Woodland Creatures, aka My Foray into Japanese Fabrics and Indoor Mall Things

The fashion here is pretty great. I really like the aesthetic, if it is a tinge too girly for my tastes.

Not feminine. Girly.

Ruffles. On. EVERYTHING.

One fad in particular that I really like are the long skirts. Lovely tea-length numbers that had two major problems: elastic waistbands (unattractive crinkle and painful, nothing good there) and the aforementioned ruffles.

But I wanted one. And then it occurred to me to make one. As this thought sank in, I got excited with the prospect of using Japanese fabrics, having heard so much about them and seeing the brilliant parades of kimono and yukata plastered across anything having to do with Japan ever.

I headed over to the Main City shopping center (one of a chain of mini-mall-type-things) and went to the sewing section of the department store.

Quick note about many malls in Japan: they don't have walls to separate the stores. Just wider aisles. Like a big open-air yet indoor market that makes you want to wander forever. I love it.

Anyway, -

OH AND I TOOK THE BUS THERE! I rode the bus all by myself without using any English and got off at the right stop and everything and it was glorious.

I found the fabric section. It had nifty maps on the shelves to show you where in Japan the fabrics had come from. Hokkaido, Aomori, even Okinawa - they were arranged by color and pattern and were all sorts of neat.

Even in a small department store-sized section, my head was swimming in all of the bright colors. And the colors here are intense. Like, just-looked-directly-at-the-sun-for-a-second-now-the-visible-spectrum-is-wonky bright. I already have plans for some of the beautiful fabrics I saw there. If I have to live in a house filled with throw pillows, I am willing to make that sacrifice.

And just try to stop me from making a bright yellow Power Rangers-patterned party dress when I get hold of a pattern. Go ahead.

One thing I can say, though: the Japanese are so not afraid of prints.

No, not you. 

I found this linen-y blend printed with woodland animals like deer, squirrels, birds, and rabbits. And it was my favorite colors. I had to have it.

It took me all of a few hours to whip up (I used an old pattern with some heavy modifications like HUGE POCKETS), but here it is. My Woodland Creatures Tea Skirt.

Worn a couple of ways. Photos sans dog.

Click for a better view of the awesomely adorable print.

And now my head is swimming with all the sewing I want to do. Especially with Japanese fabric - it's either super gorgeous or cartoonishly great, both of which suit me just fine.

Moral of the story: after I get a job, maybe go buy a sewing machine. Even a small one.

Oh, and put pockets in everything.

An unexpected time warp

Living here is so bizarre in a way I wasn't even thinking about.

Our apartment is fairly new and modern. All the sinks stretch out on hoses. The floor is hardwood, and the A/C is built in. Our toilet has not one, but two different kinds of bidet, and neither HP nor I can tell the difference.

Super modern, right? What you'd expect in Japan.

Except being here is like being teleported back to 1962. I'm not even kidding.

You hear a lot about how Okinawa is Americanized, especially after the war. But what no one tells you is that the "americanized" bits (language excepted) look like shots straight out of Blue Hawaii.

I seriously expect to see this every day.

Tropical prints are everywhere, and hibiscus grows wild in every city, town, and roadside. Chains like A+W and Mister Donut are all over the place, resistant to their stateside collapse and thriving in this post-war time capsule.

I've heard more Elvis and the Beach Boys than I ever did sitting at a Johnny Rockets' (that is to say, near-constantly), and there are times where I swear the world is yellow-tinted and I have to rub my eyes and squint for things to turn back to normal. And somewhere, in the distance, a radio is blasting the Ronettes.

I went to a yakitori restaurant last night with Yoshio and Kiyomi, and the place was covered in 50s and 60s americana, from the labels of model planes to Crackerjack boxes and rubber chickens. Instead of curtains, they hung tropical print dresses and shirts from clotheslines between tables, the outermost of which were tatami and the inner of which were wooden picnic tables like you'd find at a beachside campsite. The corrugated sheet metal walls (also covered in retro memorabilia) were artfully torn and burned, leading up to a traditional Okinawan red terracotta ceiling that had been transplanted inside (facing inward, oddly enough, covering the outer tables like an awning) and guarded by a couple of clay Shiisa. I almost laughed out of the strange feeling in my stomach - like all of a sudden the Tardis would show up and the Doctor would pop out, apologizing for the mix-up wherein he smashed two time periods together in altogether the wrong place.

"Sorry! This entire island is pretty much my fault."

Aside from the constant fear that someone will start following me around while playing the ukelele, it's absolutely fascinating.

Know what it's like? It's like how a 1960s housewife expects her honeymoon to look. And I'm not complaining.

After all, I always said I was born in the wrong era.

Anecdotes from Japan: Slang for genitalia, aka Why you should always have a dictionary

So, even though the OS is in Japanese, my denki jisho (electronic dictionary) and I are inseparable. It has JtE, EtJ, Kanji lookup, and various other wonderful features that I don't understand how to use yet.

It basically looks like a DS. Mine is sans stylus.

It's good for deciphering things in a grocery store and on various storefronts, but not much use in conversation, as that moves quickly and most people (in either language) prefer mime to get their point across.

Also, though I do make it a point to talk to people when out on my own, most of my attempts at extended conversation have been with HP around, seeing as these first few days, we've been mobbed by family members. The closest are HP's youngest aunt, Kiyomi-obasan, and her husband, Yoshio-ojisan. She peppers her sentences with the few English words she knows, and Yoshio is a fairly atypical Japanese man in that he's a chatterbox. Not that I mind - it's refreshing to see someone so friendly - but both of them have encouraged my speaking Japanese, and I've been able to hold broken conversation with them on my own and even make a few terrible jokes.

Fast forward to Sunday night. We're invited out to dinner with them and their only daughter, Reika, who is my age and recently married. Her husband Yuuji was also there, and I'd been warned that Reika was uncomfortable with her American relatives, and therefore would likely be functionally mute throughout dinner. Though after introducing myself (in Japanese) and giving her the gift I'd brought over (a designer label bracelet covered in gold filigree and various charms), she seemed to warm to me a lot. Dinner was ordered, we talked about various subjects at normal Japanese pace with HP giving me rough translations when needed, though I could mostly follow along and contribute. They asked about my family, what kinds of foods I liked, and how I was liking Japan and wow was my Japanese getting better by the day! Also, what anime and manga did I like? Because everyone does.

A mysterious but great philosopher known only as The Sphinx once said: "We are weakest when we think ourselves strong." And just as I was relaxing into the flow of conversation and congratulating myself on how well everything was going, I heard a word I didn't understand.

Now, there's a phrase that almost every beginner Japanese student learns on the first day. It follows the pattern of "Xx wa nan(i) desu ka?" meaning "What is xx/What does xx mean?"

I use this phrase a lot. The Japanese are usually happy to oblige when I don't understand, and I've learned most of my daily vocabulary this way. So when HP and his uncle were talking about work and wives and pain and snickering, I asked about the word I didn't know.

"Sumimasen - 'Kintama' wa nan desu ka?"

At this point, he and his uncle started laughing, and everyone else, who'd been having another conversation, asked what was so funny. I turned to them and repeated the question, and they laughed too. Kiyomi smacked her husband a little, and HP only managed to say that they were "Ichiban no taisetsu" [the most important thing] before he and his uncle died laughing again. At this point, I sighed and grabbed my jisho out of my purse (a habit that made his family laugh without fail, and this was no exception) to look it up. Reika looked over my shoulder, saying "Arimasen!" [It won't be there!]

Except it was.

Don't bother looking it up; I'll save you the trouble. Hint: It means "balls."

Kintama - lit. "golden balls;" testicles.

Reika laughed even harder as she declared "Aru yo!" [It's there!] and everyone broke. Again.

I had (albeit unknowingly) functionally asked them "What is 'nutsack?'" and then looked it up in the dictionary.

His uncle bought me a beer and gave me a thumbs-up. I am apparently the most hilarious white person ever.

The moral of the story is always have your dictionary with you and men are the same everywhere the end.

Travel log

In the string of backlogged updates, here's the first, chronologically - the trip over.

I got into Logan at about 7am, and immediately regretted packing such a heavy duffel bag. My rolly, square-shaped bag was manageable, but the shape of the duffel bag made sure that the weight was as unevenly distributed as possible. Awesome. I was sure I was going to pay, like, $500 in oversize baggage fees.

Luckily, my check-in attendant was awesome. She checked Elsa's papers first, weighed the bags, figured a few pounds' difference was negligible, slapped destination stickers on them and waved me on my way.

Elsa wasn't liking the airport, but a chunk of breakfast sandwich was an adequate bribe.

The first flight was fairly uneventful, aside from me worrying about how she'd do. But there was no whining, no crying, no nothing. I did have the good luck of sitting next to a young Japanese math teacher who was on his way home from a conference at Harvard. He was extremely friendly and kind enough to help with my reading (I had a textbook open in front of me 90% of the time), commending me for my study.

I don't think I'll ever forget what he said to me. "Most foreigners go to Japan because it's Japan, not because they want to talk to the Japanese. You are different; you will do well."

Then the furball got to take a pee break in Dulles (they have super cute dog bathrooms in the terminals!) and we hopped on to the main leg of our journey.

I got bumped up to economy plus in order to balance out the plane. I didn't complain.

Elsa did get stressed out, but more in heartbeat and breathing irregularities rather than whining and crying, and mostly on takeoff/landing/turbulence. Again, small chunks of my in-flight meals helped, as well as when they darkened the cabin. I got to catch up on my movies, watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean and X-men: First Class before passing out for a few hours.

I also met my guardian angel on this flight: a marine assigned to Okinawa, V*. He was a few years older than me, and talked nonstop about his wife and two kids back home, and how he couldn't wait to finish his assignment and get back to them in the States. He also offered to guide me through customs, as our connecting flight was the same and he'd made this trip five times in the past year.

"Grateful" doesn't even come close to covering it.

We landed and I was like a baby chick following its mother. We grabbed our bags and headed to the Animal Quarantine section of customs, where Elsa was descended upon by vet techs cooing in Japanese about how cute she was. Her paperwork went through quickly, and she was in and out in less than half an hour. They commended me on my organization, and I thanked them for all their help.

Then was actual customs. About two minutes spent there.

Then the ticket counter to pick up our connecting boarding passes. That was an adventure, as Elsa needed to be put in the animal cargo section in a big, plastic kennel. Again, done quickly, and we ended up at our gate with an hour to spare.

I slept through to Okinawa, where by the time I walked off the plane and into baggage claim, our flight's bags were already on the carousel. The animals were in their own section off to the side, and a very tired, but no-worse-for-the-wear Elsa bounced back into her soft-sided carrier. Two bags later (they check your claim tags before you're allowed to leave, which is awesome!) I got to see HP waiting with two of his aunts, Midori-obasan and Kiyomi-obasan, who both gave hugs and greeted me in a broken mix of English and Japanese. Then one of the english teachers from his base school came by with the school van ("Party van!" is apparently a running joke at their school) and drove us to Okinawa-shi.

By now, it's 10pm local time. I get the grand tour, feed the pup, put her in her kennel, and pass out, enjoying the air conditioning.

All in all, my travel here was pretty spectacular. Not only was I surrounded by super friendly, helpful people, but it was like the world saying "We know this sucks. Let's make this a little better."

Total time in transit: 24 hours
Time, adjusted: ~36 hours (9:23am depart Boston, 8:45pm arrive Okinawa)

Not bad for flying to the other friggin' side of the planet.

Thus ends the obligatory oh-god-flight post.

Now we can get on to the good stuff.

This is what I did today

These awesome rocks are everywhere here.

In Nago, about 45km north of where I live.

Real updates to come starting tomorrow. But for now, a picture of what my world now looks like.