If you've found this site by chance, or through a search engine link, you probably won't find what you're looking for. Sorry about that. This site is mostly for friends and family to keep up with my travels. Being on the other side of the planet means that my current time is roughly 12 hours different from the rest of America, and it's not always easy to catch people on the telephone.
If you find something here of interest, feel free to browse around. All
the really personal stuff is in hidden secret areas anyway.
Not
really, I just wanted to sound mysterious. The site is open, and if you
can find joy in anything here, you're welcome to hang around. The bulk of
the site is in the photo
gallery and the blog,
where I upload my photos and ramble on about life in Okinawa. It's not
terribly exciting, especially if you don't know me, but you're still
welcome to poke around.
When you create a site like this, there's always a question of what to put
on the title page (the first page you come to on the site; the page you're
reading right now). Since most of the real information is in other
sections of the site, there isn't a lot left to stick on the first page.
You try to fill space with pictures of cherry blossoms (a hallmark of Japan)
or nice scenic shots, and then you write some rambling prose around the
pictures so it doesn't seem as obvious that you have nothing better to say.
Kind of like I'm doing now. Hmmm...
At any rate, living in Japan is an adventure. I'm in Okinawa, a sub-tropical island that's officially part of Japan, but also quite different. Okinawa is like Japan on training wheels. There's a lot of American influence here, so that skews the culture a bit away from mainland Japan. The history of Okinawa (the Ryukyu Kingdom) is also mostly independent from mainland Japan, so even though there are similarities with "real" Japan, Okinawa also has it's own unique flavor.
The histories of Japan and Okinawa are interesting, and maybe some day I'll add a section talking about them. In the short term, here's a little thumbnail sketch of the recent (the last few hundred years) development of Japan. Like most Asian countries, the culture of Japan was heavily influenced by China, and the link is still obvious across both Japan and Okinawa. However, in 1639 the shogunate governing body started what is known in Japan as the "sa koku" or "closed country" policy. Japan was mostly isolated from the rest of the world for two and a half centuries.
This is the type of experiment that sociologists can only dream of; to take an established culture and remove all outside influences and see how it develops. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan, and Japan merged back into the rest of the world during the ensuing Meiji Restoration. Japan is once again influenced by the outside world, but still retains many unique aspects of culture that developed independently from the rest of civilization.
But I'm rambling. Suffice it to say that Japan (and Okinawa) is a
fascinating place to live. In many ways, living here is like being a child
again. Every day is filled with amazement and wonder. Everything is new
again. And of course, I'm learning to talk, and to read and write again.
Sometimes people ask me if I'm homesick. No, not for a moment. There are
certainly things I miss from America, most notably my beloved dog who
traveled to the far corners of America with me, and is now staying with
friends in Wisconsin. There are times I'd really like to go through a
drive-through and grab a cheeseburger and fries, and it would be nice to
talk to someone in a store using more than the most rudimentary sentences.
But overall, I don't think I'd trade this place for anywhere else. Every
day is an adventure, and every day I'm happy to be living in Japan.