If you were to time travel 20 years back to tell me I'd be living in Japan, I would laugh and tell you to stop smoking crack. Japan was never on my radar. But here I am, visiting the country of my birth, and I have been away so long that I am now considered a tourist.
But it's funny, life somehow shows you signs. When I was in UNI, you had to do an elective language course. I came late to the pre-start of the semester as I was away on work holiday in Florida. Spanish, French and Latin, all the sexy languages were gone.
So what's left?
"Chinese, Japanese and ummmmmm....
Hmmmmm. I'll take Japanese.
And that's how I ended up taking a basic course in Japanese in Uni. The teacher was a woman from Yokohama Japan. I couldn't tell you her name or point out her face. She wasn't bad looking or anything. I remember the male students were always happy to see her though. Interestingly the other guys in the class would always tell me:
Dean, yuh nuh see the Japanese teacher like you?
Really? I just don't see it.
Little did I know that the basic course in Japanese was a sign in the road of life.
Life is one big road with a lot of signs
Emancipation Park, we stopped by to kill some time on the AM of August 7th. It made for a good spot to take some "Jamaican" photos before heading to buy some patties, stop by my parents' house and then off to Ocho Rios. I liked that the park was decorated in Jamaican flag colours for Independence and Emancipation holidays. ( Emancipation Day is on August 1st and Independence Day is on August 6th in Jamaica.)
The park is well kept and usually bustling on the the weekends. I can only imagine the festivities that took place the night before( Independence Day ). But on a Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM, the day after independence day, nothing but the beautiful lawn, tropical trees, statues of Jamaican heroes and a few people scattered around the park.
I purposely tried to avoid the holiday crowd especially when it comes to heading out of town. If it were not for the Airbnb owner telling me about an extra fee for checking out on a holiday when I was booking months ago, I would not have remembered it was Independence Day. After realizing that fact, I made sure to check out the day after Independence Day and made my way out of town when the crowd left and were mainly back at work. It was a smart move, the highway was empty.
Well here is another sign. My wife wasn't very happy as you can see in this photo. She was feeling "under the weather" and just came around after recovering from food poisoning a day ago. On top of that travelling with a party of 7 can be stressful and exhausting. I don't think I helped in any way either as I had the kids and her parents to tend to. Her needs actually came last. But in my mind, I thought hey, this is your third time to Jamaica, you know what's up. Thinking back on this now, I should have done better. In all honesty though, she rarely smiles for photos π . Same with me, but I know how to fake it. Something I learnt visiting Florida a few times and seeing how the old white ladies did it π.
One thing when I'm travelling, a lot feels so rushed. A reason for that is Japan has very few vacation days. Taking a two week vacation isn't an ordinary thing here. In many companies, to take two weeks off needs special permission and tubs π of paper work I've heard. And usually, paid holidays per year are up to 20 days and that's if you are lucky. 10 days paid leave is usually the case and sometimes they wanna tell you when you can use it. Japan is great to visit but itβs real different when you live here. But isnβt that everywhere or am I missing something? Itβs all mindset, right?
Until next time,
Stay Blessed, never Stressed
