I've been lazy since my first couple blogs. My sister Zahra gave me a good blogging pointer about just making short ones more often. That sounds like a good idea. So this one will be short but still interesing I would like to think.

Most Okinawans are extremely polite and friendly towards Americans. They have a good reason not to like us with the three Marines that raped an underage girl back in 96 and a recent assault, this year, on a 9 year old by an Airmen. My experience has been good for the most part. Of cousre I've only been here since May this year. In early November I had a fender bender with an Okinawan guy probably only in high school. It was completely my fault...I rolled into the back of his car at a stop light. The sad thing was I was falling asleep and had one of those long blinks and next thing I hear is my fender bumping the back of his car. It had been a long day. Luckily I was hardly moving but my car is a V8 4 door Toyota compared to his tiny hatchback wagon. The awkward part was waiting for the police to show up. The Okinawan police come and take a statement and so do the military police for any car accident involving US military. We waited a only a few minutes for the local police but it took the military police an hour and a half because of three other accidents. The extent of my Japanese is stuff like "Hi my name is Anthony." or "Good evening" all completely inappropriate for the situation. So we just stood there not saying anything until the cops showed up....for almost two hours!!



The damage doesn't look too bad and my car didn't have a scratch on it. It's been almost a month and I think my insurance company took care of it but I can't read the statement they sent in the mail. Slowly but surely I'm learning Japanese.