August Whirlwind: Week 4 ~ Hawaiian Night

Junko in the kitchen making dinner.

Immediately after returning from Bali, I was in charge of planning an outreach, fun activity for the church.  The idea was Hawaiian Night.  I was kinda nervous/stressed about putting it all together and the idea of being in charge of a bunch of energetic kids for an afternoon, but things turned out pretty well.

The day started out early and we all did what we could to prepare.  Junko was in the kitchen all day cooking the hamburger patties for the loco moco dinner.  Yoko and Manami were running around making sure we got everything we needed.  Hiromitsu prepared the music.  I decorated the New Chapel to make it festive.

The kids all came by 4:30 and we started off by playing several rounds of Chubby Bunny.  It was a new game for the Japanese kids (and adults).  They really enjoyed it.  It was pretty funny to see their faces all stuffed with marshmallows.  Of course, Chubby Bunny has nothing to do with Hawaii, but it was a fun game that I wanted to use on them.

The second game was a hula hoop contest.  Poor Yoko drove all over Sendai looking for hula hoops.  Apparently, they're quite difficult to find and not as cheap as I thought they would be.  The hula hoop was quite a challenge for the kids.  For some of them, it was their first time trying it.  But for a few a girls they picked it up really quick!

After hula hoop, we had a hula hoop relay.  This was really me trying to eat up time and their energy all at once.  The task was to skip to the hula hoops, then jump in and out of the hula hoops 10 times, hula hoop 20 times, then run back.  It was actually kinda fun watching them.  They even wanted to do it twice.  But we didn't have time for that.  Afterwards, every kid was rewarded with an ice pop.

We went back inside for a game of fishing.  It was basically Manami hiding behind the whiteboard and attaching candy to their "fishing poles".  It was a free prize.  The picture's pretty funny!

When games were over, we enjoyed a wonderful local dinner:  loco moco, haupia, and lots of different kinds of tropical fruit juice.  We had pineapple, mango, and mixed.  At this time the adults also came and we closed dinner with the Lord's Prayer in Hawaiian.

After praying, the women who showed up made their own leis out of fake flowers and string and ribbon.  Some of them turned out quite cute despite its cheap quality.  The lei making went on longer than I expected.  About an hour after, we finally started the main attraction.  Hula lessons.  Sayaka was the main star and she taught everyone the basic steps of hula.  It was pretty hard to learn a full song in just one hour, but I think all the ladies really loved it.  Sayaka was a great teacher.

The Lord's Prayer in Hawaiian

Ultimately, I think Hawaiian Night was a success.  I think the adult ladies especially loved learning hula, making leis, and just chatting.  I think the staff also enjoyed it too.  I think we could even start our own hula halau!  Maybe we can another hula event sometime again soon.

Back: Aaron.
2nd Row:  Haruka, Manami, Yoko, Aya, Sachiko, Mayumi, Kyoko
Front:  Asuka, Junko, me, Sayaka