Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Here in Hawaii and Dogs in Japan


Picture taken Sept 21, 2005 at Haleiwa Beach Park

Here's another retroactive blog (confused by all the switching of dates?). If you are confused, well so am I. Sometimes, I think Hawaii must be the most Japanese place outside of Japan. Look at the picture above, which I took a few months ago. My wife and I were enjoying Haleiwa Beach park, one of Oahu's more underrated beaches. Here we were, in a rural town, when I see Japanese tourists even at this semi-remote outpost on the island! I wonder how they feel: flying to Hawaii to get away from it all and then they bump into their fellow Japanese screaming to each other in Osaka dialect.

On the one hand, they must not like it, this does destroy the atmosphere of being in a foreign country. On the other hand, it is truly scary being in a foreign country, and so it must feel reassuring to see other Japanese. Kinda like Americans overseas - can talk about wanting to be among the locals, but panic sets in when far away from other Americans and the nearest McDonald's.....

Back to my Japan vacation...Here's the entry that should've have read August 09, 2006.

Here's a pic of Choco, my Japanese cousin's dog. She was abandoned in the mountains, and became part of the family through a Japanese rescue group. Doesn't she remind you of a dog-deer? Naturally, she is a bit scared of people, and only today has she finally warmed up to me and came to me while I was watching TV with my aunt in her room. Strange dog - when we take her for a walk, she gets all stressed out by the city and tries to run back indoors. She also shows interest in me, then when I try to touch her, she runs away. But I know she's not dumb - she probably knows more Japanese than most Americans. How many of you readers know the Japanese for "sit" or "wait" or "come"?

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Still too busy to post!


This is my daily winter distraction ...

Can you believe that I still haven't posted the pics from my final days of my Japan trip? I"m currently working on a book on Japanese TV, and after begging the editor, got one final deadline extension of a few weeks. And, like any budding writer, I squander my newfound time to become perfectionist, and constantly revise...

Almost all of my free time has been spent typing on the computer , while I look out the window and see perfect beach weather just beckoning me to come outside. That is the torture of living in Hawaii: it is so hard to do work when you know that a tropical beach is just a 20 minute drive away! Like setting a buffet table right in front of a starving man chained to the wall...

Luckily, Dana from Dana's Tea House is slogging through my 500+ page mess of a manuscript and editing what she can. Poor woman, nothing worse than to read the babblings of an academic who can barely write. Anyway, I plan to upload more pics from Japan and bring a sense of closure to my Japan blog. In the meantime, check out the posts I have put up retroactively, and some of the links I put on my post about my trip to the Battleship Yamato Museum in Kure, Japan. I even found some Starblazers songs to link up with!


Beach in Kahala, taken Sept 2005
Should I start a new blog, one that reflects my new life in Hawaii as a "returned local" and start showing you how a "kakure mainlander" views Hawaii with changed eyes?