The blog Far Outliers describes itself as “Exploring migrants, exiles, expatriates, and out-of-the-way peoples, places, and times, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region.” Posts on the blog range widely, covering lots of really interesting and, indeed, “far outlying” topics, from a breadfruit revolution in Ghana, and Afghanistan as the “University of Jihad”, to numerous posts on Native American history, Korean history, and Central Asia. There are, of course, numerous posts on Japan as well. I’ve learned so much about interesting different corners of the world from this blog, and you just never know what he’s going to post about next.

In recent weeks, the author of Far Outliers has been typing up and posting sections from notebooks kept by his brother, when the brother was working as a guide at the 1975 Ocean Expo, held in Nago, Okinawa (incidentally, Ocean Expo Park remains a major tourist attraction today, and includes the Churaumi Aquarium, the Oceanic Cultures Museum, an open-air architectural museum of Okinawan architecture, and a small botanical gardens, among other attractions). His posts provide some fun glimpses into the experience of the Expo, and some interesting commentary on Japanese & Okinawan etymologies & linguistics. They include posts on:
*Birds
*Robatayaki
*Taketomi Island + traditional Ryukyuan tattooing
*Sailing and Tattoos
*The Japanese suffix “-buru”, meaning roughly “to pretend [to do/be something]
*shopping for knives

A view of Iejima from Ocean Expo Park. Photo by Travis, 20 Sept 2014.