American Day

Once a year the American military community of Misawa, Japan puts on a festival for the Japanese community, called American day. There is a parade, food booths, all sorts of demonstrations of American culture. Yesterday was that day. Jeff was in charge of the booth for his squadron, this is a major fund raising venue for the base community as well. He worked all day both Saturday and Sunday, doing manual labor. His normal job is behind a desk. He is in excellent physical condition, he ran a 1/2 marathon last month, did a triathlon last summer, climbs mountains, snow shoes, and goes to the gym 5-6 times per week. Even though he is in excellent physical condition all this manual labor was hard on the old body. Poor guy.

I have never gone to American Day. This being our last chance to go I made the effort. Jeff had the vehicle due to his having to transport all the stuff. So Lily and I walked there on Saturday. It took me two hours, I was walking pretty slowly and stopped to use the restroom, but still, two hours. By the time we finally got there, everyone was cleaning up, so we went home. Sunday, Lily and I took the bus there. It is very hard to get a stroller on the bus, so we walked from the bus stop to the festival. Not too far for me, but for Lily. Well she made it. We got there and Mandy, who helped her dad all day both days, Mandy took her to the parade. We walked around a bit and went home. It is hard to do a festival with a little one who is free to roam in a large crowd. Plus there was so much food, all of it contained items of which Lily is allergic. We didn't make the walk all the way to the community center to see the demonstrations of American culture, did I mention the hundreds of thousands of people from all over northern Japan and the no stroller thing.

Lily and I missed the bus home, there being one bus per hour, we had to wait another hour. We walked around, went to a playground, etc. Lily was a bit grumpy, not having eaten in about 4 to 5 hours and having been walking for about a mile over that same time span. She wasn't too terrible just not her normal self. So we finally made it home. Lily has been less than eager to eat a lot lately, just grazing for the last couple of weeks, but boy did she shovel down the grub after that. That is how we spent our weekend.

My new class, programming, is being delayed a week. Closer to the time I get my DSL, so we will just have to wait and see what happens. The latest incarnation of "the logo" is on the sidebar, I haven't heard from Dad yet, so we will see what he thinks. I guess I will have some time to work on the website. My desktop publishing class has been on a break last week so I may be busy with that this week.

I hope you all had a great weekend and that this week is fabulous.