Samantha's Morioka Birthday

Samantha and I have been trying to go on a weekend trip since she got back from America. Every time we have tried to go though something has come up at church, work, and life in general. So last week we practiced saying no to things and got the weekend to our selves. I even took Monday off work to have a 3 day weekend to celebrate Samantha's birthday. We went to Morioka, the prefecture capital. As we have said in past writings its a nice city with a lot to do. Since the weather was a warm but rainy we didnt do a whole whole lot of stuff but still had fun. The big highlight was going to a place we went in High School and are thinking of taking my folks. The Morioka Handicraft Village, its kind of like a Japanese version of the parts of Gatlinburg that dont have a million tee shirt airbrush places. There was even a bear holding a welcome sign. Iwate is famous for its iron work, especially cast iron tea pots. Its also famous for its wool craft brought over by an Enlgish missionary. The day we went they even had Japanese dance. It was 1000 yen to watch but they let us see a bit for free since we were foreign. Here are some photos from it.

Xbox conclusion

There were a couple of startling developments in the life of X box over the last week.

Caleb recieved 4 emails within 3 days detailing...something. You see, Caleb's verbal Japanese is a bit better than his written Japanese. This fact makes gobs of sense when one takes Kanji into account. Kanji are those little symbols with about a million minuscule lines. There are thousands of them and most have more than one reading... Speaking of Kanji, that might have to be theme of next weeks post. Unfortunately the emails Microsoft sent him were veritable walls of Kanji, so we had no clue what they said.

These emails were starting to make us worry that the worst had happened to our poor beloved X Box. ( Shanghaied by pirates for example).

Yesterday, Caleb decided to show the emails to a Japanese coworker in order to get a translation. Meanwhile, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, Stephanie (0ur neighbor) was riding by our houses on her way to the board of education when she was stopped by a man with a big delivery truck. The big delivery truck was blocking our very little road and holding up traffic.

Here is a transcription of the event as told to me by Stephanie:

Delivery man://Gestures to Claire's house// Okusan? (Wife?)

Stephanie: No. That's Claire's house.

Delivery man: Okusan?

Stephanie: No

Delivery man: //Starts to leave//

Stephanie: //Realization dawns// Matte! Matte! Tomodachi! Tomodachi! (Wait! Wait. We're friends!)



So Stephanie collected our X box for us and kept it safe. Perhaps I should have labled this post "Stephanie saves the X box as well". For all we know, that delivery man's next stop was to drop off all unclaimed X boxes at pirate's cove.

I'd like to take one moment aside to talk about Japanese customer service.
Our Xbox was picked up from our door, and was delivered (with a little bit of confusion) within a weeks time. The X box functions perfectly again, and it still plays American Games. They accepted our American warranty , and so the total cost to us was a grand total of 0 Yen.

Here's the kicker. Here's the detail that pushes this whole thing over the edge. Included with our repaired X box was a card for 1 month of X box live (The service that allows you to play games online with other people). I suppose this was supposed to make up for the one week of service we missed due to the repairs.

I love Japan, man. I really do.

First Day Back at School

Today was my first day teaching of the new school year. I was at Kozuya JHS today and it was good to be back. I have really missed teaching my students, though today I only had one class. It was my new seventh graders just up from Elementary. They are the class I did the Halloween party with and I really like them. They are so energetic that it makes teaching great. We are going over the alphabet teaching capital and lower case letters. The new English teacher wanted me to fix the students bad writing, which was a nice thought. They have also hired a support teacher who comes to English class with us. So there are 3 teachers in the room. I'm not sure how I feel about it but more as it develops.

Caleb saves the Xbox

As you may have noticed, Caleb and I are updating more often. We worked out a system that should have us updating twice a week. Caleb posting at the beginning of the week, and myself posting at the end of the week. We didn't mention it until we were sure we could pull it off.

Anyway, the post scheduled for this week was "Culture Shock Part 2: Powdered Awful", but it will have to wait until next week. This week, ya'll have to hear how Caleb saved the Xbox.

I'd like to start by pointing out how important our Xbox is. It allows us to play video games, which we both love. We can talk to people back home over Xbox live. Also, as of this moment, it is the only device we own capable of playing DVDs region coded for the US. (My computer will play Japanese DVDs and Caleb's computer doesn't want to play anything.)

We love our Xbox. What we don't understand is why, when we love it so much, did it red-ring on us. Ahhhh the red ring of death. When we went onto the Xbox support webpage, we were given some advice on how to fix red-ring. The advice basically boiled down to : Disconnect the power supply.... now reconnect the power supply... is there still a red ring? Yes? Well then your machine's totaled, send it in for repairs.

Sending it in for repairs is a bit easier when you're not on the wrong side of the globe.
Even though the Xbox isn't very heavy, it wouldn't be surprising if postage ran somewhere around $50 for a one way trip. Oh and the repair itself had a standard $100 price tag stamped on it. So we were looking at $200 dollars for this little procedure.

Go type "xbox" into google. Somewhere within the first five results should be an offer to sell you one. You see what the price is for a new X box is? $190. It was going to be more expensive to get our current x box repaired than it would be to buy a new one.

Okay, so we consider buying a new one. Bad news, if we purchase an X box anywhere nearby, it will be a Japanese X box. A few quick searches online and we are confronted with the fact that a Japanese Xbox will not play American games.

Things were beginning to look pretty bleak. Then, in one of the search results, I noticed mention of X box repair centers in Japan.

"Do you think that a Japanese repair center could fix an American X box?"

"Well, we can try", Caleb said.

So we find the X box support number on the Japanese X box page. Caleb calls them up and has a long, difficult conversation in Japanese. At the end of said conversation we know three things:
1) They can repair American machines
2) In Japan, you don't have to mail the X box to the repair center. Someone comes to your door (Within the next 24 hours!) to pick it up.
3) Our limited warranty works in Japan (somehow) and will cover the costs of the repair work.

Sometimes this country is absolutely wonderful. I'm not sure how long it will take to repair our X box ( The American website said two weeks or more). After seeing how well they handled everything else though, I'm sure it won't be too long.

Lent: Old Testament

This year for Lent I have given up pleasure reading. This means that I only read things for work or study and newspapers. I have replaced all the time I spent reading pleasure books with reading the Bible... straight through. I began this project a little before Lent and got worried that I would slow down or give up at about Numbers/Deuteronomy. So, to prevent this and make sure I at least got a good ways in I took my vow. Last night I finished the Old Testament and it was a journey. My view of God and the Bible have been all over the place reading it.

First, after reading the Old Testament I realized what a New Testament Christian I was. I knew the most famous Old Testaments stories, characters, and etc. However, I was much more familiar with the New Testament. I really think that I mistook New for being More Important Testament, my attitude being if someone says something is in the Old Testament I asked, "Well, is it in the New". Now I think that was a bad question. I should have asked how the New Testament deals with the issue. The differences in the question may seem slight but I think there is a world of difference. The question of "Is it in the New Testament" implies that if the answer is No then the issue is not important. For example, are the Old Testament Laws repeated in the New Testament? The answer is no. This would lead me to think that they weren't really important. After reading them I see that they are important, I'm not going to start living by all of them. ( I'll still wear clothes of mixed fabric.) However, they take up so much of the scripture and address things in the daily life of Israel they have to be important.

The question that I will start asking is, how the New Testament deals with the issue. This doesn't have the same implication that the Old Testament is lesser. Its meaning is more to acknowledge the unfolding nature of the scripture and Gods love for us. If I asked this question about the Law a great answer would be to look at Matthew 5:17-20. Here Jesus says that he has come to fulfill not to abolish the law. This is about how none of us can fulfill the Law so Jesus came to do it. It does not mean the Law is unimportant it means the Law was the framework Jesus came from and operated under. How could it not be important then?

Second, this one a bit of a lighter note. The Old Testament is long. Way long. I always knew intellectually that it was longer then the New Testament but not how much longer. There were definitely times when I thought the Old Testament would never end. When reading got to be "Israel turns back on God, God sends prophet to warn Israelites, they ignore him, God punishes them, and then later God rescues them and they go back to God, repeat". I feel bad that the Bible got repetitive, but the Prophets turned into a bit of a slog. The other part that got to be a grind to me may surprise people, but it was Psalms. I know that Psalms is many peoples favorite part of the Old Testament and I see why. Its a nice break from Israel and righteous anger God. God is our rock and a mighty fortress and he will deliver us. It's nice, it's more of the love aspect of God that we really want to focus on. However, they got very repetitive to me I had trouble seeing how one differed from the other. Some did jump out at me sure, but I struggled to understand why each Psalm was important or different from the one before it. Psalms is important and I have been convinced of that, but I don't think I will ever do a straight through read of it again.

Third, things I was surprised I liked alot. I really like Proverbs, they gave me a lot to think about. I read through them really fast and plan to read them again when I finish the New Testament. Ecclesiastes was something that I was really drawn to. The tone about the things of this world being meaningless was dark and truly memorable. It made me think about the things that I found important and tried to advance in. The importance of God over the things of the world is just so well shown. Also, the closing verses are new favorites, "Now all has been heard here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man for God will bring every deed into judgment including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." This is a book that I will go back and reread over and over again. There was so much to it and the rest of the Old Testament that I had never seen before.

Lastly, the way that I'm reading the Bible now has been very interesting. After reading about how chapters and verses were added to the Bible I have been trying to read without using them. It has been nearly imposable for me to do. For a couple of reasons one being that I have used them my whole life and the other being its hard to discuss a part of the Bible without saying chapter and verse. I don't think that chapter and verse are bad necessarily, just that they encourage verse picking. Instead of looking at the Bible as a whole, where thoughts flow into each other and are meant to be seen as part of the whole, verses and chapters brakes them up so that each verse seems like an isolated thought. This turns the whole Bible into not a book, but a collection of saying and proverbs. Rather then try and understand the whole, we look for parts that confirm beliefs we already hold. A verse in isolation many times is not a complete sentence, let alone a well developed full thought. We all know that you can take fragments of the Bible out of context to mean or show anything. Many times we say that this is a bad thing, but mostly we say that when someone is using it against us. They can be a great help in discussing the Bible making sure we are in the same place. We just need to make sure that we remember that the Bible is a book with an overall message not a collection of comments.

Also, the many references in the Old Testament to caring for the stranger and about hospitality kind of surprised me. I had I think fallen into thinking of the Old Testament as Gods wrath book and the New Testament as Gods love book. They are both Gods love and Gods wrath, when we focus on one aspect of God to the exclusion of near exclusion of all others we miss the rest of the story. As I continue on into the New Testament I look forward to seeing the Gospel unfold and learning more from it. I will probably be slowing my pace when I can read other books again, but the New Testament isn't as long so hopefully it will take less then 40 days to do it.

Cleaning Lady Ambush

This is kind of in the same vain as Samantha's Culture Shock post. To understand the cleaning lady ambush you have to have some background on our work environment. When schools are on break we come to the Board of Education. That's what it says in the contract at least.

What that really means is that we come to a room that is two buildings away from the Board of Education. The room is basically a closet of a closet. You have to walk through a closet to get to our room. The only other things in this building are a pre-school and a tax office. Our room is also fairly cluttered. We have 6 lockers meant for clothes, a fan, a kerosene heater, two tables, 5 chairs (2 of them broken), a metal desk, a sink, and our teaching materials. Now, notice what you don't have listed is a file cabinet or any other decent means of storing books and papers. All our materials are paper and books. The lockers have books in them, the desk is full of paper and lots of stuff is stacked on the tables. Oh and our sink doesn't work. I once found the cut off to turn in on and found out why it was off: because if drips a lot. Notice also that trash can was not on the list of things in the room. That's right they didn't provide us with a trash can. We bring in our own bags to keep in the room but with no can they just sit out on the floor. Before we started bringing the bags we would carry home the trash every day. Now I will admit our room was junky and disorganized, but its mostly because we don't have adequate storage for what we have.

So with that back ground the cleaning ladies come in here to clean once a week. Now when I say clean what I mean is sweep the floor... poorly. They don't take out the trash, clean the windows, mop, scrub the sink, or anything else, they just sweep. There is one cleaning lady who we are all afraid of called "the mean one" (that's our highly original nickname for her). When she comes to clean she always clucks at us disapprovingly in Japanese, picking up the least little piece of trash and shaking it at us. So if I had a gum wrapper next to my computer she would pick it up and say "This is trash." and shake it at me. Or if there was anything on the floor bigger than dust she would pick it up and ask if we wanted it and shake it. That's right, if ,for example, a used staple fell on the floor and we didn't see it she would not sweep it she would shake it at us. So we called her the mean one.

There are two other ladies who are nice and just sweep. Well this week all 3 of them came into our room. They went and stood by the sink and the mean one said, "Your sink is dirty." "There are tea bags in the sink and they smell bad." She repeats this about 3 times to me. Now, I get up and go over to her and say that the sink does not work and try unsuccessfully to explain the tea bags are drying. She then tells me that from now on we should put the bags in the trash bag not the sink. So I take them out and throw them away. Then she tries to turn on the sink at the wrong place. Explaining that the sink was turned off, I tell her that she is turning it on at the wrong place and it drips. Then without acknowledging my comment she stands up and goes over to the door. By the door is an electric heater belonging to Clarie that we used in our play. She points at it a says " heater, heater, heater".
I say "Yes, heater". She just keeps pointing at it and saying "heater". There are no verbs, adjectives, or sentences; just the word heater. Then she picks up a tea bag envelope next to Claire and begins her shaking routine. She then informs me "You don't speak Japanese" despite the fact that I had been speaking to her in Japanese. (Even thought she was talking at me, not to me.) She continues to inform me that I don't speak Japanese. Then she tells the other cleaning ladies that we are like children and that she will talk to the Board of Education. Then they leave.

Now, this is fairly rude behavior in America.

Their behavior is even ruder than it appears here for a couple of reasons. For example, in Japan only your boss can berate you. If someone from another office has a problem with you, they talk to your boss first, last, and only. Also, Japanese people frequently dry tea in the sink so we were doing something that they themselves do. Lastly, and I think most rudely, she acted like we couldn't understand her even though we clearly did. She mutters under her breath about how dirty everything is and how childlike we are. She would not talk to another Japanese person like this it would be social unacceptable and very taboo. Only because we were foreign did she think that she could get away with this behavior.

Culture shock Part 1

Culture shock has a way of sneaking up on you from the side. For those of you who are fuzzy on what culture shock is: culture shock is what happens the moment you realize that the place you are currently occupying is nothing like any of the places you are familiar with. Left without the comfort of familiarity in a new, difficult, or uncomfortable circumstance a person can have a somewhat...negative reaction.

It hits each person differently and isn't always the same way twice.

It might be realizing that living in Japan means no turkey ever. It might be the inability to read street signs. It might be a longing for a handshake (even if it has to be from one of those cheaters who clamps down on your fingers in order to win the strongest grip contest). It might be frustration in explaining a concept in a language that literally does not have the necessary vocabulary to describe it.

The first really noticeable bout with culture shock I had didn't occur until last November. It didn't start in November though, the seed was planted when I arrived.

When I recovered from jet-lag and finally began to stretch out my hands to accept some of the responsibility of housekeeping, I had a system for keeping up with bills. The system was to keep them all in a pile and pay every bill in the pile every week or so. When a bill was paid it got moved to the paid bill pile.
( Interesting thing about bill paying in Japan. You don't write out a check and mail it to the people who want your money. You don't stuff cash in an envelope and send it to the people who want your money. To pay bills in Japan you must ride your bike to the nearest conbini, or convenience store, and pay it there. Imagine going to 7-11 every time the phone bill was due and you'll get the picture)
My system was not a very good system. I had little to no idea when or what bills were arriving. I just looked for what money was due when and stuffed it into the pile. My system was not good, but it was functional. This was the seed, the sprout was when I got an unexpected red envelope.

Someone rang the doorbell of my house. When someone rings the doorbell of my house, they are nearly always Japanese. My western neighbors either knock or walk right in if the door happens to be unlocked. When I opened the door I was greeted with the sight of a man holding a clipboard and a red envelope.

Could any good come from this?

When people have a clipboard, it's because you have to sign for your delivery. When your delivery is a red envelope, you're pretty sure it's not cookies from your mother.

Using the international gesture for "sign this" (wiggling the pen over an open space on the form attached to the clipboard) the man collects my signature, thanks me, and leaves me alone with my red envelope.

When I open it, my eyes glaze in the face of hundreds of little symbols I didn't know. I looked to the numbers for salvation and was able to fish out little pieces of information. The paper showed several dates and prices. The big price at the bottom was written in red.

Uh-oh.

You don't need to be fluent to understand that red numbers mean you owe somebody money and they want it now.
According to the numbers I had missed payment on something for more than a month!
How was this possible?
I searched the paper and the envelope, looking for some clue as to what the bill was for.
There was a blue symbol at the top. Was it for water? Wait no... maybe that was the mascot for electricity. Augh!
I went to the paid bill pile, desperately searching for another bill that matched. Proof, surely I had proof that I hadn't bungled it up this badly.
I took a closer look at the dates and my stomach squeezed. What was up with these dates?
Where the "09" for the year should have been there was a 23.
How could I have missed that? How long had I missed that? I looked over a handful of the payed bills. Some of them read 09, the rest had 23.
If my brain were a computer, it would have crashed. Have you ever seen the windows blue screen of death? That was my facial expression.

It was time to call Caleb.

Somewhere between explaining that we had a bill that was more than a month overdue, that it was my fault but I didn't know how, that I couldn't even count on the date anymore, somewhere in the midst of all that I had wound myself into an emotional ball that was nearing hysterics.
Perhaps hearing the proximity to tears in my voice, Caleb (who had pointed out the need for a better bill system more than once) didn't even say "I told you so". He told me to bring in the bill so he could show it to his boss .

On the way there I realized how strange it was for me to get this upset over a misunderstanding. I hadn't neglected a bill in the unpaid pile. I hadn't willfully ignored a responsibility. The short walk to Caleb's office in the brisk November air let me think. This wasn't just about the bill. The overwhelming feeling wasn't even guilt, or worry it was helplessness.
I didn't understand what the writing on the bill said. I couldn't call the help line to ask for more information. I had no clue why the year was written as 23. I felt helpless and useless and impotent, and I just wanted to be able to pay my bills like a functioning adult.

And that, my friends, is culture shock.

The epilogue to this story reads as such:

Caleb made me feel better with a hug and assurances it would be OK. He took the bill to his boss and got the full story.

The full story reads as such:
When we first arrived to Japan (back to that little seed) we had been told that certain expenses would be taken out of our account automatically every month. One of those expenses was, in reality, not taken out of the account. Neither did a bill arrive at our doorstep until the overdue balance came riding in a red envelope. It wasn't my fault after all. I still fixed up a new bill paying system. Now all the paid bills have a nice little accordion folder they go into that separates them by type and time of delivery. Organizing is one of those things grown-ups do.

Oh, and as for that strange 23. That was Heisei.
Think of Heisei as the "year of our lord" only instead of Jesus, you're talking about the Emperor. Each emperor has his own period, (the last Emperor's time was called the Showa period) and it changes the date.

At the time of my writing, it is now the first of April, year 24 of the Heisei period.

Here's the wiki article if you want a better explanation:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisei_period

It's kind of cool now... in hindsight... when bursting into tears over heisei seems silly.