I can't believe all this time has passed and I completely forgot to talk about my trip to Japan.
So, background - my sister married a marine officer, and he's been stationed in Okinawa for the last couple of years. Okinawa is actually in the tropics, so I planned the trip to be in October (of last year) in an attempt to enjoy cooler weather and less bugs (especially the bugs that come up through the toilets. I don't think I could ever live permanently in a tropical area).
I'd wanted to go for awhile, but what finally motivated me to go ahead and buy the airplane tickets was the two of them adopting a Japanese baby boy :), born in December 2015. He's the first child of my siblings and I (:D!!). His name is Kai Jason. They wanted him to have a Japanese name that wouldn't sound too out of place in America, but they also wanted him to have an ordinary English middle name in case he preferred to go by that when he got older. Kai means 'Ocean' in Japanese, at least in the kanji they picked for the name. Their language is fascinating - a word can have different meanings depending on how it's written. (More on their language some other time - I'm working on learning their simplest alphabet hiragana). His nickname is 'Bam-bam', so I'm sure that gives everyone a good idea of his personality. He's also big for his age - he's pretty much worn clothes that are for a child one or two months older than him since he was about a week old.
They're also in the process of adopting a second child, a baby girl named Mika Jeanette. This adoption process ought to go pretty easy comparatively, considering that the Japanese courts already decided to give one of their children to foreigners. Getting America to recognize the adoptions is also a bit of a convoluted process, because the Japanese and Americans don't have pre-set legal agreements to do so, which I suspect is largely because the two countries have very different viewpoints on adoption (it's shameful to adopt, to be adopted, or to be put up for adoption in Japan (but the courts don't charge for it), whereas in America, adopting is viewed as something wonderful (though our legal system charges tens of thousands to do it)). They're temporarily locked onto Japan until they finish going through both procedures, so we have to visit them :).
On to the main topic - Okinawa.
It's beautiful. Despite the late time in the year - October - it's very hot, very muggy, and there's an almost constant wetness in the air - not really rain, but something close to it. It rains a lot, though, year round. As a result, everything is very green.
In the cities, most of the residential buildings are grey cement, which looks very odd at first to us from America, where houses are practically every other color but grey. We did see random painted walls (as in, three of the four walls were grey, and one was red), and pretty much all of the stores were colorful. They let plants grow almost everywhere over the buildings. Apparently this is because they're very big on nature, but, practically speaking, due to the jungle-like environment, it'd be a losing battle to try to fight the plants.
And the cars. It takes a bit to get used to, at first. They're all tiny. You know those Smart cars that look so silly in America? They don't there. All the cars are small (some are longer, for families larger than four (rare), and those stick out). We also saw a handful of Hummers, which apparently tend to belong to gangs, and my, did those look silly there. Their roads and lanes are small. What's odd was seeing signs and such in Japanese, and then seeing 'FORD' and 'TOYOTA' written out in English.
I'll admit to being a total wimp about eating raw meat, but there's plenty to eat besides that. We had quite a bit of ramen, I'm in total love with tamagoyaki (an omelette made by rolling layer of fried egg together), curry.... yeah. I could list that for a long time. An odd one is red bean buns, which is a dessert. Japanese 'sweets' aren't sweet by American standards, at all. These are plain buns with a red bean mash in the middle of them. Yep, a vegetable used as a sweet.
I really wanted to buy a kimono while I was there, there was a sale (which was the only way I could afford one. I had no idea they were so expensive). What I ended up getting is a furisode style, which is a kimono with very long sleeves, which signify that I'm an adult and single. The kimono itself is very long (one size fits all, and held up with a single belt that the top part of the kimono covers. An obi (basically a wide fabric belt), covers the rolled over fabric, and they usually (not always) have a bow that's attached in the back. They're quite difficult to put on by yourself, so I know I'm not wearing it quite perfectly (though I didn't get a slip (basically a second, thin, kimono that goes underneath and only shows at the color), which would've complicated the dressing process to the point of impossible for someone who didn't grow up in the culture).
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