Dancing with the Seniors

The average life expectancy for an Okinawa woman is 87 years, and today we learned one of the reasons for their long life span.

While at Miyakojima High School today, many senior citizen women from the area came to teach us a traditional Miyakojima dance. They were all dressed beautifully and, when we danced, they could dance gracefully and demonstrate high levels of athletic ability by jumping and stomping. We danced until all of the American teachers were sweating and laughing together with the women. We performed the dance from beginning to end twice. It was then that we learned that the average age of the performers was 84 and a few of them were in their 90’s. It was amazing!