Sweet Potato Festival!

We try to get out for some sort of adventure in Okinawa, about every weekend or so. With the help of the local paper, Japan Update, I can stay abreast of the various festivals and activities available here. We missed the Obon festival as it was either during church, school, work or bedtime hours! The Obon is held in the months of August and September and focuses on the Japanese ancestry and the honoring of their dead. There are a lot of different celebrations, dances, and costumes associated with this festival. As that may be a more morbid topic, we chose to try out their "Sweet Potato Festival". This festival is a yearly celebration of the harvesting of the sweet potato which wasn't ever a native plant here in Okinawa, but was brought to Okinawa by a farmer many years ago. It's become a staple item here, so the sweet potato is worthy of it's celebration! There were lots of sweet potato plants and potatoes to buy as well as lots to taste!

Have you seen a purple potato? We did see some purple potatoes in an ordering magazine in Washington state, but I had never seen one in person. Pretty wild actually! The purple sweet potato tastes like a regular orange sweet potato, just not as sweet and a little dryer. However, the purple sweet potato seems to be more common than the usual orange ones we're used to.Not sure if Cameron's "diggin" this one!

Here Mr. Sweet Potato takes to walking through the crowds in the park.

More yummy sweet potato!

We decided to join the big crowds in this area of the park to figure out what all the excitement was. They had hauled in some dirt from a local farm and had buried lots of sweet potatoes. This was their version of an easter egg hunt! With bags in hand, the kids were itching to get busy digging. They blew the whistle and off went the kiddos......

After this event, we wandered over to another crowd of onlookers. I am not sure what this particular sport is, but there were lots of different age groups of fighters and teams. The whistle would blow and the wrestlers would grab each others' cloth belts and try to turn their opponent over onto the ground. It was neat watching some of the younger guys turn the older kids down quickly! It's a sport of speed and balance!

A good part of our day was watching the performances. The performances were put on from the tiny preschoolers to the high school students of various schools on the island. Each age group had their own costume and dance. The youngest group's song and dance resembled something much like the "Wiggles" on TV. Uh.... NO! I am NOT a Fan!

These kids were really cute! Too bad I didn't have a clue as to what they were singing about! I'm guessing that all the orange and purple in their costumes had something to do with the sweet potatoes!

Overall, we had a fun day immercing ourselves in the Okinawan culture! Oh yeah, and I did try some octopus for the first time. It's one of their "fair foods". They make this hushpuppy-like batter with green and red peppers, and bury a small chunk of octopus in it and deep-fry it. There was so much yummy fried batter around it, I didn't even taste it!! I've learned here that it you aren't sure about liking a certain food, like sushi, raw fish, .... just add wasabi to it or dunk it in a batter n deep fry it!!! ;)