Breaking the Cycle

I'm going to keep this really short because it is 11:28 pm and I have to be up early for a Greek quiz. However, if I don't just post now and break this nasty habit of never posting this downward cycle of inaction will never stop. So here it is: we are back stateside but you know that already. We are enjoying studying in our respective fields. I just edited our profile and changed our description from education to student. Its nice to be back on this side of the desk again we both agree. We both also noticed that we are much more keen at picking out what our teachers will choose to test us on from the reading we do. Not sure if that has anything to do with having thought like a teacher for a year but it certainly didn't hurt. In closing, I'm pretty sure we havent turned Japanese but after being back from Japan for a whole year now we still enjoy bitter tea, raw fish and sometimes even use chopsticks to eat our salad.

Kimono

Jeff and I were invited to a special lady's house. Cho-me San is from our church here and she is the gaurdian of the Japanese culture. She teaches Japanese calligraphy, dance and flower arranging--besides being one of the cutest Japanese ladies around. She invited us to try on kimonos in her Japanese dance studio when the spring flowers were in bloom. That fell last week, so we joined her and a few other ladies for a special spring lunch. The bamboo we ate was baby bamboo right from her garden!

The kimonos were amazing. Perhaps I should rephrase that to say--what Cho-me San was able to DO with the silk was absolutely amazing. What seemed a shapeless pile of cloth took form into something really amazing.

Ohanami

"Hana" is blossom.
"Mi" is derived from the verb "to look".

This last week has been the season of sakura, or the cherry blossom. With Jeff's love for macrophotography, three great Ohanami opportunities and the patience of our hosts--we bring you a taste of spring in Japan.

(We have also been requested multiple times that these pictures be sent to our friends and family in America. Our Japanese friends are very proud of their cherry blossoms and would also like you to take note of the gift of the blossoms to America over a hundred years ago--now showing at the Potomac, Maryland....)

ps. For the record, after the night time ohanami view of the afore-mentioned slide, Mary Ellen gives it a bit of a thumbs up.

Time March-es on

Well, March has come and gone without much attempt to blogify it. So here is a summary of our March highlights.






Don and Rumiko had a beautful wedding day and soon after moved to the States.


































The 'church's' newest baby is growing big enough to crawl up the center aisle at church and embarass her father when he is trying to lead song service.



















Our students are faithfully energetic, challenging and VERY entertaining!












We torched a cake in honor of Teishi's birthday...okay, not really but we did make it all a suprise.











We attended our first Japanese elementary graduation ceremony.

There are no words to describe the sound of a couple hundred sniffling parents, children singing sorrowful sayanoras and weeping young boys.
Okay, maybe in Japanese there is ONE word to describe it.


We were able to make two very fun trips to Kagoshima to visit our friends there. This time included an exciting game of Bible pictionary. In fact, you can see the excitement on Jerry's beaming face.




Last, but not least ;), Jeff found a great new slide! It's great fun, very noisy and has a great view, but the warehouse rollway construction is much kinder to boxes than to bottoms. Mary Ellen voted a thumbs down.

social invitation

Last Friday Jeff was invited to go to Ibuski with a student/friend and enjoy the sand baths. He would leave at 10 a.m.
Meanwhile, I was attending our monthly tea party, starting at 9:00 a.m.

9:55 a.m- Jeff pops into the tea party to say hello and goodbye. We continue to chat for another hour and a half until it is announced that there is a special lunch after the tea party. Various and asundry transportation plans are made and everyone leaves for an hour, only to reconvene shortly for lunch.

12:30-1:00 Jeff arrives in Ibuski where he and Mr. Itokazu enjoy a lunch of Japanese Soba noodles before they head to the sandbaths.

1:00 pm- I arrive at the restaurant with a group of ladies. We sit and talk for nearly an hour before the rest of the group arrives for lunch. We are then served in courses, topped by dessert. Did I mention that we ate banana cake and snacks at the tea party just hours ago?

2:30 pm- Jeff has recovered from the scalding hot sand bath by enjoying a Japanese Onsen. Conversation fills the 2 1/2 hour ride back.

3:00 pm- I am now at the house of a student/friend and her family. She has kindly invited home half of the people that went to lunch and is serving us tea and snacks while we watch a classic Japanese animated film. Some of us watch, some of us munch and some of us sleep.

6:00 pm-Jeff and Mr. Itokasu made a stop at the 100 yen store and are now enjoying a sushi dinner. Each of them finish off 6-7 plates of sushi.

7:00 pm-The movie ended and I caught a ride back to the apartment with our director. I was exhausted from lack of sleep and my back found all the sitting intolerable. Funny though, my stomach is growling again. And the party roars on...a number of people remain at Shizuko's house for dinner.

8:00 pm- Roughly 10 hours later, Jeff arrives home bearing a invaluable CD holder he was able to find at the 100 yen store. We sit and share our days for an hour or so before lapsing into a tired silence.

9:45 pm- We pull out the futons and enjoy an early bedtime. All that eating and socializing just took it out of us.

I Pity the Fool!

There was a knock on our door last Saturday night. We didn't have to go open the door or even call out "come it". In Japan they just "come in". This bothered us when we first got to Japan, now we just keep our door locked if we don't want people walking in. Got to work smarter, not harder. It was one of my adult students who is also a church member. She has been studying English for a few years now but the only two phrases she can usually remember when she tries to speak English are, "thank you" and "good morning." We were greeted with a hearty "good morning!" as she entered. The funny thing is that she knows she is misusing the phrases. She and I think its funny at least and always make each other laugh, which in turn makes everyone around us laugh, likely at us. We have fun classes.

She told us in her janglish, Japanese and English all mixed up together, that she was taking us somewhere the next day. It seemed as though we were supposed to know this, but we didn't. We finally figured out that she was inviting us to a flower festival.

The next day dawned and Mary Ellen and I headed out with my student and two other ladies from church we are friends with. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story which includes seaweed tea, flowers and trees, noodles and Mr. T keeping it real in the Far East. The grilled squid was located directly across from Mr. T. I think he was yelling, "I pity the fool who eats that scariness!"

Driving

One of my friends recently voiced the complaint that us bloggers have not been providing her with enough distraction material for work. I am honored to know that our blog is used as a means of distraction for her...Welcome to my wonderful world of ADD. The land where distraction is a daily reality and oh by the way it has been almost six months since I last drove a car. I haven't gone this long without driving since I got my license 11 years ago. Speaking of driving, we went for a drive with one of our friends and got in accident. It wasn't a big deal, just a little fender-bender. The funny part of it all was when we realized who we had run into. It was the secretary of the local driving school. All the workers came down when they heard the noise and soon we were surrounded with people all wearing jackets which proudly announced that they were a, "safe driving school". Well, they were safe until we ran into them I guess.

This One's For You Greg

One of my goals I set for myself before we arrived in Japan was to complete a marathon during the year. I had high hopes of training and maybe even setting a new time record for myself. I did run on a pretty regular basis for the first month we were here. I was able to run down to the ocean in the mornings and back towards the mountains on my return for home. I have never run in a more beautiful place. However, after a few weeks the newness of the beautiful scenery and the hope of a good marathon time was worn down by a lack of sleep and a true Japanese work schedule that drove us both to sickness right before Christmas. We traveled in China and got better. I thought that was interesting.

We got back from China on Friday night and the marathon came early Sunday morning. We were picked up at 4 am and drove two hours to the marathon. The two marathons that I ran in the past without injury I completed in around 3 hours and 45 minutes. The one that I ran on a gimpy knee I finished in 4 hours and 40 minutes. I tell you these times only to put my time in this marathon in perspective. I finished with the glorious time of 5 hours and 25 minutes! My cousin Greg has run a few marathons without any training as well but he does them in less than 4 hours, even close to 3 and a half hours I believe.

It was a beautiful marathon. It was also the most hilly course I've ever seen. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since the whole country is mountainous but I was. I was also surprised by how many people out of the more than 10 thousand seemed to be running with little or no training as well. In America you always get some stragglers but this seemed like a whole marathon of stragglers. At around 2 miles people were already stopping to stretch and even have a cigarette. I thought that was pretty funny. "Ya that's gonna help your running problems." The course was lined with people cheering, of course in Japanese style, very quiet and polite. But they were cheering none the less. The course took us through the Japanese country side by traditional thatched farm houses and ancient fields. The farmers along with their sunbonnet-clad wives cheered for us from their little stools placed near the old road. I gave one grandma a high-five and made her smile a very big smile. I also thanked a group of old ladies who were giving oranges to the runners and they were very surprised that a foreigner not only knew some Japanese but was also so polite, they smiled and clapped in approval. That kept me going for another few feet.

Mary Ellen was able to ride along with one of her students, who's husband was also running, and see me along the route. That was really nice. Nothing like a kiss from my beautiful girl to keep me going. I ran with one of my students for part of the way until we got separated, but we caught up after the race. All in all it was a really good experience but I think next time I will train a little more.

China: from The Great "picture" to the Forbidden "photo"