Say it with me everyone

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

May I be frank?


Y'all, it's been 99 degrees in my house the past few days. It's been 92 degrees at night.

Safe to say, it's been hot.

Our new neighbor, a wonderful lady from the UK, asked how southern Americans dealt with the heat. I almost felt sheepish admitting that most people have air conditioning.

It's true that Ichinohe's summer isn't as bad as Tennessee's summer ( or Georgia's summer or Mississipi's summer or...). The heat wave broke yesterday when some rain finally made it into town. Rain can easily cut down the temperature by ten degrees. Two days with scattered showers (like the ones we've been having) leave the temperature in my house at a very agreeable 87.

There are some great perks to summer as well. Most towns in Japan have a festival or two during the summer. Our big festival is still a couple of weeks away but we had a fun little event just this week.

They call it a caterpillar race. Well, really they call it a long Japanese word that I didn't quite catch.

Teams are tied together at the ankles. They have to complete little challenges along the way. Oh and several teams had cool little group outfits.
We all loved the grapes.


This bus costume was in-SANE. They had this little generator on wheels behind the group. There was 0ne station that involved tossing water balloons between group members. I wonder if it made them nervous.




The group that dressed up as packs of cigarettes were almost dead last.



Our seats were right beside the third station. A "Mystery Food and Drink" station. When the racers reached the station they had to eat or drink whatever was given to them before they could continue the race. The fastest groups to move on were the ones that got bananas. The slowest by far were the groups where each member had to eat a whole cucumber. A cucumber doesn't seem like much food, until you're trying to eat one in under a minute.

Here's my favorite group (dressed as Alice in wonderland characters) eating bananas.

Don't you just want to squeeze the Cheshire cat?


The Queen of Hearts was the fastest eater there. She had that banana gone in two seconds!
And here's us! The other blond lady is our new neighbor, and the shorter lady is Miyuki ( who is even cuter than the Cheshire cat).