Out in the country in Sashiki, the buzzes and drones from nocturnal critters was enthralling. So on our last night there, I convinced Jojo to sneak out of the house with me around 1 a.m. We sat in the middle of a dark sugarcane field and recorded some new songs with atmospheric accompaniment.

“International Cutie Pies”

“Moe Meguro”

WTF is a free quarterly zine produced by Rattlesnake Press and the Poetry Unplugged poets from Luna’s Cafe in Sacramento. It features “X-rated” works from local writers and artists.

I hoped mine would be printed in English and Japanese, to give them some kind of context. They only printed translations (I swear, I know how to count syllables), but it’s still an honor to get published.

You can pick up a copy at The Book Collector or order it online here.

Some people have inquired as to how we got such a sweet internship:

Jojo and I participated in a program called Study and Intern in Okinawa, Japan. As far as I can tell, it’s the only internship for English speakers in Okinawa.

Participants should have at least beginner knowledge of Japanese, but there’s no age or higher-education requirement. It’s pretty nonexclusive, except that we each paid $2,500 for the month, not including plane fare and most meals.

We opted for the assistant teaching track, but there are several other options. You can intern at hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops or sports facilities. They’re unpaid, but you get great experience with the language and business.

We also decided against supplementary language classes, but there are intensive Japanese courses available at JSL (Japanese as a Second Language). The classrooms and included dorm rooms are in the same apartment building.

Mike Holland, the man in charge, was our liaison with the schools, our sight-seeing tour guide, and our main source of transportation. He brought us to some fancy parties and showed us some awesome spots off the beaten path.

So that’s that. I’ll be happy to tell you more if you’re interested.

One night on Tonaki Island, we went out to this seawall with Sigrunn, new friends Kinjo and Saya, the pink guitar, the recorder, two bottles of awamori and some panda chocolates. Here was the result:

This song utilizes some traditional elements of Okinawan folk and pop music:
1) Hogen phrases (akisamiyo = oh my god, deji = very)
2) Musical battle cry “iia za za!” (a vocable = lyrics with no lexical meaning)
3) Finger whistling (yubi bue)
4) Lyrics about a drunken creeper (a.k.a. Yamada Denki)
5) Power derived from distilled liquor (and chocolates)

Now to wax poetic.

I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha in 12th grade, and now there’s only one passage I remember (not coincidentally, also the only passage I understood):

But today he only saw one of the river’s secrets, one that gripped his soul. He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this?

This idea echoed through my head after our Tonaki trip, thinking back to the people, the surroundings and that song. It was a culmination of so many wonderful opportunities and happenstances that I knew could never be recreated. How did I end up on an island in the middle of nowhere, that no one has ever heard of? With people I might never see again? Singing a song in a language I don’t know?

It was a perfect night, but it was fleeting.The trip ended, the buzz wore off, the tide changed. That exact moment, on the seawall in the dark getting spooked by underwater phantom lights and wearing a chivalrous boy’s sweatshirt against the strong Pacific winds, now only exists in my head.

So I take comfort in that my one-time bandmates hold that memory too, and that maybe one day something similar can be repeated, and that I remembered to bring the recorder’s windscreen.

A cab driver brought Jojo to tears by teaching him this Okinawan proverb: ichariba chode. Once we meet, we are brothers and sisters. We felt that strongly in Okinawa, being so quickly taken in by friends, and friends of friends of friends.This fraternal philosophy inspired the video.

Our program director, Mike, was in touch with a TV crew from NHK, Japan’s national public broadcaster. The station has been doing a series of documentaries featuring aspects of Okinawan culture in an effort to boost tourism. For this particular piece, they focused on tako raisu = taco rice.

Okinawans invented taco rice in the 1960s so they could serve Americans something remotely familiar. A bed of white rice is topped with ground beef, shredded American cheese, shredded lettuce and tomatoes. It’s pretty gross.

But for this video, we went to a restaurant in Kin Town and acted like Americans getting off a hard day of work on the base, cooling down with some taco rice. We were instructed to give the waiter/chef (in real life a DJ from FM Okinawa) a chorus of thumbs up. For about two hours of prepping and filming, here’s the clip with us:

I can only guess at what they’re saying. I think it’s something like, back in the day, how can they serve tacos in a place where tortillas don’t exist? “It’s rice!” If you can translate, though, please feel free.

While in Okinawa, I got in the habit of always carrying a camera, an audio recorder and a notebook. Even a 10-minute trip to the convenience store usually warranted something worth documenting. I became hyper-aware of unfamiliar surroundings and sensations, wanting to share everything “strange” with people back home.

So, I have hundreds of photos of plants, architecture, artwork and geography. I have dozens of recordings of the monorail, the beach, the bugs, the birds and the music. I have pages of notes of history lessons and song analyses.

But, as much as all those have taught me about Okinawa, it taught me that there are things worth documenting anywhere in the world — including, most importantly, at home. We get so used to our everyday surroundings that we forget they might not be “everyday” to someone else.

So pay attention! Look up and around you when you’re walking instead of down at the ground! Take those earbuds out of your ears! Take your time eating! Slow down and enjoy everything!

This will sound dumb, but it really bothered me that I couldn’t record smells in Okinawa — sweet-smelling dusk air, salt that smelled more like the ocean than the ocean smells like the ocean, peculiarly good-smelling bathrooms. But we have equally fascinating scents at home: railroad tracks, the Rainbo Bread factory by my house, the kettle corn vendor at the Davis Farmers’ Market.

As a full-time observer, I learned so much about the island, but I learned more about how to enjoy day-to-day life. I hope you can take some of that away too.

According to Wikipedia, many others have covered this song, including … wait for it … ANDREW W.K.

I just found another citywide PA recording from Urasoe. I think it was marking the noon or 1 o’clock hour. You’ll get an idea of how serene the city could feel from our tatami mat apartment bedrooms, until the traffic light turned green (“blue”) on the major highway right below.

Tonaki Island

Sashiki

Uruma

Nakagusuku

Hanging on our bathroom wall