Regarding Photos

Due to technical difficulties, photos will be added later.

Awesomely Named Activities

Hand-Rolled Sushi Event

Last night, we went to Kotomi’s dad’s sushi bar and we all got to make our own sushi. It was pretty fun. They gave each table a big platter of fixings and told us to have at it. Afterwards we played bingo for food prizes. It was pretty fun.

Watermelon Agriculture Experience

This morning we were supposed to wake up at 5:20 to go to our planed activity, but the alarm clock broke so we woke up (sorta) at 5:30 when our stop-gap (Megan’s watch) went off. We were late, but we weren’t the latest. We walked down to a watermelon growing area (they were growing in big greenhouse-like enclosures) to have our “experience”. We got to eat fresh watermelon, then we each carried 6 watermelon back to a truck. We got home by 7:30 which is earlier than we’ve been getting up lately…Even so, the watermelon was pretty good. (almost worth the early rise).

Nakijin Festival

Well, we went to the festival for the village that we live in. It was awesome. There was little kid sumo, tug-of-war between elementary kids, and of course the classic games and fried food on a stick.

Adventures with Gabe Part Deux

A lot of the younger Imajin boys (and some of the older ones) did this dance to rather catchy music while wearing slightly bizarre outfits and face-paint. Because of his injury, Gabe can’t perform with us, but someone took pity on him and decided that he should join us for the finale, dressed as the boys in the afore mentioned song.

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of the finished product, but we do have a picture of the finished face-paint (as started by Nick and much improved upon my Megan and myself.) We think it was really awesome.

After, when he tried to wipe it off, it turned purple. Which was super awesome. (raw, in Gabe’s words)

Performance

The performance was really good. Imajin was, as always, really good; The traditional dancers were beautiful; ASUKA, a NON-traditional dance groups was really good; We were better than usual, which is always a happy thought. We have video, which hopefully you all will get to see.

Greatest Thing Ever

Right after our show was over, they lit up the laser show which lead into the bestest fireworks show ever. It was like the Japanese version of rhythm n’ booms.

A Familiar Face

Some of you may remember Jin Yakabi, a teacher from Okinawa who taught in Wisconsin for a semester 3 years ago and performed with us. Well, it turns out that he was in Nakajin for the festival, because he recognized us and found Nick to say hi. So, Hi everybody.

Out and About

Okinawa Prefecture International Exchange Section Guide Inspection

Seven words…21 syllables…and kind of scary sounding. They didn’t line us up and make sure our clothes were clean and ironed or anything. This was the activity listed in our schedule for July 31 (thurs). It turned out that we went to the Okinawa Peace Memorial, then to Shurji castle.

The Peace Memorial had a museum about the fighting in Okinawa during WWII which was so horrific that it drove the people of the island to devote themselves to peace. We had headsets with keypads into which we could punch the numbers found on particular displays to hear information in English, but there was tons more that was in Japanese. It was probably for the best though, because we were pressed for time as it was.

Outside of the museum was the memorial itself which had big blocks of some sort of stone (granite?) with the names of everyone killed on the island – US and Japanese armies and Okinawan Civilians. Each has a section.

After that we went to a castle, the main one of the Ryukyu kingdom. It was pretty cool, a mixture of Chinese and Japanese architecture. The buildings and the interiors were really pretty. Afterwards we all got ice cream and shaved ice.

Adventures In Naha

On Saturday, we headed out to Naha for a performance. We got there early so we could wander down a big shopping street and have dinner. We had donuts and ice cream (again). Then we went to Mac’s because the Imajin kids we were with won the vote. (I think the other group of people went to a restaurant for soba noodles)

Afterwards, we had a performance which went pretty well. We should have pretty good pictures and video. An old lady saw Carole and the video camera and dragged her to a good spot right before we went on. An Imajin member gave Gabe a jacket so that he was “official”. Some festival staff person saw his jacket and told him to go to the front. (when asked how we was supposed to do that, the response was “push them aside”)

After us, the main Matsuri Daiko group performed. For everyone not aware, this is the parent group of Imajin, and we are a US chapter of Matsuri Daiko. The man who sings Mirukumunari (the bowing song…) was there and sang while they played. Afterwards, we and Imajin had our picture taken with him. We did several creative things to see over the crowd: Nick climbed a tree (a classic approach), a bunch of us croweded around back stage to peek, eventually Genta and I stood in the back of the crowd and watched the screen of my video camera which I held above everyone’s head (not original, but whatever works). Eventually, Michiyo put us on the stage area at the very back. Durring the last dance, they dragged us up to dance around (and some other audience members too.)

All that was left then was to pack back up, and begin our two hour trip back to Nakajin.

Oh The Places You’ll Go (Hannah Continues to Ramble)

Shopping With Mom

Right after we finished our last post, Mom-san picked us up and took us to the grocery store because she had stuff she needed to get. While she was shopping, we bounced around laughing at engrish and getting snacks. We found fish heads. And Thomas the Tank Engine poky sticks. (We got neither)

Government Officials

The day before yesterday, we were taken to meet the Mayor of Nakajin and then the head of Education. I noticed a stack of snoopy books on the shelves in the office of Education. As Gabe said: “Best. Government. Ever.” (Neither of us wishes to imply that the presence of snoopy makes a government.)

We had pictures with them, but no one in our house seems to have one. We will try to get one added later (no promises…)

Nakajin Castle

After visiting the government, we headed off to the ruins of Nakajin Castle, one of three castles on the island.

Our tour guide was really cool, and spoke pretty good English as well.

More Spiders

After the Castle, we went to Kouri island, which is visible from the beach that we went to last week. We found an even bigger spider than last time. We watched it eat a bug that was bigger than the spiders we have in Wisconsin. It pounced while Megan had her hand next to it. There is still argument as to whether or not Gabe screamed like a girl (he did)

SHOPPING!!!

Last night, Nick arrived. Everyone piled into the bus and we went to Mihama (read: the dells of Okinawa) While Michiyo and several Imajin students went to pick up Nick. Most people ditched the American part pretty quickly in favor of this huge mall were the stores didn’t really have walls (it was sort of like a department store). Most people got manga, and several people got engrish shirts. The kids and Megan went to the arcade which sounded like a lot of fun.

The drive back took half an hour less time than the drive there (maybe the driver, Mr.Miyagi, was speeding?) There was some singing, including a bus-wide rendition of What a Wonderful World, and the wheels on the bus (each member now has a verse).

Engrish four You

Today, we went to lunch and found the following on the register.

Cow erasers

The cow erasers that were given as gifts were a big hit in our host family (me, Megan, Hannah, and Carole's). We stacked them up and even attempted to play Jenga with it. But we obviously failed.

Hannah's ramblings

Sorry that we haven’t updated until now, it turns out that internet is not as close at hand as we originally thought it was, and our house is pretty removed from the rest of the group. Here’s what has been written the last few days.

Narita Shenanigans

Because we had to go through customs in Narita, we had to go through baggage claim. Baggage claim is, well, baggage claim, so I won’t describe it. The only important part of the mini experience is that one of Lynn’s two bags wasn’t on the conveyer belt. Someone got an airport employee who confirmed that it hadn’t made it to Tokyo and asked for a forwarding address. Ever helpful, Megan handed over her customs forms which had the address of our Okinawan contact, Michiyo. When it became clear that the guy wasn’t going to return anytime soon, the decision was made to send most of the group on ahead. Carole was to stay behind with Lynn. Megan, by virtue of her customs forms being in the possession of the absent airport guy, was forced to remain behind as well.

Customs was really easy. The 9 of us got in line and handed in our cards declaring our summer sausage and beef jerky (yes, “meat products” is on the list of restricted items, and must be declared.) and the customs personnel waved almost all of us through. Gabe, however, had been held back and sent somewhere. Not really sure how much time we had left (no one really thought to look at a ticket and then at a clock) and definitely not sure how long it would take to find our gate, we chose to leave Peggy and Txong behind with instructions to show Gabe where to go, and hopefully meet up and confer with Carole.

The instructions which we had left with Peggy and Txong lead the remaining 6 of us to the international part of the airport which was not where we wanted to be. Our next three tries didn’t work either. Eventually we stopped an asked for directions. (It turned out to be about 50 feet away from where customs spit us out, in the opposite direction from what we had been trying.)

It turned out that Carole had Pax and Emily’s tickets so they couldn’t get boarding passes. We also found out that the original three left behind were already through security and had been missed by the two lookouts. We left Emily and Pax with promises to return with their tickets and headed up to security. Our group which had started at 12 was now down to 4.

From there things went rather smoothly. Emily’s ticket was delivered to her. It turned out that there had been a mix-up with Pax’s tickets, but several calls by the ANA people put that to rights (we came to find out that the same thing had happened to Megan as well) and we found Gabe on the other side of the metal detectors, no worse for the wear but rather put out that everyone else had been waved through with the same declaration. (His sausage was taken away after he was sent to animal quarantine)

Everyone got through with over an hour to spare. Several members bought water which turned to be one of those “electrolyte enhanced” beverages called “pacuri sweat” which was actually rather tasty, contrary to what its name might suggest. A cheating-filled game of UNO involving most of our members was started. I have no idea who won.

Upon our arrival in Okinawa, we found several members of Imajin waiting for us with a big welcome sign.

Adventures with Gabe Part I

So, Gabe went on a walk and found this little guy, or I should say big guy just down the street from where Carole, Peggy, Megan and I are staying. The pictures don’t really show it, but its web is 3 dimensional, with a dome in the back. The spider is about 5 in long.

This Just In

Our host Dad, Hiro, just told us that we’re supposed to have a typhoon on Sunday. For those of you aren’t aware, that’s what they call hurricanes in the eastern hemisphere. It isn’t going to be a big one and its kind of a normal occurrence, so don’t worry guys!

But... it turns out that it missed us! We did, however, have wind and stronger rain than normal which we think is a result of said typhoon.

Adventures with a Group

Yesterday, Keisuke took our house plus Gabe on a walk and told us about flowers and showed us an ostrich farm.