"Damn you for going to Okinawa!"

So the morning i left Osaka for the airport the guy who worked at my guesthouse remarked that it was getting colder in Osaka and recalled I was heading to Okinawa and actually said, "Damn you for going to Okinawa." i thought this was funny, hearing him curse about the warmer weather i would be enjoying. and i am, thank you very much for those pleasant words of sending.

So i have retaken up my reading of Eat Pray Love since i got here. I will say it was the blessing I expected to have lost the book on my way to Kyoto because I read instead "Kokoro," a Japanese novel by  Natsume Sōseki that was first published in 1914, as I just found out, thank you very much Wikipedia, in serial form in the Japanese newspaper, which would be a neat way of reading it. The book doesn't have chapters and is divided into 3 parts so I had to abandon the traditional way of putting down the book after reading a few chapters. Eat Pray Love is like this really, even if each part is divided into 36 stories, they certianly aren't chapters or neccesarily stopping points. SOOOO anyway, the title of the novel can be translated to mean "The heart of things." Kokoro was a really enjoyable read (even if it was about lonliness, solitude, and suicide) and it was very satisfying to read a Japanese novel while travelling in Japan, i really loved it and also without planning it this way i finished the final pages while landing right on the ground in Okinawa.

So. Having been gone from my blog for a week, with no updates except finally using Google Language Tools to more accurately write my blog title in Japanese, I decided I needed to get back to writing.

I think I am also glad that I took a break from Eat Pray Love one) so i could go about my own adventure without comparing mine to hers constantly and two) so i can enjoy the book now, which i am.

I finished the section on Italy and I am now on to India. While i am aware that her transition from Italy to India was obviously a gazillion times more intense, I have found the shift quite abrubt as well. I went from my own "Italy" (Kyoto) where I could revel in my own desire to enjoy life in the present, give into to pleasure and little indulgences to "India" (the base on Okinawa), where I suddenly feel challenged to, well, be disciplined, create my own habits and rituals that will bring me closer to God, and really put them into practice right now! Which brings me back to thinking about what I will do next in my life that is meaninful and then I am like whoa whoa whoa, "YOU are still in Italy, maybe we don't have to worry about India quuuuiiitee yet." This took the pressure off a little because its true. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, revelled in travel and life in Rome and the indulgence of eating and eating and eating and enjoying life in the present for 3 whole months before she committed to staying in an Ashram. So I will continue to enjoy the aspirations this part of the book is bringing back to me but I will also keep in mind I am still on my trip to "Italy."

And i am certianly having no trouble indulging myself. It is like a dream. literally a dream to puruse lonely planet, find a place i want to go and then start planning the trip. its the best feeling in the world.

i have been trying to figure out what my little Eat Pray Love quest is all about and maybe its this, trying to figure out the balance between this viral travel bug i have inside me (you see it lays dormant sometimes, but when it comes on, it comes on strong) and the beliefs i am most convicted about, the way i dream and desire and believe i should and will live my life (which have a lot more to do with service, sacrfice, and love of others than well.... indulging onself...) so maybe that is my journey and I am still on the first part.

okay off to my first Ikebana class...