atarashi hajimari

The phrase atarashi hajimari means new beginning in Japanese. This phrase reminds me of Sakura season as it represents renewal and new beginnings.

My atarashi hajimari began on September 13, 2023. It was on this day that I boarded a plane and said farewell to everyone and everything I knew and loved. Landing in Okinawa was more than a choice. It was the start of finding my ikigai or my reason for being. This fortuitous journey came about because of so much that I experience in the salad days of my youth.

My love of and for travel began when I was a child. My family was fortunate enough to be able to travel frequently. This provided me with enormous opportunities not just to see places and historically significant sites but to also learn about many of the big and small aspects of daily life in each place that make it uniquely different. I have taken what was imparted upon me during my formative years into my adult life. Here in lies many of the wonders and delights I discovered whilst wandering many miles in Japan.

Living in Okinawa, Japan has changed every facet of my life. It has reshaped the way I live my life, relate to others, honor the sanctity of each day, show and share love and how I interact with and participate in new experiences and places (through traveling). For 14 months, I traveled around Japan. My intention is to share what I have learned in hopes of learning more and thereby creating a community of practice. This is one of the first pictures I took upon arriving in Okinawa. It is a view I have continually enveloped for all its simplicity, beauty, and light. 

I was blessed to be able to wake up to this view every day while living in Okinawa. This is a view from my balcony in the Ginowan area of Okinawa. You can see Mihama American Village way off in the distance. On Saturday nights there are fireworks.

A symbol here in Okinawa is the tetrapod. I had no idea what is was before it became part of my daily view. They are made of concrete and use a tetrahedral shape that helps dissipate the force of incoming waves. Water flows around rather than against them. You can read more about them here. I bought a tetrapod as a souvenior. It was a simple object within my daily landscape that I never grew tired of looking at. I will miss it tremendously.