I am back on the main land now. I had a lovely week down in Okinawa although it was quite action packed. I think we went on a very Japanese style holiday. I went with Kosa, Emi and Sachiko. I work with the last two and you know Kosa. Everyday was quite scheduled. I am not used to this type of holiday. Usually I just go out and chill somewhere and do what I feel like. I think this way, we saw a lot more and tried things I wouldn’t have known about. On the other hand, next time I will just go there and sit on the beach. I will give you a little info on Okinawa. If this doesn’t interest you, just skip to the next paragraph. Okinawa used to be its own country that was ruled by a King. It has a history as long as Japan’s although Okinawa seems to have made more efforts at developing trade with other countries when Japan was shutting its doors. They were a peaceful and unified nation until 1879. Japan then made them a prefecture and diminished/dissolved the power of the ruling family at the time. Okinawa was heavily bombed in the Second World War and came under American control until 1972 at which point control was returned to Japan by mutual agreement. Although control has been returned to Japan there is still a strong American military presence and bases cover almost one third of the prefecture. We got flyers on the streets from locals wanting the army to leave and rightly so. There is no reason for them to be there anymore. The castle was burned to the ground and bombed extensively so it is not an original structure anymore though it has been recreated and preserved where possible. There was a lot more english tourist information availible here than anywhere else I have travelled in Japan. That is about all I know about the history of Okinawa.

The weather there is a lot warmer that Nagano obviously but it wasn’t exactly tropics either. It was about 25 degrees when we got there. It rained off and on for most of the time and was quite windy. I didn’t mind that though because it was better for traveling around. And as I say, this was not a sitting on the beach type of vacation so I didn’t lose out on any potential tanning and/or burning as would have more likely been the case. It definitely did not feel like Japan. This could have been because of all the Americans walking around. Most of the cars we saw had rental plates or army plates on them so even many of the Japanese were tourists. There are only about 300 000 permanent residents in the capital city of Naha. There is just over a million people in the prefecture. Considering Japan’s enormous population and reputation for packing people into small spaces I was surprised by the low numbers. People are supposed to have the longest lifespan in the world in Okinawa. The number of people that live to see 100 is quite high. About 15 in 100 000 compared to 4 per 100 000 in mainland Japan. Friends have told me though that MacDonald’s is evening up the score on that one. It is quite mountainous as well so there is a lot of places where there is too much jungle and mountains to make it suitable for living. I would imagine they get pretty hammered by tropical storms and typhoons as well. There was a large storm heading in when we were meant to flight out and our flight was almost cancelled. The weather was quite horrendous in Nagano at the time too so there where many cancellations at that end as well. In the space of about a day and a half we got 50 cms of snow. That was a bit of a shock to come home to. I fell asleep on the train and didn’t wake up until half way home. When I opened my eyes I was blinded by it. It looked quite beautiful though. The valleys and countryside always look nice once it’s covered in snow.

Basically we got up fairly early every morning and drove our hired Nissan Cube around. It was comfy and easy to drive. We drove over pretty much the whole prefecture except for the North East corner because we didn’t have time and there didn’t seem to be much up there. Many of the small islands are connected by bridges and fixed land links so we got to see several small islands as well. It only takes about 2 or 3 hours to drive from one end to the other. We went to a big aquarium in the North. It seems to be the only thing up there besides military bases. It was quite impressive and had a beautiful botanical garden complex attached to it. Other than that, we say a lot of nice views and did a lot of shopping. Because of all the Americans, there are a lot of foreign products available at the grocery store. I now have more Worcestershire sauce as a result. Delightful! The food was pretty good there too. I like Okinawa soba noodles. They eat many kinds of pork there including ears and feet. A very popular vegetable is the goya. I initially didn’t like the goya (a warty looking bitter cucumber) but came around to it in the end. There is also loads of sugar cane growing there which made a nice change from all the rice fields. It looked more like Mexico or Thailand in a lot of ways than Japan. I got a hair cut and a massage which was quite relaxing. I always enjoy getting a hair cut while on vacation. It is quite a bit shorter but no one at home has noticed it. That is trouble with being surrounded by men. Gisela will be back from South Africa soon though. Today is her birthday actually. This picture is of the stained glass ceiling of the botanical gardens. It was so huge it was hard to take a good photo. I like how this one turned out though. The next picture of me on a cliff area somewhere in the middle of Okinawa. The rocks were very strange. They looked like sponges but were actually quite sharp.

This morning I have no classes because all students are writing exams. Yesterday was the first day back at school after winter holidays and then a massive set of rather important exams began. The kids were not excited to be leaving for holidays back in December and this would be why. I did an interview with the city hall people today on the quality and taste of Shiojiri's tap water compared to Canada. It was quite hilarious. I tried not to laugh the whole time. Luke came and translated the interview and his presence made it even harder to keep a straight face. The interview took half an hour. I tried to explain that we drank well water when I was young and that we had our well located by a diviner. I don't think that came across because Luke was not ready for that kind of vocabulary. It might also make us look slightly crazy in Canada. He said he was would look it up. They were conducting the survey on people from other countries as well as Japanese people who had transferred to the Shiojiri area for work reasons. Our local government has too much money. I also foolishly asked if they feared E. coli here but they have no cows to worry about and I would imagine the people who take care of the water plant are so hyper vigilant about their jobs that no error like that could ever occur. I also bemoaned the lack of flouride in the water.

On the job front, I have not made any plans for what is going to do next year. I can’t decide what to do so I am looking at a variety of options. I am going to a university open house on Saturday morning in Tokyo but I don’t know if I would like the course of study. I am really thinking about what I would enjoy the most. I want to do something that will set me up for any future plans I might endeavor to complete but I also want to enjoy myself. I don’t need anymore intensive periods of studying in a field that doesn’t interest me. I am running out of re-contracting time. I have to decide in less than a month what I will do next year. It is really stressing me out. I don’t want to have to make a default decision based on the stupid contract signing deadline. I will let you all know what I decide.