Robot Exhibit

Have you ever wondered if the future many kids dream of is here? If the hover boards and flying cars made up in Back to the Future: Part 2, is really somewhere out there being approved? What if the future is here? What if right now there is an alien talking to the president? You never know. The world is a gigantic place, and so is the universe. All I know is that’s exactly how I felt last Saturday.



We drove and drove to a billion Lawsons, Family Marts, and even a CoCo. These are all convenience stores by the way. They have these red boxes where you can get (no, not movies) tickets for whatever event you. If you buy from those boxes instead of the actual event, you get a discount. We were trying to get a discount but of all the convenience stores we drove to, not a single one had any tickets for a robot exhibit. My dad had read about this exhibit in one of the newspapers on Kadena Air Base. He really wanted to take us. So, he ended up buying tickets at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum of Art. Long name, eh?


Walking in, we saw a whole bunch of life-sized replicas of famous robot characters from famous movies. One you might recognize, (if you’re like me and just love action movies) is The Terminator. That thing scared the heepitapajeebees out of me! If it were moving I would have ran out of that building.


As we continued walking around, we saw a bunch of little toys, action figures and posters of things like Astro Boy, Starwars, Transformers, and Alien. Plus, there were many more Japanese characters we didn’t know. It was truly robot heaven!


Once we got past all the still robots, we got to some real, live, moving ones. The first one we saw was a climbing robot. It was a silver-ish color that looked like aluminum foil. The next robot we saw was a little baby dinosaur called a Pleo. You can actually buy it. I knew a friend who had that one. The Pleo is a very life-like robot. Its movements are almost like a real animal. It even has “skin” on it to cover up all its wires and medal parts.


Next we saw some remote wired cars. Kemet got to drive one on a short obstacle course. Once Kemet hopped out of that super cool car, we then headed over to check out some robot floor cleaners! They were circular and had little bristles underneath them that sweep up all the dirt off of the floor. There was a floor sample to demonstrate the cleaning performance of the robots.


Finally, my FAVORITE robot was the ones that could play traditional musical instruments! There were three robots playing a traditional Okinawan song. This song must have been popular, because everyone was clapping and bobbing their heads to it! All and all this robot exhibit was the Bom!

Here is a short slide show for this entry:  https://picasaweb.google.com/vincentprice74/August102011#slideshow/5639016823074559698

Beach Day 2

Yesterday, Sunday,  we packed up for yet another trip to the beach. This beach deserves a blog entry. The beach we went to was a new one. It did not have a a net like the other beach. My dad thought it was the perfect spot to practice our snorkeling. Before we got in the water we played at the park. That park was awesome! It had all sorts of cool equipment like a merry-go-round thing that you have to pedal to get it to spin. They also had a bunch of ramps for skate boards and a basketball court. My dad and I did some basketball drills when we got there. Kemet and Tsehai played in the park. They had a back board with five hoops on it. Kemet said that it increases your chance of getting it in. I don't know how accurate that is because I missed all the shots I made on that.

After sweating it out we headed toward the beach. We walked around in the water for some time. When we got to big rock sticking up out of the water we saw something black that looked like a snake. "Kemet stick your face in and see what it is." Daddy said. "Okay." So Kemet stuck his face in to take a look. When he popped out of the water he said "I can't see anything." So Daddy tried and I tried but neither of us could see it. Of course we weren't gonna put our face right on it, we didn't know what it was. So Daddy told Kemet to stick it with a spare breathing tube we had. Kemet didn't want to so I said "Gimme this. I'll do it." When I stuck it, it slithered slowly into the rock. I freaked out and ran out of the water. We snorkeled a bit and got out of the water. After that, we walk on the rocks along the beach and went home. It was a fun-filled, crazy, interesting beach trip. Here are the pictures:

Ryukyu Mura

I'm sure most of you know that Okinawa was originally it's own country. Japan attacked it and took over. Alot of elders like to consider Okinawa as Okinawa, not Japan. So, it's best to say "I'm going to Okinawa for a visit." Not "I'm going to Japan for a visit."

Okinawa was originally called Ryukyu kingdom. Their religion is not worshiping a god. Instead, their elders and ancestors. They are tombs of all shapes and sizes all around Okinawa. My favorite is the turtle tomb. Here is a picture of it:

Very interesting shape.  Anyway, at Ryukyu Mura we learned about what Okinawa used to be like. We saw some old houses that were moved from their original location to Ryukyu Mura. We had tea and Japanese "doughnuts" in one of those old houses.

Here is the slide show for this entry:

https://picasaweb.google.com/vincentprice74/RyukyuMura?authkey=Gv1sRgCMbH45WXhIXCtQE#slideshow/5630575189616970866