Celebrate Children!

May 5th is Children's Day, a holiday for celebrating the health and happiness of Japanese children. It is also a day for children to honor and give thanks to their parents. Traditionally, May 5th was celebrated as Boy's Day, a day to honor young boys, and families with sons hang carp streamers outside their homes. For those of you who are worried about fairness, girls also have a holiday, Girl's Day, celebrated March 3. The carp streamers are called Koinobori, and they look like colorful fish-shaped windsocks.

One carp is flown for each boy in the family, with the largest one (usually black) representing the father, and smaller carp representing each son. The youngest son is represented by the smallest flag. The carp represents strength and determination to overcome obstacles, qualities demonstrated when it swims upstream against swift currents. It is a spirited, energetic, and powerful fish. These traits are also desirable in young boys, which is how they came to be a symbol of Boy's Day.


An impressive display of carp flags is flown over the Higa River just north of my house, where I took these photos this weekend.

Peter Update - Peter has been participating in the Marine Corps Martial Art Program (MCMAP). From what I can tell, it is just a mishmash of various forms of martial arts designed to teach marines how to fight with their hands should the need arise. Peter has now reached the second level of the program, gray belt. I believe there are five levels total. Black belt is obviously the highest, and Peter says there is no hope of him ever reaching it. We're into the countdown days of this deployment!

Kyoto AGAIN!

Peter Update: Peter recently spent about a week doing a training exercise in Djibouti. According to him, this was the most fun he's had yet on this deployment...which means I probably don't want to know what he did! Only about six weeks left on this deployment! We're getting closer!

Kristin Update: Meg and Moira came out to visit about two weeks ago and we took a trip up to Kyoto and Tokyo. Pictures speak louder than words, so here are a few photos from our trip. I'll try to get some of the Oki photos up soon!


Another geisha photo.


The cherry blossoms were a little bit past their peak, but we did get to see a few nice weeping cherries. We got luck and stumbled on some that were lit up beautifully at night!


These photos are torii gates at the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. There were literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of them spread for 4km up a mountain...we had a great morning hiking around in the woods enjoying the shrine.


These gates were set in a beautiful forest...the walk in the woods would have been pleasurable even without the shrine!
There were many little side shrines as well...buy a baby torii gate for only $40!

The candles were in one of the little side shrines at Fushimi Inari.


I assume these two statues are Buddhist...but I don't know much about their meanings, I just thought they looked cool.

Spring has definitely arrived in Japan...just about everything was in bloom, not just the cherry blossoms!
In one of the gardens I found a crane.



We spent a single evening in Tokyo, which is a lot like New York or LA.

The city lights were beautiful at night!