Wedding in Alaska

[Taylor]

Last Wednesday Julie and I took an overnight bus to Tokyo, hopped on an airplane bound for Vancouver, B.C., spent twenty four hours at the airport waiting for our next flight, flew to Anchorage, Alaska for a wedding, flew back to Vancouver, met up with Julie’s parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephews at the airport in Vancouver, flew back to Tokyo, took a bullet train to Aomori, and then a local train back to Noheji.

It was wonderful.  In Alaska we were able to spend some quality time with longtime friends we haven’t seen in at least a few years, including the bride and groom (Kenzi and Curtis, respectively).  Friday night, after the rehearsal, we went to the home of Kenzi’s parents for some whole roasted pig, salmon, halibut, barbecue chicken, salad, rice pilaf, and lively conversation.  They live on a mountain in Chugiak with a gorgeous view of Cook Inlet.  We managed to get a good picture of it as the sun began going down at 11:30 at night.

The wedding was perfect.  I’ve been friends with Curtis for the past sixteen years and am so happy he’s found the love of his life.  His wife, Kenzi, is a wonderful person.  I hope our next visit will come sooner rather than later.

Seeing Julie’s family was also very refreshing.  We had a great time catching up and were amazed by how much our nephews have grown in the past year.

Now we’re back to work, staying plenty busy until the students go on summer vacation.

Anyway, here are some photos:

On the trip, Julie began a new hobby — taking pictures of me sleeping with my mouth open.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

The view overlooking Cook Inlet that we alluded to earlier during the rehearsal dinner.

Looking up at another photographer before the ceremony.

:D

Dad's dance.

Cake

Hacky-sack

Dudes of Valdez

After the reception we stayed at a hotel in Anchorage and ordered this pizza at midnight. It was one of the best decisions we made that weekend.

Anchorage airport.

'Merica Sized chips.

Playing with the nephews in Vancouver.

Our nephew Levi playing with a ball we bought for him and his brother. It changes color if you toss it.

Angela (Julie's sister) and Jack

Back in Tokyo

Pikachu Express

As always, more pictures here.

Odds and Ends

[Taylor]

Merry Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve in Japan and we felt like an update was in order before our big trip.   Tomorrow we take the bullet train to Tokyo where we’ll stay for three nights.  After that it’s off to Kyoto, Osaka, Miyajima, and Hiroshima.  We’ll return to Noheji on January 2nd.

Since we’re not bringing computers along, we decided to write a longer entry to hold you over until we upload our pictures from this once in a lifetime trip after New Year’s Day.

Holiday Lesson Week

Julie and I just finished a crazy week of teaching.  Every lesson followed some sort of holiday theme for the duration of the period.  In my case I taught the same lesson all week long at three different schools.  Here’s how it went.  After a few minutes of sharing some of my family’s Christmas traditions, I had my students participate in a missing lyrics activity designed from an earlier lesson using the song “Good Day Sunshine.”  This time I had them listen to the song “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” (original Burl Ives version).  By the end of the week, I had listened to the song over 150 times.   You probably think I’m sick of the song, and I guess I am, but after a few lessons early in the week, the song stopped bothering me (at least during class).  The words and melody just sort of washed over me like white noise as I managed my class and directed the traffic of students looking for the missing words taped to the walls of the room.

After we went over the lyrics for the final time, I put on the cap, beard, and eyebrows in the picture above, pressed play on the CD player one last time, and lead the class in a sing-along.

Holiday Celebrations

Yesterday the people of Japan celebrated the emperor’s birthday.  Every student and teacher had the day off, except for the people who go to my school.  Since so many people in the community don’t have to work that day, my school puts on a sports club ceremony that’s open to the public.  It reminded me of a long-held tradition at my high school in Oregon where the male seniors dressed up like girls and performed a complicated dance routine to the teachers and underclassmen.  Although there was some cross dressing at the beginning of the ceremony, Noheji’s festival ultimately proved to be less scandalous and spontaneous.  It was obvious the students had been practicing for weeks.  The ceremony was as much an opportunity for them to get-the-weird-out and crack jokes as it was to showcase their discipline, dedication, and athleticism.

For example, in one routine, a group of students performed a modern day interpretation of Snow White and Seven Dwarves while simultaneously teaching first aid and CPR fundamentals.  Later another group of students dazzled us with a jump rope activity that included double dutch push-ups, cartwheels, and backflips.

In the afternoon I had to stay at school, but Julie went to an English Christmas party at a community center. She baked cookies for the occasion.

Language Update

At some point after our first six weeks here we picked up enough Japanese to get by in our day-to-day life.  In order to improve we’ve basically had to study on our own.  At times this has been a struggle, but I’ve come up with a new strategy.  I’ve decided if I have a webpage open, I’m going to have a Japanese textbook open too.  So far it’s worked out well.

Noheji Catholic Church

A few days ago we walked by what we assumed was a garage.  Turns out it’s a Catholic church!

Driving Safety

If you are over the age of 50, you must put one of these leaf stickers on your car.  If you have only been driving for a year or two, you must put a leaf sticker on that’s green and yellow.

See you in January!

Yoi oto shi o!

Winterizing the Apartment

Say 'hello' to Toyo-chan.

[Taylor]

It’s December in Northern Japan.  We live in a typical apartment which means no central heating.  How do we stay warm?  Well, the heater pictured above is a huge help.  It runs on kerosene fed through a series of pipes from a tank in the back of our complex.  It’s a little pricey, but it keeps our living area warm and cozy.  We seal off the other rooms of the house to keep the heat in.

A lot of the cold creeps in through our window panes so to help combat this we’ve put up some specially made bubble wrap on the glass to act as a layer of insulation.  A special felt lines the perimeter of the window to suck in moister from condensation.  In a few days we’ll be putting up a clear plastic seal over the rest of the frame to hopefully prevent a little more cold air from seeping through the cracks.

The downside to sealing up the windows is that moisture from within our apartment will have a harder time escaping.  This will become a bigger deal in January when we receive more precipitation.  Drying clothes inside also creates a moisture problem.  What’s our plan?  Basically double-duty on those moisture absorption packets we talked about in an earlier post.  We’ll also deploy our dehumidifier to other rooms of the apartment when necessary.  For the time being, however, it’s helping to dry our clothes in a closet.

Japanese clothes dryer.

One last thing we’ve installed in our apartment to fight off the cold is a little something to remind of us home.

Happy Holidays.

Halloween Lesson

[Julie]

During the last couple weeks of October and even into November, I had the privilege of teaching a Halloween lesson to many different classes of elementary school students.  Even though Halloween is a Western holiday, it has become very popular among the youth of Japan.   This is exaggerated in the area where I am teaching because of the influence of the nearby U.S. Air Base on the merchandise sold at local stores.   The nearby mall in Shimoda caters to its Western shoppers with an abundance of Halloween costumes and treats, which started taking over the shelves in mid-September.

The vocabulary list for the lesson included: Happy Halloween, Trick or Treat, candy, ghost, witch, monster, bat, black cat, spider, and jack o’ lantern.

The older students learned about All Saints Day and the harvest. I was able to prompt them to come up with Halloween costume ideas, saying:

“Some costumes are scary.” (Besides the vocabulary words, they came up with Dracula and Frankenstein)

“Some costumes are beautiful.” (kimono, princess)

“Some costumes are movie characters.” (Doraemon, about 15 anime characters that I didn’t recognize, Batman, Spiderman, Superman, and The Little Mermaid)

“Some costumes are famous people.” (Michael Jackson, “Obama,” one sixth grader stated and then continued, “Yes we can!,” Beyonce)

A couple of times I was able to bring costume material for the little kids to use. I brought toilet paper and black and white trash bags. They had a blast!