Swimming and Opera

One of the big summer school activities is swimming lessons. Ogimi has four elementary schools, but only one of them has a pool. During the summer, the different schools will load the kids onto a bus and invade that school's pool for a couple of hours.

The fact that there are people who do not know how to swim is a concept I am slowly grasping with. This concept is further inhibited by the fact that these kids live within walking distance of the ocean. Yes they are from Okinawa, but I am told repeatedly that Okinawans only LOOK at the water. One of the mom's from Real Japan told me the kids there can swim. So I think this is an Okinawan thing only.

It's taken two summers now for me to finally understand that there are people who really can't swim. Maybe it's because I grew up in Florida and had a swimming pool, but even the actual question of 'Can you swim?' was foreign to me coming to Okinawa. Why would someone even bother to ask that question? Of course I can swim, who can't? It's like asking 'can you walk?'. And these aren't the kids asking me this, but the adults.

So last week, I went with the kids to help teach swimming. The kids wear what I consider to be normal swimming attire. A bathing suit. The teachers wear what I would consider to be normal swimming attire if I were allergic to water. They wear a bathing suit with a long sleeved wet shirt, swimming cap, and goggles. They look like they are ready to swim in a triathlon. I always feel a little bit awkward strutting my hairy white self into the open, but then again, the moms do seem to become more talkative.

The teaching part is fun, even if the kids really do suck.

But the most interesting part of the day was when everything was over and I was getting into my car, I was approached by a couple mom's asking if I can site read opera music. Random, but okay. I said it depends on the music and I headed back to school.

When I arrived, there was a lady waiting for me. This lady turned out to be an opera singer and is a friend of one of the student's mom's. She had great English and she said she speaks German even better. She lives in Tokyo but studied and lived in Vienna for 10 years. She hands me music and says we are performing in 30 minutes. Luckily the songs were easy enough to pick up in that time, but I did postpone lunch (yes, that's a big deal for me) in order to be ready.

Then the whole school files in (all 40 of them) and we gave a performance. The lady was amazing and I've been invited to visit her and her husband if I am ever in the Tokyo area.