-I am in the distance in this picture, sorry! But it does show how the fishing worked very well-
This weekend I stayed put on my little island and what a good decision that turned out to be! As most of my friends where leaving Izena for various reasons that weekend I was looking forward to spending some down time and chilling by myself. I also had a number of things to do; planning lessons studying Japanese and such like. I also planned to get round to some painting and keyboard practice. However one should always expect the unexpected here. On Saturday morning as I was outside my house stretching in my skimpy running gear, about to go for a run. I had pegged this weekend to try for the full 20k, up to now I had just been doing 10ks as my long runs. As I was about to set off Kamiyama-san my neighbour trots up saying “cycling now! Come!” I managed to gather he wanted me to take part in something called the ‘Tour de Izena’ and to do this on my granny bike (no gears and a basket)! Well that sounded like a lot of fun to me so we popped my bike into the back of his van and off we went. It turned out not to be a race but rather a sort of bike tour of the island but that didn’t stop lots of Japanese turning up in lycra on racing bikes. There were a lot of people from off island included a cute American couple (air force) as well as a number of Izena people. The tour/race was already underway by the time we arrived so Kamiyama san just drove to the middle of the main group of people and dumped me out there, I am sure this shocked the Japanese riders, having a gaijin suddenly dumped in their midst (wearing my red jump suit none the less)! After we had completed the tour we took part in some kind of harvest ceremony which involved everybody taking it in turn to go out into a rice paddy and cutting a bushel of rice with a kama (sharp knife on a stick). My friend Kaiich took some pictures of me doing that so hopefully I can get them from him at some point. After that was done I managed to squeeze in my run (but only 10k) before the barbeque and after party. We enjoyed performances by the junior high girls (dancing to techno music with pom poms) and of course eisa. The highlight for me was a dance to a Japanese version of an Abba song. I had already had dinner but I sat with some older people from Okinawa honto and the old lady next to me kept bringing me more food and an old man kept bringing me more beer, not that I was complaining! The following day I got up at 7am to go fishing, urgh! This fishing involved herding the fish into a long net. Everybody walked in a long line making as much disturbance in the water as possible driving the fish into the waiting net. Along the way a poor lady got attacked by a tiny octopus, it attached to her foot, but always at hand in times of need our island police man whipped it off. He then dismembered it then and there and I had the pleasure of a tentacle. I quite like octopus but perhaps not so early in the morning. After the fish herding a number of us went out onto some exposed sand (it was low tide) and dug for shell fish (cockles I think). After about 20 minutes we had a whole tub full! And back on the beach the older people got stuck in with relish. I tried to hang back but the ever enthusiastic cook from my junior high made me have some, it wasn’t bad, quite sweet but as with the octopus it was a little early in the morning. It was interesting to note some of the younger kids (15/6 at a guess) from the Okinawa mainland wouldn’t try the cockles. Tastes are changing! After helping clear up some things from the night before with Yoshiaki-san I had lunch with the Tour de Izena people before they took the ferry to the mainland. After digesting I went off on my run and did the 20k for the first time. It was actually pretty good. It's going to be a long slog but I will crack this endurance malarkey, well I suppose I better if I am planning to do a triathlon next year. And I am.