Tag: okinawa.

A taste of my own medicine

At a beach in Okinawa one Sunday morning, I noticed a solo western culture guy arrive with a look of curiosity and interest in the various groups of people already at the beach.

A short while later, as I was playing down at the water’s edge with some of the guys (that is, some of the friends with whom I was at the beach), I noticed the same solo guy attempting to be casual quite near to us, though, in my eyes, totally trying to make contact with us somehow.

“You can talk to us,” I said, smiling.

“Huh?”

I repeated, we chuckled, and I asked his name.  I gave him my own first name, and brought him to the guys, sharing with them the fact that he, too, was Canadian (which I am not, but most of the guys are).

At the end of the beach hangout, I mostly was the only one who talked much with this guy, but I knew he was vacationing solo for a month+, and it was clear that the communication and interaction were appreciated on his end.  So, I learned a little bit about his educational background and aspirations, and told him how we were all in the JET Programme in the same prefecture as one another, and that I lived near Tokyo.  Beyond that, I told him almost nothing of myself.  Some impressions of living and working in Japan, yes, but no facts or figures about me and my life.

When we said our goodbyes, I wished him well on his travels and for his future.  We exchanged no contact information.

A few hours later, when I diddled with my Facebook, I saw that I had a friend request from him.

Wowzer.

Kind of freaky, right?  I checked with my group, and none of them had talked to him when I hadn’t been present, and none of them was friends with him on Facebook.

I was amazed at the feat.  Though, I suppose I could have been weirded out, it was only flattering to me, really.  How many times have I gone through what has sometimes been hours of researching, just to find someone (usually a guy) online?  People regularly tell me that I am a fabulous stalker (and that I fortunately use it for good, rather than evil), I am so good at it.  I meet a guy in a bar, having learned only his first name, and I can find him online, supposing he has some kind of Internet presence.  But that is also part of why I am so careful about what I share about myself with people I don’t know – so they don’t easily find me online , if I don’t want them to find me.

However, my skills of stalking and research led me quite quickly to a way this guy could have found me.  I won’t give away all my secrets, but it has to do with photos allowing you to tag locations on various social networks – I think he found me because of the photo I took at the beach, and then put online.  Clever, clever boy.  Or perhaps he was just lucky.  I still haven’t asked.  ðŸ˜›

But, I must say, it was, albeit a bit weird and freaky, quite exciting having a taste of my own medicine used on me – the stalker is stalked!  Sort of, anyway.  ðŸ˜›
Post-a-day 2017

Okinawa, but actually Baseboards

Okay, today was, put simply, an amazing day for me.  I stood up for myself against myself and social pressures and blah-di-blah-blah, I wandered about, I found amazing things, and I never even made it to my intended destination.  And it was fabulous.

However, I’ll not write about all of that tonight.  I’m on my phone, and I find it cumbersome and somewhat annoying to write a lot on my phone, so I’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday, when I have my computer to use.  Don’t worry, though, I took lots of pictures to remind me of what all I did today (a bit different for me, huh?), so those will help me write it all up rather accurately later on!  

Instead, tonight I will write about baseboards.

As I was showering just now, here in the Air BnB, I started wondering about how they manage cleaning of the place between visitors.  Naturally, I cut off that line of thinking almost instantly (because, of you know anything about me and cleanliness, you know I have super-mental-OCD when it comes to bathroom-related cleanliness).  However, it reminded me of dirty I have found places to be in Japan.

Now, when I say that I find places here dirty, it doesn’t mean that Japan is generally gross all over the place – the average person likely wouldn’t notice a thing, except on the odd occasion.  I mean things like door handles, hand towels, and all sorts of other little everyday things.  Things like baseboards, for example.

I never thought much about baseboards (aside from ‘kicking the baseboard’ at the end of an outside turn in two-step (the partner dance, not the song that says it over and over again)) until I was visiting my high school boyfriend’s house one day.  They were finishing with cleaning day at their house when I arrived, and his mom was assigning the final chores to him and his siblings.

“Do you want to vacuum, or do the baseboards?” she asked him.

I think he picked the vacuuming, but I’m not sure.  I asked what she’d meant by “the baseboards”, and someone explained that it was running a wet paper towel or rag along all of the baseboards in the house, in order to get and keep them clean.  I got to watch one of his siblings (perhaps it was his middle sister) then do just that, going along quickly on her knees, cleaning the baseboards.

After that, I began to wonder how my family’s baseboards stayed clean, seeing as I had never noticed anyone cleaning them in any way, and certainly not in the way my boyfriend’s family did it.  I think I never asked anyone about this, but merely wondered privately what magic was at work.

Unfortunately, though, this opened me up to a whole new world of cleaning and cleanliness.  As if I hadn’t already had enough criteria for what determined a place’s (and its residents’) cleanliness, I now had this new one called “baseboards”.  Everywhere I went, of baseboards were in view, I was suddenly aware of how clean they were.

Nowadays, it has calmed down a bit, as it is no longer a new concept for me.  However, I still notice them (and judge places and people by their cleanliness, of course).  In Japan, they have often been unclean, sometimes even layered up with dirt and dust bunnies.  (Actually, there is an extreme amount of dust bunnies at my schools – I don’t understand how they all develop, not why so many of them have to end up right by my desk, of all places.)  And, every time I find these baseboards, two thoughts occur for me.  Okay, well three. 

1) Gross.

2) I want to leave now.

3) They need to get in board with John’s mom on this one. 

(John is the old high school boyfriend, in case you didn’t gather that.)

And, since so many have proven unclean here, I’ve actually taken to avoiding looking at them.  I hardly have I think about it anymore, I just realized – I simply don’t look at them.  Thus I am able to maintain one small piece of this sanity a good handful of people in the world believe that I truly do have. 😛

So,… go check out cleaning your baseboards, kay?  Or not.  Just don’t invite me over, if you haven’t checked them and can guarantee their cleanliness. 😛
Post-a-day 2017