After 2 months of daily and nightly driving, Lucy finally finished her supervised driving and earned her on-base license! She is super excited, but not as excited as we are! Now, she just needs to keep practicing driving the stick shift so she can drive the mini mini. Of course, she drives our Noah whenever she wants.
Next up is Senior Night for Volleyball! It seems like the girls season just started, but suddenly we find ourselves at the last home game! Which is even stranger if you think that it is only the second week of October. How could it already be their last home game? They played MC Perry (Iwakuni) and ended up splitting the games. Both girls have had a great season thus far and we are super proud of them, but tonight was all about Lilly and her fellow seniors. The team really did a wonderful job celebrating them!
In addition to it being Senior Night, it also happened to be Homecoming weekend. During most of the volleyball match Jim was outside watching Ben play in the first half of the JV game - in the pouring rain! Ben does double duty on both JV and Varsity which means he is only allowed to play a half in each game. I am not going to lie, I am glad I was inside for the JV half that he played. It was really coming down. The rain cleared up in time for the Varsity game to start - whew!
He also saw some action in the 4th quarter of the Varsity game. He typically gets a good 5 to 10 yards every time he carries the ball. Sadly, the visiting team from Zama ended up beating us during OT in the last few plays of the game. Since the weather was crappy, there aren't any good photos - sorry 😬!
The next night was the Homecoming dance. The kids have a really good group of friends this year and it was fun to take them over to the Yokota tea garden for some group photos. Everyone looked fantastic all dressed up.
After the kids left for the dance, some of the parents decided to head off base for a group dinner to celebrate another Panther Homecoming in the books! We made our way back to the O Club, where the dance was going strong, and we were able to sneak in to see the action and take our picture in front of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign the girls made as part of the theme decorations. From the looks of it, everyone was having a great time!
The next week, I had the opportunity to join an event with Japanese spouses. This is the first partner event we have been able to have in over three years!! The Japanese planned this one and we met at Paratrooper base about three hours away. The idea was that we would participate in two of the training exercises for new paratrooper recruits. The first was being raised up 260 feet and then lower again with a fixed opened parachute to simulate a parachute jump. The second was jumping out of a mock airplane 36 feet in the air and then zip line to a berm 50 meters away. The information we were given beforehand didn't really do a great job of explaining EXACTLY what we would be doing, but after a lot of hand gestures and saying Hai a few times (what was I agreeing too?), we set off.
As luck would have it, I was up first on the parachute exercise. The fellow Japanese spouse assured me it was a piece of cake. What could go wrong? Ha!
She was correct of course! It was incredible!! Sadly the skies were overcast so my view wasn't impressive. Apparently on clear days the Tokyo Sky Tree and Tokyo Bay are visible.
The second exercise was harder since you actually had to jump off the platform. We were given about a 5 min explanation and then herded up the steps. I think this one would have been more fun if they had let us go full speed, but we were tethered and we stopped well before getting to the landing berm. All in all, it was a fantastic experience.
We don't like to have blank spaces in our calendar, so when our friends mentioned they were going to an Autumn festival nearby we jumped at the chance to go with them! Originally we had planned on returning to Takayama for their fall festival, but the weather didn't cooperate so this was going to be our only chance at seeing the centuries-old floats. The place was PACKED! We have been in Japan for over 3 years and I haven't been anywhere where there were more people. The country had just opened up for tourists, so we were being asked by several locals where we were from. When we said Yokota Air Base, you could tell they were disappointed 😬.
Pre-covid, this festival would attract more than a million tourists during the two days it is held. The main attraction is the large fleet of 29 floats representing each of the town's neighborhoods. All the floats are two stories tall, with the bottom being a small decorated stage with musicians and the top including a doll or puppet. The stage can spin in order for it to do "battle" with other floats from different neighborhoods. So basically two floats meet at an intersection and have a musical battle and who ever gets the most applause is declared the winner. The whole thing is pulled by ropes down the street by people who live in that particular neighborhood. It was all pretty fascinating, even though we really didn't have any idea what was going on most of the night. The food, drinks and company were great and that is really all that matters!
The leaves are beginning to change and so the girls and I decided to drive down to the Fuji 4 Lakes in an attempt to find some "fall" and take some pictures. According to the internet this is what we are going to see:
This is what we got however 😞. Oh well. The girls and I had a fantastic lunch and it was fun hanging out with them. Lucy especially wants to come back down and try again for some fall pictures.
The last two weeks of the month are going to be all about volleyball and football - sorry!
The girls had a tournament down at the American School in Japan (ASIJ). They didn't play as well as they wanted and ended up in the consolation bracket. I tried out a new lens on my camera and it wasn't great. Hopefully I will get the kinks worked out before soccer season.
Following the volleyball tournament, Lilly's senior class sponsored a "Trick or Trunk." It was supposed to just be for the senior class, but since the school is so small they decided to open it up for everyone. Lilly decided to decorate her car about 3 hours before the event and this was what we came up with - a JAWs theme. We even tried to get Yoshi to participate. He was not amused.
The last weekend in October found Ben playing in the last JV football game of the season. He played his usual first half of the JV game and was able to play in the final Varsity game the following night. Even though the JV team didn't get to play as many games as they originally thought, they ended up gelling as a team and Ben definitely has grown to love this game! We look forward to seeing how he progresses as a player in years to come.
Sadly I missed both of Ben's last football games because I travelled to Okinawa with the girls to watch their last volleyball games of the season - and possibly their last high school volleyball games period! - sniff sniff - but more on that in a second. Jim, however, was able to attend both games and he provided these pictures for me. He said Ben played quite a bit in the Varsity game and did a great job. Sorry to miss it Ben!
As I mentioned earlier, the girls had a final volleyball tournament in Okinawa and since Lilly is graduating and we don't know if Lucy will play volleyball at her new school next year ... I decided to head down with the extra incentive of seeing two of my good friends ... it was an easy decision to go!
The matches started strong and the girls did fairly well against the teams they had played previously. They knew they were not going to beat the host team - Kubasaki, but in our bracket, they were doing great.
The wheels kind of fell off the second day, and they were relegated to the silver bracket at the end of group play. As disappointing as it was to not be in the golden bracket, the girls gutted it out and won first place in their division! A perfect ending to a wonderful season!
It wasn't all volleyball the whole time for them (or me). They spent some time relaxing at the beach and having some team bonding over dinners out at American Village. I got to spend some much needed time with two of my friends from way (way) back. We have even got some future trips planned for 2023!
As always an amazing adventure for an amazing family. Can't wait for your return
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