today some of us from the young okinawans and others i haven't met before went to the lunch to talk about going to cuba for the upcoming 100 year anniversary of okinawan immigration to cuba celebration. our guest of honor was an okinawan who lives in mexico and has been to cuba many times. i brought some friends. his english is limited so i mostly talked to him in japanese and my friends in spanish. food-wise, it wasn't exactly a veg(etari)an-friendly place (seafood restaurant) so i can't give any raves there. conversation-wise, it was a good lunch. i got to meet some new people and so forth. one of them i even have been very close to meeting before but didn't realize it. it's simply because we're all running in the same circles when we participate in okinawan/japanese-american activities.

as for cuba, there is such an air of mystery because of the relationship between the government of our two countries. our guest who has been to cuba didn't exactly unveil the mystery but those of us who were at the lunch, whether or not we go to cuba, at least i think we all are interested in the okinawans who live there because they are like us, simply transplated in a spanish-speaking country rather than an english-speaking country. i'm not sure if any of us directly have relatives in cuba but those okinawan-cubans are like our cousins but we are cut off from them. when we go, we want to share our immigrant cultural differences of what it is like to be okinawan-american and okinawan-cuban. i know that some of the activities for the anniversary include visiting a world war 2 internment camp (yes, japanese immigrants were imprisoned in cuba too) and an okinawan-cuban cemetery. our guest also told us that though they have no teacher, the cubans are practicing obon dancing for the anniversary celebration. it all sounds terribly interesting!