Ice Cream Colored Cars

Before we moved out here, a friend suggested that I write down everything that seems surprising at the beginning. “Pretty soon, all of those things will feel normal and you will forget that they ever seemed foreign,” she advised me. As usual, she was right. The car colors in Okinawa have already started feeling somewhat normal- and it sure didn’t start out that way!

Yesterday while driving, I looked over at Dane and said, “People don’t drive orange cars like that in the States, right?” We’ve been here for a little less than a month, but already I’m having trouble remembering if something seems normal to me because I am getting used to it here, or if it seems normal because I’ve seen it at home.

That experience inspired this post, because I never want to forget that these ice-cream colored cars were not normal to me several weeks ago. In fact, it was not so much the shapes (although that has taken some getting used to as well) but the car colors in Okinawa that I found most shocking when we bought cars here.

I think the best way for me to describe the color choices in Japan is by using “flavors” rather than “shades”. In fact, I imagine you would have better luck asking for a mint or bubblegum colored car if you asked around than you would looking for something in dark green. So rather than wait three years until “Easter eggy” cars seem normal to me, I thought I should snap a couple of pictures now. And suggest that today, we all be the strawberry ice cream colored car among a sea of silver. (What, too much? Okay, just look at the pretty colors.)