Spring Festival

Sunday the base hosted the 16th annual spring festival. What a sight to behold!

Between the hours of 0900 and 1600 (9am-4pm) the entire south side of the base swarmed with thousands upon thousands of people (local Japanese Nationals), and dozens of huge hawks flying overhead looking for any opportunity to swoop down and catch a snack off the ground.



There were food booths, live music, a 1/4 mile line to buy American Pizza, line dancers, a play about the Samuri, and much much more.



What a strange feeling to be the native in the place that's full of tourists after three months now of being the tourist, and to have my daughter be one of the many tourist attractions. You see, she is pretty much the opposite in appearance to what the Japanese are used to seeing. As we walked along, me pushing an empty stroller and she, beside me, pushing her little dolly stroller with her dark skinned dolly in it, an older Japanese man motioned that he would like to take her photograph, as soon as I nodded and said 'hai', cameras came out of everywhere. It was like the most polite paparazzi ever, lol. Throughout the day she posed and smiled with her dolly for her adoring fans and even posed with a few people so they could have a picture of themselves with her. She ate up the attention and I learned a new Japanese word. Kawai (I probably spelled it wrong) means cute or beautiful, thanks to the translation of a passerby who stopped to tell me what so many women and men were repeating over and over. Many just adored and couldn't get over the fact that she is so very fair of skin and hair, yet doted on her little dark dolly and lovingly rubbed it's hair whenever people would point at it. This was the subject of many photographs.



I somewhat fear that this popularity and the relative safety of Japan may lead to difficulties when we get back to the states and she's not such a novelty and the people are not as likely to be as polite or (I hate to say it) honest. It is so safe here that I often see children as young as 4 or 5 out riding bikes by themselves or in groups of 2 or 3. Children are frequently out of mother's sight in department stores or grocery stores and it's no big deal, no one is going to sneak off with them to do bad things to them. That would be dishonorable (not to mention that certain crimes here are much more severely punished than in the states, something I think we should seriously consider). It's nice here too in that it's usually pretty obvious who she belongs to out of a crowd, since we are typically the only gaijin (foreigners) in a given area (except at the festival), and it would be pretty obvious to anyone around if someone else took her. I still insist on keeping her by my side, much to her chagrin since she sees so many other children her size, though years older, away from their mothers.