63rd Annual Airman’s Ball

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September 25th, 2010 was the 63rd annual Airman’s Ball. It also marked the 50 years of partnership between the U.S. Air Force and Japan. We celebrated with a great Taiko Drum performance.
General North also made an appearance and gave a wonderful speech about our strong alliance with Japan. It made me feel very lucky to be in Japan at this time and grateful for all the friendships I have made in such a short amount of time.

Following his speech was the after party. I danced a little bit but I really thought I was going to fall in my heels! We went next door to The Faultline and listened to a Japanese band play some classic rock and blues. They were pretty good!
It was a pretty cold night at the ball. I bought a new dress for the ball and I noticed a lot of people wearing kimonos. Maybe next year I will wear mine. ^_^

Misawa Air Show 2010

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September 19, 2010 was the Misawa Air Show and 100,000 people showed up!  I volunteered for a few things here so it was a busy time for  me! I baked 12 plain devil’s food cakes for some organization that I cannot remember. Cakes and pizza are two of the biggest sellers at the Air Show. It is one of the only times the Japanese citizens have an opportunity to go on base and eat American food.
I also made a poster for 35MOS. They were selling turkey legs! They looked delicious!


I also volunteered at the JAFC booth. (Japanese International Friendship Club). We sold cakes, doughnuts, candy bars and drinks. They had made 100 cakes and we sold out! And one man bought 30 Hershey’s bars! And  how could he not with salespeople like us!
Around 3pm it started raining pretty hard and everyone left. All in all, I had a great time at the Air Show even though I didn’t have a chance to walk around.

Korakukan Theater

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Korakukan Theater is located in Akita, Japan. We took a tour here on a bus so I don’t have any directions. (I slept  the whole way there!)We got a backstage tour and got to go below the stage to see how things worked. There is a manual device below that turns the stage around. Also, there is a place for an actor to drop down or rise from the bottom of the stage.

Now so me of you may  not know what Kabuki is and some of you  may have preconceived notions that it is boring. It definitely isn’t boring! There were two parts to the show. The first part was a very touching story and even though my knowledge of Japanese is limited and I didn’t have a translation, (though our tour guide gave us an outline) it made me  teary eyed! (We were not allowed to take pictures for the first half)

The second part of the show was all dancing. The music was a lot more “modern” than I expected and there were a lot of dress changes! Many times a male would play a lead female part in the dance routine.

At the end of the show, we shook hands with all the actors, took pictures and got autographs. It was definitely worth doing and something I really wanted to do when I got to Japan. Another one to cross off the list!

Kaminarido

Kaminarido is another Ramen shop we discovered. It is right across the street from Sukiya. I don’t know what it is but every time I go to a new Ramen shop I feel it is the best in the world. Ramen is great because it is  inexpensive, filling, and delicious. I can’t wait to start going to Ramen restaurants when it is colder!
  
Directions to Kaminrado: : from POL gate go straight through 2 traffic lights. Ater the second traffic light take your first right. Kaminrado is on the left after Dragon Boat Chinese restaurant and across from Sukiya.

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