Eventful

I'm usually always doing something now. Nights are getting busier, and weekends in September are crowded with sports events, speech contests and whatever else the other JETs can pull out of the event suggestion box.

This coming weekend looks to be either a time of sports and comraderie or a time to lockdown the house and wait for the storm to pass (click on the TC Warning link). A typhoon is coming, and it looks like it's on a direct course for Okinawa.

I ventured to the mainland this past weekend, which was something I hadn't done, I realized, in over a month. The last time was sometime in June, for an book club meeting in Chattan Town to discuss Vladimir Nabokov's novel Pale Fire. I alternately love and hate Nabokov's narrators; they are equally dense and well-formed as well as misleading and deceitful. It had been awhile, and I looked forward to meeting a lot of the new JETs that had arrived. I don't see them a lot; an island life can be restricting, but I often find reasons not to visit the mainland simply to save myself the trouble and money of not going.

Elina, the leader of our block of JETs, organized a weekend of events that I could not ignore. Saturday consisted of a BBQ at the beach with some swimming, a couple hours at the bowling alley, a midnight run through an Okinawan playground and a final cap to the evening with karaoke until three a.m.

It had been years since I'd been bowling--though I suspect that, if there was a bowling alley on my island, I would probably be there a lot--but after the first game I started to actually remember how to roll the ball down the alley. After the alley was the real fun though: Japanese playground equipment is crazy and sue-worthy, and it's a blast to play on. The best part was the loop constructed of rope that some of us (half-drunk or mostly-drunk) climbed through. Well, all of us climbed through.

The karaoke afterwards was typical karaoke: splendid and rousing. I will really miss it whenever I come back to the states. It's an experience that has little to no rival.

On Sunday we went sea kayaking. My first time. It was easier than I thought, but it wasn't as back-breaking as it could have been. After the kayaking was over, I trekked back to my island and pretty much zonked out for the rest of the day.

Elina has pictures of all the events posted here. Considerably more than I took, but I'll post some of mine later.