August 19, 2012 - Friendship Festival

This past weekend Yokota Air Base held a Japanese-American Friendship Festival.  After looking at the schedule online, we decided to go on Sunday.  We left the house mid-morning, loading up on sun screen and water ahead of time.  Summer in Tokyo is HOT and HUMID, and that's coming from somebody who's lived in Houston for several years.  We had over an hour's train ride to the west of Tokyo.  Once we arrived, we joined the crowds streaming onto the base.

I'll let the kids tell you about the day.

Cooper:
We went to the Yokota Air Base for a friendship festival. There was a really cool strong man competition. They all lifted really heavy weights and the guest strongman pulled a huge bus filled with people (I was in the bus)!!!! A little bit later we listened to a Van Halen cover band. They played lots of songs and they played "Jump" last. Then a little bit later we went home.

Greer:
Hello!
So last weekend, we went to Yokota airbase with tons of American soldiers and Japanese soldiers. The first thing we did was eat because we were all starving! There was a line (separate lines) for hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and hotdogs. (So we thought-- and everyone else obviously thought the same thing too.) Mom (Mrs. Jen to some) and I got in the hot dog lane with about 10 people in line, and Dad (Mr. Drew), with cooper, got in the cheeseburger line. Both of the burger lines had about 25 people each. When we got to the front of the line you could see that you could get anything in each line! Mom, thinking that dad and cooper may have already gotten to the front of the line, decided not to get them hamburgers. When we went to find them, they still had several people in front of them. So I just sat down in a small patch of grass to eat my hotdog. I don't know if they got back in the hotdog line or stayed where they were 'cause I was hungry, so I ate.

The next thing we did was go see the StrongMan competition. There were two true strongman, one from Washington, and the other one from somewhere else in the States. They were professionals. There were people who weren't strongmen, yet, but were there to be in the competition. About 10 men competed and 1 woman. Half of them from Japan and the other half from the States. They did races where they carried 200 pounds in each hand for 60 meter dash (30 meters each way). They were timed. The female competitor had to carry (I think because they switched the weights) 100 pounds in each hand. Then they did two kinds of reps. This is when the two real strongmen actually showed off. After they finished, they brought out a bus. The real strongmen were going to pull it. And Yes, they decided to fill it with people. They were sitting, standing in the aisles, and even on the stairs! Then the first strong man pulled the bus all the way, but the second strongman said "10 more kids!" about 15 more kids piled on and about 7-10 adults came on too. He pulled the bus about 10 meters but stopped suspended above the ground by the harness attached to the bus. Basically he couldn't go any further and he didn't complete the challenge. One race I forgot to mention was the flipping race. There was a huge tire (2)  and two competitors each flipped the tire 30 meters across the asphalt. The last of the pairs to race was the woman and a Japanese man. The woman still had to flip the tire of the same weight as the rest of the competitors. At first she was lagging behind but she pulled ahead at the very end. The real strong men from the States awarded winners with trophies at the very end.

After watching the strongmen competition, we got Klondike bars from a nearby stand. Dad couldn't wait to eat some more food because we heard that they were gonna have jambalaya (those of you who know him well know he loves his southern food)! We were all hungry again from being out in the heat and walking around a lot, but we decided to wait a little bit. Next we went to look at the planes. I liked most of the American ones the best cause they painted them! One had neon splotches, another one had a shark's face, and some were painted wacky camouflage colors like blue and orange browns. Of course some were the regular camo greens but some were even cooler!

Once we had seen the small jets, we moved on the the amazing big huge aircrafts! You would get to walk inside and look around. After we had toured the smaller of the two, we went to sit in the shade of the enourmous wings of the larger one. A few minutes afterwards we decided to go get jambalaya. Right after we had walked about 20 feet, water started spraying from the fire engine! Of course Cooper and Dad decided to get WET, but Mom and I decided just to get misted by the spray that blew towards us. Way better than walking around sopping wet.

When we went back to see if they had jambalaya, they said they were out and making more. Sadly the person actually didn't know, and they weren't making anymore. We got more water and I think we had drunk about 14 bottles of water already. We ate some Mexican tacos on soft tortillas and they were good too. We bought five more bottles of water and headed home after spending 5 hours at the air base.

Thanks for reading! Greer

Hmm, Greer talks a lot about the food.  Wonder where she gets that from....

And now for some pictures:
Here's a couple from the the Strongman (and one Strongwoman) competition.  Despite what Greer thought she remembered, the female competitor did not get her tire over the finish line first in her pairing.  However, there was one male competitor who was unable to finish before the timer went off, so she for sure at least came in ahead of one. 

 

Here's Cooper running to get on the bus (can you pick him out?):

Here's one of the American planes Greer liked:

This is from inside one of the big American planes. Can you see the line formed on the left? That's to get inside the cockpit. It was a wait of a couple of hours; we were not interested. To the right you can see another line; that's for the cockpit of the other big American plane.


With one of the military personnel on the big plane:





After we disembarked from the plane:

Cooper wanted to make sure I included a shot of the whole plane:

The spray of water from a Yokota Air Base firetruck.  This was a welcome (momentary) relief from the heat.

Nothing says Japanese cuisine quite like fried Oreos:

Drew took some video of the Van Halen cover band, but I'm not sure I should bother including any of that (even if it had been a good cover band).  The funny part to us was our kids.  These are kids who like music, including rock, but they sat down on the hot, hard ground the whole time the band played.  Didn't even get up for "Jump."

 

And one final picture:

The festival was absolutely huge - the crowds were just incredible - I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. They had barrels such as in this picture all over. The truly amazing part of this

picture to me is that every time I looked in any of these barrels, they had the correct garbage in them. Yet every time I tried to set up recycling bins at things like swim meets and school events in the States, I invariably had to sort through a ton of garbage afterwards because people seemed incapable of putting their garbage in the correct bins.