September 19th was the Misawa Air Show! It was not nearly as big as the one we went to down in Yokota, but it was important because everything we sold would fund our squadron activities for the next year. In addition to the usual pilot swag (hats, tee shirts and patches) we wives baked and sold over 700 cakes! Most Japanese people do not have ovens in their houses and are unable to make baked goods for themselves, so they go crazy for American goodies! I don't know why, but I went a little crazy and volunteered to bake 48 cakes all on my own. That's 24 boxes of cake mix, 72 eggs, and 2 gallons of oil!! If it weren't for the fact that I can fit 8 of these little 9 inch cake tins in the oven at once, this would have been almost impossible. There are people in our squadron who baked upwards of 60! Sometimes I forget that things that are fairly run-of-the-mill for Air Force families are absolutely absurd in the normal world.
The morning of the air show we woke up and it was pouring down rain. We were afraid that no one would show up to buy all of our cakes and we'd have to eat them all! But thankfully, the rain stopped right before the gates opened to the public, and held out until right after all of the cakes sold out around 3 pm that afternoon. Some people were unhappy about the chilly, damp conditions but those of us who sweated it out down in Yokota had no complaints!
The air show here in Misawa also has a lot more strict rules. We were not allowed to set up our tent in front of the jet, and no one in a flight suit was allowed to sell anything because it gave us an "unfair advantage" over the other base agencies. We thought that was absolutely ridiculous since the pilots are the whole reason the Japanese people were coming to the airshow! But we got around the rule a bit by having a few guys in flight suits just hanging out talking to people in front of our booth. James, of course, volunteered to be one of our resident rock stars.
The people up here in northern Japan were not as pushy about getting in there and interacting with the pilots. They were more content to stroll by and peruse our merchandise. So we had to get creative about our marketing. Brenda, the wife who organized all of the cake baking, had the brilliant idea of giving out free samples to get them hooked. I was assigned the task of selling and applying temporary tattoos. I found two lovely little helpers (daughters of our flight doctor) who significantly upped our sales. I'm not sure if it was because they were so enthusiastic in their sales pitch, or because the Japanese people just wanted an excuse to interact with these adorable little American girls. (They like to think it's because they're cute. ;^)
One thing that was really cool about our air show vs. the one down in Yokota is that we actually had some flight demonstrations. One of the pilots in our squadron has his air demo certification so he did some maneuvers in the F-16, and the Japanese version of the Thunderbirds called Blue Impulse did a long show. Their jets are not as loud or powerful as ours, but they did some formations and stunts I've never seen before. I didn't get any real good pictures of them. I was too distracted actually watching! haha.
Over all, the day was a success. We made a lot of money for our squadron, and we were able to serve the Japanese people. Next year will be interesting as it will probably fall to James and myself to organize the whole thing.
For weeks the committee has been meeting to plan and work out the logistics. I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into events like this. In addition to setting up the hangar where the event took place, we had to work out how to handle the money, security, cleaning crews, transportation for the vendors to and from their hotels, food for all of us throughout the weekend, as well as finding and organizing all of the volunteers who would make the event possible.
That last job fell to me and my co-chair Annette. Originally when I was asked to be on the committee and take charge of finding volunteers I didn't think it would be too difficult. Little did I realize that we needed upwards of 250 volunteers to make this thing run smoothly, and it fell to me to advertise, organize, and answer the questions of all of these people and make sure they were in the right place at the right time. It became a full time job as I spent hours every day writing and answering emails and phone calls, and organizing all of their personal info into a massive spreadsheet. The people who had this position before me were very unorganized so I kind of had to rewrite the book when it came to pulling this off. It felt good to hear people say at the end of the weekend that I did a great job and they were very impressed with the system we came up with. Hopefully all of my notes will help the next person's job be much easier than mine was.
Thankfully, all of the hard work paid off. We had plenty of volunteers for each of the shifts throughout the weekend, and there were no major fires to put out. It was a long and rough weekend because I came down with a nasty cold right beforehand, but we still managed to have a lot of fun. James even came down to help out for a while, and we picked out a few nice pieces for our home during the time we had to shop.
James and I decided to invest in a Korean bar. It's dark cherry wood carved with cherry blossoms, bamboo and other Asian plants. The top folds out into a bar/counter surface and is inlaid with grey marble. The doors swing open to reveal a lot of storage for glasses, bottles, etc. We don't drink much but it's a beautiful piece and will make it fun to entertain in the future! James also insisted on buying one of the decorative Samurai swords they had, and I bought some fun Christmas presents that some of you may be getting in the mail in December!!
