Thinking West, living East.

I spent several minutes desperately trying to access my blog, and it really jumbled my sense of reality for a minute.
I am having one of those days, that seems to be preceded by many similar troublesome days.  Or I am just in a mood.
Or I just need to put some laundry away and get the hallway cleared.

I bought two shelves for our DVDs - the kind that come in many pieces in a box that are assembled at home.  Japanese hardware stores sale them under the heading Do IT YOURself!  which somehow seems slightly threatening, the way I tell the girls that it's not my job to clean their room, "Do it yourself!"  -I love assembling things.  I am not intimidated by the idea of having to assemble something myself.  However, it should have occurred to me that all the directions are in Japanese.  It's a good thing I learned from my dad that the pictures are universal, and really that's all I need.  That and to count all the pieces before I start.  I had some extra pieces left over.  There were instructions on how to use them, but I deemed them unnecessary.  Let's hope it's OK.  I saved a pretty good chunk of change buying them instead of ordering something from the BX [I saw nothing even remotely similar in stock], BUT it was terribly inconvenient.  Actually it was just mildly inconvenient, perhaps typically inconvenient is most accurate.  I have gotten to the point where my few words of Japanese, my confident and Friendly American demeanor and the ¥ [yen] in my wallet assure a fairly smooth shopping experience.  But I had to drive all over the place to find what I was looking for.  I left the house at 530pm and didn't get home until almost 9pm. The Man was getting ready to send out a search party.  As soon as he could find his phone.

There is a lot of wondering about whether we are going to decide to stay here or if we are going back to the States.  I go back and forth.  Some days it is so beautiful and wonderful here, the sea sparkling, children smiling, etc, and some days I am one of those losers who wants an item after 9pm that she knows is widely available all over the US in a 7 Eleven or Wal-Mart but is not easy to find [possibly at any hour] in Okinawa.  And some days I miss my mom too much.  Or my sisters or my best friend.  Perhaps those are all the same days I'd be a bag of nerves no matter what.  I just miss having family I can see face to face.  And I miss familiar choices.  But, now, here is familiar .... I don't even know how much things cost in America anymore.  When we were in CA for vacation I was appalled at the general rudeness everywhere.  Some people confuse familiar with friendly.  I think I adapted to the comfortable distance of perfunctory politeness in a way I had not anticipated.  Oh yeah, and Okinawa is beautiful wonderful and marvelous.  There are so many things I did not know I did not know.
For example:
My Japanese teacher was doing a fun peripheral cultural lesson on the days of the week in kanji.  She was breaking down each word into it's root ideogram.  She asked us, "Who is the king of the animals?"  and like eager American students, we answered, enthusiastically in unison, "The lion!"  But our teacher hung her head and dropped her arms to her sides.  With closed eyes she counseled us.  "You are in ASIA, there are no lions!"  Oh, "The tiger!" we then called out, slightly abashed.