2nd Worldwide Uchinanchu Conference

The conference is chaotic. It starts an hour late and doesn't really have a set schedule. Dr. Willcox provides the keynote on the Okinawan Diet. We get headsets that provides translations in Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Man, the logistics for a conference with so many different language speakers must be a nightmare!

I sit in on the Women's Forum. They are preceded by two men who speak about the power of women but the examples they cite are only in the context of wives. I start to get seriously annoyed. Thank goodness the women who comprise the panel talk about their impressive contributions and accomplishments, which have nothing to do with being wives. This gets me thinking about the status of and attitudes towards women in South America and in Okinawa.

Lunch is SUSHI in bento boxes. Chris and I run away to get food at a local por kilo. We eat our meal sitting on a balcony looking out into a giant tree. Heh. I was enjoying the meal so much, I forgot to photograph it til after it was half consumed.

Restaurante por quilo is a Brazilian restaurant in which you help yourself from a buffet and weigh your plate. You just pay for the weight of the portions you chose.

Kilo restaurants usually serve varied, home-style Brazilian food: beans, rice, meats, vegetables, pastries, casseroles and salads.

The kilo price is the same for everything, so the terms "light" and "heavy" have a literal meaning here - a heaping serving of lettuce will probably be cheaper than a small serving of steak or potato salad.

Daniel Chinen lets me have some of his time to present the Takejiro Higa Story. It's crazy. You talk a few sentences, then it is translated into Portuguese then Japanese. They grabbed Tomaz and someone else and told them to translate with no warning! Whew!