Welcome BBQ

Sunday was our Welcome BBQ/Lucas's Farewell BBQ at Innoshima Beach, we rode in Narumi's Van to get there it was about a 30 min drive. There were many weird cell phone calls through out the trip some in Japanese some in English "meet under the dinosaur" Which we understood when we arrived to see this huge dinosaur sculpture.
There was a park with grass and a whale shaped playground for the kids to play-on.

Then closer to the water was a boardwalk and then a beautiful sandy beach.

In the distance there were dragon boat races. Oh that net is a shark net so we can swim and not get eaten by sharks. (also keeps the jelly fish out).
First thing's first set up a tent sort of thing. I didn't really get it no one sat under it they didn't put any food under it. Hmmm I don't know just for fun I guess.
People started showing up and introducing themselves to us. Parents made there kids ask us questions in English it was very cute the 2 common questions are "What is your name?" and "How old are you?". Then the real party started PICTURES. A lot of people took pictures of us. Some on the sly, but a lot asked if we would be in a picture with them.
One lady even handed me her baby for the picture. (He was very cute.)
The BBQ was delicious a lot of meat on a stick plain hot dogs on a stick and corn dogs. We also had what we thought would be regular hotdogs in a bun. The buns were regular size but the wieners were like the ones we have as an appetizer so you had to have 2 per bun. They were good though. Of course there was sushi. My favorite was the potato. It looked and tasted just like a McDonald's Hashbrown YUM!!! Of course we took some pitures of our own.

The sun started to go down over the water.
The kids all got "fireworks!!" Kind of like giant cake sparklers but a little more violent because bits of burning paper fly off. It was scary by Canadian standards but apparently good clean Japanese fun. By the end of the night the two little girls in the skirts (who were afraid of me at the beginning of the night) were holding my hand following me around. It was so cute a can't wait to teach them. From their car window they were yelling See ya, see ya, thank-you, arigato, see-ya until we couldn't hear them anymore. It was adorable but it made me miss Annie. One thing that is very different in Japan is everything is very very very very very slow. It's going to take me a long time to get used to that. At home if we went to the beach and it was time to go home so we started packing up (unless we started doing something else) that would be a half an hour to an hour long project tops then we would go home. I don't know why it took so long but from the time they started packing up to the time that we actually left took close to two and a half hours. So So Slow. It's going to Drive me nuts. But on the bright side Cam's going to fit right in (hee hee just kidding). I worked on Monday and my first class was a 4 year old girl. Her name was Machiko she is really cute but she couldn't concentrate at all. Matt said she has probably never seen a white women before. All she wanted to do was sit in my lap and touch my face and touch my hair and tell me things in Japanese. It was very cute but not very productive, ooops. Today (Wednesday) Cam is working and I have the day off which is good because I'm a little bit sick. I have an ear ache and a sore throat and one eye that gets crusted shut during the night. Cam and I both had the day off yesterday so he went to a drugstore and got me some pills. They are helping quite a bit. Yay. But he also bought me some chips or candy I'm not sure, they are shrimp flavored and they are shaped like shrimp. They smell disgusting, but they taste pretty good. Other weird things we've tried butter flavored potato chips yum!, and Cam had this drink when he asked Matt what it was Matt said "cow piss", then laughed for a long time at Cam's expression of horror but it's spelt cal pis and it's actually carbonated milk (gross). But Cam said it was pretty good!!

As for the questions yes we do have a mailing address it's as follows

Cam and Karleen Jones
4519-4 Innoshima Takuma-cho, Onomichi-shi, Hiroshima-Ken, Japan

Also Heather e-mail me all about the wedding!!!