JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

What is going through the minds of people who throw trash onto a road or place it on the road divider? I assume they clear their vehicles of trash to keep a clean personal environment. So they must think the rest of the world should have to deal with their personal trash! Not only is it an eyesore to see cans, bottles, and plastic containers strewn all over the place, on Okinawa it is a driving hazard. With the strength of the winds that accompany the all too familiar tropical cyclone systems, the trash inevitably gets blown all over the road. Cars constantly have to swerve to avoid these unsightly hazards. Is it really that difficult to use an appropriate trash receptacle?

For anyone who has ever studied Japanese as a second language, one of the most difficult challenges is the writing system. Although I have lived on Okinawa for what can seem like forever at times, the written language is still a thorn. With the spoken language there is a constant auditory refresher course in daily life. However, unless one purposely makes a daily effort to utilize it, the written language can pretty much be forgotten. The only problem with being illiterate as far as a writing system is concerned is that eventually one has to use the language for one reason or another. The Japanese written language is a complicated combination of three separate systems. Hiragana, a system composed of characters which are used for native Japanese words; Katakana, the characters used for foreign words; And Kanji, the most difficult system consisting of a type of hieroglyphics that was adopted from the Chinese written system of over 5000 characters. To complicate matters even further, the language consists of many English language foreign words that have been “adopted” by the Japanese. The largest problem with these words is that they are not pronounced or spelled in the same manner as the native language. So when trying to write these words, not only do you have to convert from the alphabet to Katakana, one also has to mentally change the words from English to the Japanese verbal version of the word to do so. It is no surprise very few foreigners ever become proficient in this written language.