Futenma Flightline festival

This is on the way to MCAS Futenma. It's a shrine/grave type of deal, head on in, pay your respects, then grab a drink. Okay so I don't think that how it really works, but most of these shrines seem to be tucked away in the trees, farther from the road but this one is just out there by the roadside. With Obon coming up there's going to be a lot of action at the shrines and I'll admit I'm very curious to see how they celebrate their ancestors returning to earth for a weekend. Though I'll also feel like I'm being rude and butting in where I don't belong if I look too hard....


We went to the Futenma Flightline Festival today. This picture is us driving on the flightline. Josh had to use all of his willpower to not speed down the lane and say prepare for takeoff.


Now I've been very spoiled in that most carnival type events on military bases have been free or close to it. This one wasn't. I'm sure it was still cheaper than a typical civilian fair but this slide definitely wasn't worth what we paid.
Look at him climbing up there by himself. He needed a little coaching but once he got it he flew up there.


He went down a little faster than I would have liked. He seemed a little freaked out too, but he did laugh at the end, which made me feel better.


Then he went on this slide, and was trying to pace himself, and flipped over. He did not land laughing this time. No more slides today!


He knew exactly what to do for this game. This picture is actually me trying to get him to stop playing. He won some rubber duckies. Every kid needs rubber duckies. Later he stuck a chopstick in it and was waving it around. I couldn't help but think that there were probably people eating duck on a stick at the fair at that very moment. Poor little ducks.


I am a facepainting fan. I don't really know how Thomas felt about it. He kept his hand over his eye the whole time. He's so shy. The girls thought he was pretty cute though. We definitely know by now that kawaii means cute.

He finally looked up when they used a fan to dry the paint. The skull and crossbones is so hardcore. That girls outfit is pretty awesome too.


Then we were hungry. I don't know if anyone is ever actually hungry at fairs, or if it's just the constant smells and sights of carnival food that makes you think you're starving. We noticed that in general, the Americans chose the Japanese food, and the Japanese picked American food. I guess whatever is different and "special" eh? This lady is cooking our noodles. Note the mickey mouse apron. They are obsessed with Mickey mouse. They'll put him on a sign for anything, even if it has no reason for being on the sign.

We got french fries too. Thomas ate them off of sticks. It's rude to stab your food with chopsticks, but he wasn't using a chopstick so I figure it's okay. Plus he's a toddler. And he's kawaii.


Here is a prime example of "Engrish". They don't have an R sound, their R's sound like L and R combined and that ends up in some very funny signs and tshirts. Alizona???? Must be a new state.


These were slushies and you could put as many different flavors in there as you wanted. Overpriced, but very fun! I'm kind of concerned if this picture isn't a bit foreboding of future spring breaks for Thomas.


They had a show around 6pm. At this point it's pretty typical, eisa dancing, drumming and the incessant "IE SA SA" or "SUI SA SA". I should really look up what the chants mean. I know they came from Buddhist chants, because the dancing is actually a sort of prayer type of thing to comfort ancestors but I'm not sure what it actually means.
This was the first time we've seen the dragon appear. He was so cool. I wish I had my good camera. I just get freaked out taking my good one out on days like today. (Humid, muggy, raining one minute, sunshine the next)

I missed a lot of dragon performing because these girls were quite taken with Thomas, and even took his picture! So I took theirs. Seemed only fair.

Then the Shishi mai came out. This was the best one I've seen. I never saw the men in the costume and they were very very much like a dog. The Okinawan Shishi mai is derived from the Chinese lion dance. But according to Wikipedia, they are very different from each other. The lion and dragon kind of fought each other, but it seemed more like a sibling rivalry to me and there didn't appear to be a winner. I know that shisa dogs (which people put outside their homes here to protect them) was supposedly used to kill a sea dragon, so perhaps that's the significance.

This picture is right before the shishi starting biting audience members. A great time.


All in all it was a pretty good day. We had a few snafus early on in the day but it's bedtime now and the good outweighed the bad. I think that's really all we can hope for.