God this island is small.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. I’ve recently joined in practicing volleyball with a group of mothers and grandmothers, (and one other jet), who can kick my butt five ways to Sunday (the mothers/grandmothers, not the other jet).

Seriously.

Most of them played in highschool or college, and continue to play to stay in shape. They are hard, lean, fast, and very competitive. They’re just as liking to spike a ball (hard) on one’s head as they are to pull out pictures of their children and grandchildren, to either agree at how cute they are, or tsk over the fact they aren’t married yet. (27 and still not married?? The horror. THE HORROR!) But anyway this last Tuesday there as a game (one that me and the other jet were invited to *watch* not to play haha). Usually practice starts at 745-8, and one of the women picks me up at 720. But I wasn’t sure if this would hold true or not considering it was a game. Luckily the woman called me on my cell, unluckily I was shopping and couldn’t hear her very well. I picked up “20 minutes”, so I thought she meant “20 minutes from now), and it was currently 6 oclock. I confirmed by asking “in 20 minutes?” and she said yes. (all of this is in Japanese by the by), so I rushed back home, ate a quick dinner and was out there by 620.

….20 minutes later I was still out there, and figuring I had gotton the time wrong, when the woman showed up, just as I was about to go back to my apartment and wait until 620. I was surprised to see her, especially when, getting out of the car, she asked why it was I was out there when she said she’d come at 720. I explained I misheard, and then asked her why she was out *here* if she hadn’t been expecting me until 720.

She stated simply that a woman who worked at the hospital had saw me standing outside. Somehow she not only knew who I was (not surprising) but she also knew I was waiting for volleyball (surprising) and that this other woman was supposed to pick me up (very surprising) had *called* the other woman, and informed her I was waiting too early, and that she needed to come and get me.

Why I wasn’t just called again on my cell phone I’ll never know, but there that’s not the point of the story.

The point is that everyone knows my business, and presumably the business of the other jets, an dnot just my business, my business that *I* don’t even really know haha. And these are people whom I obviously don’t know, or at least don’t know very well, because I don’t remember seeing someone familier walking by.

This island is *small*.

And I was surprised, not to mention a little taken a back, at how small it really is, and how much everyone, and I mean *everyone* knows you, from this instance, but in general it doesn’t really bother me. And I think its because I’m kinda used to living in “small” places.

And now comes my comparison between living on a military base, and living on this island. Of course there are a lot of major differences, but there are some general simularities too. For example, on a military base, a lot of places are accessible by walking or biking, rather than a car. It might be a 20 minute or so walk from the home, but that’s really not bad. It’s the same with here. I can get to basically every store I need to by walking, or, in a couple extreme cases, by biking. I can’t explore the whole island by bike, but I can get to everyplace I *need* to.

But also, there’s a sense of…sorta security about both places. With a military base that’s obvious, because its, well, the military. What could be safer? And its this sense of security which has many a parent letting their children loose to wonder about the base unsupervised when they are way to young for that.

Tis the same thing with the children here, as I’ve mentioned before. Because parents think the *people* are safe, they seem to fail tot hitnk about such other dangers as traffic, or falling off of something high, wild life, etc. And they don’t think about how just becase you might know someone, or know someone who knows someone, or whatever, that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone out there isn’t still a bad person who could hurt a kid.

But be that as it may, that’s the general feeling of the area, that its safe, for children to wander around unsupervised (even those so young as 1st graders in elementary school), and for women to wander around alone at night (thought I still don’t do that, just in case. It only takes once).

Another simulartiy comes a little less from living on a military base in general, an dmore from being the daughter of an officer. On bases overseas especially, many military members and their familys will know who the officers are, and from that extent who the officers children are. Rather than racisim on bases, there’s a lot of…”Rankcism?” well that’s not really the right word, but people are very rank conscious, and this spills over to the children as well as the adults. The higher one’s parent’s rank is, the more likely people will know who their children are. Even if they don’t know *you* they’ll know *of* you, and quite possibily what you look like. And from there on bases, officer family or not, you are _always_ running into someone you know, or kind know, from that one thing or another.

It’s the same here, though its because 1. I’m foregn and 2. I’m a teacher of 7 differen schools. There are a total of 5 foreigners on this isaldn, all of us jets, all of us teachers, and most of us live in the area we teach. Thus its not hard for the people on the island to see a foreigner, (Especially now a foreign woman, since we’re all female too), and make a guess that we’re one of the English teachers. From there I teach *every* kid who lives in my district. *Every* kid. Which from there means I’m connected to each of those kids’ parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, etc. Even if they’ve never seen me before, they can probably reconigize me from the children’s descriptions (darker skin, tall, huge fluffy curly hair. BAM that’s all that’s needed. Really the hair is all that’s needed lol), which means people I’ve nevr seen before will revvongize me when I’m at the grocery store, walking down the street, etc. It also means that people I’ve met maybe once or twice randomly will always know who I am, cause I might well be the only person like me they’ve ever met, looking _radically_ different from everyone else. Whereas for me, everyone here is obviously Japanese, and I have a much harder time distinguishing faces that I’ve only met once or twice from the random other faces I see pasing me by on the way to wrok, to the store, etc.

And despite the fact that I’ve been ehre for 6 months now, it means that, whenever I’m out, there is alsmot _always_ *someone* staring at me. Normally it’s the “holy shit a foreigner!” stare which is a mixture of interest, curiotsty, puzzlement, and maybe some fascinated horror (haha). Very few times is it the cold stare of disgust or hatred, and that’s only been a couple of times, and always by old men, and whom its easier to understand that, given the culture they grew up in. I don’t get it hardly at all from older women, tho. Sometimes I’ve thought maybe I was, but when I say goodmorning ot them n Japanese they almost always smile and their faces soften considerably. I don’t think they know (or realize) that it looks like their glaring sometimes haha, nor do I think they’re specifically glaring at me, I think they might just always look that way >.>;

Anyway, the last major similarity is how it feels to get *off* the island or off the base. Especially when over seas, getting off the base can be a mixture of kinda scaryness, and relief. On the one hadn when you leave the base you leave the familier, the comfort an dsecurity that comes with that “small town” esq feel, and familier more American surroundings. On the other hand getting off base can be an excivting adventure, not to mention a relief being somewhere where everyone doesn’t kinda know you/you seeing and doing the same thing every day. Basically, here or on a base, if you do something as small as trip and fall falt on your face, or as large as commiting a cultural blunder, if your on base or on the island, *someone* who at least *kinda* knows you will see, and it’ll be all over the area by lunch time. Like my volleyball incident lol. But at least if your off the island or off base, you don’t have to worry about it. Yes you still have to be careful cause you’re in another culture and you wanna be respectiful and mindful of that, but if you do blunder up, at least the whole world (as it seems) won’t know about it.

And those are my thoughts on the subject. Of course there are a lot of differences too. One major one is that on a base I was never asked for my autograph lol. Whereas here with my elementary students, its like I’m Angelina Jolie or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if my signature was going for millions of yen off of Japanese ebay or something!

They are absolutely fascinated by my signature, and its because in Japan tehre’s nothing like it. You know the cursive scrawl of a signature Americans have? There’s none of that here in japan. First of all, names are written in kanji, the Chinese characters, and there’s no like “cursive” equivalent. Secondly, they don’t use signitures for like signing papers or whatever, they have a stamp with their name written in kanji on it, that they stamp on documents or whatever. So signitures or “signs” are unheard of. I began to sign bingo cards whenever we play bingo in class and a kid wins, and suddenly EVERYONE wants a signature. It gets to the point where at the end of the day as I start to walk home, I’m swarmed by elementary students, pressing pens and paper into my hands, begging for me to sign it.

Dude, here, I bet I’m *bigger* than Angelina Jolie. What now!