JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

So far this year the typhoons have exploded all around us. With it being October, the typhoon season is nearing its end. All great events have a grand finale. Sure enough, we are now sitting-out a large blow hard as it makes its way over the island. And after that, there is another one awaiting the chance to display its massive show.

Most of us know the ongoing struggle between men and women and the toilet seat. Well men there are times when you don’t leave the seat down. One would think this is a no brainer, but when you have to use the women’ s facilities to relieve yourself, try lifting the toilet seat. It’s pretty disgusting to walk into the bathroom and find urine all over the toilet seat.

Last week I had an old friend visit the club. She had just become a grandmother of a very beautiful little girl. It is so hard to belief that it has been almost twenty-five years since we were hanging-out in Naha discos. She was merely in her late teens herself at the time and I was still in the Air Force. Since then, she has become a well-known local singer. She looked so happy and I am happy for her. When I reflect on those times I see how much difference time can make in the perceptions of a culture. Not that the culture itself changes much, just the perceptions and the outer surface of the location. Back then, all the resort hotels were just beginning to be built. The roads were much smaller. There were a limited number of cars, so driving was a pleasure not a chore. On-base, there were no high rises and civilian concessions were extremely limited. There were no “shopping malls” so to speak, except in Naha. I would spend all my free time at the beach, in izakayas, or at discos. Life was nothing more than one big on-going party, but having hang-overs every morning got pretty old after a little while. This culture tends to treat a person who isn’t interested in getting inebriated totally different than the person who goes out and spends all their money on partying. Oh well as the saying goes, it’s more fun when someone else is buying. Over here everyone’s a friend, as long as you’re the one doing all treating. I look at it this way; living over here taught me a long time ago the importance of true friendship. I was lucky, some people never learn.

As I mentioned before, I acquired my first computer about five years ago. I love having access to a wide array of information and especially enjoy learning how to create a variety of artistic expressions. Until recently, the usage of my computer for creative endeavors was somewhat limited because I was mainly using it for scholastic projects. Learning somewhat about html and css has been fun. One thing I was surprised to find when I began creating logos and slogans in more than one language for the club website, since we live on Okinawa, was that you can put the exact same phrase in major search engines in the English version with international search and then the Japanese version with international search and end up with two totally different results! Computing and the internet are constantly full of surprises.

Sometimes people can be so funny, like this woman I was around this week. As she was leaving a facility, she made a loud comment on how someone (I’m not sure who) lacked in etiquette. Anyone who was raised with any manners at all knows the difference between someone who shows proper etiquette and an imitating snob. Any woman that truly had a sense of etiquette would never have made such a comment so loudly that others could hear. She wouldn’t whisper the comment either. Whispering only indicates that one is saying something that is not polite enough to be said out loud. Any women who possessed real manners would know that if you have to say anything at all, it is done in private where others are not affected by the comment! Whereas an imitating snob is merely trying to point out someone else’s supposed lack of formal manners. In doing so, she is trying to display her knowledge of proper manners so as to boost her own ego, as well as her standing in the public eye. What this woman fails to understand is that her own indiscretion showed total lack of proper form. Some people understand the difference between a person with proper manners and someone who is trying to use social formality as a means to manipulate.

People who insist on parking in reserved spaces. Most of the older areas in Okinawa have extremely limited parking space. There is nothing worse than trying to get to work on a rainy day only to find that someone else’s car in your paid for slot. This happens because in a society that is supposed to overlook other people’s indiscretions, the offenders expect nothing to be done about it. Hello, the reason people pay for parking spaces is so they will have a place to park, not for other people who are too lazy or cheap to find their own place to park in.

Sometimes things can eat at you until the right connection and words come to mind. As I watch and learn more about people’s actions in general, I have to wonder if fame and/or fortune have become the “drugs” of this society. I saw what addictions can do to people in the ’80s. Some of the behaviors of people in search of more and more money seem to be very similar. “Addicts” are willing to do just about anything to get that next fix – lie, beg, and steal among a few. They don’t care who the victim is as long as the end justifies the means. Do the pressures of trying to be “better” than everyone else, and thereby achieving fame and recognition, lead some people to these behaviors? Or are the behaviors a manifestation of these people’s own characters, or possibly brains? I do know that the pleasure mechanisms of the brain are still not completely understood by experts. I can’t help wonder if these people get some perverse pleasure in enacting the behaviors? Are the messages to be “someone” in this world you have to be esthetically and materially “ahead of the Jones” creating a society of a new type of addict?

Pets, sometimes they are just so amazing! A long time ago we realized that our pets understand certain words. They would be in a complete different room when we would hear their response to statement we were making. A few months ago, I was watching a TV show that claimed dogs can “understand” up to two hundred words. We weren’t surprised. So like a parent who wants what is being said to be kept secret from prying ears, we started spelling the words. Well today, one of our dogs has figured-out what the spelled word is and responded to it. Now we are reduced to lipping and softly whispering certain phrases. What next?

I often get asked why I don’t let people bring their own beverages into the club. I really think that’s pretty self-explanatory. Inevitably I get someone who thinks they’re going islander and tries the “…but that’s not the local way!” on me. Well anyone who has been here long enough would know, the owner and/or manager of the facility decide which “system” is appropriate for that particular club. For some clubs that means “No Americans” for others it means somewhere around a one thousand yen cover charge. At Live Music Bar JET, it means no outside beverages allowed.

Another thing one hears over here is the “I have a brilliant idea” person(s). My question to them is: if that idea is so brilliant, why don’t you use your own funds, time, and energy and open that club yourself?