i still wake up several times in the night. i think only my mom and i are sleeping upstairs. the bathroom is open because clothes are hanging in the doorway. both of us get up at various times in the night and use the bathroom with the door open. it's weird..

i guess i have a morning ritual. i get up and shower, greet the dogs as i comb my hair outside. for breakfast i ate the soymilk based bread and had raw cucumbers and carrots with ponzu sauce.

we visited my grandmother today, "obaachan". she lives in a home for old folks who require a lot of care. she's in a wheelchair and no longer speaks. she doesn't seem to recognize people she doesn't see often. japanese call this "boke", i'm not sure of the proper english word for this. it was really a touching scene when my obaachan said something. well, it was more of a grunt. she's hard of hearing as well so my uncle kept saying the same things loudly to her. for almost every question and thing he says to her, if she responds at all she shakes her head "yes". it's hard to say if she's really understanding because she doesn't shake her head "no". my uncle kept saying to her who we were and if she remembers us. eventually regarding my mother she shook her head "yes" and finally she grunted. to hear her voice, even if it wasn't words moved me so much because with that simple grunt, the timbre of her voice triggered aural memories. i could recall her voice when she was happy, angry, even laughing. it brought tears to my eyes.

it was lunch time and normally she sits at a table with others and the workers feed them. she's a piggy and it seems her only pleasure in life now is meal times. she eats a lot and quickly. she even tries to eat the food of others, which is a problem. we wheeled her to a table just for ourselves and fed her. mostly yoshie fed her. my mother fed her a few things. it was amazing to see how quickly she consumes food. if you put it in a bowl, she'll eat it in one gulp and make a mess. amazingly, she can still use chopsticks quite well. she hardly made a mess when she used chopsticks. you have to only give her a little at a time or she might eat too much and choke. also, she no longer has teeth and you can't trust her with dentures so her food was very soft. yoshie mashed up the larger pieces of food. my mom brought with her some of the food omiyake from osaka airport. it was a soft cream cheese bread sort of dessert. my mom fed obaachan little pieces. it seems like she hasn't had anything sweet in a long time. she liked it a lot and my mom felt sorry for her so she fed her 3 of those breads in total. i think everyone else, except me of course, ate only 1 or 2 at most.

the place she lives in now seems to be a very nice place. she was on the waiting list for 5 years. that's how good the quality is. she just moved there this year. there's a small hospital across the street that they can take her to. for larger problems, they call the family and the family must take her to the big hospital.

does she remember you or does she have to pee?

after eating, obaachan kept holding onto my mom's hand and arm. it also seemed like she was trying to stand up. it was very touching until later we realized that when she does that it means she has to use the bathroom! we wheeled her back to her room and my mom and uncle tried to put her in the bed. it looked like she had wet herself a little so they called one of the workers. they said that after they eat, they take them to the bathroom and the old folks hold the workers hands. the workers took her to the bathroom. obaachan was able to stand up a bit to get in the wheelchair. it seems they've been training her to do this as she used to be too weak to be on her feet at all. in her room she has pictures of 3 of her children and a paper she had written on. the workers make the old folks write their name and ask them about the relatives in the photos so they don't forget.

after our visit, it was time for us to eat lunch. we went to mos burger. in the parking lot, a homeless man passed by. he had a shopping cart full of his belongings and a pet dog. seems the homeless have a uniform dress. i hated mos burger when i lived in japanese just because of the name. it sounds like "moss", which isn't very appetizing in english! it's basically mcdonald's but nicer. perhaps the quality is like wendy's? i had minestrone soup and a green salad, large, with oolong tea and water. the portions are small. japanese portions are small when you live in america, where the portions are mammoth.

then we went to a pet store which was close by because they needed to buy dog food. then we got gasoline and went home to drop off yoshie and erika. gas stations are different in japan because they are full service so if you've never worked at the gas station then you don't know how to pump your own gas. also, in order to save space, the gas hoses hang from the ceiling.

japanese gas stand

k1 took us to where he used to live a long time ago so that we could see the store called sun sea in chibana. heliosphan apparently lived in chibana at the same time, behind sun sea no less, so i went to take pictures to jog her memory. boy, has sun sea changed. it used to be all painted green on the outside but not anymore. there parking lot is no more as well. it's now in the back and has 2 levels. it used to be flat, 1 level in the front. we walked around the neighborhood a bit to see k1's old house. i really don't remember the outside! then we went inside sun sea. i don't remember the inside either! it was so big as a kid and so small as an adult.

this one's for you heliosphan! does this area look familiar?

graffiti strikes okinawan suburbs

on the drive back i asked if we could stop to view kadena air base at a spot called anpo, which is where a lot of people stop to view the base and various air craft that take off. i took video footage and felt like i was back making a follow-up to my okinawa documentary.

it's really windy by the base and so noisy

i think this one says it all

on the way back home, we heard something on the radio about a military helicopter that fell. back at the house, we were able to watch the news and learn more about it but because it had fallen only 3 hours ago at around 2pm, there was very little that was known about it. it crashed into my mom's old college. luckily, by the footage it seems that it didn't actually crash into a building, but rather side-swiped it. the side of the building has huge burnt black marks. part of the edge of the roof was also trimmed. it's summer so class isn't in session, otherwise it could have been a very bad accident. it seems like no one was killed. very fortunate but still not good for the image of the military presence here.

i checked email after helping k1 to figure out his computer obake (ghost). he said that when he connects to the internet, after a few minutes a window pops up and he doesn't understand what is written because it is all in english. he understands a few words if it is written because all japanese must study english but he studied more than others. he said he always clicks on "continue what i was doing" or something like that and the window goes away. well, we were on the internet for about 10 minutes and nothing happened so he started to call it "obake" that only comes out for him.

everyone had shakey's delivery for dinner but i had okra boiled, which i dipped in ponzu sauce. also had a green pepper/bean sprout/onion stir fry. then my aunt keiko's son johnny visited. he's in the air force and stationed in okinawa. he said he's stationed for 4 more years. he divorced his wife in the past year and since he doesn't speak english and my family hardly knows english, he hasn't visited since the divorce because his wife would do all the talking. she was korean but knew japanese too. it turns out he now lives very close to my uncle. maybe 5 minutes away. i think they will expect him to visit often now but that hardly seems likely with the language barrier. yoshie speaks english better than i remembered. jun's father was american but that was a long time ago and i don't know if they ever married or what's the deal.

after awhile, jun's family came, so it was a real sight to see so many people together. his wife erika bought healthy non-allergenic bread for me--it is made without eggs or milk. she's been macrobiotic for 3 years, ever since she learned her son has a lot of allergies to eggs and such. her parents would flip out if they learned she doesn't eat meat anymore so at their house she does eat fish.

japanese soy foods: allergen-free bread, soymilk-based bread, unsweetened soy milk

late at night we were going through our luggage and my mom realized she had brought a pair of scissors and they were not confiscated. her scissors were much larger than mine. i think the reason why mine were taken away was because they were part of carry-on luggage, whereas her scissors were part of check-in baggage.