a loss, we decided to look for Hunter and Watson in Nishihara, hoping and betting that they might be at McDonalds. They were.)

So, yeah, Miwa and I stopped at that McDonalds to get a bacon potato pie (sorta like a hot apple pie, but not). There were other places of note: the McDonalds in Haebaru where we - King, Bacon, Hollibaugh, Hodson, and a couple others, as I recall - came across an RX-7 that was on fire, and tried to convince the McDonalds employees that, when we asked to use their fire extinguisher, we weren't simply mistaking the word "Big Mac" for "fire extinguisher" (I still remember shokaki today because of that experience); and new bridges where they weren't before, making navigation by distant memory a bit more difficult. But it was all fun, and a very relaxing journey through some very hilly territory....but this time in a car, not on a bike.

Day 2 In Okinawa

It took my breath away. I stammered, not quite knowing what to say. All I could manage to spit out was "this was my bean apartment...16 years ago." The two gaijin were just as stunned as I was. I introduced myself and my wife, and one of them asked with building anticipation in his voice, "wait, are you Krikava?!? I'm McGlinchy. My parents know your parents." It took me a moment to gather my thoughts, not expecting at all that I would bump into someone from home, but sure enough, there he was. To be honest, I don't remember the kid, but I did know his dad.

What a small world! 16 years after I left this apartment, I find my way back...literally...only to find two choros in my old apartment (at the most random time of the day), and one of them knows me and my folks.

I wandered the apartment, told them some of the lore of the place (like, it having had - for a period at least - the only stand-up ironing board in the mission), history of the mission (then, the Okinawa dendobu), and they were, again, just as stunned as I was. I spent no more than 4 or 5 minutes there, but those 5 minutes were absolutely priceless.

Even more priceless than walking through the shotens and somehow finding the farmers market area, and locating the coolers where the pig faces were sold. The same cooler that kept the pig face I held up on my first P-Day in Okinawa. I was impressed to find that they now offer the pig faces in a variety of marinades. What a selection for the passionate foodie out there.

Going to the Kokusai and wandering the shotens was sort of something I had to do, and just barely something I wanted to do. Although I wanted to see a few touristy spots while in Okinawa, I really wated to embrace the mundane (to borrow a term from John Cline - fellow Okinawa traveler from many years past). I'm not a touristy tourist. I think most companion travelers would be extraordinarily frustrated traveling with me. But not Miwa. She's from here. So I think she has an appreciation for all things mundane.

I really enjoy wandering the dusty neighborhoods nowhere near the tourist centers, where if you got lost, you'd really be lost. While we were walking Kokusai, we saw a bunch of gaijin, and I proffered to Miwa that I wish I could take them all to Gushikami, find a little oba store, buy some pan, get an Acquarious, then see how hard we could make the oba laugh by tossing out various expressions in her native tongue (Uchinaguchi). Admittedly, the tourists probably wouldn't get it, nor really appreciate it. They aren't equipped with the language, and probably don't understand the history of the place.


But I do, and I will. Before wandering the oba stores of Gushikami, I had to contribute to the local economy of Heiwadori. We actually did buy a few things (mostly food - fish and shrimp that the vendor then took upstairs to a grill, cooked and prepared for us), some fabric for my wife to make a baby sling with, etc. But I reserved most of my coin for other, more random places.

Kokusai was the first stop. We then went to find my Shuri apartment, with the aid of our navigator and driver, Miwa's mom. After that, down to Big Dip to take our picture in the cone and get some ice cream. We went back to Nishihara to drop mom off, then got back into the car to go in a vain search for my Naha Higashi apartment. "Vain" because I wasn't even sure if I successfully found it on Google Earth. I took the wheel, wandered from Nishihara, through Shuri, and down to Higashi. Sure enough, the Force led me straight to it like I was there yesterday. Coincidently, the apartment is now named "Miwa Mansion" (or was it always named that?). What are the odds? We then took a round about way back to the Shuri apartment, then to the home in Nishihara.

There's something important to me about relearning the routes and avenues of towns I had lived in, in the past. Like it somehow revalidates that I did live there. I was able to piece a few key streets back together, and returned to Nishihara very satisfied.

We still had more to do, after the sun had fallen. We went out with Miwa's high school friends. She had a great time, and I enjoyed watching her have a good time, but trying to follow a conversation between three girls in Japanese is...well, exhausting. So, my brain shut down, and I spent most of that time pondering the appropriateness of the Starbucks in Okinawa screwing up my Grande White Hot Chocolate in the exact same way the Starbucks in Seattle screw it up - by putting mocha in it.

Return To Okinawa

So, the thing to remember when traveling to Okinawa - and, I didn't forget this - is that the flight is eternal. I can't say for sure how long it took us to set foot on Okinawan soil (because, at some point, we crossed the International Dateline), but about 30 minutes before landing, I somehow had the foreboding feeling that we'd never actually get there.  This was not a flash to my childhood complaints to my dad asking, "Are we there yeeettttt?" No, no.  This was truly the sinking feeling that we'd never actually get there.

Before arriving, however, we had some fun spots.  My favorite began with the wife and I walking through the Vancouver International Airport in BC discussing whether or not Curling was a sport or a game, and if only a game, how is it that it is an Olympic sport (not realizing until later that they are called the Olympic Games.)  We eventually found the gate for our next flight and sat down in the lovely airport to watch some of the Olympic coverage.  Bless the gods of sport (or games), curling was on.  To her awe, I was able to explain some of the rules and basic strategies, and, of course, why I seemed to know so much about the game (I watched a lot of the coverage during the 2002 games).

As the match (is that what you call it?) progressed, I was amused by two things: people seemed to move themselves to seats closer to us (I was wondering if they were trying to listen to my commentary); and, 2) Miwa was really getting into the match.  We were cheering on the Canadian Men's team as they were playing against whomever.  Outbursts of "wow!" and "woah!" were common.  My fists flew into the air in triumph several times.

That was amusing to me.  Miwa had so quickly become very interested in the game that as the match wrapped up I offered, "and you were wondering why the sport/game caught fire in 2002...."

Several, several hours later, we found ourselves in the Haneda airport waiting for our connecting flight to Okinawa.  We were hoping to have enough time to hop a train to Tokyo to find a good ramen stand, then jet back to the airport to catch our flight out of Dodge, but the Japan Airlines representative said that it would be a bit "kitsui", so we decided to forage for food in the airport.

To my delight, the better half of me spotted a little restaurant that served katsu curry.  Now, to understand the coolness of this, I have been hankering for a decent katsu curry for, well, since I left Okinawa 14 years ago.  I've had it a time or two in the States, but it had always left me a little disappointed.  And the shame is that it's not a difficult dish to make.  It's really quite simple, like making toast or oatmeal. But for some reason, no one could get it right.  So, at the airport, I asked the hot gal with me to take a picture of me with my katsu curry.  It was...okay.  Better than the other katsu curries I had in the States, but it lacked the potatoes or carrots one would expect in a superior serving of curry.

Shortly after scratching the katsu curry itch, I saw the realization of George Constanza's dream: stall doors that reach all the way down to the floor.  I as a little concerned when I first walked in because the ... throne ... had a number of buttons and lights on it.  And while I can read Japanese, I can't read Chinese.  But I guessed, and guessed right.  Back to George and his stall, it really does have its benefits.  I really think he was onto something there.  There was a nice sense of solitude in there.  Quite nice.

Some hours (eternal hours) later, we arrive in Okinawa at 11 pm'ish.  We got off the plane, waited for our bags, met the in-laws, and got a free ride back to their home.  (Which contrasted with my mission, when we got off the plane at 1:30 am, got to the President's home at 3 am, got to sleep at 3:30 am, then got up at 6 am that morning.  Brutal!)

No Time For Rookies

For all you fans of the movie “Major League” (of which I am one), you may have been devoted enough to suffer through one of its sequels, “Major League: Back to the Minors.” The plot revolved around a coach who has been there done that. He’s seen the good, bad, and the ugly of professional baseball. He becomes the reluctant coach of a minor league team with only one real Big League prospect, Billy ‘Downtown’ Anderson.

Billy can hit home runs, and quickly dominates the Minor League. He’s eager to make the jump to the Major League. However, the coach sees a hole in his swing and he is sure the pitchers in the Majors will see it too. Billy gets angry at the coach, and derides him for holding him back from the Majors. The coach patiently tries to reassure Billy that he (Billy) still has some more skills to develop before he will be successful in the Majors.

Billy convinces the front office of the team to promote him to the Majors, and he heads off to Big League play. As predicted, the pitchers at that level quickly discover his weakness, and he flops, being sent back to the minor leagues, and back to his coach. Humbled, Billy finally takes to the advice his seasoned coach has to offer him on his swing, and eventually goes back to the Major league fully developed and prepared to be successful.

This plot line comes to mind as I watch Sarah Palin. She seems to have potential. And that is exactly what I thought two years ago when she first came on the scene. I somewhat expected to see more flash than substance at first, but I hoped the substance would come along. While I continue to consume what she has to offer, I've noticed that I never get filled up. She sticks it to D’s with such fervor and effect that a part of me is really satisfied. But I just haven’t seen the substance. It’s a bit like cotton candy – really tasty, but ultimately lacking.

I wonder if she’s not a bit like Billy “Downtown” Anderson, pushed to the Majors before she was ready. What worries me is that the throngs of people out there who are consuming the cotton candy with such glee that none of them are noticing that they’re not filling up, and there’s no real nutrition.

Scott Brown could be another Billy Anderson. Moments after his historic win in Massachusetts, the blogs were afire as to whether or not he would run for President. With a Buzz Lightyear jaw, a National Guard background, and a political homerun under his belt, some are seeking to push him into the Major League before he is ready.

Winning the Presidency is not the end game here. We forget that. Winning the Presidency is a means to a greater end. The greater end is enacting policies that will bring greater freedom, prosperity, and security to the American people.

President Obama is, I think, a Billy Anderson. From his party’s perspective, he had a lot of talent and potential. But rather than putting him through the necessary drills and development that is required of any great and effective leader, they shoved him (granted, he didn’t need much shoving) into the Major League before he was ready. And the result is a picture of him standing next to a picture of Jimmy Carter with an "=" sign between them on the cover of “Foreign Policy” magazine. By no one’s measure (except, perhaps, Jimmy Carter’s) is that a good thing.

Where are the Dwight Eisenhowers of American politics? Where are the folks who have depth, experience, have been through rigorous testing, and have failed some, but succeeded at most? Why don’t the American people support those who HAVE been there and done that? That’s who I’m looking for. Give Scott Brown a couple decades of testing in the trenches. Send Sarah Palin back to the Minors to fix the hole in her swing.

I don’t want a Billy “Downtown” Williams in the White House, regardless of which party he (or she) is in. If it’s an R, it’ll make us look bad and is ineffective. If it’s a D, we (R’s) can never truly make a good case that the D’s governing philosophy is ineffective because folks can always blame the failure on the lack of experience, not the liberal philosophy.

Who's The Bad Guy?

So I recall around inauguration day seeing so many young kids bleary-eyed with excitement over the election of Barack Obama. While he wasn’t my guy, it was kinda neat seeing little kids excited about politics. Somehow, then-Senator Obama made politics something of a pop-culture phenomenon. As a certified political junkie, I was interested in, and somewhat amused by, seeing that I (or, perhaps just my interests) had become hip.

But, alas, all my dreams (and those of little kids) have been dashed on the rocks of recent polls and elections, leaving them (and the President) in tatters. How could the hopes and dreams of young children be so brutally and violently taken away from them? Who was the culprit who crippled the President and corrupted the policy making process so badly that the kids who had life-sized cardboard cut out President Obamas in their bedrooms, are now wondering why no one seems to like their hero anymore?

It’s the Democrats.

Let me back up a couple years. Back in the 2006 election cycle, when the D’s first secured big wins in the off-year elections, they were successful in part because it was an off-year election (one in which the President was not up for election). The party out of power always does well in off year elections. But, they were even more successful than most thought they would be because they went out and recruited a lot of conservative leaning Democrat candidates to run for House seats in conservative districts.

A clever move at the time. But, in the midst of our (Republicans) defeat, I recall consoling a number of my allies that all was not lost. “Speaker Pelosi now has a bunch of ‘blue-dog Democrats’ that will not go along with every whacky thing she’s got. They may for the first year or so, because they owe her for all the money she funneled into their election campaigns. But sooner or later they’ll want to stay in the House. And to do so, they’ll have to try to reflect the values of their conservative districts.”

So, the House may have peaked too early for the D’s. They peaked too early because the ideal time for the House to muscle through their most ideologically pure objectives would have been in 2007. The Senate on the other hand, was primed for their ideologically pure dominance between the times Arlen Spector handed the D’s the 60 vote supermajority back in April of 2009 (see my April 28 note) and Senator-elect Scott Brown rocked the political world by placing his red-bum in the darkest and purest of cobalt blue Senate seats in the country (the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat).

Of course, for the White House anytime between January of 2009 and now, President Obama can sign any whacky legislation he wants. But you gotta have all three (House, Senate, and the White House) primed for action at the same time.

If you look purely at the numbers (as I did during my September 4, 2009 note), the D’s could have passed any piece of legislation they wanted – without 1 Republican vote. They could have had their Health Care bill and eaten it too. They could have changed the national anthem to Zipadee Doo Dah.

But could they really have? Were the blue dog dems in the House going to go along with it? The House did pass a health care bill. The Senate, then, changed it. Stripped some things out, put other things in. The hope, they say, was that so long as the Senate passed something, the House and Senate negotiators could have sorted out the differences (made the bill more pure) in Conference Committee (where different versions of bills coming from the Senate and House are reconciled into a final draft).

But then that pesky promise of then candidate-Obama about putting C-SPAN cameras into the Conference Committee chambers got in the way. Televising Conference Committee negotiations, in my opinion, is absurd. We see enough grand-standing on the House and Senate floors on C-SPAN that would NEVER take place if the cameras weren’t there. Never would a bill get reconciled in Conference if cameras were involved. Not a chance.

But, Senator Obama (perhaps in his naiveté as still a newcomer to the Senate, or in his zeal to say anything that sounds good – as some politicians are wont to do) made the stupid promise…many times. C-SPAN seized on that, and started pummeling the House and Senate leadership with it, bludgeoning them (and the health care bill along with it) to death. (The voters, really, put all the nails but one in the coffin of the bill. However, C-SPAN added one last nail for good measure.)

So here we are. The President’s popularity hovering in the upper 40% area, and Congress’s effectiveness shot. Who should the children look to as the “bad guys”?

I submit it can’t be the impotent R’s (who now, finally, are showing signs of life). I submit the D’s are the ones who shot themselves in their collective foot – perhaps making the President, after one year, a lame duck.