Cherry Blossom Festival 2009

On Saturday was the Atsugi Base Cherry Blossom Festival. I knew there would be big crowds, but I wasn't expecting the 20,000 people that came to base. Glenn and I were up early to set up VAW-115's tables. We sold Hawkeye t-shirts, coins, zippos, DVDs, patches and all sorts of embroidered things. The Japanese eat this stuff up! They were taking pictures and dressing up in flight gear and spending SO much money on Navy gear. VAW-115 isn't quite as flashy as the jet squadrons, but we made around $7000 in 6 hours, the other jet squadrons made $15,000. It is a good money maker for the Officer's Mess!There was live entertainment, food booths and then the static display of all of the aircraft. Here is the mighty Hawkeye behind our booth.

Cherry Blossom Festival is an open gate event though so anyone from the Japanese community can come on base and see what all the mystery is behind the gates. It is a great friendship event. I had a few of my English students come on base too.
The Japanese loved to take pictures with the pilots and even got several autographs. I think they were feeling like celebreties! Here is Glenn with a Japanese boy.

Our Super Fan (a loyal Japanese friend of the squadron that comes to every event) brought his scooter for pictures as well. Notice the Liberty Bell paint job?

Even I got in to the fun. Here I am in some of the flight gear. I never got to do Lady Chick day in Kingsville so I'm making up for it now I guess :)We were exhausted after the long day, but still made it to dinner with our super fan and the O'Club for some karaoke! I'm looking forward to next year's festival!

PS. Notice no pictures of actual Cherry Blossoms? That's because they hadn't started blooming yet!

English Classes

I think my schedule is finally full with English classes. I only teach 3 days a week, which I'm pretty happy with because it makes taking time off much easier. Much fewer classes to reschedule/cancel.

This is what my class load looks like so far:

Monday:
12:30-1:30 Toshiko
2:00-3:00 Yumiko and Yuko
4:00-5:00 Yuki and Miyuu (2x a month)

Tuesday
4:00-5:00 Yumi and Mitsuru
6:30-8:00 Keido and wife, and Ameriko

Wednesday
9:30-10:30 Mayumi's friend (3x a month)
1:00-3:45 Machida Community Center Class (3x a month)
4:30-5:30 Keiko (2x a month)

Random Days
10:00-11:00 Masayo (2x a month)

I'm pretty happy with it so far. It still leaves time for babysitting and running errands during the day. Or cleaning the bathroom like today. Good times.

This weekend is the Cherry Blossom Festival on base. They open up the base to anyone that wants to come. I'm excited to see the flowers in bloom and hopefully it will happen this week. Glenn has been pretty busy coordinating things for his squadron so I hope everything comes together. He might be making a trip to Korea one of these days to get a few last things. That seems really crazy to me, to just "run to Korea", but things are crazy cheap there so it makes sense.

Have a good week everyone!