JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

A local creature that stopped by for a munchie at the house this morning.

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Another flower that thrives in the sub-tropical environment as the mini-monsoon season on Okinawa begins to come to an end.

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A less commonly known variety of hibiscus.

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As the official days of summer are upon us, the rain just keeps falling. With soooooo much rain one might wonder what people on Okinawa do to cope. The local school system seems to coincide with the lunar instead of Julian calendar. So, school-aged kids are busy preparing for the exams that occur prior to their summer break. And many retailers are full of shoppers just trying not to go stir crazy. As for me, I find that this is the time of year when it’s best to do some “spring cleaning”. Since humidity is a problem over here and every little nook and cranny that has any moister accumulated turns into a moldy mess. To combat this problem, the whole house gets a dose of elbow grease.

For those of you who feel like you’ll loose it if there’s one more drop of rain, don’t feel alone. It seems we have had a four day total accumulation of rain that is a record breaker. The past four days has given us more rain than the entire month of June for the first time in one hundred thirteen years! Good news is that the mini-monsoon season should just about be over.

Well the blow hards (otherwise known as tropical cyclones) aren’t wasting any time this year. When I turned on the local American TV channel this morning sure enough TC-4 was posted on the station. Although it may be a few days premature, there is a tropical storm out there and once again the typhoon season begins.

To me, being middle-aged has gotten a bad rap! I love being 50ish. By this time in one’s life, you’re old enough not to make many of the foolish mistakes that seem so prevalent in a person’s 20’s and 30’s. Yet one is still young and energetic enough to face new challenges, learn new things, and savor in new accomplishments. It is a time in life when a person seems to have the best of both worlds.

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This is an Okinawan residential street in 2005. The older residential areas here remind me of an apartment complex where the homes are the apartments and the roads are the hallway. This particular roadway was the access to three houses and one 3 apartments complex thirteen years ago. Now it is the access to 10 houses and the apartment complex. Originally the road was about one and one-half times this size. But as the buildings went up the road shrunk. Now it tightly fits one-way traffic only. Most of the newer housing areas have wider access roads that allow for two-way traffic, as long as nobody parks in the road. So if you are coming to Okinawa and have a typical American size vehicle, you’d be better off leaving it stateside during your duration on the island.

Finally, for the past two days the weather has cooperated with the time of year and it actually has begun to feel as if Okinawa is a subtropical island. Of course the fair weather time is spent catching up on all the yard work that was neglected during the mini-monsoon time period. But who cares, because it’s just great being able to get out in the sunshine and cool tropical breeze. Not to mention the opportunity to get some B-B-Qing into the schedule.