Okinawa "People" pictures

No, these aren't pictures of Okinawan people. Some people complained that there aren't any people in the pictures I've posted so far. So here are some pictures of the travelers...

This is a picture of Aidan and me at the Odo Coast in Itoman. I'm trying to get into the Okinawa style of dress of being covered from head-to-toe even when swimming, so I'm even wearing long pants. Yeah, I look like a total geek. But at least I'm not getting burned by the nasty sun. Later on I added a T-shirt under my hat to hang around my face and neck. It's what the Okinawans do and it does seem to help reduce the heat from the sun quite a bit.



On the way back from Itoman, we stopped at A&W. (Yeah, shame on us for getting American fast food while in Japan. But we were just getting a quick snack, and I love root beer.) At the exit to the restaurant, there was this sign that said, "If your visit was swell, ring the bell." As you can see, Angie thought her visit was swell.



On Sunday, we drove up north to go to a waterfall. On the way we stopped at a scenic view-point parking area. Aidan decided o go swimming without his shoes. That's a big mistake on beaches with lots of coral. Here Angie is cleaning out his wound and patching up his foot. Good thing I packed a first-aid kit.



To get to the waterfall, it's about an hour hike on a trail through the Okinawan jungle. Here's a suspension bridge we had to cross:



And here's a lizard we saw along the way. (Ok, that's not a person picture, but he sure is cute!)



Oops! Out of time. More pictures later. (Oh, don't forget, you can click on the pictures to get a bigger view.)

Okinawa Seaside

While heading back from the coral shores of Odo Coast in Itoman, I snapped this picture. It was on a very steep road that runs alongside a golf course.

Earlier in the day, we decided to head for the sea. We didn't have any particular place in mind, so we wandered south. While looking for a place to eat lunch in Itoman, we saw a sign advertising food so we followed it. As we approached the place we quickly realized it wasn't a place we wanted to eat at since it was some sort of posh resort or country club with a golf course. (Much too expensive!) But it was on a high hill overlooking the ocean and offered great views. We decided to explore the area a bit and it turned out there was a very narrow road running along side the golf course that headed to the seaside. (This is where the above picture was taken.) At the end of the road, there was a small public parking lot and an etrance to the seashore.

It turned out to be an awesome place that is part of Odo Coast. It is mostly a jagged coral covered shore, but when the tide goes out, a whole bunch of tidal pools are formed that you can walk around. In the pools were all sorts of marine life - very colorful fish, sea cucumbers (or something very similar), sea urchins, crabs, etc. We spent about 5 hours exploring the place.



Probably the most exciting part of the day was when I discovered I was about to step on a sea snake. Here's a picture of it:



I was in the water and was attempting to climb a large rock and noticed this bright blue and black snake swimming near my foot. Fortunately, before heading for Okinawa I had been warned about the various dangerous marine critters in the area and knew immediately to stay away from this. Sea snakes are poisonous. Had I not known about it, I might have thought it was just a very pretty eel. It was interesting to watch as it swam in and out of little holes in the coral outcropping occasionally bringing its head to the surface to get some air.

The scarey part about this is the large rock the sea snake was swimming around was an nice spot for climbing and jumping into the water. For a couple hours there were some teenagers hanging out playing in the water at the base of this rock occasionally climbing up it and jumping into the water. And they didn't know there sea snake was there! When I explained to them what I saw (as best I could since they only understood Japanese), and they then saw it for themselves as we pointed at it, they immediately got out of the water.

I took a bunch of other pictures of this area - it was quite beautiful. Hopefully I'll have the time to upload them later on today.

Okinawa Sunrise

Here's a pretty poor picture of the view of the first sunrise I saw on Okinawa today (errr... I guess technically it's now yesterday for me, but if you are reading this in the western hemisphere it could still be today, or it could be last week or much later depending on when you actually read this, but I suppose that's not really relevant).

After travelling for more than 24 hours straight (and losing almost 2 days in the process due to the international date line crossing), two friends and I arrived in Okinawa. We arrived at our final destination exactly on time, but we never would have epxected it based on how it began. I started out at about 4:15 am with my sister and nephew making the hour long drive up to Boston so a car wouldn't have to be left at the airport for three weeks. (Yup, I'll be away for three weeks, so now would be a good time to break into my condo if you feel so inclined. Unfortunatetly, if you choose to, don't expect to find any good loot - all the stuff I own that has any theft value (laptop, camera, ipod, video camera, bazooka, etc.) was taken with me on my trip.)

After picking up my two travel companions, we got to the airport at about 6 am. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00, so we figured we had plenty of time. When we checked in (after about a 30 minute wait in line), the woman at the ticket counter said she had to put us on a different flight due to bad weather in Chicago that was expected to shut down that airport. So, we checked our bags, got our boarding passes and casually wandered towards the security gate check-in area. (Speaking of wandering, I sense this story is probably going to ramble on for a long time, so you might want to stop reading now before you get sucked into this gripping saga of airline intrigue and high-speed chases and lose track of all time on the computer and don't do what you actually planned for the day. Yes - no, actually, I mean no, that story isn't going to be that gripping, but it will be long, so you've been warned...)

Anyhow, as I mentioned, we casually wandered away from the ticket counter and headed towards the security line. Along the way, we decided since we were three hours early for our flight, we had time to stop at the restrooms befor the security gate. Since I didn't have to use the restroom (yes, all these details are indeed necessary for the proper telling of this story), I had a few minutes to myself while waiting for my friends to return from the restrooms. Being the somewhat obsessive person I am, I tend to check, double-check, triple-check things when I travel. "Do I have my boarding passes - yes, the kind woman at the ticket counter just gave them to me 60 seconds ago - but maybe I lost them on the way to the restrooms. Lemme check - yup - I have them. And are we heading for the right gate - yes, the kind woman also just told me gate 25 (no, I don't reallt remember now (2 days later) if it really was gate 25, but that detail isn't important to this story. But, the fact that I just looked at the boarding pass is and important detail, as you will soon see.) Ok, so I have th right gate, there's the security line for that gate just over there. Good. Things are going well. Let me double-check the time. Maybe the flight doesn't really leave at 9:00 like I remembered. Hmmm... nope, it appears the flight leaves at 6:55am. WHAT?!?! 6:55??? But it's already past 6:30 and my friends are taking their sweet time in the restrooms thinking we have another 3 hours! Holy smokes! How did this happen??"

Then it dawned on me - the sinister woman behind the ticket counter had mentioned in passing that she was putting us on a different flight. What she neglected to mention was that it was already boarding and would be leaving in less than half an hour from now! And we haven't even gone through security yet! I can only assume this was all part of some evil scheme of hers. Fortunately, due to my over-sized bladder and lack of a need to use the restroom, I thwarted her evil plan (or scheme, as I called it in the previous sentence) and we quickly ran through security. Actually, we attempted to quickly run through security, but the evil she-devil ticket lady must have also bewitched me as I twice failed the "walk through the metal detector" test as I forgot to remove all metal objects from my person. (I always thought it was three strikes and you are out, but the security person firmly assured me in the case of airport safety, it's two strikes and you're out. I find that odd with Boston being the hometown to the Boston Redsox and lots of baseball fans. You'd think they'd at least show some support for the team. Or, even if they are Yankees fans, they'd at least show some support for the sport of baseball in general and stick to a reasonable common phrase. Think of all the children who are going to grow up confused in little league, standing at the plate waiting for the next pitch, wondering to themselves, "I have one strike. Can I safely let this next pitch pass? Was it two strikes and you are out, or was that only applicable to airport security?" Yes, it could happen. It's how society gradually disintegrates. You let one little thing slip and the next thing you know, little Johny doesn't wait for the better pitch and instead swings too soon, pops up to center field and loses the game for the team. From then on, it's all down hill. He turns to drugs in his teenage year looking for escape from his failure in baseball, and who knows where it leads? Instead of going on to be successful doctor and finding a cure for cancer, he becomes a burden on society.)

Anyhow, as I started to say, once my second attempt to pass the metal detector test failed, I assume the voodoo practicing, fire breathing ticket lady's befuddling spell must have started to wear off as it suddenly dawned on me after repeatedly searching my empty pants pockets that I had slipped an ipod into my shirt pocket. I tried to expain this to the kind security guard, but it was at this time that it was explained to me that it's two strikes and I'm out. So, I was politely, but firmly, escorted to the special screening area where I got to get an extra thorough search for more metal objects on my person. All the while my two friends found great amusement in the fact that I was the cause of a problem at security. And meanwhile, the clock was ticking on towards 6:55 when the flight departs. So after it was confirmed that I pose no threat to airline safety and I got my complementary "pat down" to confirm the very high-tech metal detector wand was actually working properly, we were again on our way, running through the terminal to catch our flight. As it turned out, we got there just in time - there was still a line of people waiting to get on the plane.

So, we boarded the plane and waited for take off. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. And at this point I could go on and on about how long we waited and how it was an emotional roller-coaster as the pilot announce we were taking off, only to announce a few minutes later that he was after all mistaken and we weren't rally taking off because the airport in Chicago was completely shutdow, and how we got off the plane, then back on, and waited some more, etc. etc. And, I suppose I did pretty much just describe that in a nut shell, so I'll leave it at that. In he end we waited about 2 hours before we finally did take-off. Which meant we ended up leaving at almost the exact time our original flight was supposed to leave. So we arrived in Chicago just in time to catch our connecting flight. And wonders of wonders, our connecting flight was just two or three gates away, so we didn't even have to run around.

Looking back on the situation, it was definitely a good thing that we got to the airport early for our initial flight. Otherwise we would never had been able to get on an earlier flight, and we would have missed our connection in Chicago and probably would have had to wait a day later to catch our flight from Chicago to Osaka. And in the grand-scheme of things, I suppose it wouldn't have really made a huge difference, other than the fact that I never would have been able to take this photo (you do remember the photo I was originally talking about at the beginning of this writing, right?). It would have been a different photo of a different sunrise, and with one one less day of travel, I wouldn't have had a chance to write this long rambling description of my day of air travel.

I supposed there is a lesson to be learned from all this - maybe "The early bird gets the worm", or "Two strikes and you are out." I dunno. On a more serious note, I guess the one thing I did realize from this experience is how a Zen approach to life is really quite helpful at maintaining a peaceful disposition. Even though there were a few unexpected delays and problems, I didn't find myself worrying too much about it and I think I remained upbeat through the whole thing. A few years ago in the same situation I would have been a nervous wreck. Now I tried to just remember there's no sense worrying about things you can't change.

The Kempo Hakku

If you buy a gi from Shureido, they usually include a large tri-folded cardboard insert that has a funky picture of Bodhidharma along with a bunch of text written in Japanese. I never knew what the Japanese text said, until today. I was visiting the Shureido store in Naha (picking up a bunch of stuff!) and when the saleswoman was packing up the items, I noticed she included an extra piece of paper with the tri-fold cardboard insert. I was hoping it might be a translation of the text and when I opened my bag of goodies I was happy to see it was indeed an English translation! Here's a picture of the text (with my numbered annotations), along with the English translation (click on the image for a larger view):



Title: The Kempo Hakku (The eight laws of the fist)
1. The mind is one with heaven and earth.
2. The circulatory rythm of the body is similar to the cycle of the sun and the moon.
3. The way of inhaling and exhaling is both hardness and softness.
4. Act in accordance with time and change.
5. Techniques will occur in the absense of conscious thought.
6. The feet must advance and retreat separate and meet.
7. The eyes do not miss even the slightest change.
8. The ears listen well in all directions.

I've been told I really need to work on number 5. I tend to think too much with my karate.

There's a pretty good web site here that has a less stylized kanji version of this. If you visit that site, you can move your mouse over each line and a pronunciation along with an English translation will appear for that line.

Nunchaku!

At karate class we just had a special seminar on the basics of using the nunchaku. Wow! Talk about a challenging weapon. And I thought tonfa was difficult to learn. At least when learning to use tonfa you don't normally run the risk of accidentally knocking yourself unconscious. But that is a very real risk with the nunchaku if you aren't careful. The seminar was a lot of fun, albeit a little bit painful at times. Everyone I talked to afterwards was happily describing the various self-inflicted injuries they received. (I whacked myself in the side of the head once and hope to never do it again. It hurt quite a bit and I still have a small lump from it.) I don't know of anyone who didn't accidentally hit themselves at least once. It gives you a good appreciation for how dangerous these things can be and how careful you need to be when practicing with them.

Another very serious consideration with these weapons is their legality. Depending on where you live, they may be illegal. I know in Massachusetts they are illegal, so to my young friends in Boxford i must say don't even think about it! In Rhode Island there is a statute that allows the use of martial arts weapons for education purposes. Actually, the statute allows the use of any weapon for educational purposes, not just martial arts ones. The statute (11-47-43) is an exemption from the provisions of statute 11-47-42 which specifically forbids the use of "the so called 'Kung-Fu' weapons", along with a long list of other weapons. (Yes, the state law really refers to martial arts weapons with that exact phrase - the so called "Kung-Fu" weapons. Pretty funny...) So, at least where I live I know its OK to have these weapons for karate class. Just to be safe, I always carry a recent receipt for payment for my karate class and I carry a copy of the RI statute number, and I only carry my karate weapons in my gym bag with my gi and I keep it out of reach in the back of my car, so it's clear I'm not planning on using them outside of class.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so don't base your actions on what I describe here and assume everything will be ok.

Barn Swallows

I've been slacking a bit in my writing here. It's not that I haven't seen some interesting things lately or not had something I'd like to write about, but I just lack the free time. The problem is I'm not a very efficient or good writer - I tend to edit and re-edit and even though the final product doesn't really show it, most of my blog posts here on average take me anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to write. That's time I could spend doing a lot of other things that need to be done, like sleeping, or cleaning, or practicing karate.

But enough of my excuses. Here are a couple pictures I took this weekend of some barn swallows that live underneath my condo. They tend to swoop around over the cove catching bugs and are kind of relaxing to watch. (I was trying to work on a project I took home from the office, but Sunday turned out to be such a nice sunny day I found myself distracted staring out the window at the birds. I had been hoping for a nice rainy day.)



On this particular day, the swallows were landing in the mud to gather up pieces of seaweed - I assume for building nests.

T-shirt comparisons

Ok, this probably isn't the most interesting item, but maybe someone will find it useful. I'm going to Okinawa next week and from what I've been told, it's hot and humid there. Not just the usual New England hot and humid - but tropical, someone just slapped me in the face with a hot face cloth, hot and humid. And since the main point of this trip is to practice karate, I've decided it might make sense to look into some specialized clothing to make the experience as comfortable as possible. So, this week I bought a few different styles of T-shirts to see if they made a noticeable difference when worn under my karate gi.

I usually just wear a plain ol' cotton T-shirt under my gi and at the end of the night it is completely soaked. Cotton is quite absorbent and doesn't wick moisture at all. It's very comfortable when dry, but once it gets wet, it stays wet for a long time and feels pretty gross. That considered, all the new T-shirts I got were made of synthetic materials and were advertised as designed for wicking moisture from the body. I bought three styles: one from Under Armour - UA Tech, one from Eastern Mountain Sports - a Coolmax T, and one from Nike - a Nike Pro "compression fit". While all the synthetic shirts were an improvement over a cotton T, I must say, after trying each of these T-shirts for several hours of exercise, the Nike Pro compression style is by far the most comfortable. I'm not sure if it's because it is more of a form fitting design, but it was so good at wicking moisture it almost felt like there was a cool breeze constantly blowing on me. I'm definitely going to pick up a couple more of these T-shirts. If you are looking for something lightweight to wear as an under-layer while exercising, I definitely recommend this shirt. Since it's a compression fit style, it's not something you'd normally want to wear by itself around town (unless you are going for that super-hero costume spandex look). Those other loose fitting shorts are more appropriate for that.

The Wonder of Music

I stumbled across a reference to an interesting music site called Pandora. It's basically an online radio station, but it is totally customizable and adaptable. You tell it a song or artist you like, and it will then start playing songs that share similarities to what you said you like. It s based on something called the Music Genome Project. Songs are analyzed based on a bunch of different qualities (rhythm, harmony, vocals, etc.) so they can be categorized. While the music is being played, you can also give feedback to say whether you like the song or not, and even get an explanation of why that song was selected.

I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate the music choices were. I entered "Peter Gabriel" to see what songs it would play, and the very first song it chose is one of my favorite songs by the "Talking Heads" (This must be the Place (Naive Melody)). I had never before made a connection between the two artists. I knew I liked them both, but didn't really think they were that similar. I'll have to give it some more time and see if Pandora continues to provide a good sampling of music for me. But so far, I'm impressed.

Oh, and Pandora is totally free. So give a try!

Too idle is not amusing

I had an interesting experience this evening that made me better understand a simple concept in Zen - that of the importance of having control over your mind. It might seem like a very easy thing to do - after all, it's your brain. But if you've ever tried meditating, it becomes very obvious how your brain just constantly produces new thoughts. It's very easy to lose focus and just follow any particular thought that might be interesting at the moment, and at that point, you are no longer in control. In this particular case, for some reason tonight I found myself musing about the pointlessness of life. This led me to wondering about the significance of my existence. Was I making any contribution to anything? What if I died right now? Would it matter? Sure, I imagine some people might miss me, but really nothing would change in the world. Others would quickly fill in the minor gaps that were left for things I might have been doing.

This thought process quickly turned my mood from one of very upbeat to one that was very depressed. Before I knew it, I was in an almost paralyzed state where I just didn't feel like doing anything since it was all totally pointless. And it was all from just a single initial thought that caused my mind to wander in a different direction. Looking back on it now, it all seems quite silly, but at the time, I just couldn't see that I had let a simple thought totally take over my mind.

Fortunately, I managed to come to my senses in a quite accidental manner. I ended up getting distracted reading some Sunday comics. Yes, the simple act of reading some comics was enough to jar me out of this foul mood. For a moment I completely forgot the negative chain of thought I had been following. At that point it then dawned on me that I had been letting a single thought rule my mind and affect my mood. My mood then immediately improved. And that's when I realized how it was a good illustration of the Zen concept of the importance to make sure you have control of your thoughts.

Not so handy

Unfortunately, it's taking a bit longer than I expected for my hand to get better. I got the stitches out on Thursday morning. The orthopedic specialist rechecked the lack of feeling in my finger and he remains convinced that the feeling should come back eventually on it's own without the need for surgery. I asked doctor if I needed to worry about the wound re-opening and he said since it had been 11 days, I would have to be pretty strong to flex the skin enough to open it. Well, wouldn't you know? I guess I'm mighty strong. While driving back to work from the doctor's office, the skin began to come apart.

When I got back to work, I put some Neosporin on the cut just to make sure it wouldn't get infected and I then covered it with a bandage. It turns out that moistened the cut enough for the whole thing to split open over the next hour. I got to take a good look around inside and it looked pretty nasty to me. It was all gooey and there were large sections of white stuff inside. I thought it might be infected, so later that afternoon I went back to the office where I originally got the stitches. I saw a different doctor there and she said since it was originally such a deep cut and it's in the palm of my hand and is constantly getting flexed, it was normal that the outer layer hadn't yet fully healed. She also said the white stuff inside was just dead skin that had been trapped inside when the wound was stitched up and everything looked good. She then just put some small strips of tape over the cut to hold it together and advised I leave the tape on there until the cut holds together on its own.

The tape fell off later that night, so I then went to the local drug store and found some funky new Bandaid finger wraps that looked like they might work well for holding the cut closed. Unlike the conventional bandages that have a pad in the middle, this is just all stretchy rubber material. It almost looks like Goretex. Even though it is rubber-like and flexible, it is also absorbent and breathable, so the underlying skin doesn't turn all white from too much moisture getting trapped underneath. And so far, the bandage has held pretty well. I can make a fist and flex my hand and the cut stays held together. This is what it looks like now (with the new Bandaid finger wrap bandage taping it shut):



It does look a lot better, but what bothers me is it is still very sensitive. If I just bend my hand a certain way, or accidentally bump the area where the cut is, I get an electric shock-like feeling in my finger - sorta like the feeling when you bump your funny bone really hard. It's a bit discouraging since there are many things I still can't do in karate. One of my favorite things is the weapons class, and I haven't been able to take the class since the accident. I've done a few test runs of trying to do some bo kata, but just when I start to get confident everything is ok, I suddenly get a nasty jolt of pain in my hand and I have to stop rather than push my luck. I'm hoping once the skin is finally fully sealed it won't be so sensitive, but nerve damage tends to take a long time to recover, so if I think about it too much I tend to start to feel a bit down.

And I've found a good escape from feeling down is to do something else so I don't think about it. So this afternoon I decided to go running. Both my feet still work quite well, so I may as make good use of them. It was raining a bit when I headed out, but I enjoy the rain when the weather is warm, so I figured I'd try a somewhat long run and go out to Rome Point. It's not really that long, actually, but I haven't been running in a while, so it seemed like it might be a long run. As it turns out, the whole loop only took me 40 minutes. The last 20 minutes of the run were a lot of fun. It started to rain really really hard. Even though I was wearing water-proof trail running shoes, it didn't really help since they filled up with water from the water running down my legs. By the time I got back, I was completely soaked. I was so wet, I had to get changed while standing in the bathtub to avoid getting water all over the place in my condo. Once I was dry, I then checked a map to figure out how far I had actually run. It turns out it wasn't very far - only 4.73 miles. Since it took me 40 minutes, that means I averaged 7 miles per hour - I have no idea if that is a good pace or not, I'm thinking it might be a bit on the slow side. You can see the route here: