On August 18th and 19th our base
hosted a Japanese American Friendship Festival. 176,000 Japanese Nationals flooded the base to view the
planes, eat American food, and shoot pictures of all the blondes and babies.
Yes, I had my picture taken at least 100 times over the weekend. No, I am not
exaggerating. It is a very intense situation; as soon as the gates open people race towards the planes.
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| Look at em' go! |
Saturday Mark and I were part of the crew at the Hot Dog and
Gatorade Booth. Mark also announced the planes in the mini air show, he did so
good!
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| We are ready to sell some hot dogs! |
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| what a cute announcer! |
There was an Obon Festival and a Bon Jovi cover band that night. Here is an explanation for the festival straight from Wikipedia:
Obon (お盆) or just Bon (盆) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.
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| Bon Odori dance |
.JPG) |
| BON JOVI! |
Sunday morning came and we now were on the flight line. I
spent my day dressing Japanese people in flight suits and placing them in the
cockpit of a helicopter. Now Japanese people are shy, they do not want to do
anything that might make them stand out or be foolish… so it was quite a feat
to get them to want to dress up, but we were successful.
Once we got started the young and old were on board!
There were some really awesome flybys during the weekend. We
saw a U2 (this plane goes so high the pilots have to wear space suits), and a
parachute drop out of a pair of C130s. Fred, the C5 made a
late appearance on Sunday, prior to that he was, you guessed it, broke. FYI for my non AF readers, C5s are constantly
broken, it is kind of a big joke.
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| The C130 drop. |
We worked hard, had a lot of fun and can't wait to do it all over
again next year.
I loved your coverage of the festival! I had strep that weekend and was too sick to experience anything more than the fireworks... but I was really happy that we got to see those... they were awesome!
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