Wordless Wednesday: She Got Trashed

Stunned with Sign Language at an Okinawan Festival

Star Performer

Last night, I returned from four days on the southern island of Iriomote, Okinawa.

Traveling with a sailing sabani team, I was plenty busy, getting tanned in the hot sun.

It can be exhausting work but, it's always interesting.

Besides the sailing boats, there were other things I had on my checklist of things to do.

It was my first visit to this island and, there's wildlife, we don't see on this island.

A good friend, Miss Miyagi, got me to the Wildlife Center, an hour's drive away.

There, I made contact and, took some photos but, they can wait.

This photo, I liked better than, any taken on this excursion and, wanted to post it tonight.

The girl is 8 year old Hiyuri Yamashita and, she's signing the Japanese word, for star.

Hiyuri is accompanying a band, performing an Okinawan song, at a rehearsal.

The festival, would be held the following evening and, she would be on stage.

It's always best, for me, to attend the practice and take photos before the main event occurs.

That way, people get to know me and, aren't nervous when I take their photos.

Curious, as to why such a young girl, knows how to use sign language, I asked her grandma.

"Does, Hiyuri have bad hearing, like me?"

Granny, laughed and said, "No. We teach all the children, how to sign!"

Camera: Pentax K1

Lens: Pentax 15-30 at 29 MM

Exposure: f/4  1/40   ISO 1600

Location: Iriomote, Okinawa

Date and Time: AUG 26 2017  8:05 PM

NOTE: More images at Iriomote Island AUG 2017 on Facebook

Wordless Wednesday

Hando-Gwaa Statue on Ie Jima Okinawa and Advice for Parents

The Poor Girl Didn't Have to Kill Herself

 

This statue is a monument to Hando-Gwaa, a girl who fell in love with the wrong guy.

After the fact, she found out the dude was married.

So, she climbed up Mt. Tatchū (タッチュー) and hanged herself with her long hair.

The statue is in Shimamuraya Tourist Park.

That's way down below Mt. Gusuku or Tatchū, whichever you prefer to call it.

Now, I know Okinawan parents use this monument to teach children lessons.

But, I'll put my thoughts in simple English for everyone to read.

Advice for Parents

 

 

Teach your daughters there are some people we call Slick Willies in this world.

Before a girl lets a guy wiggle his way into love, she has to know how to check him out.

Look for concealed wedding rings and, stuff like that.

And, even more importantly, when out on a date.....

Don't Get Too Stoned ! 





 

Jumping Over Mt Katsuu: How We Gotterdun

She Really Didn't Jump That High

The pretty girl didn't have to jump over 400 meters in the air to compose this photo.

I took it while waiting for the Katsuyama Shikuwasa Flower Festival Festival to Kick off.

Most girls would look at you like you were crazy if you asked them to try this.

Say something like, "Nene, how about a picture of you jumping over that mountain?"

Well, she did seem to act like she was confronting a lunatic, at first.

But, thanks to the Zuckerberganator, the gal recognized RyukyuMike from Facebook.

So, she took a minute of her time to listen to my plan.

 We borrowed two folding chairs from the set-up in front of the stage.

They were strategically placed so she just had to jump-up a tad while I shot the photos.

That's how we gotterdun.

She Gets Away With Murder This Girl (Photos)

                       This girl comes into my Bar on a Saturday night and messes with my beard

             Gets a red rubberband, twists it real tight and tries to make a ponytail out of the thing

                             Then laughs and sings karaoke until the wee hours of the morning

                     She gets away with murder only because Grandpa loves her and she knows it

                                                Anybody else tries messin' with me like that

                                                       They'll be lookin' for their teeth !


Visit my Homepage for THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

Unidentified Fruit (Photos) and a Girl with Muscular Arms (Unexplainable)

Normally, I would just delete photos of this low quality to save space for the ones I consider worth keeping. 
This unidentified fruit keeps popping up in my files and I've got to do something about it before it drives me nuts. Maybe, it is a nut. Who knows?

The girl with the muscular arms, she wants to know what this fruit or nut, growing on the island of Okinawa is, too. She's from here and she's never seen anything like it.

The reason we have such low quality photos is the shot was taken through an open car window. The engine was running and I had to tell the driver ( Dude I call Ryukyu Rusty ) to lean back so I could snap the shot without getting his ears or nose in the picture. It was raining, a little, and the place we were at looked like some kinda sacred site so, I wasn't getting out and setting up my tripod and all that fancy stuff I usually do. 

Just in case we had to make a fast getaway, he kept the engine running.

Rusty, he's one of those good old boys from Texas. He has his machine tuned to where it sounds and acts just like one of those GMC pickup trucks with dual exhausts, quadruple carburetors, an over-sized cam and makes a low growl, vibrating and straining against the brakes while it waits to make a quick getaway.

 The only thing is it's a Nissan with half a GMCs cylinders.

Then, I got the idea it'd be lots easier to identify an unidentified fruit, or whatever is, if we had someone to stick a hand in the picture. That would give it a sense of scale.

Well, like I said, I wasn't dragging all my camera stuff out of the car to shoot some fruit in the rain.

Rusty, he was the driver. He had to keep the engine running, just in case we had to make a fast getaway.

His fiance was sitting in the back seat. She got volunteered. That's her hand under the fruit.

It gives the picture some scale. That fruit isn't a pear. We can't figure out what it is.

The arm is hers, too. It doesn't look much different that any other arm I've seen on a young girl anywhere else in my travels. I found out about the muscular arms about a month later.

We were all sitting at the bar one Friday night and I pulled up the photos we took that day. Everyone snapped shots of the fruits with their cell phone cameras to show them around and see if we can get a name for the strange thing.

When the PRETTY GIRLS and UGLY GIRLS and the Unidentified Fruit came up, Rusty kept talking about the muscular arm in the picture.

Well, I'm still trying to figure out why he keeps picking on her about the muscular arms when just the right amount of beer kicked in for all of us to start flexing muscles and groping each other like we were working at the TSA (bicep gropes only) and now I know. This girl has arms as hard as a rock!

She can't explain why. It's not from her mother or father. She doesn't pump iron, work in the fields, practice karate and brick smashing with her bare hands. She doesn't do any exercise harder then operating the TV remote control. It's unexplainable, if even she can't explain it !

Today I spent way too much time Googling unidentified fruits and came up more confused than when I started. I have some deadlines to meet and just don't have time to research this fruit any longer. Maybe someone will see the photos and have the answer. The girl with the muscular arms, I wouldn't mess with her. They're heading back to Texas to meet Rusty's family. I know what his grandpa will say when he meets her. 

It'll be something like, 

"Keep that one; good breedin' stock".

 That's what he'll say when he sees the photo of the unidentified fruit !

Wildlife Photo: Pigeons in Flight + A Girl Named I Eat My Pigeon !

Today I'm feelin a little rough around the edges from too much cold medicine I guzzled last night. So, all you get to see will be these pigeons flying and I'll introduce you to this gal I met one day when I Googled to see if anybody actually eats pigeon.

Most wildlife photographers probably don't even consider pigeons to be wildlife. I know, I don't because the dang things are everywhere, city, country, jungles and even flying around dropping little white bombs on government buildings, statues, landmarks and state capitols.

Pigeons do make great subjects for a cameraman wanting to practice shooting birds in flight, though. They're fast and pull off some pretty fancy aerial maneuvers so, when nothing else worth shooting shows up and I get bored, I shoot pigeons for practice (with my camera, of course).

There was even a time when pigeons were drafted into the Army to be messengers during a war.  Now, the guy who came up with that bright idea must have had a awful lot of time on his hands or been really, really bored. It's hard enough for me to get one of my dogs to bring me something. How in the heck are you supposed to teach a bird to deliver a message and bring back a reply?

Fortunately, along came the internet and we don't have to draft pigeons anymore. We just keep them around to entertain bored photographers and old people sitting on park benches with stale bread crumbs. And, we allow them to deface government property. It's the right thing to do.

This is no joke. There's a Girl Named I Eat My Pigeon. I don't think she really ate anybody's pigeon or ever even thought of eating pigeons. It's just a name she picked up along the way. I don't want to steal her thunder so, if you're really interested in these sort of things, after you're done drooling over my Pigeons in Flight photo, you can pop-in on the Girl Named I EAT MY PIGEON and find out what made a name like that stick to her. She's really, alright, I think !