Aub and Erica on their way to kayak thru the mangroves. Note the Ozark-like mountains the bkgrd. The entire island looks like this.
This is a picture.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Dang, my back itches!
Just in case you were wondering, yes, I did indeed change the appearance of the blog. I like it a bit better this way, though I admit I copied shamelessly off of S.O.W. blog. Thanks for the tips, Bryan. I imitate b/c I like the way yours looks and b/c I am hopeless when it comes to figuring out how to write html stuff.
Anyway, I'm glad to be able to stream some football this morning. It's a Wednesday night game between Bowling Green and Boise St, and it's refreshing. Enjoying it.
And my back itches. It's recovering from the sunburn that it underwent during snorkeling on Saturday (and it's Thursday today!) and so it's turning less red every day. But it itches like a big dog. And for the last two nights it's been keeping me from sleeping well. Too bad for me... But the back is not peeling too badly yet (and I'm hoping that I can keep it from peeling badly by putting lotion on it 24 hours a day) and it's turning back to its normal pasty white, so I hope that I will be finished w/ this soon.
Finally finished studying the 2nd alphabet in Japanese (katakana) so now it's on to grammar and vocab. That's good b/c it means that I can now start to learn how to talk to people.
Anyway, I'm glad to be able to stream some football this morning. It's a Wednesday night game between Bowling Green and Boise St, and it's refreshing. Enjoying it.
And my back itches. It's recovering from the sunburn that it underwent during snorkeling on Saturday (and it's Thursday today!) and so it's turning less red every day. But it itches like a big dog. And for the last two nights it's been keeping me from sleeping well. Too bad for me... But the back is not peeling too badly yet (and I'm hoping that I can keep it from peeling badly by putting lotion on it 24 hours a day) and it's turning back to its normal pasty white, so I hope that I will be finished w/ this soon.
Finally finished studying the 2nd alphabet in Japanese (katakana) so now it's on to grammar and vocab. That's good b/c it means that I can now start to learn how to talk to people.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Tropical paradise island
Many of you may have heard a rumor of a "tropical paradise island getaway" that Aubrey and I may or may not have undertaken this past weekend.
I am here to tell you that such rumors are categorically untrue. Said getaway actually occurred on a SUB-tropical paradise island. Sorry to disappoint.
All joking aside (not really, but for now, I mean), Aubrey was gone to Kagoshima City all week for a Japanese-learning conference. She reported abject boredom while there - apparently there was little to do there and she was like the only one who didn't drink (and I'm not talking tea, and I'm not really talking "social drinking" either). Sounds like a recipe for blowing through about 5 good (and long) books over the course of the week. Alas, 5 good (and long) boox were not in her possession, so she was a bit on the idle-time-on-my-hands side. But she made it thru OK and boarded the all-night ferry from Kagoshima to Amamioshima along with a fellow JET named Erica, who lives in Kagoshima. A friend hooked them up with a more-or-less private room w/ bunk beds and curtains that you can draw across the bed to shut out the light. Nice deal - and it usually costs quite a bit more. So they got some sleep before their 5 am arrival. I, meanwhile, boarded a similar ferry at 5 am in Kikai and arrived in Amami at like 7:40 am. Our 1st move was to our hotel in Naze (the ferry also docks in Naze), which we found w/ little difficulty thanks to Erica's Japanese skill. Before the weekend was out, we would owe a lot to Erica's Japanese skill. Quite thankful for it.
Anyway, once we dropped off most of our stuff at the hotel front desk (check-in wasn't until 2 pm) and got some breakfast, we took an hour-long (and quite scenic) bus ride to a beach on the extreme south of the island (Naze being at the north edge). The bus dropped us off at a hotel and they rented us each a pair of swimming fins, a snorkel, and a mask.
The beach was very pretty and the water was perfect. Blue, clear, not too cold, not too hot. Like Baby Bear's porridge, it was. Mmmm, porridge.
Anyway, we got all lathered up w/ sunscreen and walked slowly across the rocky rocks (which really hurt our feet) to a depth appropriate for snorkeling. If we put our fins on, it hurt less but was harder to walk.
It seems that a lot of the beaches on Kikai and Amami have a lagoon-type setup to them b/c of the coral growth. You'll see shallow water (with lots of coral patches, if it's not all coral) for about 50-60 meters, and then waves breaking on a secondary and barely visible "beach" of coral at the edge, at which open ocean begins. This beach was no different. So we had to try to be careful where we stepped, but besides the pain of walking on rocks, had no mishaps. And once the snorkeling began, it was awesome!
We saw lots of really interesting fish. We saw a couple of clown fish scratching their bellies on and hiding in a sea anemone. I saw one that was chubby, w/ white spots on a black background on his back, and then orange spots on a purple bkgrd on his sides; each time another fish would pass by him he would spin around them once and then continue on his way. Except then once a fish of the same species approached him and they spun around really fast like 12 times before continuing on their way.
Most of the fish we saw I don't have names for. We didn't see any stryper fish or any deep-sea fangly fish, but I'd say it was still really rewarding. On the sea floor we saw weird blue starfish and some sea slug-looking things as well as alot of crabs and different kinds of coral.
My big mistake was not wearing a T-shirt while swimming. We were out for at least 2.5 hours, and the sunscreen didn't hold up. My back is now pretty red and I've had to sleep on my stomach and side for 4 days. It's pretty unpleasant, yes. Thanks for asking. Never go snorkeling w/o a T-shirt on or at least applying sunscreen to your back once per hour.
My other mistake was wearing my nice Teva sandals in the water out to a patch of rocks that were above water, about 30 meters from shore. I left them on these rocks since they were above water and continued snorkeling. But then the tide came in, and when we were finished snorkeling, I couldn't find my sandals or the rocks where I had left them. I was really bummed and so flailed around in the water for about 20 minutes before getting really tired and deciding to follow the waves to shore to see if they had been carried there. Praise God! I knew that my sandals float, but along the rocky shore I was easily able to find them. Very thankfully, I put them back on and trudged back to shore. We were really sore, thirsty, hungry, and a bit sunburned (my back turned out to be the worst of us three) but we had a great time.
The next day we relaxed a bit and tried kayaking in the mangrove park, among the famous mangroves. It was fun but neither very challenging nor very long, so we were a bit disappointed. We went to an Italian restaurant that night, which tasted good but was a bit more expensive than I would have liked.
Monday, a national holiday in Japan, we got up early, left the hotel, and took the bus to another hotel/resort, where we hung out on the beach and wake-boarded mostly. That was pretty fun indeed. Neither Erica nor I had ever wakeboarded, so it took a while to get to a standing position on the board while the Sea-Doo was pulling us, but Erica managed it more quickly than I did. I fell down like 8 times before catching on, and I was the one who had gone water-skiing before! But at least I made it up, and once I did it was really fun. I could see the coral patches gliding past me under the clear water in the coral lagoon, so it was a little scary but invigorating. Aubrey handled it like a pro and so spent the longest time on the wakeboard. But she paid for it - she is the most sore of us today. She said she fell one time just b/c her leg was getting so tired that she needed to rest.
After doing all the wakeboarding we could handle, we took our flight back to Kikai. The flight to Kikai, by the way, is all of 10 minutes - it's the shortest commercial flight in the world.
So that was our vacation. Great time, pretty expensive really, but we learned alot about traveling in Japan and managed to avoid any huge disasters.
I am here to tell you that such rumors are categorically untrue. Said getaway actually occurred on a SUB-tropical paradise island. Sorry to disappoint.
All joking aside (not really, but for now, I mean), Aubrey was gone to Kagoshima City all week for a Japanese-learning conference. She reported abject boredom while there - apparently there was little to do there and she was like the only one who didn't drink (and I'm not talking tea, and I'm not really talking "social drinking" either). Sounds like a recipe for blowing through about 5 good (and long) books over the course of the week. Alas, 5 good (and long) boox were not in her possession, so she was a bit on the idle-time-on-my-hands side. But she made it thru OK and boarded the all-night ferry from Kagoshima to Amamioshima along with a fellow JET named Erica, who lives in Kagoshima. A friend hooked them up with a more-or-less private room w/ bunk beds and curtains that you can draw across the bed to shut out the light. Nice deal - and it usually costs quite a bit more. So they got some sleep before their 5 am arrival. I, meanwhile, boarded a similar ferry at 5 am in Kikai and arrived in Amami at like 7:40 am. Our 1st move was to our hotel in Naze (the ferry also docks in Naze), which we found w/ little difficulty thanks to Erica's Japanese skill. Before the weekend was out, we would owe a lot to Erica's Japanese skill. Quite thankful for it.
Anyway, once we dropped off most of our stuff at the hotel front desk (check-in wasn't until 2 pm) and got some breakfast, we took an hour-long (and quite scenic) bus ride to a beach on the extreme south of the island (Naze being at the north edge). The bus dropped us off at a hotel and they rented us each a pair of swimming fins, a snorkel, and a mask.
The beach was very pretty and the water was perfect. Blue, clear, not too cold, not too hot. Like Baby Bear's porridge, it was. Mmmm, porridge.
Anyway, we got all lathered up w/ sunscreen and walked slowly across the rocky rocks (which really hurt our feet) to a depth appropriate for snorkeling. If we put our fins on, it hurt less but was harder to walk.
It seems that a lot of the beaches on Kikai and Amami have a lagoon-type setup to them b/c of the coral growth. You'll see shallow water (with lots of coral patches, if it's not all coral) for about 50-60 meters, and then waves breaking on a secondary and barely visible "beach" of coral at the edge, at which open ocean begins. This beach was no different. So we had to try to be careful where we stepped, but besides the pain of walking on rocks, had no mishaps. And once the snorkeling began, it was awesome!
We saw lots of really interesting fish. We saw a couple of clown fish scratching their bellies on and hiding in a sea anemone. I saw one that was chubby, w/ white spots on a black background on his back, and then orange spots on a purple bkgrd on his sides; each time another fish would pass by him he would spin around them once and then continue on his way. Except then once a fish of the same species approached him and they spun around really fast like 12 times before continuing on their way.
Most of the fish we saw I don't have names for. We didn't see any stryper fish or any deep-sea fangly fish, but I'd say it was still really rewarding. On the sea floor we saw weird blue starfish and some sea slug-looking things as well as alot of crabs and different kinds of coral.
My big mistake was not wearing a T-shirt while swimming. We were out for at least 2.5 hours, and the sunscreen didn't hold up. My back is now pretty red and I've had to sleep on my stomach and side for 4 days. It's pretty unpleasant, yes. Thanks for asking. Never go snorkeling w/o a T-shirt on or at least applying sunscreen to your back once per hour.
My other mistake was wearing my nice Teva sandals in the water out to a patch of rocks that were above water, about 30 meters from shore. I left them on these rocks since they were above water and continued snorkeling. But then the tide came in, and when we were finished snorkeling, I couldn't find my sandals or the rocks where I had left them. I was really bummed and so flailed around in the water for about 20 minutes before getting really tired and deciding to follow the waves to shore to see if they had been carried there. Praise God! I knew that my sandals float, but along the rocky shore I was easily able to find them. Very thankfully, I put them back on and trudged back to shore. We were really sore, thirsty, hungry, and a bit sunburned (my back turned out to be the worst of us three) but we had a great time.
The next day we relaxed a bit and tried kayaking in the mangrove park, among the famous mangroves. It was fun but neither very challenging nor very long, so we were a bit disappointed. We went to an Italian restaurant that night, which tasted good but was a bit more expensive than I would have liked.
Monday, a national holiday in Japan, we got up early, left the hotel, and took the bus to another hotel/resort, where we hung out on the beach and wake-boarded mostly. That was pretty fun indeed. Neither Erica nor I had ever wakeboarded, so it took a while to get to a standing position on the board while the Sea-Doo was pulling us, but Erica managed it more quickly than I did. I fell down like 8 times before catching on, and I was the one who had gone water-skiing before! But at least I made it up, and once I did it was really fun. I could see the coral patches gliding past me under the clear water in the coral lagoon, so it was a little scary but invigorating. Aubrey handled it like a pro and so spent the longest time on the wakeboard. But she paid for it - she is the most sore of us today. She said she fell one time just b/c her leg was getting so tired that she needed to rest.
After doing all the wakeboarding we could handle, we took our flight back to Kikai. The flight to Kikai, by the way, is all of 10 minutes - it's the shortest commercial flight in the world.
So that was our vacation. Great time, pretty expensive really, but we learned alot about traveling in Japan and managed to avoid any huge disasters.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
This is the other side of our house, thru which we rarely enter. It is more convenient for us to enter on the other side. Ours is that first covered area w/ the wooden pillars. All this vegetation you have seen in these last few pictures is not nearly as lush and green after the typhoon. Alot of it is gone and the rest is all beat-up and shredded.
This is a picture.
This is our house from the back on a typical (ie, sunny) day. The 1st residence on the right is a neighbor, and our house's entrances (one leads to the entryway and one to the bathroom) are between those three wooden pillars there. Our washing machine is the white thing w/ the hose between 2 of them, and hanging to dry is a white T-shirt. That long trench is where the water from the bathtub, kitchen sink, and washing machine (but not the toilet, thankfully) drain. Said trench leads to the main storm sewer.
This is a picture.
Nastiness
You know, I've heard it said that James White is a "strident debater." And I'd thought I'd heard some passion and meanness in the Alan Dershowitz-Alan Keyes debate in 2000.
And then I heard the debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens, which took place less than a week ago.
I guess I post about it just to keep everything in perspective - I don't know if I will ever hear half as many ad hominem arguments in any one debate in my life again. You might be interested. The topic is the War in Iraq, and is bandied about by a slick Englishman (Hitchens) and a belligerent Scotsman (Galloway).
And then I heard the debate between George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens, which took place less than a week ago.
I guess I post about it just to keep everything in perspective - I don't know if I will ever hear half as many ad hominem arguments in any one debate in my life again. You might be interested. The topic is the War in Iraq, and is bandied about by a slick Englishman (Hitchens) and a belligerent Scotsman (Galloway).
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A side note on football
On the subject of OU football, it appears that I picked a great year to go out of country. But just for fun, see this article from ESPN and let's walk down Memory Lane.
In particular, see this sentence:
OU ranks 113th nationally in passing and passing efficiency after attempting no passes in the second half of the Sooners' 31-15 victory over Tulsa last week. The Sooners had 42 yards passing in that game -- the lowest since throwing for 38 yards against Syracuse in 1997 in the forgettable John Blake years. The Sooners had never passed for fewer than 100 yards in Stoops' previous 80-game coaching tenure.
All I want to say is that OU won that game against Syracuse in 1997. Donovan McNabb was the Syracuse QB, the Orangemen were nationally ranked, I was present, and John Blake extended his contract by one year just before we the students ran onto the field to celebrate.
This is not to say that I don't think that OU's quarterbacks have played horribly. Hey guys, do better!
In particular, see this sentence:
OU ranks 113th nationally in passing and passing efficiency after attempting no passes in the second half of the Sooners' 31-15 victory over Tulsa last week. The Sooners had 42 yards passing in that game -- the lowest since throwing for 38 yards against Syracuse in 1997 in the forgettable John Blake years. The Sooners had never passed for fewer than 100 yards in Stoops' previous 80-game coaching tenure.
All I want to say is that OU won that game against Syracuse in 1997. Donovan McNabb was the Syracuse QB, the Orangemen were nationally ranked, I was present, and John Blake extended his contract by one year just before we the students ran onto the field to celebrate.
This is not to say that I don't think that OU's quarterbacks have played horribly. Hey guys, do better!
The ferry provides big common sleeping rooms, about 33 feet by 16 feet. These rooms each have a bunch of sleeping mats and a blanket for each one. The "pillow" is a not-very-soft foam rectangle thing, and it's not very comfy. Fortunately, we grabbed a corner and my smart wife brought regular pillows from home so we were not relying on those rectangles. The guitar I later removed from the wall hook when the ship started rocking w/ the ocean waves.
This is a picture.
Kagoshima to Kikai
I'm gonna skip down a bit from the latest news. I was going to tell a bit of the story of our trip in Kagoshima. Come to think of it, I was gonna just omit the details, but I'll go over it briefly.
Took the bullet train to Kagoshima and went immediately by bus to the pier from which we would later leave on the oceangoing ferry to Kikai. We had been told that there were coin lockers for storing stuff there and so we wanted to leave our luggage locked up there so we could explore Kago a little bit. Once we got there, we found that the lockers were a bit too small. D'oh! We were (miraculously) able to get our smallest suitcase in one and my laptop bag in another, leaving two big bags and a guitar. So after some deliberation, we decided to run the risk (which is low in Japan) of leaving the bags unlocked. On top of the lockers there was some stuff and a way to obscure the bags partially, so I rearranged the stuff on top and left the bags there. A bit nervous, we left and went to the Tenmonkan district, which is an open-air mall kind of place in Kago City, but it has a cover. It is comparable to some European malls I have seen (such as in Paris). After walking around there (w/ my guitar on my back) we returned to the pier and found our bags undisturbed. Praise God! We arrived at 5:15 pm, ready for the 5:50 pm. However, once we arrived, we found, to our horror, that the sign read "Okinawa line, 4:50 pm departure." Uh oh. Aubrey darted downstairs and asked the ticket window agent, who bolted outside and then motioned frantically for us to run outside. I was on the 2nd floor w/ all the stuff, so I got it down as fast as possible and we ran outside, trying not to dump the bags over too badly. We barely made it onto the ship (which was about 30 seconds from pulling up the stairs for boarding the ship). Once again, praise God!
We found the ship old but not too disgusting. We put our stuff in the sleeping room and tried to kill time by exploring a bit and eating supper. Bedtime for us came at about 9 pm and we tried to sleep on mats on the floor in a room where the light never was turned off. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the ship started really rolling w/ the ocean waves, so I was lying there, trying to relax and go w/ the flow, as it were. I slept little that night and Aub slept a little more, though neither of us slept much (and I was wearing earplugs and a blindfold!)
We finally arrived in Kikai and went to our home. Aub took a nap and had to go to work (poor thing) and I tried to stay up, but ended up spending most of the day asleep in bed, trying to get over the feeling of seasickness that came on me after I got off the ship.
Let's just say that the ship passage was a rather unpleasant way to spend 11 hours!
In the interest of continuity, I'll stop this post here and post some of the relevant pictures from the above story.
Took the bullet train to Kagoshima and went immediately by bus to the pier from which we would later leave on the oceangoing ferry to Kikai. We had been told that there were coin lockers for storing stuff there and so we wanted to leave our luggage locked up there so we could explore Kago a little bit. Once we got there, we found that the lockers were a bit too small. D'oh! We were (miraculously) able to get our smallest suitcase in one and my laptop bag in another, leaving two big bags and a guitar. So after some deliberation, we decided to run the risk (which is low in Japan) of leaving the bags unlocked. On top of the lockers there was some stuff and a way to obscure the bags partially, so I rearranged the stuff on top and left the bags there. A bit nervous, we left and went to the Tenmonkan district, which is an open-air mall kind of place in Kago City, but it has a cover. It is comparable to some European malls I have seen (such as in Paris). After walking around there (w/ my guitar on my back) we returned to the pier and found our bags undisturbed. Praise God! We arrived at 5:15 pm, ready for the 5:50 pm. However, once we arrived, we found, to our horror, that the sign read "Okinawa line, 4:50 pm departure." Uh oh. Aubrey darted downstairs and asked the ticket window agent, who bolted outside and then motioned frantically for us to run outside. I was on the 2nd floor w/ all the stuff, so I got it down as fast as possible and we ran outside, trying not to dump the bags over too badly. We barely made it onto the ship (which was about 30 seconds from pulling up the stairs for boarding the ship). Once again, praise God!
We found the ship old but not too disgusting. We put our stuff in the sleeping room and tried to kill time by exploring a bit and eating supper. Bedtime for us came at about 9 pm and we tried to sleep on mats on the floor in a room where the light never was turned off. Somewhere in the middle of the night, the ship started really rolling w/ the ocean waves, so I was lying there, trying to relax and go w/ the flow, as it were. I slept little that night and Aub slept a little more, though neither of us slept much (and I was wearing earplugs and a blindfold!)
We finally arrived in Kikai and went to our home. Aub took a nap and had to go to work (poor thing) and I tried to stay up, but ended up spending most of the day asleep in bed, trying to get over the feeling of seasickness that came on me after I got off the ship.
Let's just say that the ship passage was a rather unpleasant way to spend 11 hours!
In the interest of continuity, I'll stop this post here and post some of the relevant pictures from the above story.
By the way...
Did you know that you can click on each picture and you'll get a full-sized version?
Just asking.
Just asking.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
This is Aubrey and Natsue at the Hiroko Kokubu (a Japanese jazz musician) concert to which Nat's father invited us in Yamaguchi City. I went expecting an underwhelming show and was pleasantly surprised - it was great music! Incidentally, I liked it so well that I wanted to purchase the CD. In the concert lobby, the CDs cost $30 so I balked, but it turns out that I haven't so far been able to find one under $40 on the Internet. Live and learn...
This is a picture.
Monday, September 12, 2005
OK, last one for today. This is Natsue, Aub, and Nat's sister Asami at a hot spring (called an "onsen" that is the appropriate depth for foot-soaking. It is basically a public park. We happened to meet three Latinos here who were jabbering in Spanish and introduced ourselves so as not to eavesdrop unnecessarily.
This is a picture.
I'll say one thing for the Japanese - their vending machines are awesome! And they are everywhere! I saw one at a roadside cemetery, for example. Anyway, they have tremendous variety, no two are the same, and they are pretty expensive (in this machine a 16 oz. Coke is about $1.50).
This is a picture.
This is Aubrey, with the Yamaguchi bullet train station on the left. We are very happy in this picture, since it was taken only 9 hours after our first reunion in 5 weeks. Look at those cute earrings on that hot woman! (Can you see them in this blog post? Maybe it's too small. Well, trust me, they're there.)
This is a picture.
The system seems to be down
...so I can't seem to post any pictures right now.
Sorry.
I will get back to picture-posting later on.
Sorry.
I will get back to picture-posting later on.
We now have hi-speed Internet access!
And my dilemma is easy to understand.
I have now been on the Net for about 3 hours since I got it hooked up, catching up on news, sports (college football and tennis, the only ones worth reading about right now), and email, and skyping people like mad.
And I had made kind of a personal promise to post lotsa pictures once I got Internet at home. In fact, I had hoped to have it earlier today. I saw Aubrey off to Kagoshima by airplane today at the small Kikai Airport at 11 am. She is off to a Japanese language seminar conference thing in Kagoshima - sounds fun. Though when she called me at 9:30 pm tonight, there was alot of noise in the background. She apologised, saying that the payphone was really close to some common area and "the only thing do around here is drink and karaoke." So THAT'S what that was - some tipsy JETs were busy "singing," "rapping," "making horses' rears of themselves," etc. in the nearby common area. OK. Anyway...hopefully she'll really enjoy herself. She's been here 6 weeks and is experiencing some culture shock. I think she misses quite a bit of the American life, which is a normal progression in one's immersion in such a different culture. I'm not there yet, but I fully expect to be within 4-6 weeks. You just have to push on. After this week in Kagoshima, she'll meet me in Amamioshima, which is an apparently really beautiful island near Kikai. She has Monday off, so we'll enjoy a 3-day weekend snorkeling, doing stuff on the beach, and other enjoyable things. There are apparently really nice coral reefs there, so you can all be insanely jealous when I tell you how purty they are. Real purty.
OK, I was gonna tell you about my dilemma before my rather lengthy digression. OK. I've taken lots of pictures and I want to post them all, but I'm tired and it's late and I don't want to flood my own blog with too many. So I'll try to do it in an orderly fashion.
Here goes...
I have now been on the Net for about 3 hours since I got it hooked up, catching up on news, sports (college football and tennis, the only ones worth reading about right now), and email, and skyping people like mad.
And I had made kind of a personal promise to post lotsa pictures once I got Internet at home. In fact, I had hoped to have it earlier today. I saw Aubrey off to Kagoshima by airplane today at the small Kikai Airport at 11 am. She is off to a Japanese language seminar conference thing in Kagoshima - sounds fun. Though when she called me at 9:30 pm tonight, there was alot of noise in the background. She apologised, saying that the payphone was really close to some common area and "the only thing do around here is drink and karaoke." So THAT'S what that was - some tipsy JETs were busy "singing," "rapping," "making horses' rears of themselves," etc. in the nearby common area. OK. Anyway...hopefully she'll really enjoy herself. She's been here 6 weeks and is experiencing some culture shock. I think she misses quite a bit of the American life, which is a normal progression in one's immersion in such a different culture. I'm not there yet, but I fully expect to be within 4-6 weeks. You just have to push on. After this week in Kagoshima, she'll meet me in Amamioshima, which is an apparently really beautiful island near Kikai. She has Monday off, so we'll enjoy a 3-day weekend snorkeling, doing stuff on the beach, and other enjoyable things. There are apparently really nice coral reefs there, so you can all be insanely jealous when I tell you how purty they are. Real purty.
OK, I was gonna tell you about my dilemma before my rather lengthy digression. OK. I've taken lots of pictures and I want to post them all, but I'm tired and it's late and I don't want to flood my own blog with too many. So I'll try to do it in an orderly fashion.
Here goes...
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Ari arimasu
(This post is about 5 days late. My excuse is that the computer where I typed it is all in Japanese. I can read what I wrote but nothing else. So I accidentally saved this post as a draft instead of posting it. Sorry.)
Time for a quick Japanese lesson.
Ari = ants
arimasu = there are
You get the idea. Basically, our home has ants. I'm going out today to get some ant poison trap things to lay around the house. It's not an infestation, but it is quite annoying. But it could be a LOT worse - could be spiders or rats, or -shudder- cockroaches. Of which I've seen only one (it was crawling up my shoulder while I was trying to sleep one night).
So... after the typhoon all is back to normal. Aub came home early yesterday after feeling a little weak and strange late in the school day, so I took care of her ('cause I'm sweet like that). The weather is back to sunny and HUMID. I am growing in my burgeoning friendship w/ a Tokumoto-san, one of the librarians in Kikai. He is really helpful, and is definitely one of the 'men of peace' Christ referred to when He sent out the 72. He is helping me procure a borrowed bike, gives me free coffee at the liberry (good coffee, too!) and helps me out w/ Japanese from time to time. He even invited me to karate class! I'm still mulling over whether I want to get involved in the karate class, though it could be fun. When you get a little ways into the dvlpment of your forms and stuff, you end up every class by donning pads and sparring with the instructor guy, who is some way-high black belt. That would be fun (for about 20 seconds, but still).
I better go - someone else wants on the liberry computer.
Time for a quick Japanese lesson.
Ari = ants
arimasu = there are
You get the idea. Basically, our home has ants. I'm going out today to get some ant poison trap things to lay around the house. It's not an infestation, but it is quite annoying. But it could be a LOT worse - could be spiders or rats, or -shudder- cockroaches. Of which I've seen only one (it was crawling up my shoulder while I was trying to sleep one night).
So... after the typhoon all is back to normal. Aub came home early yesterday after feeling a little weak and strange late in the school day, so I took care of her ('cause I'm sweet like that). The weather is back to sunny and HUMID. I am growing in my burgeoning friendship w/ a Tokumoto-san, one of the librarians in Kikai. He is really helpful, and is definitely one of the 'men of peace' Christ referred to when He sent out the 72. He is helping me procure a borrowed bike, gives me free coffee at the liberry (good coffee, too!) and helps me out w/ Japanese from time to time. He even invited me to karate class! I'm still mulling over whether I want to get involved in the karate class, though it could be fun. When you get a little ways into the dvlpment of your forms and stuff, you end up every class by donning pads and sparring with the instructor guy, who is some way-high black belt. That would be fun (for about 20 seconds, but still).
I better go - someone else wants on the liberry computer.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Our first hurricane
OK, we should have Internet connection in abouut a week from our house, so more news and pics will be forthcoming then. Might be slowed by the recent typhoon, though. Speaking of which...
You may know that a big typhoon (aka, 'hurricane') recently blew right through our island Kikai. Yes, it went pretty much right over us. But, fortunately, our island is more like a gradual hill rising out of der ocean rather than a city built on a big floodplain between the ocean and a huge lake, like the Big Easy.
On the other hand, the hurricane was approximately the same strength or a little stronger than Katrina. We were pretty much stuck inside our house for 40 hours. BORING.
No electricity either for 30 hours. So we were pretty miserable. And our island's vegetation is all torn up. But we are fine. No injuries and none the worse for wear, really. The electricity is finally back on and so life is back to normal pretty much.
Thanks so much for praying. We were kinda worried to hear that the winds would be about 110 miles per hour when it hit us, and that sounded pretty bad. And it was bad, but apparently the structures here, though they don't look it, are built to withstand hurricanes. So thanks be to God.
You may know that a big typhoon (aka, 'hurricane') recently blew right through our island Kikai. Yes, it went pretty much right over us. But, fortunately, our island is more like a gradual hill rising out of der ocean rather than a city built on a big floodplain between the ocean and a huge lake, like the Big Easy.
On the other hand, the hurricane was approximately the same strength or a little stronger than Katrina. We were pretty much stuck inside our house for 40 hours. BORING.
No electricity either for 30 hours. So we were pretty miserable. And our island's vegetation is all torn up. But we are fine. No injuries and none the worse for wear, really. The electricity is finally back on and so life is back to normal pretty much.
Thanks so much for praying. We were kinda worried to hear that the winds would be about 110 miles per hour when it hit us, and that sounded pretty bad. And it was bad, but apparently the structures here, though they don't look it, are built to withstand hurricanes. So thanks be to God.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
From the traveler to Kagoshima
You know, it occurred to yesterday, while praying for fellow missionaries Aaron and Ben, in C. Asia, that our situations are quite similar. Remote location, surrounded by people who speak a somewhat difficult-to-learn language, lower living conditions than we are used to, main lifeline to home being the Internet, slow progress in relationships...
There are many differences as well, but it was just striking.
Anyway, I just wanted to let y'all know that we are indeed on the island of Kikai now, safe and sound. A bit about our time between the end of the Traveler's Saga and now...
Aubrey and I had a hotel room in our friends' home city of Yamaguchi, from which we were able to join them in various fun activities while slowly acclimating me to Japan. Aubrey took me out for lunch on Saturday, the day after my arrival, to a place called Kaiten Sushi, where everyone's table is adjacent to a conveyor belt which conveys small plates of various foods, mostly sushi, around. You just grab whatcha want and eat it, and then are charged by the number and color of the plates. Later we ducked into an arcade to play a video game with four drumsticks, two taika drums (the big Japanese-looking kind of drum) and a screen with bkgrd music and scrolling icons to tell you when to hit the drum. You are scored according to how on-rhythm you are. I did OK the first 3 times, but by #4 I had hit 98%. Great game.
By the way, pictures of most of this stuff will follow in about a week - we're supposed to have Internet hookup at home then. Could be 10 days but I hope shorter. So be patient.
That night, our friend Natsue's family took us to this jazz concert, which I TOTALLY dug. It started slow, but the bass player was ridiculously good, the drummer was very tasteful, and the band was together. Boy, it was fun! Several songs contained vocal bkgrds, and it added so much. I'm buying the CD - the artist is Hiroku Kobutu. I must admit that the idea of Japanese jazz didn't ring my horn (or is it toot my chain?) that much at first, but I was convinced. Later we had dinner at their house and had a great time - her dad speaks Engrish quite well and was very proud to show off his house (and a nice house it was indeed). He told us how many tatami was each room. More info on tatami later.
Next day we were blessed to attend our old friend Yoshio's church in Yamaguchi. The Japanese service was cool - about 30 Japanese praising God. Quite awesome really... the pastor has been a believer for about 30 yrs and our friend Yoshio showed great spiritual growth since his second birth 18 or so months ago. We were really encouraged by that. We also met some Canadian missionaries who are tentmakers like us, teaching in the church's school and doing some other odd jobs on the side. There was an English service later on, where a Filipina sister spoke. I must admit that her message left me shaking my head at its immaturity... it highlighted the problem present in many countries where the church is not in many cases sufficiently supplied with competent teachers of the Word. We are in prayer for this church and this sister. Great attitude and openness to the Lord, truly. Fortunately, learning can come quickly w/ an open heart and teachable spirit.
Next day we were on a train early, bound for Kagoshima City in the south of Japan. More to come on that soon.
There are many differences as well, but it was just striking.
Anyway, I just wanted to let y'all know that we are indeed on the island of Kikai now, safe and sound. A bit about our time between the end of the Traveler's Saga and now...
Aubrey and I had a hotel room in our friends' home city of Yamaguchi, from which we were able to join them in various fun activities while slowly acclimating me to Japan. Aubrey took me out for lunch on Saturday, the day after my arrival, to a place called Kaiten Sushi, where everyone's table is adjacent to a conveyor belt which conveys small plates of various foods, mostly sushi, around. You just grab whatcha want and eat it, and then are charged by the number and color of the plates. Later we ducked into an arcade to play a video game with four drumsticks, two taika drums (the big Japanese-looking kind of drum) and a screen with bkgrd music and scrolling icons to tell you when to hit the drum. You are scored according to how on-rhythm you are. I did OK the first 3 times, but by #4 I had hit 98%. Great game.
By the way, pictures of most of this stuff will follow in about a week - we're supposed to have Internet hookup at home then. Could be 10 days but I hope shorter. So be patient.
That night, our friend Natsue's family took us to this jazz concert, which I TOTALLY dug. It started slow, but the bass player was ridiculously good, the drummer was very tasteful, and the band was together. Boy, it was fun! Several songs contained vocal bkgrds, and it added so much. I'm buying the CD - the artist is Hiroku Kobutu. I must admit that the idea of Japanese jazz didn't ring my horn (or is it toot my chain?) that much at first, but I was convinced. Later we had dinner at their house and had a great time - her dad speaks Engrish quite well and was very proud to show off his house (and a nice house it was indeed). He told us how many tatami was each room. More info on tatami later.
Next day we were blessed to attend our old friend Yoshio's church in Yamaguchi. The Japanese service was cool - about 30 Japanese praising God. Quite awesome really... the pastor has been a believer for about 30 yrs and our friend Yoshio showed great spiritual growth since his second birth 18 or so months ago. We were really encouraged by that. We also met some Canadian missionaries who are tentmakers like us, teaching in the church's school and doing some other odd jobs on the side. There was an English service later on, where a Filipina sister spoke. I must admit that her message left me shaking my head at its immaturity... it highlighted the problem present in many countries where the church is not in many cases sufficiently supplied with competent teachers of the Word. We are in prayer for this church and this sister. Great attitude and openness to the Lord, truly. Fortunately, learning can come quickly w/ an open heart and teachable spirit.
Next day we were on a train early, bound for Kagoshima City in the south of Japan. More to come on that soon.
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