Last night saw my villages 88 something festival. To celebrate the wonderful number 88, they are very fond of 88 here, almost as fond of it as 97. Anyway I performed eisa twice, once at the start of the fest and once at the end so I had to stay throughout the whole thing. I was hoping to get home to do some tidying but no. After it was done and all the kids and almost all the women had left the remaining (mostly men) people did some sort of ritual. We all sat in a circle on the stage around two bowls of fruit and two big bottles of awamori and sang this VERY long song/chant and clapped our hands. Then there were speaches and more drinking, I didn't get back until 12 which is pretty good considering. The pic is of me and two teachers from my school, the lady is Risa Sensei my JTE. This was the first time she had done eisa! She is from mainland okinawa where not EVERYBODY does eisa.

It was raining quite alot yesterday and the blue tarps they put up weren't really upto the job. Luckily the rain eased off by the time we started eisa.

Just as a side note my face got so sunburnt training on the weekend that an elementry kid asked me if I had been drinking :(. I hadn't touched a drop, honest!

PS. I have just read today on www.bbc.co.uk that there has been another school shooting in America. Two in a week! What is the deal with that!!! I would be asking some serious questions about my culture/society if it seemed to regularly produce individuals who wanted to harm the most innocent members of their society. And why does it seem to me at least that nothing it being done about it? Are people that complacent? It is not a unique American problem but (I think) predominantly so. For a contrast: after the Dunblane shooting in the UK the Snowdrop petition (started by those affected by the shooting) caused the then government to effect a ban on all handguns except .22 calibre single shot handguns. The succeeding government (Tony and his motley crew) finished the job leaving only muzzle-loading and historical pieces legal. There are cultural reasons handguns won't be banned in America. Sometimes I think we put too much value in something just because it is cultural though, we are quite happy to tell certain countries to (for example) give women the vote when culturally said culture does not consider women eligable. We should be looking critically at our own cultures too. Anyway I am side tracking and don't want to start a long rant. Just expressing my shock and anger at this hideous facet of humanity.