Power rangers are popular in America, but nothing like they are in Japan. Here, at a local festival, parents have brought their children to see the clash of Good and Evil (or at least the clash of spandex and Styrofoam) acted out on a temporary stage in an a city park, beside a row of Japanese carnie venders hawking cold French fries, Octopus popovers, and dried squid. We were there for other reasons.

Last Sunday while on a walk with Callan I met a woman in her fifties who was out planting flowers in front of her home. She lives in the house next to the small park in our neighborhood that is home to the oldest looking dog I have ever seen. We first noticed her dog from atop the park slide, which is tall enough to let us see over her garden wall and into her backyard where her old dog spends most of its time sitting in a dog house, unless it gets its chain tangled around a nearby rock, and then it sits next to the rock, waiting for someone to unhook him. Callan and I have often gone into this woman�fs backyard to untangle the poor dog�fs chain.

This woman, Mrs. Matsunaga (her name means eternal pine by the way), helps run a local group that practices and performs traditional Okinawan dance and music. She invited us to come see them perform on Sunday afternoon last week, so after church we drove down to the community sports center where the �gTokiwa craft industry Big Festival�h was being held, and the Okinawa dance team was scheduled to perform. When we arrived, the Power Rangers where at the climax of a galaxy shaking battle with a monster that looked a bit like a large gray asparagus. The stage was soon cleared and we got to see the Okinawa show.