every morning we are taking cold showers! you just can't adjust the temperature at all. the only settings are summer/winter. it is on winter setting. man, i'd hate to take a shower using the summer setting. that must be really cold water! at first it was ok but taking a cold shower every morning is beginning to get to me. i am not sleeping with a blanket so i wake up cold. to then take a cold shower is not good as i need a warm shower if i wake up cold.

associação okinawa do brasil

this morning all 3 of us went to liberdade to go to the kenjinkai building for the shinto mass. the mass was really boring and i didn't pay attention. the main room where it was held was overflowing with people so i hung out in the lobby.i saw several of the young brasilians i had met yesterday. they were working at the event, directing people as they entered the building. some of them speak english, some speak japanese, and some speak both. i was much more at ease with them and having fun talking to them when it's just me and them and not other americans around. i don't do well in big groups. but it's a little hard to relate to them because they're so young, still in university or maybe even younger. but i feel like they are more mature and easy going than the americans so perhaps that's why we were able to smile and laugh.

missa

after the mass was over, we hung out for a little bit because my cousin was trying to find someone to give us a ride to the next event, which is the main event for me. i had already planned taking public transportation to the various events. i didn't know there would be a bus or people that would help out to give rides so i was totally ok if no one helped us but much relieved that there would be people helping us. afterall, we have having a little difficulty communicating and don't want to be taken advantage of. or what if the taxi driver doesn't know the places where the events are being held... so it's much nicer to just ride with a local. plus we get to talk to them and get to know more about brasil and the nikkei community here. while we were waiting for the person assigned to give us a ride, i was spotted! someone recognized me from my blog. that was pretty interesting. turns out he's a fellow southern californian who has been living in new zealand and loves brasil. he's a professor who works with an okinawan professor documenting the okinawan diaspora. their work is focused more on those that left for work and such, rather those recently who are more tied to the military which is what i'm familiar with and relate to. i don't relate at all to those who left 100 years ago or so like the okinawans in brasil. it's just a different background though we are connected to the same land.

the person assigned to give us a ride to the park where the main event was being held was very cool. yesterday i only got her business card but today we got to know her. (side note: every japanese carries a business card with them, even if it's just name and number. that is a major reason why i made my podcast cards and yes i was handing them out.) she's a very intelligent half-okinawan 3rd generation. i believe i got the facts right but i might have confused them a bit. anyway. we enjoyed spending time with her. at the end of the park visit i even interviewed her for the podcast as her university research is on nikkei brasilians who go back to japan to work.

our little contingent at the entrance

at the park, i videotaped and took photos of the festival, stalls, and parade. the parade was the main event but at first i was a little blown away by how big the event was. there were many stalls selling food and merchandise of various sorts. clearly this seemed to be the nikkei community at large and not just the okinawans. or was it? the okinawan community is notoriously huge down here. if they were all okinawan, well then i haven't seen that many okinawans outside of okinawa. it was pretty amazing. after walking briefly around the stalls, we were shuffled into the kenjinkai building in the area. (yes, they have more than one, there is the central one where the mass was held and then little sub offices throughout the greater city area.) we went inside because that was were there was lunch for the foreign visitors. it turned out to be the same stuff from last night so again we didn't eat much. i decided to have a brasilian beer to see what it's like. you know what? i hate beer and this was no better. it was typical beer taste which is not the slightest bit appealing to me. after the lunch i really needed to use the restroom and the line was long for women, as always. the stalls had all stopped working as they said there's no water. when i got to the stall i think i figured out what happened. to many foreigners used the restroom and put the toilet paper in the toilet and not in the trash so it got clogged. *tsk tsk*

okinawan-brasilian immigration centenary parade

next: the parade. i'm not really a parade person but this was the event that i was looking forward to the most. i wanted to see what okinawan-brasilians are like after hearing for so many years how strong in numbers they are. that when they gather for events, they have so many that they even split into groups based on which town they are from. well my friends, they are definitely strong in numbers. for the youth performing eisa-esque taiko dancing, there was something like 350. that's just one group within the parade. each cultural performance group were very strong in numbers. i've never seen so many hanagasa at once! (hanagasa are the hats these ladies are wearing.) the bus of old people in the parade was noteworthy for just how many individuals had reached the milestone to ride in the bus, (i believe it was ages 95 and up, their families included). as usual with these sort of events, there were also groups marching from other countries. the foreign delegations were asked to march in the parade and again i declined in favor of watching the parade. i'd rather see what the whole thing is like rather than stare at the same person's butt in front of me and that be my only memory of a parade i travelled so many miles to attend!

after the parade was over we wandered around the rest of the stalls before leaving and being dropped off at our hostel. then we rested until it was time for the next event of the day: buck-tick fan meetup. while planning my trip, i put out a call on the internet for a fan gathering and several responded. it was decided that we would meet up for karaoke in liberdade. once a fan mentioned they have b-t songs, i said that karaoke is what we have to do! i thought maybe 2-3 people would show up. no sir, in total 10 people showed up! not all were fans, some brought their friends, but still i think it was a very strong turnout. it was one of those places where you get your own room. at first we were a little confused how to get the karaoke machine to work but after that it was non-stop singing. they had several b-t songs, around 15-20 and not all of them were singles. i believe the most recent song was from 2002. we started the evening off with "just one more kiss", followed by more buck-tick songs, some other japanese stuff, then songs in english, and brasilian songs. the brasilians insisted that we non-brasilians sing the chorus so they would teach us the chorus before starting the song. that was pretty fun. the cheesier the song, the more fun we had. a very fun evening.

[update 9/21/08: we learned that sepultura played at kazabrea on this night and we completely had no idea and missed it. perhaps it was god's way of not disappointing us because looking at the map, it was just too far away from where we were staying. i have no idea how much it would have cost to take a taxi round trip, probably at least one or two limbs. on top of that, sepultura didn't take the stage until 2am so we would have been really fucked for the next day.]