Amy's BEE RIde Dinner

I'm getting ahead of myself with this blog post, but I thought I'd write something before I have to acknowledge that another weekend has flown by and tomorrow is a work day again.

This weekend, my friend Amy held a charity dinner at the Peace St. Diner in Toyama city. She is leaving JET this year but has decided to extend her stay here a little longer by doing a bike ride from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The organization is called
BEE Japan (click here) (Bicycle for Everyone's Earth), and you can read about what they're doing on their home page. There are 8 members riding this year and each of them is responsible for raising money for the environmental issues they are trying to resolve.

Amy's charity dinner was held at a small vegan restaurant in Toyama-city, she invited JETs and non-JETs alike to come. The meal was 2000yen, or about $20, 500 of which went directly to Amy. Along with the buffet style meal she organized a Silent Auction -people brought all kinds of random items, from maps, to artwork, to knitted vegetables, to socks. At one point a giant Darth Vader Pez dispenser arrived out of no where and Amy asked me to put on my coaching voice and announce that it too would be up for bids -however, people started bidding on it while it was still in my hand...before we knew it the people were calling out prices and we ended up selling it on the spot for $25!! The silent auction in itself was quite successful, a lot of the items were popular and you had to keep track of the bidding, but of course there were a few that were left without bids. So at the end of the night Amy asked if I would auction the rest of the items off live -just so that we could get rid of what was left. Little did we know that we'd end up selling these items for probably more than what the silent aution had brought in. A box of tissues for $5!! Scarves that nobody had bid on were sold for $30! %7 for a chocolate bar! It was fun to watch people get into the spirit of it -knowing that all the money was going to charity. I ended up pretty hoarse, but it was a lot of fun and well worth it.

After the aution Amy opened the floor to anyone who wanted to share poetry, music or literature with the group. There were just under 35 people in attendence and 5 people got up to read, perform, sing and entertain us. People were totally captivated and the room was full of energy during the whole thing -there's something to be said for people performing, especially when the pieces are personal creations.

Diverse, eclectic and random would best describe what I thought of the evening. Amy managed to raise over $600 on Saturday. She's got one more big event in May that will hopefully put her over the $1000 mark, but if you're interested in donating to her cause, please let me know and I will arrange a way to get the money to her.