Farewell AOSA!

Last week, I attended my last AOSA/AWA luncheon. As usual, they did a fantastic job putting everything together and it was great to chat with some new friends.

Also last week, a new executive board was elected so I am no longer the AOSA 2nd Vice President of Community Relations! I loved working for AOSA for the last year+ but I am happy to pass the job on as well. AOSA was a great support network and just so much fun! While I was the 2nd VP, I helped give away over $20,000 as scholarships and community grants to our Atsugi/Zama community! I am so proud to have helped so many people and groups.

My successor will have a great time giving away even more this year since our annual bazaar last year raised almost $20,000 more than the previous year! What a fantastic group of volunteers we have.

I don't know if I have any pictures of our full board, but here is Amy, our president and two of our advisors. AOSA couldn't have been what it was without these three.

 

The first of many farewells and good-byes to come!

AOSA Meeting

As Vice President of Community Relations of our non-profit group, AOSA, I'm required to attend bi-monthly meetings amongst other obligations. As you can tell, it's a pretty big obligation that I have to drag myself to each month! Ha! What a fun group of ladies!

 (I promise they are candy cigarettes. Who knew that you could actually buy those things anymore?!)

Amy is the first ever Mrs. AOSA! What a fun night!

Onsen Party

 A few weeks ago I attended an AOSA event with our Japanese counterparts. We got naked together at the onsen and then had a drinking party. I'd call that bonding.

 During lunch, we played a few "drinking" games. For example, above, Ann has just won a game of paper, rock, scissors which means that Sato-san must redeem herself by making Ann laugh.

 In the next game, the person in back is blindfolded and must feed the person in front. I was not very good at picking up the beans with chopsticks.

 And of course, it's not a party without karaoke and dancing!

Misono Orphanage

On Sunday, I volunteered with AOSA (the Atsugi Officers' Spouses' Association) to work at the children's festival at Misono Orphanage. The orphanage is home to about 120 children from tiny babies to the age of 18. Adoption is not very common in Japan so the majority of these children will live here until they are considered adults and move out on their own. This was my second time visiting the orphanage. Last time, I simply played and fed some of the babies.

The festival is held each year by the staff and older children for the younger children. We didn't understand everything that was going on, but the children seemed to being enjoying all the food, candy and toys they were receiving!

Tori and I were the AOSA representatives and we gave out cookies to the children and staff that other AOSA members and the Junior Sailors Association had made. They really seemed to enjoy the 'hand-made' cookies!

Misono is a Catholic orphanage as you can see by the nuns. One of my favorite pictures of the event was one of the Junior Sailor Association members teaching one of the sisters how to drink a Capri Sun!

There were several organizations from NAF Atsugi. They were grilling lots of American foods including hot dogs, hamburgers and short ribs.

It was a great event and I was happy to be a part of it!

AOSA Luncheon

Last Tuesday, we had an Atsugi Officers' Spouses' Association luncheon with the Atsugi Wives Association (Japanese wives). The AWA ladies planned this event and had a Japanese martial arts demonstration.  The food is always wonderful and it's neat to meet new people. Most of the Japanese women don't live around here though. There husbands live in temporary quarters during the week and come home on the weekends. Here is our table:

After the lunch and demonstration, I had a 2 hour meeting with the Japanese and American association's executive boards. I am now one of the vice presidents of our non-profit group. It was very interesting to see how the Japanese women run their meetings. So formal! And so long! It's going to be a fun year!

A Japanese Variety Show

Every couple of months, the AOSA/AWA luncheons occur. I've written about them in the past, like the Kimono Luncheon. In December, AWA hosted a comedy/variety show luncheon. In Japanese, this is called a Yose. Yose is a variety theater that shows popular entertainment. Typically it is just rakugo (comic storytelling) but it can also include many different types of performers.

The first performer was Mr. Ssaiga Katsura which was a narrative story. He called himself a sit-down comedian. :)

He told a funny story and acted out all the characters voices and used just a fan and a towel for his props. He spoke English so everyone could enjoy his performance.

The second performer was a balancing act. He balanced all sorts of things on his face and body. It was pretty impressive. Here he is spinning the umbrella and throwing and catching a ball.

The third performer was a mime and "balloon" artist. Except, instead of balloons he used this plastic wire that he made shapes and things out of. I got pulled up on stage during this part so I don't have any pictures of him. Lots of people left during his performance though- I had no idea people were afraid of mimes! I thought it was just clowns.

Here is my lunch table. Thanks for a fun afternoon ladies. The AWA ladies always do such an impressive job, just like I said about the Mochi pounding event. The Japanese don't do anything unless it's 110%!

AWA/AOSA Izakaya Night!

AWA is the Atsugi Wives Association which is the Japanese counterpart to AOSA, the Atsugi Officer Spouses' Association. On Friday night, we had our annual joint Izakaya night. An izakaya is a eating/drinking establishment. We had the private room upstairs and it was a great time! We drew numbers for our seats and I sat next to Yuko who was crazy fun. Here we are when the drinks just started flowing. We paid approxiately $50 for dinner and two hours of drinks so you had to get your drink on fast before the two hours ran out.

We got to the izakaya and the Japanese wives started things off with a skit and Japanese drinking games. These two were our MCs for the night. One was a Japanese drunk business man and the other was a thief. Not sure where the hula skirt fits in. Here's a picture of one of the games we played. It was a bunch of rubber bands and a pretzel stick and they had to make their way around the table without using your hands. The losing teams had to drink. The other game involved popping balloons with our body parts. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that game (although my team did win :) ).

After our two hours at dinner were up, we headed to Wink, a karaoke bar close by. Once we got there we realized that the bar only served whiskey and shochu (a Japanese rice liquor, kind like vodka-ish) so we made it work. I had my first whiskey and water. Bleh. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the entire karaoke bar was about the size of a large bedroom. We crammed all 30 of us in to the bar and sang away. Yuko and I sang John Denver's "Country Roads" which was the only song she knew in English besides "Yesterday". Where do these ladies learn this stuff?

This picture is one of my favorites of the night. Yuko is wearing a samurai costume hat. You can see why I liked her. I hope I see her again at the luncheon in November. Such a fun night. I'm so glad I went!