Earlier this week it was a blustery day, the ocean was being churned up by the wind which generated a myriad of colors from white through dark green. Below my house a thresher was harvesting sugar cane and flinging pieces high into the sky. You could hear the crashing of the waves between the whoosh of the thresher blades. I reflected on my decision to embark on this adventure and smiled quite satisfied.

Today is again blustery and quite cold by Okinawa standards, 53ºF (11.6ºC). I broke out my electric blanket last night. Okinawan houses usually don’t have heat and are poorly insulated. I have a small space heater but it hardly pays to turn it on in my big house. She came with a box of toys but hasn’t once put any of them back in the box. I like to organize my paperwork into manageable piles and she likes to crash into them and scatter paper all over the room. My other cats have generally accepted her but they’re still working on the pecking order. Smokey is curled up in my lap as I’m writing this.

I’m taking a pottery class. We’re learning to make Shisas, the half lion half dog symbol unique to Okinawa. Shisa statures guard the entrance to almost every building here. They always come in, pairs male and female one with an open mouth to catch evil sprits one on with a closed mouth to contain the happiness in the home. Shisas guard the clinic on base but must have been installed by Americans. The open-mouthed male should always be on the right. Oops.

I always thought that a pair of Public Library Lions would look good on the platforms at the top of the steps at the entrance to my house. So I purchased a pair from my pottery Sensei. They are pretty big and weigh 60 lbs each. Most large Shisas are cast from molds and fired once in the kiln. Mine are hand coiled and fired twice. The second firing is a high temperature firing and many large pieces shatter. This is one of the reasons large pieces are so expensive. Clay is pretty expensive too. The small Shisas I’m making contain $87 worth of materials.

Jorge is of Okinawan heritage but was born in Peru. In 1906 a number of Okinawans left their homeland for Peru as contract laborers. Eventually, a vibrant Okinawan community arose in Peru almost 100 thousand strong today. An Okinawan, Alberto Fujimori served as President of Peru for 10 years. Many present-day wealthy Okinawans owe their wealth to relatives who survived WWII in Peru

Jorge came to my house to negotiate the Shisa sale. We spent three hours sipping coffee and solving the world’s problems before ever talking about the Shisas: a typical Latin American custom. Jorge’s native language is Spanish. He didn’t learn to speak Japanese until he came to Okinawa as an adult. He claims he always starts his conversations with the Japanese in Spanish and then moves to English. He uses Japanese as a last resort. Otherwise the Japanese look at his Asian face, listen to his poor Japanese and treat him as if he’s retarded.

I learned a lot from Jorge about Okinawa. It seems that Okinawan labor is cheap compared to mainland Japan, so all the telephone information services in Japan use Okinawan operators. This surprises many Japanese as the Okinawan accent in Japanese is distinct. Okinawa also has a lock on catalogue and Internet sales operations for the same reason.

I also had some more surgery. The AF is making me get into shape and I blew a small epigastric (abdominal) hernia doing crunches. I had a laparoscopic repair which took less than an hour. They were finished at 4PM and at 7PM I was eating a steak dinner. I never took anything stronger than Motrin (Ibuprofen). They made 7 small holes in my stomach and my new nicknames in the clinic are Swiss and Patches. In order to do this, they inject a lot of air inside you which so bloated me that I couldn’t get into a regular pair of pants for three days.

I went back to work five days after the surgery and will start up my exercise program again tomorrow.

My digital x-ray project is picking u steam and cutting into my schedule. I host the AF X-ray consultant-guru for a visit here next month and hopefully we’ll be finalizing the project so it can get funded.

Cheers

Ray