japanese love their pictures and today we all gathered about to take pictures together. we have also gotten to know the other groups a little more so it made for more meaning in the pictures i suppose. i found out that one guy from brasil knows my relative there because they are both head people in the kenjinkai, (the relative we connected with last year in okinawa). in fact, he even had a brochure from the kenjinkai with his picture in it and i confirmed that he was the relative i was speaking of. it was interesting to communicate with him because he knows only a little japanese. he can fake a bit of spanish since he speaks portuguese natively. so i had to rely on our broken japanese conversation and the struggle of those who speak spanish trying to fake portuguese and his faking of spanish from portuguese. anyway, it was a sample of what i can expect when i go visit the nikkei community in brasil! also today, the locals and un-locals put on more of a show of song, dance, and martial arts. not that i know much about karate, but it was really interesting to watch their demonstration of various katas because what they have passed down is an ancient kata taught by the first immigrants roughly during the 1910s or 1920s. they were doing moves i've never seen before, not in japan and not in chinese movies either. perhaps others who have studied martial arts knew these moves but i am completely ignorant.

the locals demonstrating an ancient kata