Winter Tips

It's now May 15 and finally warm and nice. Its 75 or 23 degrees depending on you measurement and Samantha and I have every window open and are eating pineapple on the couch. That's right the weather is so nice we aren't using the kotatsu(heated table) we are sitting on the couch. This makes it seem like the perfect time for us to write our tips, tricks and realizations about surviving an Iwate winter.

1. Accept that you will be cold inside the house. Remember you're not aiming for warm, you're aiming for acceptable. And acceptable gets colder then you ever thought.

2. It's frozen. I don't need to know what it is to tell you it's frozen. Here is a partial list of frozen things: toothpaste, shampoo, milk, juice, cucumbers, wet laundry (the first time you take a block of laundry out and break it apart is a hard day), the floor of shower, drain of washer (meaning water is thrown up onto the floor), floor, pots left out to dry freezing to the counter, Samantha's wet hair.

3. Kerosene is a cruel mistress. Yes, if you use it your house will be nice and warm and your laundry will dry. However, if you use it too much you will die. Too much is over 3 hours. Also 5 minutes after you turn it off it's cold again.

4. Kotatsu is your friend. Kotatsu keeps you warm, but only you. This means that your clothes won't dry and every where else is cold. At least kotatsu wont kill you.

5. Reduce. Samantha and I have a 6 room house in summer. In winter we live in two rooms that are really one larger room partitioned off with sliding walls. We make brief expaditions to the other rooms like the toilet, shower and kitchen but that's it. Also, the warm room has to have every thing in it, you drying laundry, your bed, table, kotatsu, heater, tv, couch and things that need to stay warm (as in food that has been cooked already).

6. Bubble wrap. It's for more than packages home. In Japan people put it on the windows in winter. You spray the window with water and then stick the wrap to it. That means that you can't see outside but that's OK only snow is out there anyway.

7. Electric blanket. Its the third best thing for winter. You can warm the bed before you get in it. Like other forms of heat there is the risk that if left on all night it will burn the house down, but that's a risk you have to decide yourself.

8. Blankets are heavy. Samantha and I slept under, I kid you not, 12 inches of blankets. It was so heavy that you couldn't move around at all in you sleep and if you did and somehow exposed an arm to the cold, well you would know it fast.

9. Blankets are strange shapes here. Most of the blankets I have ever seen in Japan are too small to dangle off the bed. Meaning you have to put them on sideways making them too short so you need a lot. I think on a normal winter night we had 8 blankets.

10. Cheer up. There are things to do in winter like skiing and it wont last forever. If you let the winter ruin you life it will. Yes, winter is both the longest and worst time of the year in Ichinohe but it ends so just make it through. Do what you need to do to be happy and warm.

If you are reading this as an ALT being sent to Iwate don't be scared its not too bad. I mean its no reason to not come.

Two Weeks In Tohoku

For those of you who hadn't heard my parents just came to visit us for 2 weeks. Now, I know what all my college friends are thinking 2 weeks with their parents in a paper house sounds difficult, to be diplomatic. Well, it was actually a lot of fun. They came during a period here called Golden Week. Golden Week is a magical time when 4 national holidays happen in the same week giving the whole country a nice time off. Its also when if you live in the frozen north the cherry blossoms finally bloom and everything starts to get warm. We were able to do a ton of really cool stuff thanks to holiday and my Chokai JHS school principle who is a great guy. I will be braking this post into discriptions and pictures of the places we went so here we go on Two Weeks in Tohoku.

Sendai
I didn't bring my camera to pick them up in Sendai so all Sendai pictures are by my father. I really thought that it would be mostly pick them and head back home. However, they got pretty good on the Japanese time right away. We walked around town the day after we arrived. We found a Cherry Blossom Festival in Sendai park, my parents got to see the famous Sakura (cherry blossoms) and eat some mochi. There really aren't to many famous places in Sendai the park, train station, and shopping areas are it. We were lucky and found a craft fair in part of the city. There were a lot of people selling hand made cloths and jewelery. One of the most interesting was the ring you see below. After that picture is the festival we saw.


The only bad part of the Sendai stay was the hotel. I got us a 3 person room to save money and it was so incredibly small. There were 3 beds and no place to set your feet.


Ichinohe
There were a lot of things that we did in Ichinohe. They got to go to all but one of my schools which let them see me teach class and press them into helping teach class. My kids were excited to meet them and ask them questions. At Kozuya we got lucky and they ate lunch with the kids. Mom didn't finish her whole school lunch which does not happen. One of the kids and I just starred at her unfinished soup confoundedly. The student dumped it out for her in the end. I was glad that my students were able to have the opportunity to talk to people who weren't their English teachers.
The house we live in here was interesting for them to. They were especially surprised by the toilet, which has a hand washing sink on top of it. The water that you wash your hands in fills the tank and then later goes into the bowl. The weather was a bit cool for them so they spent a lot of their time cold. Really it made me think about how used to the cold I have gotten. I mean I'm not really cold now but it hardly gets above 70 in the day here.
The big highlight of the time in Ichinohe was going to the Goshono Jomon historical site. About 15 minutes on foot out of town is a museum and park built around an archeology site. The Jomon people were the first people to make pottery in Japan. In the north of Japan they lived by hunting and fishing. Their houses were built partly under ground with log and dirt roofs. The museum was great in had a really cool theater and a lot of great pottery. The park had a rebuilt Jomon village in it that you could go into and even climb on. Pictures from here on mine.


Hachinohe
The Principle took my parents, Samantha and I to Hachinohe. In spite of heavy winds it was a great trip. We went to the Hachinohe city museum which I found frankly a bit odd. It jumped from Jomon pottery to the Samurai to modern technology in 3 huge leaps. By the museum was a castle reconstruction. It was an old castle with wooden walls really more like a small walled village then what you think when you here castle. The best part of it was they let us try on reproduction samurai armor. You can judge for your self who would have been the best samurai.


After the castle we went for a short ride on a small boat. A SHARK boat. Thats right the boat looked like a shark. We went around the harbor in Hachinohe and feed the sea gulls. They will eat right out of you hand. It is quite startling to have a shrimp cracker grabed from you hand by a sea gull. We also learned the Japanese word for sea gull is Umineko. They call sea gulls sea cats because of how they sound.


The next place was some where that we have blogged about before, the Hachinohe fish market. Or as I call it the Hank Williams fish market because they play only Hank Williams music. We got to see alot of really fresh fish and feasted and I mean feasted on it. We ate shrimp, beef, fired chicken, scallops, squid, and just plain fish until we were fit to burst then went to a bath house. There is nothing in the world more enjoyable then feasting and then sitting around in hot water. Japanese hot spring are something that we don't have in America that I will miss so much when we finally move back to America.

Lake Towada
Lake Towada is one of the largest lakes in all of Japan. There is a park around the lake that really looks alot like the Smokey Mountains. We got to walk around the park a bit and see the river that runs threw it and the snow melt coming down from the mountain. Lake Towada itself is huge, its so big that the boat ride we did on it took 50 minutes and crossed the narrowest part. The lake went right up to the mountain and shore was dotted with little island and inlets. To tell the truth it looked kind of like how I imagine the coast of Alaska to look, snow capped mountains, cold water, and a gray sky like it could snow or rain any minute.

Hirosaki
This is one of the top 3 most famous places to view cherry blossoms in all of Japan. We went on the best day of the whole season so it was packed. Its a park that used to have a castle and now mostly has cherry trees. There are literally thousands of them in every color cherry trees come in so just white and pink. However, it was one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. There was one place that was a tunnel made of cherry trees. To be honest though if it had had a bit less people it would have been perfect. As it was there was a bit to much worry about getting split from the group to fully enjoy it. I'm really glad that my parents got to experience it though there is nothing like the crowds and the trees its something everyone who visits Japan should try and experience.



There is a lot more that we did that Samantha will pick up Thursday. All in all my parents trip here was great. I was proud to show off how much Japanese I knew and how I could get by here. I know that there are plenty of more famous places in Japan they could have gone to but I wanted them to see what my life here was like. Tokyo and Kyoto will be there next time.

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.