JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

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.