Okinawa - On to the female dog

Shisa, the Second 🐶🦁

Today I'm changing accommodations. One of the apartments I won't miss. I'm moving on, the backpack has become heavier and fuller. Or maybe I'm just not used to it anymore. No, at the airport I will be reminded of the extra kilos in a few days. But before I can move into the next accommodation, I still have time to kill. What better way to do so than to paint another Shisa?

Shisas are now a pair of animals. Yin and Yang, entrance and exit, male and female. It takes both.

And adopting just one of my favorite animals would be animal cruelty towards Hideyoshi. Yes, my male Shisa has been named. 'Hideyoshi' is a good boy name and stands for 'excellent, virtuous, good, respectable'. And from today onwards, 'Tamiko' - 'child of many beauties' will accompany him. 😀

At some point, I will arrive at the new accommodation. It is nice to look at and more pleasant than the last one. The last one had something of the end of my last relationship: you live together, have to go through the shared space, both are somehow friendly to each other but there is something in the air that makes it better to stay out of each other's way. Only suitable for sleeping.

I am probably reaching a phase again that has had enough of the journey. Maybe not necessarily of the journey, but of... It's hard to describe... Could it be a little homesickness? Currently, I just want to be by myself when it comes to my accommodation. No shared space, no dealing with people. Check-in and check-out. Nothing more. I know that this will be over in a few days, but still.

My gut needs simple questions that can be answered with 'yes' and 'no'. I turn the question about the accommodation into such a question. I cancel my accommodation with my Japanese patron and move into a studio apartment in the city.

I can observe myself as familiar strategies for appeasement arise. 'Hey, why not get some chips or something sweet!', the gremlin rattles at my inner door. And that, even though I know that I don't feel like it at all. Sports, fresh air, and water are the first-aid strategies to counteract this.

German reading pleasure 📖

While browsing in my new accommodation, I came across a book. In my room, there are around 50 books, with more than 40 of them in Japanese, and exactly one in German. I'm a bit curious, so I flip through it. And I am surprised. The title already intrigued me. 'The true face of God'.

What harm can it do to browse through it? I probably have more daring things to say than to my eyes. Well, I skim most of it and leave it mostly unnoticed. Theories about aliens and religion. It could be right, it could be wrong. 'You can't prove the nonexistence of Pumuckl.', it is said. I don't like the prophetic part about it. But surprisingly, the philosophical part grabs me, even though I don't read it completely.

If you feel like doing something, first check whether it harms anyone, then do it without caring what others think about it.

Yup, I agree with that. Currently more and better than ever.

Each of our organs was created by our fathers, the Elohim, so that we can use it without the slightest shame, so that we are happy to use what was made for use. And if the circumstances require the use of one of these organs and it brings joy, it is because our creators wanted us to experience joy in using it.

I see, prophets love complicated sentences. But the message is true.

Every human being is a garden that must not lie fallow. A life without joys is a fallow garden. Sensory pleasure is the fertilizer that causes the mind to open. Asceticism is unnecessary unless it is a temporary exercise for the purpose of training the mind to control the body. But once you have passed the test that you have set yourself and it should always be limited in time, you should enjoy the pleasures of life again. [...]

Wow, sounds a lot like my kind of religion. :D

A sensual being has much more chances of being in harmony with infinity because it feels it without having to meditate or think about it. Meditation and thinking will enable this being to better understand this harmony and to radiate it around itself by teaching it.

All right, where do I need to sign up?

Engrish, Do you speak it?

I know that the Japanese are not the best when it comes to English. It happens when it is not mandatory in school.
But in Okinawa, this goes to another level. Due to the permanent US presence, the Okinawans are trying to integrate English. I've long since gotten used to the fact that many things are labeled in English like 'take out' or the name of the restaurant, but the dishes are not additionally written in English.
But I see here more one-to-one translations or no checking of the result. On a T-shirt it said:

Choosing who you wear today
is choosing how you live today.

I can't get the image out of my head of someone putting on another person's face.
However, here on the island, there is a special discipline: Write it the way you understand it.
I have come across more than enough 'Close' instead of 'Closed' here. But I was not aware that there is a third variant.