I made it back to the island on New Year’s Eve. It was excellent to be back and see everyone again, and there was much music, dancing, and being merry. In the morning of the 1st I climbed the tallest hill on the island to watch the sun rise over the Okinawan mainland, and later in the day I played with the taiko drumming group at the seijinshiki (big coming of age party for those who turned 20 in the previous year) of one of my favourite classes.

Alas, today I have run out of time to write more, so here is a photo instead:

I arrived in Naha, Okinawa this afternoon, and after checking into my hotel went out to have dinner with T-sensei, who was my favourite of all the teachers I taught with. It was lovely to see her again, but since arriving I’ve been haunted by the slightly uncanny feeling that almost no time has elapsed since the last time I was here. I had exactly the same sensation – something a little like deja vu – the first time I went back to Edinburgh after coming back from Japan.

After saying goodbye to T, I went for a walk around the city – it seemed a shame to waste any time here, and I knew my body clock wouldn’t allow me to sleep if I went back to my hotel anyway – to see which of my old haunts are still the same, and which have changed. Walking around Naha now, like Edinburgh then, the city felt slightly unreal, probably because it now consists of about two parts memory to one of stone.

Tomorrow I’m hoping to get my old phone reactivated. Then I will be unstoppable.

Ps. Writing this from my room in a great newish hostel called Burney’s Breakfast, which I would totally recommend to anyone going to Naha: for ¥2,800 (£19 at the current exchange rate…) I’ve got a room with a double bed, a PC with unlimited free internet, and as much free coffee – proper filter coffee – as I can drink.

I am nearly on my way: only five days until I set out with my backpack — first back to the island for some goodbyes, and then home, via China. Last Friday I went to an izakaya with a few friends for a goodbye party. Miss R and Mr. B brought this excellent chocolate cake, which obviously pleased me very much. Apparently the ladies in the cake shop were also quite excited because they’d never been asked to ice this message before.

That said, I have taken a few photos of things lately that I will try to dig out when I get a moment. I took a couple of days off work at the beginning of this week and went to a waterfall in the wild north of the mainland with some elementary school kids who’d come across from my island. And I’ve been continuing to go to Okinawan metal events, to see my friend Teru’s band, and take more black and white pictures of people jumping around and screaming.

Traditional Ryukyu (Okinawan) dancers, at Shuri castle, Naha.

It always strikes me when I watch Okinawan dancers how much their movements look like slowed-down karate (which of course is also Okinawan). There seems to be a particularly Okinawan form of movement, distinct from its equivalent in mainland Japanese arts: very smooth, fluid movements, usually from point to point. Very graceful. Japanese arts like taiko drumming and kendo (sword-fighting), on the other hand, seem to involve sharper, jerkier, more aggressive movements, with more visible acceleration and deceleration.

Funny, though, how pain fades out when you’re actually doing something (like, for example, making tea), only to come screeching back at you the moment you stop and are momentarily unoccupied again. I sat in seiza for an almost unprecedented ten minutes or so while the teacher talked me through all the movements required to make a cup of tea, and the pain, though still present, was just a dull background nagging. The moment I finished and put the cup of delicious green froth down in front of me, though, the pain came boomeranging back like a horseshoe thrown in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. Smack!

But there are a bunch of third-year girls who practice it every Monday at my current school, and last week I was invited along. I thought it was a one-off, but it turned out I was expected this week too, so I suspect I’m a tea-ceremony regular for the rest of term.

The tea ceremony is an extreme formalisation of a social situation – the making, presenting, and drinking of tea. I knew this. What I didn’t realise until I tried it was the extent to which it feels not so much like a formalisation of a general social situation, but an abstraction of a specific one, if that makes any sense… Not just the tea-related movements – picking up the cup, washing it, placing the green powdered tea in it – but all the movements involved – which foot goes forwards first when you step into the room or stand up – are specifed and equally important. So it feels like the point is not so much the perfection of a meaningful act as the perfect enacting or re-enacting of an ideal scene.

It made me think of Plato’s idea that all actual things are flawed variants of a perfect ‘form’. The ceremony feels like an attempt to capture the ‘form’ of making and drinking tea. The fact that this is impossible gives the ceremony a dizzying (and for me, unexpected) feeling of endlessness: the feeling that you really could spend your whole life practicing it and you’d still be an infinite distance from ‘getting it right’. I think I understand better now why it’s also used as a form of Zen meditation – I’d assumed it was primarily that it involves sitting still and focussing on the body’s movement. I hadn’t imagined this dizzying, almost depressing feeling of imperfectability and abstraction.

It also reminded me of one of Philip K. Dick’s madder novels (I can’t remember which one), in which (if I’ve remembered right) everyone living on Mars participates in a daily semi-religious ritual that involves playing with a particular type of doll while watching a particular television programme. And a Borges short story about a man rewriting Don Quixote word for word.

I should say that the first time made a much more profound impression on me than the second: the second time I was much more focussed on the excruciating physical pain in my legs.

On a completely different topic, these were just what I needed to rekindle my excitement about travelling in China at a time when boredom with organising visas and the mental resources devoted to thinking about preparations for leaving Japan, and plans for when I get back to the UK were beginning to eclipse or dilute (depending on whether excitement is a light or a liquid — I’m not entirely clear on this matter) my excitement about passing through China on the way back. [Via Antipixel]

On New Year’s Eve, on the way back to the island, I met up with Teru and also Ivan — my pre-predecessor, and the first JET teacher on my island (I was the third). Since we had some time before the ferry, we went to the Okinawa Chura-umi Aquarium. I’ve been there quite a few times before, but this was the first time with my new SLR. I wish I’d had more time and it had been less crowded, but I still got a couple of nice shots. Here is a lady watching a manta from a table in the aquarium café.

Today was mūchī-no-hi — a day when it’s traditional to eat mūchī (‘moochee’) — Okinawan sweets made from rice paste, and wrapped in a fragrant palm leaf, whose scent and flavour they absorb. So here’s a picture of one.

Mūchī are delicious, but the stickier ones are probably the messiest food on the planet to eat. The edible bit, inside the leaf, is a thick, sticky paste, and while sometimes (on really well-made ones) the leaf peels away cleanly, as often as not it comes away in strips, and the paste gets on your fingers and round your mouth. People eating mūchī look endearingly monkey-like as they try to separate the sticky paste from the leaf with their teeth while retaining cleanliness and dignity.

Here is a thing I learnt today: in Japan, the tune Chopsticks (the thing that just about everyone can play on the piano) is not in fact called Chopsticks, but instead has a title that translates as Oops, I stood on the cat. So there’s a thing.

Last night T’s band Tetsukabuto (‘Iron Helmet’) played a concert. Before they went on stage, they had an air guitar contest — the prize being a real electric guitar! A backing band made up of members of various Okinawan metal bands, fronted by my friend Teru, and dressed in biking leathers in a simultaneous tribute to “Birmingham, UK’s Judas Priest!” and the popular Japanese TV celebrity, Hard Gay (who specialises in performing stunts and interviews while dressed as a leather-clad, Village-People—style 1970s gay stereotype). Members of the audience had to jump around on stage and play their imaginary guitars as extravagantly as possible while Teru screamed out a Judas Priest cover and Masa — Tetsukabuto’s front man — watched with a clipboard, giving the participants marks for ‘moves’, ‘attitude’, ‘rockingness’ and so on. Here are some snapshots. The winner, if you’re interested, was the young man who may be seen second from the bottom on the left, and second from the top on the right.

On which note, I must now pack my bags because tomorrow morning I am going back to the island for New Year. My pre-predecessor, who I haven’t met yet, is coming too (it’s been nearly six years since he left now), so it should be interesting.

Have a good New Year, wherever you are. Let’s hope something good happens in 2006. 良いお年を！