The Last Month

At the end of July, the Lutheran Brethren churches got together for a family camp out near Mount Iwate. It was short - just one night - but we had a fun time singing songs, hunting for beetles, making bread over a fire, etc.


A few days later I had some of my Mana friends over for a movie and trying out some 5-minute Japanese recipes. We made potato mochi, sesame seed pumpkin, pork & herb leaf rolls and pancakes.

The next night after my English classes two of my high school students, Rieko and Sayaka, came over and dressed me up in my yukata. Then we went downtown for the Sansa drumming festival and parade!



The next night I got dressed up and went again, this time with Keiko and her co-workers. Gotta fit in as much Sansa as possible, since I don't know when/if I'll ever experience it again!

The next day my grandma and cousins, Ashley, arrived! And... we went to the Sansa festival :-D We went with Hannah, who had just finished her year of teaching in Akita, and her brother and cousins who had come to Japan to help with some camps. We got downtown just in time to see my students Rieko and Sayaka performing in the parade.





The week with Grandma and Ashley FLEW by!



The day before they left, the three of us took the bullet train down to Tokyo to spend the day with my grandma's friend, Yayoi. We had lots of fun sight-seeing and shopping in Tokyo and even took a boat ride at the end of the day. Then we went to Yayoi's home for supper with her family. There we had AMAZING food and LOTS of laughs!


The next day I said goodbye to Grandma and Ashley as our trains went separate ways and came back to Morioka, to spend the night with some of my English students. We had a barbeque, played games and then I stayed overnight at their house :-)


Here's Ryoto the next morning, making me his specialty of rice with butter, soy sauce and dried seaweed. It was really good!


After I got home from the sleepover, I met Heather, the current teacher in Takanosu, and our friend Sachiko. It was a HOT day, so we had Morioka's specialty cold noodle for lunch - reimen. Reimen noodles are almost clear and a little tough (hard to explain, but they're not soft). They are served in cold soup with a hard-boiled egg, kimchee, a slice of fruit (watermelon, in this case), a slice of meat, pickles, etc.


And the next day was SUMO! It was amazing, and I can't even begin to describe it all here, so I won't try ;-) But ask me sometime about it!

The day after that (yes, August has been a busy month!) Keiko and I traveled to the coast of Iwate Prefecture, on the Pacific Ocean. We met a woman on the train that night and after talking with her for abotu 5 minutes, she offered to pick us up from our hotel the next morning and drive us around to see the different sights along the coast! Here I am the next morning with Hitomi-san in Ofunato city.

And on the beach with Keiko:


A meal of fresh sashimi (raw fish) and delicious seaweed in Kamaishi city the second night of the trip:


Manhole cover in Miyako city:

The third day we went to Iwaizumi to meet my high school student Satoko and her parents. She was home in Iwaizumi on her summer vacation (she lives in a dorm house in Morioka). They took us to Ryusendo, a cave with beautiful, clear blue lakes inside - one with a depth of 98 meters! The cool temperature inside was a nice relief from the heat and humidity outside.

A couple days later, we had my farewell concert at church. I was surprised to see that Satoko's dad and brother came all the way from Iwaizumi! Some of my students came and also Keiko's parents. It was their first time to come into the church. Also, Kirsten, the teacher in Akita, came for the weekend (while talking to each other on the phone Saturday night, she decided come, so she packed quickly and made it to the station just in time to catch the last bullet train to Morioka!).

After the concert, Keiko, Kirsten and I went to an okonomiyaki restaurant. Here are the ingredients of the mochi (pounded rice) one:

The next morning, Kirsten and I went to a stained glass class and made a cherry blossom night light!

It's a hard process! I gained a whole new level of respect for stained glass artists!

Later in the week I had my going away party at a restaurant with my English class of Geothermal engineers.

And the next day was my going away party at Mitake chapel. We had a watermelon-smashing contest (like a pinata, but with a stick and a watermelon on the floor) and then ate lots of watermelon :-)

I'll miss these wonderful students!

Natsu Adventures: Travels, Tastes and Turning 23

At the end of June, I took a day-trip with Keiko and her mother to Omagari (her mom's hometown in Akita prefecture). We visited three homes of relatives, and I was the first foreigner to be in each house. They were all so kind and welcoming. At the home in the picture below, they served a wonderful homemade meal of rice grown in their own field and fried-tofu pockets filled with cold noodles.



The third house we visited was the house passed down in the family (through the oldest sons). Six generations have lived in this house:




Below is the barn/shed next to the house. It's made without using any nails:

On the way home, we stopped at Tazawako, the deepest lake in Japan:

To celebrate the Fourth of July, I had my high school class over to my apartment and we made s'mores over my gas stove. Some other treats were tortilla chips and salsa (they'd never had salsa and chips before), cherries - American and Japanese varieties, fresh pineapple and Kool-aid.


My birthday celebrations lasted about four days! I had to teach on my birthday (July 5th), but the night before, my friends from church threw me a "nagashi-somen" party. Somen is a type of noodle often served cold in the summertime. We rigged up a slide from the entrance of the church, with water flowing from the garden hose. Then we "served" noodles and more down the shoot. We enjoyed the challenge of catching mini-tomatoes, boiled eggs, cucumber slices, chopped up (edible) leaves, thin slices of scrambled egg, raw fish and even little single-serving fruit jello packs.

Birthday cake!

After my classes on the 5th, I took the bullet train to Akita city and met up with Hannah and Kirsten. We hung out and celebrated my birthday til I left on Monday! Here we are with our friend, Yuka, who we met when she was working at Starbucks.

Some guys were practicing for the Akita Kanto summer festival. The Kanto, candle-lit lanterns hung on a bamboo frame, can be as tall as 13 yards and weigh as much as 110 pounds! The men balance the Kanto on their shoulders, foreheads (shown here) and lower backs while walking!


On Monday I returned to Morioka to celebrate my birthday with the Miyakawa family. Mrs. Miyakawa's birthday was that day (the 7th), so we celebrated our birthdays together by going out to a nice buffet for supper.


After supper, we went to Izumi's apartment (the middle daughter) and had a variety of fruit. Check out this kiwano! It tasted like a cross between a banana, kiwi and cucumber.

Here's Mifumi "grooming" Chacha the cat with a lint roller :-)

A few birthday presents: the shirt (also with a pair of shorts - to be worn around the house), bag (goes with a kimono or summer yukata), and a delicious gift melon!

The cute sandals I bought to wear with my yukata (no pictures of the yukata yet, but I'm going to wear it to Morioka's Sansa festival in August, so you'll see pics then).


Miho, the mother of two of my English students, making a stained glass lamp. In August, I'm going to make a sakura night light :-)

Last weekend the Sorensen family came from Sendai to visit me! Here we are in my apartment - and William in my bathtub:

Kim and I enjoyed Starbucks coffee jello frappuccinos!


We went to Kenji World - an indoor water park with a beach-like wave pool, water slides, RAIN, a flowing river pool, and more! On our way there, we spotted this beetle vending machine in the middle of nowhere. 300 yen ($3) for a male and 100 yen ($1) for a female! They are a VERY popular pet here (no joke!):

And June just flew by!

I can't believe I'm already changing the calendars again! This spring I resolved to do as much as possible in my last few months here, and looking ahead at my calendar for the rest of the summer, I can see that it's definitely happening! Here's a look back at June:

This month, our beloved fellow-teacher, Kaila, returned to Canada. The weekend before she left, the four of us went to Matsushima Bay and spent the day on trains, boats, islands and beaches! Between running to get to every train and boat of the day, performing a going-away dance for Kaila and using the provided rope to climb down to the beach, we got lots of exercise! Here we are on the boat:



We miss you, Kaila!!


In mid-June, my brother, Peter, and sister-in-law, Felisa, came to visit! The day after they got here, we climbed Mount Himekami (3,687 ft.) with a group of friends, including two four-year-old girls!

We had lots of interesting creatures of the sea at the sushi restaurant:

We listened to a storyteller with a cold in Tono city. She apologized to us before and after for it being in Japanese! She was very friendly and invited us to sit on the stage with her for a picture:

Peter and Felisa proved that the castle barriers at Iwate Park were no match for their invasion skills:

And we ended the week with the true test of chopstick-skills: the wankosoba noodle-eating competition. Peter had 162 bowls and Felisa had 100! Everyone was impressed - and very concerned with whether or not Peter would be okay after having that many!

On Saturday morning, 15 minutes before we were going to leave to bring Peter and Felisa to Morioka station, we had a big earthquake! The trains, highways and airports in our region were shut down for the day, so there was no way for them to get to the airport. So we had one more day together, which meant they were here for the Chagu-Chagu horse parade:

A Weekend of Akita Bliss

I went to Akita city to visit Kirsten and Hannah...

I got there at 10 p.m. and was welcomed by the girls, who told me we'd be riding bikes back to Kirsten's apartment. I was concerned because I had a suitcase and was imagining myself rolling it along side me while I rode the bike, and I knew it was no short trip. But, no, we got the bikes out of the bike parking ramp and Kirsten plopped by suitcase right into the basket! But the capacity of bike baskets never ceases to amaze me. It took a little while to get the hang of it, but it turned out to be really easy to ride with my little "baby" in back.

On Sunday afternoon we took a road trip out to the coast, thanks to their friend DJ Conny (pronounced "coney"). We stopped at the grocery store before we left to get our picnic snacks, but ended up eating most of them in the car. Toward the end of the ride we were going through narrow winding roads in the mountains and regretted eating so many snacks... but once we got out and got some fresh air, we felt much better :)

At sunset, we set up a blanket on the edge of the cliff and had some strawberries with sweetened-condensed milk from a tube. Somehow Kirsten ended up in the picnic bag. Weird... ;-)
We played frisbee until it got dark, then we drove to a look-out point above the city. There were vending machines, of course, and that's where Conny introduced us to the incredible Orange Fanta Shaker. You shake it 10 times before opening it, and it becomes a perfect combination of orange soda and orange jello. Incredible! And it doesn't even explode when you open it - any chemists out there who can explain that?

On Monday we met up with Kaila (the teacher in Takanosu), her friends Brendan and Pam, visiting from Canada, and Sachiko who drove them. We also got to meet Heather, the new teacher who will be taking over for Kaila. We had a fun time at Starbucks (the new coffee jello frappuccino is AMAZING! I don't know what it is lately with jello in drinks, but it's such a good idea) and the mall. We even had Baskin-Robins - my first time since I got to Japan.


I love the rice fields in this season.

At one point Hannah, Kaila and I ended up stranded in a little train station in the middle of nowhere, but it's long story, so I'll just leave you with this image from inside the over-pass at the station. With all the vending machines in this country, there is never a lack of bottles.

Golden Week with Mom and Dad

My parents were here from April 30th-May 8th, during my Golden Week vacation. We packed a lot into our schedule and were busy all day every day! I was impressed with how much Mom and Dad were willing to try: ANY food put before them, speaking Japanese a little, the public bath, meeting lots of people, etc. Here are some highlights from the visit:

When I showed the above picture to one of my high school students, she said "it suits him well."

This was the "geibikei." We sat on the floor of the boat and rode through the shallow water. The man told jokes and sang a couple of traditional-style songs for us as he pushed the boat using the pole.

^ Dad eating a whole fish. Delicious?

During the Golden Week holiday there was "Boys' Day" (now sometimes called "Children's Day). Families and businesses fly these "koinobori" to celebrate the boys (or children in general).

Mom drew and told the story of Noah's Ark at Hallelujah Nursery (with the help of a translator friend).

Here I am with my two moms. :-D

On their last full day in Morioka, Mom and Dad got to meet my cute little Wednesday-students.

A special gift for mom from the Miyakawas!

Spring in Full Bloom

The beginning of spring

Here in Morioka we are anxiously awaiting the "sakura" (cherry blossoms). The weather has been warmer, and it seems like people are coming out of hibernation.

The new school and fiscal year starts in April here, so at the end of March there was a "haruyasumi" (spring break) for students - but no break for English classes! Rina, the girl from the family I stayed with on my college band tour in Japan three years ago, visited Morioka with two of her friends from college. It was so fun to see her after so long! We have kept in touch through letters and emails, and I'm so glad I got the chance to see her again.

Here we are in Tsukigaoka Church (their first time in a church). Nana, Rina, me, and Nozomi:

Here we are with Morioka's rock-splitting cherry tree!

And here we are in Iwate park, next to the old castle walls, trying to be Mount Iwate :-D

On Easter Sunday our church had an Easter concert open to the public. Many of the church members performed, as well as a few students from the university and Kay, the niece of one of the church members, who was visiting on spring break from L.A. where she grew up and goes to college. I played trumpet, and Kay and Keiko played flute. About 80 people came, and we filled the sanctuary! Afterwards we had a cake buffet with lots of different desserts to try.

That night we all went out to a restaurant to celebrate and say farewell to two of the girls from church who were moving away for college. The food was served as many dishes that we all shared, beautifully arranged. Here's the dessert:

Then, at the end of March, Hannah and Kirsten visited from Akita, and we packed a lot of fun into the couple days they were here.

Sushi, puri-kura (photo booth), shopping, eating jajamen (Morioka's specialty noodles), karaoke... so many great memories!