Halloween, Part III - Trunk or Treat

Our final Halloween event was the Trunk or Treat held on Camp Foster. This event allows the Japanese locals to come onto the base to trick or treat. Instead of having all those people go into the apartment buildings or duplexes, the Americans dress up their trunks and give candy away from there. I found out that 4,000 Japanese and Americans attended the event. We went through over 30 bags of candy in 2 hours! It was insane. And of course, there were prizes for the best trunks, but (again) we didn't win any. Still, it was really fun and like the other events, we are already planning again for next year. I think I'm going to have to start saving my money for candy now.

Our theme (that we gave ourselves) was Haunted Under-the-Sea. We decorated Megan's black Nissan March as a freaky ocean creature with big teeth. The top of the car had a torn pirate flag, and the ground was covered in fake blood and gooey worms. We also had a freaky skeleton hand come out as people went to grab candy out of the treasure box, located within the creature's mouth (where the skull is sitting). The final touches were a pot of dry ice under the car to make it smokey and the Jaws theme song playing in the background. Our costumes were so crazy: on the left is Joe, as a seaweed creature, Noa is a shark-attacked diver, Meghan is an evil octopus (sorry, I didn't get a good photo of the legs), and I'm a scary pirate. Ahoy! Argh!

Halloween, Part II - Murder Mystery

Have you ever heard of a murder mystery dinner? It's a game in which you are assigned a character role to play. The game is played around a theme and a recent murder (fictional). The players have to figure out who commited the murder from the characters involved in the game. While playing, food is served and people are supposed to mingle as their specific character trying to get information and clues.

So, I've always wanted to play one of these and the Saturday before Halloween, I finally got my chance. Noa, Joe, Meg and I signed up for our first murder mystery. It had a bizarre theme: the Immortals Halloween Ball. Basically, our characters were considered immortal and lived in a parrallel existance with mortals. The immortals are all part of different families or clans. I was a Mage, which was made up of medeval characters. I played Guenevere (who turned out to be disliked by most of the other characters). In another group, Noa was the prince of the vampires (who dressed as a vampire dressed in an Elvis costume - it was a costume ball after all), named Prince Allendro and Meghan played the part of his scion, or basically servant/follower, named Cynthia. Joe was part of a different family, which comprised of different characters from ancient Egypt. His name was Anubis and he was the loyal son of Isis. Here's our group photo:

It was an interesting night. It took awhile for the game to take off. The key to it all is to talk to people; see what they know and try to get information about the murder. During the event you get to eat and drink (no alcohol though) all you wanted, but throughout the game, clues were hidden and characters were "killed" off. I was one of the unfortunate few and then I became an investigator (lame-o). We never did figure out who the killer was until it was revealed to us at the end. If I was to do it again, I would have stepped it up a notch, since the game seemed to end just as it was getting good and people were getting into character.

All in all it was fun and strange all at the same time. We're thinking that it would be fun to host one ourselves sometime. Here Noa and I pose by some of the decorations from the event.

Halloween Activities - Part I: Underwater Pumpkin Carving

Since I'm trying to catch up on blogging, I'm going to break up the Halloween blogs into separate entries. We were so busy with events the entire weekend leading up to Halloween. I definitely think this was the busiest Halloween I've ever had.

The first activity actually involved Noa and our friend Joe. Meghan and I signed them up to participate in an underwater pumpkin carving contest. The basic rules are as follows:

-you have 30 minutes to carve your pumpkin

-you must carve your pumpkin underwater

-you and your buddy must be underwater

-you can use any carving instrument

-you may add adornemnts after the underwater carving, but you may not cut your pumpkin in any way

-there is a limit of 20 teams

Here's our guys, ready to go:

Meg and I were supporters of our team and helped as much as we could - which was not much except for giving commentary on the competition and cheering them on. It was a beautiful day for the event and we enjoyed the sunshine and the opportunity to be outside.

After all the teams had completed the carving portion of the event, they gathered all the teams at a tent to decorate their pumpkins. People went crazy with the adornments! Here are some of the pumpkins below:




There were 2 categories: silly and scary. You had to pick one to enter your pumpkin in, so the guys chose silly, even though it didn't really fit into either category (more on that in a minute). The prizes were good: all diving equipement, like underwater cameras, BCDs, wetsuits, etc. So, there was definite incentive to win.

Unfortunately, the guys didn't win, although we really thought that theirs was pretty good and should have at least won a second place prize. I think the winning pumpkins won more for their adornments that carving or creativity, but what can I say? The judges just didn't appreciate the creativity behind the boy's work.

Their pumpkin was named Sparky. The inside of Sparky was spray painted black to look charred. Then Sparky had 2 batteries put in his neck with spark plugs attached. The guys even added dry ice to give it a smoking effect. The top of his "head" looks like it was blown off - nice carving detail and the eyes look starry. I thought it was "the bomb" (sorry, bad joke there). Seriously though, theirs was great. Here is a fantastic picture that Meg took that really captures the essence of Sparky. You can also see some of the competition (the one in the back far right won the overall prize - it had a fog machine attached to it, but I wasn't that impressed the adornements or the carving). I liked the Kiss themed pumpkin next to Sparky, but that didn't win anything either! Even though Sparky didn't bring home a prize, we all had a really fun time and I'm planning on participating next year. I'm already working on a scary idea.

Weekend Update

Another weekend come and gone and not without tears this time. I got a serious case of homesickness this week and longed for life to be the way it used to be. Even though I really like it here, I miss many aspects of how life used to be before moving here. Thankfully, our dogs will be joining us in 3 weeks and the Apostles are due to visit at the end of December. Until then, I am staying busy, trying to blog, and trying to enjoy the many opportunities here. Here are some of the highlights of this past weekend:

-went to my first Starbucks in Japan
-went to the O-club for drinks and dancing - wasn't in the dancing mood (again, dealing with homesickness)
-shopped at the Christmas sale at the Kadena gift shop (it's that time of year again)
-spent 5 hours getting my classroom in shape before Parent-Teacher conferences next week
-planned my lesson for my observation this week by my principal (yep, I'm freaking out)
-visiting one of the local pet shops (quite disappointed with it)
-learned to play MaJong - I think I'm hooked!
-went out to eat at my new favorite restaurant - a Nepalese place (basically serves different kinds of Indian curry dishes with REAL naan bread)
-walked along the beach in the evening
-discovered the pirate ship that is a playground

Alive

In case you've been wondering (and many of you have by your recent e-mails to me), I'm still here. I'm alive. I'm happy and I'm still kicking. As you can imagine, I've been extremely busy here and as most of you know it takes a lot to keep me from my blog, but I can honestly say that I haven't had a moment to tend to it. I have a lot of catching up to do, so I will try to let you know about some of the exciting adventures I've had over the last two weeks in several entries in the blog.

I have been having many issues with blogger recently in trying to upload pictures to my site. That's one of the reasons I haven't posted. This weekend I plan on posting about all the events - even if they get blogged without photos. But, let's all keep our fingers crossed just in case.

It's good to be back. Read on for the other newest entry I've been trying to publish.

Maeda Point & Onna Point

Weekend of October 20th:

We had decided that it was time to dive the much loved Maeda Point.Since arriving to Oki, Noa and I had been told over and over again that the place to go was Maeda Point. The catch is that it's a little bit of a drive and you have to get there early because it fills up by 8 am. So, we met Meg and Joe early and loaded the car with enough equipment and supplies for a morning's worth of great dives off Maeda Point.

After getting lost and making some turns in the middle of cane fields, we found the area known as Maeda Point and everyone was right - it was beautiful! A total divers dream, this place had a great parking area, bathrooms, and a stairway leading into the water. We had to explore and take in the sights before lugging all our equipment out. Here's some photos.

In our excitement of finally finding the place, however, we kinda neglected to question why the parking lot was empty and why we had to cross construction barriers to get to such a beautiful local. Soon, the reason became evident:

If you can't read the sign* well, it says that Cape Maeda is OFF LIMITS. They closed it for environmental maintenance. So, we were stuck. We had all our gear and were ready to go on a dive or two, but now we had no clue about where to go. We did consider diving there anyway, since it seemed pretty desolate, but we didn't want to risk Noa and Joe to get in trouble for trespassing and then having the military get wind of it and have it affect their jobs. We decided to call the experts. While we were calling some dive shops for their advice, up drives Meg's dive instructor. After he assessed the situation, he said that it would be better for us to dive at a different location. We followed him to a different dive location called Onna Point - which was up north a little further.

Onna was beautiful too, although it was a little tough getting to the location, since you pretty much have to off-road it once you turn off the main road (the photo doesn't quite do it justice, so imagine that same scene with lots of holes in the ground). Here are some photos of the view - the drive off-road and the view from where we parked:

We ended up doing 2 dives that day. Both were good dives, although I continued to have issues clearing my ears. The first dive I got to 80 feet and the second dive was around 40, but was fun because we spent a lot of time exploring one area thoroughly. I felt like I almost got to see more, since I wasn't trying to push ahead and see what comes up next. I even got to go through a little passageway. Noa had a run in with a mama clown fish that was not about to give up her anemone without a fight. If only I had had an underwater camera. The only downside to the dives was the entrance and exit point into the water. The way Onna is set up, the point of entry is by climbing on coral rocks into the water. This is not always easy with a 40lb. tank strapped to your back and fins in your hand. Also, there were other diving groups around, so the pressure is on not to make a complete fool of yourself going into the water. Thankfully, I didn't fall or slice anything open on the sharp coral. I did like Onna and could easily go back for another dive, but I have heard rumors that people are still swimming and diving at Maeda, even though it's technically "closed". Hmmmm....maybe I'll get to dive that sooner than I originally though.

Here's a pic to leave you with. It's the area that we had to maneuver while going in and out of the water (the area that dips in).

*Look at the bottom right hand side of the sign. It gives a phone number to contact the "Onna Government PUBRIC Department"! Now that is one of the joys of living in Japan.

Japanese Cars, Part I

Upon our arrival to Okinawa, one can't go long without noticing the many differences in cars here as compared to those in the United States. One difference I found quite humorous was the naming of cars. Many of the Japanese cars use people names* as the name of the model. I keep hoping to see a "Julie" cruise by someday.


*The names of the cars pictured above from left to right, top to bottom: Max, Nadia, Jasper, Cedric, Will, Silvia, Carol, Noah, and Mark.

Eminem's Twin

Except that he's not limited to rap - he 'll sing it all! Noa had a blast this past weekend at karaoke. I've captured a few of his best moments on film (he, he, he...). In the middle photo he's singing with his friend Joe, who was there with his wife, Meghan and another couple, Sean and Beth. It was agood group to sing with. We all had many turns with the mic and went home with sore throats. Even I got a little too into it. Here I am belting out "It's Raining Men":

We spent the rest of the weekend doing all kinds of random, fun things. Saturday morning we awoke to a huge breakfast in honor of Noa's birthday from Meg and Joe. Then we all visited several stores looking for some furniture. We had lunch at A & W, which they have enverywhere here. It's kinda like McDonalds or Starbucks - they are on every street. The interesting thing was that I didn't think the food was that good. It wasn't very filling and seemed to lack something. But the soft serve ice cream - or what they call "soft cream" - was yummy! Although we didn't find any major furniture pieces, we did get a room divider screen and a rug for our dining room (sorry no photos yet!).

On Sunday, we attended church, did random house stuff, I worked (but fit in a little Sunday nap too!), and in the evening we had games at our place. On Monday (Columbus Day), Noa worked in the morning and then went diving. I, sadly, could not go since I had put off a majority of my work to play over the weekend and had to put in the hours at school. I was so sad not to join them, but I had to get more work done at school. So, I tried (in vain) to convince Noa that he was actually just scouting out the diving spot for me to see if it was any good.

I think Noa had a good birthday weekend overall. He got to talk to family, hang out with friends, and got a call from his best friend serving overseas. I think he'd agree that turning 29 isn't all that bad.

A Time to Laugh, A Time to Play

That's right - it's Noa's birthday!! Since it's on a Thursday this year, we're playing it low key tonight and having fun this weekend. We went out to a soba (Japanese noodles) restaurant for dinner - one that's actually right around the corner for us. It was completely authentic - no English in the place at all. The funny part about the place was the way you placed your order. Basically you walk in, put some money in a vending machine, push the button for your order and out comes a ticket and change. You give this ticket to the cook and in a little bit your food is served! The place is a small mom-and-pop type place, which was cute and it neighbors a nursery/garden shop so we sat at a window and looked out at the greenery as we slurped our noodles.

Although both of us have to work during parts of the long weekend ahead, we're still planning some fun birthday activities. Noa has fallen in love with karaoke. The picture above was taken the first time we went. So, we've invited a few friends to join us at the karaoke place tomorrow night. We also hope to get another dive in this weekend (although the weather has been rough lately with a typhoon somewhere out there - it's been really windy!!) and I want to take Noa to the Botanical Gardens. So, even though it's a low key night tonight, we're gonna spread the birthday cheer throughout the entire weekend.

Happy birthday to Noa - the guyI love enough to move halfway around the world to be with. Love you, babe! 

Random Things

Some random things for the blog today. First, here's a photo of the folded t-shirts my students wore to the field trip to the Botanical Gardens. They are tie-dyed and paited with each child's name on the front. I can't take credit for this creativity though - a couple of parents made them. I just though the photo was neat. I get a new student tomorrow. That brings the class total to 23.

On a quick trip to the grocery store tonight to pick up bean sprouts and sushi, I remembered that we were running low on toilet paper. Instead of going all the way back to the base to buy some (where it's less expensive), I decided to buy a small package at the grocery store to tide us over until I had time to go to the base. When I brought the package home I discovered something very comical. Little did I realize how innovative the Japanese really are - notice that the package clearly shows that they turn their milk into toilet paper! Wow!! No wonder it's so expensive!

The Japanese certainly are smart and innovative. One obvious example can be found within their bean sprout packaging. The photo is not that great, but notice how the sprouts are still "planted" in a piece of this moist, foamy thing. The sprouts are carefully packaged and kept in these little cushions in order to be "fed" an ample supply of water. Personally, I think the sprouts last longer and taste better in Japan. I'm sure there's some interesting science behind the sprout cushion, but I don't have time to research it.



Finally, I've neglected putting photos of our apartment on the blog because it's not completely decorated yet. Still, there are some funny things about it that just need to be shared, like the fact that our cabinets are so high that I can't reach the top half of the shelves (the Japanese think we are all very tall, apparently). Another funny quirk about our place are the ceiling fans. Notive the faux sky-blue marble. Yeah - it's pretty bad. But, I've seen worse around here. Apparently, the rumor among the Japanese designers here is that Americans are into elaborate and colorful decor. I thought that looking at the fans everyday would just kill me, but surprisingly I don't even notice them anymore. Noa is starting to like them, which could prove to be a bad thing for future housing decor choices. Remind me to never let him pick out our housing fixtures.

 

Giving Back

We woke up Sunday* to some Japanese little leaguers out by the sea wall picking up garbage. I had never seen this before, so I don't know if it's a regular occurrence, but I found two things comical about it. One: they were using chopstick-like utensils to pick up the trash, and two; they were wearing their uniforms. I guess they don't want to be though of as just some great kids who are cleaning up this lovely island. Noa tried, in vain, to yell "thank you" to them (in Japanese, of course), but his calls went unnoticed.

This spurt of environmental responsibility spurred us to fulfill our planetary duty in keeping the earth green: we took the Starlet out to Kadena and bought some plants for our apartment! Now we have something to water and nurture...well, at least until the dogs get here.

*I've been trying to blog for a few days now, but the computer has been working against me...grrrr....

Botanical Gardens

Our kindergarten class went on a field trip today to the Botanical Gardens. Obviously, I can't share pics of the kids, however, I did get some shots of some of the beautiful plants around. The gardens were beautiful and we all loved seeing the animals, such as the goats, a giant iguana, fennec foxes, ferrets, tortoises, and hungry, hungry carp. You can bring old bread or purchase food for the carp. They are crazy! They'll jump on top of one another to get to the food. Here's a photo:

Anyway, the trip was a huge success. The kids had fun and behaved well. The parents seem pleased and now I am totally spent. I think I'll be going to bed early tonight.

Going Out

Noa and I went out to dinner the other night and we only got two pics (the camera died on us). Luckily, both were good enough for the blog (and as we all know, it's all about the blog). The restaurant we went to was above a bowling alley, so while we waited for our friends to join us, we decided to check the place out. We found this electronic version of that Dance, Dance Revolution game - except with drums. So funny- Noa looks like a natural, don't you think?
The second pic is me right before eating a piece of tuna sushi, which I think was pretty darn brave. Even though I'm smiling here, I can now say with absolute certainty that I don't like it. But, the tuna wasn't the worst part - the wasabi was my least favorite and then I had seaweed stuck between my teeth (how annoying). So, I'm going to continue ordering the cooked items when we go out to eat and Noa can stick with the raw items.