Fuji-san

Kyoo okusan to Fuji-san ni noborimasu. (Today, my wife and I climb Mt. Fuji)

These are the 4 trails. Ours is the longest, Gotenba-guchi.

 The Japanese call it Fuji-san. (“-san” is a suffix added to people’s names when you address them. It is a sign of respect. They call Mt. Fuji by “Fuji-san” out of respect for this enduring symbol of Japan.) I am contemplating taking the video camera, but I am sure we will at least have our regular camera. I think we decided on the Gotenba-guchi trail which takes about 7 hours from the 5^th station. This is the trail with the Suna-bashiri trail on the way down. The Suna-bashiri is a sand slide made of volcanic ash and apparently it is like a 1500 meter sand dune that you can run down the whole way, taking giant 2 meter steps if you run. I have heard it is pretty exhilarating. We are definitely looking forward to that!

We’ll let you know how it was… 

(I was going to post this before we left but didn’t have time. Stay tuned for the full version of the story in the coming days. It’s already pretty long!) 

 

Back to School…

Well I was back at school again this past Wednesday.  I was excited to return, but was pretty jet lagged.  The kids didn’t understand why I was gone, but they were glad I was back.  I got lots of hugs and they seemed more attentive than every.  For craft this week, we made little hats.  I finally rememberd to bring in the camera and the kids really enjoyed having their pictures taken. Check out the photostream…

Inochi and Hataraki…

Life and Work

So, it’s true. As Stephen mentioned in his last post, I did indeed finally get a job! WAHOO! I had been trying to find something more within my line of study, either international business (which would be almost any business here in Japan) or IT, partially because its good money and partially because it seems to make more sense “career-wise”. Since all of those positions are a couple of hours away in Tokyo, I’ve been looking at what’s in demand here – English teachers. So here I am now, settling into the idea of teaching English at Bless Preschool to a group of 5 to 6 boys (depending on the day) that range from 3-5 years in age. As you might imagine they are extremely rambunctious but their energy is contagious. It’s such a blessing to be around children again… there is just something in me that craves it. Being quite new to teaching, I am thankful that the school is pretty low key and I am enjoying creating my own ESL/ELL curriculum at a kindergarten level, the children are really sharp here.

I am still busy learning Japanese (Nihongo) and while I feel like I understand it well, it’s challenging to speak full sentences in public… I am seemingly overwhelmed and I stumble on my words… so I continue to hit the books. Stephen and I started private tutor lessons a week ago, so now we are learning at turbo speed. Its funny, I feel like I really am talking like Yoda from Star Wars… the sentences are so out of order, not as familiar as the romantic languages…Italian, French, Spanish…. Oh well, it’s a great challenge to go along with teaching.

Beyond work life (now that I have one ), Stephen and I have been enjoying getting out of the weekends, we aren’t used to living right downtown surrounding my tons of concrete yet, so out to see the beautiful countryside it is. We’ve been staying around Nagoya, Aichi region and hiked a couple weeks in a row now. Its looks like we will be tackling a small mountain this weekend with a hiking group, we’ve yet to go with them but we are trying to prepare to climb Mt. Fuji this summer when it opens, I believe that will be in mid-July. Stephen’s birthday was just last week, so we took a drive out to Seki city (1 hr) to get him one of his presents – his own set of Samurai swords. Seki city is where one of the main schools of sword making was back in the day when they wre constructed for the actual samurai. He was quite excited, we learned about the swords at the sword making museum there and now displayed in the middle of our living room are a few (unsharpened) swords, but I will let him tell you all about that…

The weather here has been sunny for most of spring and we are now entering into the rainy season, which equates to an incredibly hot, humid, and sticky summer… it will be interesting running around the park with the children, drenched. Eh, its all about the experience right? We’d purchased street bikes a few weeks ago (you know the old school ones with baskets and bells and lights and granny handle bars) to get around the city and avoid parking and gas prices (almost $8 a gallon here). We’ve enjoyed biking to the grocery store and out to dinner and I ride to school too. We found there are a few spots downtown where really really good musicians set up and play on the side of the street… we had a blast last Friday night riding around seeing things, watching people, listening to hustle and bustle of the city, watching the large TV screens all over the buildings (like in the movies), and realizing that we really are living in JAPAN! Still so crazy….

Life in Japan

I am a little bummed that I we haven’t been better about the blog. I thought I’d be a good blogger. But for some reason I always feel like I need something substantive or meaningful to say. I could simply describe all the cool things that happen here or funny experiences that we have, but in stead I put if off… Well this is me posting again.

It’s been a while. We went to Guam a little over a month ago. We were going a little stir crazy and needed to get away from work and everything in Japan. It was also a nice short return to the familiarity of the US. It’s only a three hour flight from Nagoya.  We got there and immediately went to a doctors appt that I scrambled to make in the weeks prior. Then we made a b-line to the first Mexican joint we found. J  After finishing that up, we went to the Marriott on Guam. I don’t know what we were expecting, but it was a bit of a shock after living in what has to be one of the nicest Marriott hotels anywhere and going to one that looks like it was nice a long time ago, and then was forgotten for a couple decades. It was sort of run down and had a faint smell of mildew. So we switched to the Hyatt for our second night. Anyway, we walked Tumon beach and enjoyed the sunset and warm water on our feet. The next day we went scuba diving. That was an experience that I will definitely do again. We actually went through a local dive shop and got about 4 hours of dive instruction and dive time for $75 each. Pretty stinking good deal if you ask me. Our instructor (forgot his name) was a Navy guy from Tacoma who’s been on Guam for 5 or 6 years. I think you can email him direct at diveguam@yahoo.com if you happen to be headed that way. Anyway, I think you normally only go to 15 or 20 feet on a first dive but we went all the way down to deeper than 30ft. I looked at his dive computer at 27ft as we were going down and I know we went quite a bit further. It was amazing. I won’t try to describe it. If you’ve seen pictures of tropical underwater, that’s what it looked like. And we were in it…

We also got our apartment which is pretty cool. It’s very hi-tech with digital controls for everything, from the video doorbell to the tv in the bathtub wall, to the control panel in the kitchen that controls the bathtub temp, volume, etc, to the remote controlled AC, to the digital toilet controls for the bidet, butt-washer, massager, deodorizer etc… We are on the top floor and have a decent view east over one of the few Catholic churches in Nagoya.

Anyway, things are going pretty well over here. Susan finally got a job at a preschool. She is very excited about that. She’s been taking japanese and is making a ton of progress which makes me feel pretty stupid sometimes. But I haven’t really had a lot of time to take lessons until now. Things are finally slowing a bit and I have been working at least one 8 hour day a week… sometimes more than one! It’s crazy!

I didn’t even work last Saturday at all!   So that has freed up some much needed R&R time. We went up to this great old pair of towns called Magomejuku and Tsumagojuku last weekend. It is sort of a little tourist town that has many buildings preserved from their traditional style. It is all on a hill. It’s amazing to see how they diverted water through the town and used the water to power things in the houses… waterwheels on many of the houses with gears to grind grain and things and to water the rice fields… Anyway, it was pouring rain and we hiked up in the rain to the old traditional walking road between Kyoto and Tokyo. The original trail is still preserved between those two towns and we hiked up past some rice fields that are all terraced on the hills. It was like going back in time…

It was a great weekend even though it was raining so hard. I think rainy season is officially starting, so I am gonna have to get used to it all over again…

Kagi, Kagi, Kagi!

Hello everyone! We just wanted to send out a quick update that we finally got our keys (kagi) to our apartment here in Japan. We will be living downtown in a “mansion” which is your typical 900 sq. ft apartment.

Our new address is:

Herbe Aoi #1403

1-17-13 Aoi Higashi-ku

Nagoya, Aichi

JAPAN 461-0004

We don’t yet have our landline setup, but I will be sure to post that when we do. I will be sure to attach photos when we get the place together.

Current realities…

I’m sitting up in the concierge lounge in our hotel, the rain is falling and the view of the city is quite faint from the thick clouds. I’ve never cared much for rain, but it’s funny, the rain is actually comforting as if reminds me of Seattle. I find that I spend quite a lot of time up here in the lounge as the drinks are endless (I love the apple juice here) and it’s great to be out of the room yet not wandering the city. I’m still quite without work, but I’ve been able to embrace my time and read, pray, and support Stephen doing whatever may be helpful to him each day…

This morning I picked up the newspaper to read more about the great havoc we seem to reap on the world… I suppose its possible that the world has been this messed up over the past few years/decades, but since I had so much more time to read and study the issues, it seems like every continent, every government is in shambles… We have the mess in the US of the upcoming election, the Iraq War, the Afghan War, the abuses in the FLDS Polygamist colony in TX, the hundreds of tornadoes set to touch ground in the next day…. We have the protests in San Francisco, Paris, London against the Beijing Olympics in the name of the crisis’s in Darfur and Tibet, the riots in Haiti due to increasing food costs and fuel which is actually a global issue.  Then there are the elections in Zimbabwe which could have allowed for some needed change in the country but which now appear to be causing more ruin. The official results are still being held hostage and seemingly a peace loving people are once again oppressed by those that hold the power and do whatever it is they want… There have also been killings in Nepal as they look to face their first democratic elections, but the Maoists are promising peace. Oh and of course for those of us overseas, we are seeing the dollar fall sharply, yikes!  It deeply saddens me to read about all the destruction we have around the world.

I suspect that some of this is typical from what one would see on a daily basis in the news, I guess its just hitting me harder since I’ve been in it day in and day out while living here in Japan.  The corruption and injustice isn’t anything new in the world, I realize that, but it really does seem like its worsened greatly in the past few months of 2008.  I’d like to think I wasn’t completely in the dark or naive but as I learn more about different cultures and what is taking place around the world it becomes more and more clear how messed up we all are, how sinful we are… sometimes it really is hard to see the Lord in all of this.  Where is the love?  I studied in some depth the concept of injustice while at SPU and why it has and continues to happen, but it doesn’t calm my frustrations as I open the paper again this morning…

 

 

Work. Life. Work. Life.

Balance…? Is it a myth?

I remember about one week before I was offered the job over here in Japan, I was at a conference for Christians in the business world. (KIROS, if you’re in the seattle area.) This speaker talked a little bit about the myth of balance. He explained it with a helpful pictogram of two triangles, one base up, balancing on the other, point to point. He said balance is a myth because it is so shaky. I remember really liking his solution to the myth, but for some reason, all that comes back to mind is an over-simplification that boils down to a couple Christianese cliches about trusting God. I wish I could remember because it seems like it would be helpful. I have been frustrated with myself because it is really hard to ‘turn off’ from work. I work Saturdays, and on Sunday’s I feel guilty if I don’t check email (which I am resisting pretty well actually).

I feel like I am just sortof leaning forward and I keep moving my feet to avoid from falling face to the dirt.

Anybody have any thoughts on Balance? 

A live show…

Has anybody heard of the “John Butler Trio”?

I heard them way back in 2002 when they toured North America with the Dave Matthews Band. It was a great opening act at the Gorge. I remembered really liking them but had never listened to them again. Anyway, Susan found an Anglophone blogger who has a sort of “concert calendar” for the Nagoya area. I saw the Trio and thought it would be nice since we haven’t been to live music in quite a while.

6500 yen EACH later, we made it to Club Quattro for the show. The music was pretty good. They mixed it up with banjo, dobro, 12-string, 12-string with a pick up with feedback, mandolin, electric, and an upright bass and a great drummer. I saw probably the best drum solo I have ever seen live… 

 

The lyrics seemed a little simplistic for a ‘protest’ band but I guess the world seems more complicated than it did when I was in college. It makes me wonder whether I have seen more sides to issues of life or whether I have watered down the ideals that I felt in college. I hope it’s not the latter. I have always considered myself a passionate person, but I guess I feel less that way these days. Maybe the career world has taken a little out of me, or my priorities have changed a little. Thinking about being financially sound has taken on a new meaning since we have been thinking more and more about kids. It’s not only that I want to be able to provide for my kids, but we have to be able to get them first. (Adoption can be expensive!)  Enough rambling thoughts for now….

Sunday school…

Susan and I agreed to lead “Sunday School” at church every Sunday. We are going to study Acts. I have never taught Sunday school before. I have been in Bible studies of various kinds ever since I became a Christian in high school, but I have never even been the sole ‘leader’ of one. I don’t know what the expectations will be, but I guess I look forward to the challenge. Both because it’s going to force me to study more than I have done for myself for quite a while, and because it will (hopefully) help us build a deeper sense of community here in Nagoya. 

 

Our church in Japan

I just noticed this video on our church website… this is from Easter Sunday. As you can see, we are currently attending a small non-denominational church (though Pastor C is Lutheran) in the Fujigaoka neighborhood here. The pastor does a children’s message before beginning his sermon. So far the we are benefiting from the community of church, but we are looking forward to getting involved quickly as there are some real needs here…

The guy singing (I can’t recall his name, he’s a high school teacher here) is leading worship most Sundays, he’s pretty funny and quite into the success of this song… Enjoy the video!