It was extremely cold, and I had to curl up with extra blankets to keep warm. We were sleeping on the deck of our boat, which had crashed on the shores of Japan.
“Brrrrrrrrrrr it’s cold. I think that I am an icicle,” I thought to myself. The ice-cold wind was howling in my ears because there was no door. I could her my brother snoring, he sounds like a broken record player always repeating his snores. I thought that I could finally go to sleep now, even though I can’t feel my toes.
Hoot hoot!
“What was that?” I say waking my brother.
“It was just an owl. Go back to sleep, Alexandra.” My older, macho brother Nicholas replied. I couldn’t fall asleep, thinking someone was watching me. I turned towards where the door would be and suddenly; out of nowhere a man dressed in only a mouse skin appeared. He seemed to have jumped over the side of what was left of our boat; probably he was exploring our boat.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” He scared me so much I screamed so loudly. In fact people could hear me all the way back in Greece. Soon that one man turned into ten men and they all started to attack us. My two brothers and their six friends on board started to fight back but they weren’t as prepared to fight with these strange new men with pointed spears. These strange men never said anything to each other or to us. They were all very muscular and none of them wore much. We seemed to win because the men seemed to lower their fists and spears. Luckily o one was killed but some of the men were hurt badly. While I tended to the men’s wound, behind my back the strange men were kidnapping my two younger sisters. My sisters both have long red hair and pretty blue eyes. Helen is plumper than Sara, but they are both quite slim. After I finished, I turned around and there was one of the strange men standing behind me. He grabbed me! Nobody ever grabbed me, ever. The men took my sisters and me to their village. We were taken over the hills and across a wide stream before we got to the village.
At the village, we were dragged, kicking and screaming, to the head male. We made a big scene at the village because everyone turned their heads and stared at us. The head male was very old and looked as if his hair was graying. He wasn’t as strong looking as the other men.
“Grunt, grunt, grunt grrrr.” We heard the head male say.
“What did he say?” I asked no one in particular. No one answered. We couldn’t understand one word he said because all he did was grunt. I t seemed like he was asking us a question at one point. The men there called on someone who could talk to us. This person was female and said that her name is Nana. She had very dark, long hair and dark eyes. She seemed to be wearing an all black dress, not colorful like we had worn in Greece. We introduced ourselves, and Nana interpreted for us. My name seemed to be made up of seven grunts. We told the people there that we had gotten shipwrecked because of a ginormous storm with lightning and thunder and that we were from Athens, a city in Greece. We told them we needed help getting back to Athens. After our explanation, Bobo, the head male, said he would help us, he whispered something to the women, they responded immediately. We were told to follow them.
The women led us to a different, smaller house made of sticks and grass. There, there were women with children. I assumed that they were mothers. They shoved us a hand-made black dress with red circles on it and two plain hand-made black dresses at us, and Nana told us that we had to wear them instead of our own colorful robes. She explained that the plain dresses are everyday dresses and that the dress with red circles on it is for festivals. Nana told us that we had two dresses so that when one got dirty, we would have an extra. We helped each other put on the dresses. I think that it helped us blend in better because not as many people stared at us. We walked on and I could see that our brothers and their friends were being put to work gathering food and killing animals so that we can eat.
I noticed that everyone here was different from me. They all had black hair and dark eyes. All the women had really long hair and the men had almost no hair. They also wore black dresses and animal skins instead of colorful robes like we did in Greece. Nobody had jewelry on either. In Greece, everyone looked liked they were going to a party because they always had jewelry on and they always wore their finest robes when in public. Here it looked like the women were dead because they didn’t look very energetic or happy.
We went to an empty house. It looked a lot like all the other houses because it was made of grass and sticks, but this house was smaller. Nana told us that it is her house. She had decorated the house with a hand-made rug and some animal skin. After we had a dinner of rice and vegetables, we went to bed. I wasn’t used to this way of living because in Greece we had separate night and day clothes, but in Japan everyone wore the same thing all the time. We also had more to eat so I had to go to bed with a stomach that was growling like a lion on a bad hair day. I cried myself to sleep thinking of my parents and dog. I wonder if they miss me as much as I miss them.
The Next Day
“Out of bed. You have to get up now sleepyheads,” we heard Nana say.
“What is going on? What time is it?” I asked.
“It is dawn, we don’t exactly have time other than dawn, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, and dusk. Tonight we have our summer festival. We have to help prepare for it,” replied Nana. I could bet that we were all wondering what we would be doing. We were all getting hungry so we had to go get something to eat. Nana gave us each a handful of berries to eat. They were red and blue and unusual to me, but they were very good and juicy. I wanted what I usually had for breakfast, olive, but they didn’t have any here. Plus the people here don’t even know what olives are.
I was curious so I asked Nana where we were in the world. She said that we were in an un-named land, and that across the ocean is a land known as the land of the setting sun, or China. I wondered how far I would have to walk to get home to Greece.
All day we helped cook and set up for the festival. I got to gather fruits that were red and blue, the same fruits that we ate that morning, and was told to stay away from fruits the were other colors like black, green, yellow, and orange. After that I cooked fish and rice in hot water. One of the men found a rabbit so we got to cook that too. We had to clean off the hide and cook the meat, which was red and brown. I miss cook, it is so much easier with her.
Finally the festival is starting. Nana told us that first; we must worship the gods for helping us through the year. Then we danced and ate and watched the men perform dances in elegant costumes. I really was not hungry for the first time since I got here because we had an eat till you can’t eat no more buffet of rabbit, rice, fruit, vegetables, and a strange but delicious dessert. I really liked the dance where the men dressed up as animals and hunters and were hunting each other. The music was great. People played with sticks on the bottom of different sized bowls to make a beat or a rhythm. Somebody blew on a flower petal and made a deep buzzing noise. The best was an instrument made out of a shell. The player blew through the top and a noise came out the bottom. Even though it was such a small shell, it made a really loud noise. I stayed up all night! I am afraid that if I stop dancing and eating, I will faint.
“Whew! What a happy time!” I said as we cleaned up after the festival, which lasted for seven sun rotations. I don’t think that I want to be anywhere else right now that is unless my parents, friends and dog were with me.