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.