13. Springtime!!!
The school year is sorta winding down. At Kubasaki High the rainy season is in full swing. One has not lived unless one has made the trek from the 200 Building across the field to pass by the 100 building on the left and the auditorium and the cafeteria on the right, across the teachers parking lot (4 rows of cars), down the little (often muddy and slick) hill to the quonset huts a.k.a the 600s in the pouring monsoonal rains day after day after day.
Us smoking area folks never used umbrellas, they were not “cool”. So you could always tell when one of us entered the classroom cuz we were always drenched head to toe. My homeroom was in the 600s area. From there, I would walk to the 200s for a class, then at some point back to the 600s. I wasn’t expecting the monsoons, as I wasn’t on island long enough to know what would come, so my schedule wasn’t worked out with this in mind (at the time I wish it had been).
The rain during the monsoon season was relentless. It rained, and rained, and rained, and rained, then just as it started to clear, it rained some more. The rainy season seemed to last forever. All hours of the day and the night (I miss it today). We learned to get around during the rainy season using umbrellas, because we did actually go out to the entertainment venues of Naha, Koza, the skating rink, and to the seawall even during this time. It was an awesome experience to sit in the cave and watch the rain fall outside and listen to the ocean ebb and flow. All this rain didn’t phase the Okinawans in the least. They still went about their daily lives as if the sun were out.
The one thing I remember most about the rainy season was whenever you went into a store there was a little umbrella stand right inside the door. Once you reached the awning over the door you would shake the water off your umbrella, walk into the store and simply drop your umbrella into the stand. No locks, but, your umbrella was always there when you got ready to leave (Try that in this country – the US). I never lost an umbrella in an umbrella stand in the 5 rainy seasons that I endured on island.
The rainy season brought the color out in the trees and on the ground. The hibiscus would begin to bloom, the palm bushes and trees would flower new bright green leaves. We had both right in the front yard and the springtime colors were amazing. The rainy season must have been smaller than in other years, because water rationing would get started during this year about midway through the summer. Let me tell you, water rationing is not a joke on Okinawa!