Japan Adventure

Our Last Aomori

2011-03-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

This is it- Our Last Aomori. For those of you who read this blog or talk to us often, you know that we have kept a paper-chain-link counting down our last year in Japan. Today we took down our final link. Today is our last day in Japan. As you can see in the picture below that at one time the chain-link covered 3 walls in our bedroom.

Here Angie holds the first link starting at day 356.

And today she holds the last and final link. How the time has flown by!

To start our final day, of course we had to do some cleaning and packing and paid off our final gas bill. Later on we decided to head outside to do some last minute errands, and after walking to the corner of our street we realized, because it was such a beautiful day (this last week has been cold and snowy, but today the sun came out for us!), we should probably take one last ride on Big Red & Silver Bullet! So, we quickly ran back to our apartment, hopped on the bikes, and took off!

Also, our other wish for our last day came true- we could see the majestic beauty of our mountain, Iwaki-san! So we decided to head to the best look-out point in town to take our last pictures of our beloved mountain!

And of course, our final day in Japan wouldn't be complete without some Japanese purikura, just the 2 of us!

And, now as we sit in an empty apartment, anxiously waiting for 2:30pm to roll around, so we can head to the bus terminal for the first leg of our long journey home ,we can't help but think about our time spent here. . .

It's hard to believe we are on our final day, writing our final blog of our time in Japan. It has been a difficult yet wonderful three years here. It's been a roller coaster of ups and downs, and just like a roller coaster, it seems like it has finished too soon! This place has become our home, and we will miss it dearly. We have grown so very close to many of our students and friends here and are sad to leave them, but we know that God will continue the good work He has started here, even without our presence. We will never forget our time spent in our little corner of Aomori (our state), in Hirosaki. We will never forget the friends we've made. We will never forget this place. We hope to return someday, but now it is time to say good-bye as we enjoy "Our Last Aomori."

1 More Day!

2011-03-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

With butterflies in our stomaches we entered into our last 48 hours of Hirosaki, and we lived it up! After having our fill of packing and cleaning in the morning, we went out for some Mr. Donut with one of our former students who has become a close friend. We enjoyed chatting about life events and reminiscing about school activities. After finishing our donuts we went out for some "purikura" otherwise known photo-booth pictures in English! We didn't have our fill of purikura, so we went out again with another very close friend of ours later in the afternoon after some more crazy cleaning and packing. Purikura will be a great loss when we return to the States. There is just nothing like looking extra cute and getting your eyes enlarged like an alien!! In the evening we attended our last ever English Fellowship. This church has been such a great support to us. We know that the Lord has blessed us and many others through it and that our life in Japan would have been much more difficult without it. We praise the Lord Jesus Christ upon every remembrance of it and those who supported us in Japan! After the Fellowship we went for a traditional outing to Mr. Donut. The workers at this Mr. Donut have become sort-of-friends to us, so we HAD to say goodbye to them. And then a last minute decision was made--KARAOKE!! We just couldn't resist having one more chance to sing our hearts out at the top of our lungs. So we headed to the Queen with our dearest friend and all-time karaoke partner, Kevin. We sang till past midnight and came out more satisfied than ever.

Time Flies.....

2011-03-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Besides packing, cleaning, and freaking out over our change in flight schedule, we have made time for our dear friends in Hirosaki. These are people that we may never see again in person, so it is extremely difficult to say goodbye. Only the thought of our family and friends awaiting us in the States keeps us moving our feet forward. Here is a short outline of the major events that occurred during the past week:

One of our English Club students spent a day with us hanging out. We all enjoy karaoke so we went out to our favorite, Melodie Queen. After putting our time in at the Queen we had a good night of games and food. The next morning we witnessed her first ever McDonald's breakfast, as she is from a smaller town outside of Hirosaki without McDonald's. We were sooo happy to spend some extra time with her and establish a long-lasting friendship that we hope to continue in the States or Japan but of course on Skype!!!

The next day one of our best friends came over to spend the night. We did a Bible study and played games with a bunch of friends until late into the night. The next morning she invited us over to her house where we ate the wonderfully delicious Japanese food her mother kept putting in front of us!! We sat and talked for some time and finally had to tear away so we could go home to work on more packing and cleaning.

The next day one of our close students and her friends came over to eat lunch. Although their English is not the best, we had no problem having fun talking, playing games, doing magic tricks, and watching the national spring high school baseball tournament. We prepared an American style lunch for them consisting of cheese/broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. But they insisted on making us some fried rice that was fantastic as well! We will really miss our students and wish we could have spent more time with students like these outgoing girls.

Just tonight, we had our final karaoke gathering at the Queen. This is a night of karaoke that will go down in the books or at least in our minds. A complete 6 hour marathon was hardly enough to quench our thirst for karaoke. We had a full schmorgasborg of food to enjoy including cupcakes, muffins, chocolates, potato chips, popcorn, and sweets galore. The greatest hits from three years of practice were put on the list and hearts laid out for all to sing. Vocal chords were shredded, headaches created, and heat exhaustion forced us to near collapse, but we left content and satisfied with our last ever visit to Melodie Queen.

More and More Goodbyes!

2011-03-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

With seven days left, our time is very limited here in Japan. There are many people we love and will dearly miss. Also, the town of Hirosaki has become our foriegn home. The streets and pathways of this city will forever be etched on our hearts. There are many places in the city of Hirosaki that we will come to miss during our next years in America. Here is a taste:

The DAISO. Enough said...maybe not, but this is the greatest dollar store chain to exist in existance. The question you ask yourself when entering this vast store is, "What can't I find!" And truth be told, everything can be found, maybe not in the quality you would imagine, but the quality is the price you pay--$1.00 (actually more like 80 cents!). This is the 100 yen shop that has provided us with all essentials as well as even more non-essentials: writting paper, soap, candy, California Cola, plates, tupperware, locks, cleaning supplies, pens, pencils, decorations, cds, clothing, toys, games, yarn, folders, tissues, and much more beyond your wildest imaginations. What would have life been without you, Daiso.

Next on the list is the greatest thrift store of all time. If you know us, you know we love cheap stuff. There's something wonderful about finding that great deal at 90% the actual cost that drives us to extreme levels of saving. Although the prices at this particular thrift store are not what you would find in America, the quality is much higher. There are two theories for the high quality. Either Japanese people take better care of their clothes, or Japanese people run through their clothes as fast as fashions change. Whatever the theory, we reap the benefits!! Here's to you and your annoying theme song OFF HOUSE!!

SAKURANO, the mid range dept. store. How many times did we enter and NOT see our students--never! This dept. store is not any old ordinary dept. store. It is a city in itself. NO, not no mega-mall, but non-the-less you can spend a day easily within the doors of this fine dept. store. It is complete with a cinema, bowling, pachinko, hot spring, supermarket, 2 game centers, tourist information and souvenirs, McDonald's, a 100 yen store, and more shopping stores that have the same clothes than are needed.

MT. IWAKI, this scene defines our city. Without this scenic view our city would be any other city. The shear size cannot be captured on camera. Sometimes she can hide behind the clouds and fog, and when she comes out-BAM-there she is!! We have conquered her 3 times yet still she beckons us. Life will not be the same without her near to us, just a glance away!

But of course, our friends will be missed even more greatly. Good times have been had with all these wonderful people. Our great friends threw a party in our honor to say farewell. God has created some great relationships that we know will continue in this life as well as the much more exciting life to come in Heaven. Thank you to you all for your support, kindness, and love. We can't say it enough! We thank God when we remember you all!!!

One Week After

2011-03-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

One week after the earthquake we are still feeling the effects of the disaster even in distance Aomori. While this does not bring any life threatening issues to us, it does spoil the last week of plans we have.

Last night we had plans to have dinner with a couple of our old students at the famous Gusto. We were to meet at Gusto at 6pm, but upon arrival we were shocked to find the impossible--Gusto was closed!! This is the first time we have ever seen this sight as Gusto is open 24h. Obviously we were quite disappointed, so we had to find a different place to eat.

After finding another destination for dinner, we were given few options of the possible menu items due to the shortage of food being delivered to our area; for example, out of 10 possible pasta choices on the menu, we were only allowed 4. But we had to settle. and enjoyed our dishes. We can't complain because we at least have food to eat. We were also ushered out at 8pm to save electricty. Why don't they utilize some of these electricity-saving techniques all the time?

On our walk home from dinner we were also surprised to see the only other 24h restaurant in our city, McDonald's, had closed early--8pm! This is actually better than just following the earthquake when McDonald's didn't open all day! Can you believe it, a whole day with NO McDonald's?!

Overall, nothing to really complain about. We are still making plans with our friends and old students and enjoying our last few days to the fullest.

Love Within the Chaos

2011-03-16T20:03:00.000-07:00

Although are plans have been disrupted from the earthquake, we are managing to rearrange and see some of our students and friends before leaving in 11 days! Fortunately on Tuesday we were able to have all of our English Club over (minus 1 :( ) for the final "Good-Bye" party. It was a low-key party with some of their favorite games and food, and the most important part of the party- our reminder to them of why we came to Japan- to show them Jesus' love for them and the life that He has to offer them. We said our good-byes, gave plenty of hugs, and shed tears, but we know that we will keep in touch with them, and we know that God will continue to work in their lives even after we are gone.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Japan, mass chaos has errupted with gasoline and food shortages due to closed transportation in most of Japan. We ventured out to the store today to buy some "DonTacos" (the Japanese equivalent to Dorritos) for a homestay that we're doing with one of our students tonight. That idea was quickly forgotten as we noticed the massive lines for food and the empty shelves. Here are some pictures to show just how bad it is even here in Hirosaki, quite far from the disaster-stricken areas.

This woman is not restocking the shelves. She is simply cleaning the empty shelves where once an entire aisle of "Cup Noodle" stood.

We're not sure if you can tell perfectly from the picture below, but almost all of the stores in Hirosaki are using only some of the available lights in order to save electricity. As you have probably read in the news, they have scheduled rolling blackouts to also save electricity. We actually think this energy-saving technique should be utilized all the time. It's quite nice walking through stores without being blinded by the glaring flourescent lights!

We'll continue to blog as things are updated here, and as we draw closer to our return to home.

48 Hour Emotional Turmoil

2011-03-12T23:14:00.000-08:00

The past 48 hours have been an emotional rollercoaster for us here in Japan for more than one reason!! It is difficult to recount all the events that took place to everyone, so we hope this is a concise overview what's been going on here.

We began our 48 hours on Friday morning- the morning of our last day at To O Gijuku High School as English teachers. A student greets us at our desk asking us to come to his classroom. We knew something was up, and when we entered the classroom all the students cheered and yelled, "Thank you Truvis and Angie!" Well, they never got exactly how to spell Travis' name, but they did get how much we love them!! They presented us with a standard message card and some homemade goodies which made the first tears of the day come!!

As usual for the last day of the school year, the teachers who are leaving gave a short speech to the students at the closing ceremony service. This was our last assignment for the school, and it was the most difficult one. We were presented with some beautiful flowers and thanked for our time at the school along with 4 other teachers who are leaving this year. After the ceremony students did a final cleaning of their classrooms and went home. At this time we stood in the hallway saying our last goodbyes and giving hugs to our students. This was exceedingly hard to do, not only because embracing is a very very uncommon practice amoung the Japanese, but also because we love these students dearly. Many tears were shed on both sides. Most of these students who we came to love, we will probably never see again. It was very sad to say goodbye.

After returning home, full of sadness, we began to prepare for our Good Bye Party with English Club. The party was to be held on Saturday from 2pm to 8pm. We and the students were so excited to celebrate and meet, but little did we know that trouble was brewing...

At 2:51 on the dot a rumbling began. We felt dizzy at first but shortly realized it was not in our minds. It was an earthquake. Angie quickly whipped out her camera and started the footage. This earthquake was much bigger than we had experienced before and lasted a good 5 minutes (which is rather long for an earthquake). Half way through it, the power when out; we then realized that this was a big one. Although it was the biggest we had felt, nothing in our apartment fell and no damage was done. Since the power went out, we had no idea what was happening in Japan. We figured the power would shortly come back. After the power didn't return for an hour or so we figured we'd go outside and see if we could figure out what was going on. What we found surprised us. ALL electricity was down ALL over the city. Even the street lights were off, which unlike in America create a mess of traffic. Cars were just going through the intersections without waiting, which seemed quite strange to us.

With the power still off, our friend came over for a soup and bread dinner. Although we didn't have electricity, we still had gas for our stove. Unfortunately our heater must have electricity to run, so it was a cold, cold, dark night. We lit our candles and played some games to pass the time. Still by this time we knew little about what was going on in Japan, just that a big earthquake had hit around Sendai. At about 9pm we went out for a stroll around town. The city had become a ghost town. With no electricity there was not a single light or noise, only the light and sound from the few passing cars. It was crazy to stand on the busiest intersection in town and see only 20 feet in front of you! The picture below is what we experienced on the main street in town.

Before returning to our apartment, we made a quick call from a pay phone to make sure our parents knew everything was okay where we were. We called just in time to relieve their already anxious nerves as they had just woken up to the reports on TV. This was the first time we realized the magnitude of the earthquake and tsunami. We were taken aback from the news we heard about Japan all the way from America. Upon returning home, our aparment had sunk to a low of 45 degrees Farenheit, so we jumped into bed hoping that the electricity would return and we could continue with our plans for the Good Bye Party the following day. Several times during the night we were awoken to the temors of the aftershocks.

Unfortunately, we woke up to our colder-than-ever apartment still in the midst of utter black-out. So we ate a quick breakfast and decided we would venture out to see what the rest of Hirosaki was doing during this crisis. We found there was still no electricity, no trains, and very few stores open. Those stores that were opened seemed to have generators for power. Even the city clock tower still held the time of the earthquake. People were frantically buying any food they could and kerosene in case the black-out continued.

Luckily, throughout the day, little by little the electricity returned to the city, and we were back up and running by evening. It was then that we felt the scope of the earthquakes that hit as we watched the footage and read the reports of the disaster that had struck Japan. The picture below shows the magnitude of the first huge earthquake that hit Japan on Friday afternoon. As you can see nearly all of Japan felt the tremor, and in Hirosaki we felt a level 4 earthquake in comparison to the 8.9 that hit in Sendai. Now, we are just continuing to watch the news (since we have electricity) and pray that God will bring quick relief and aid to the people of Japan. We are also continuing our preparations for the Good Bye party which will take place this week. It seems as though our last 15 days here are going to feel quite similar to this weekend as there will be many ups and downs and both laughter and tears shared.

Here is raw footage of the big earthquake live from our apartment! The movement from the camera is not only from Angie's poor filming skills, but mostly due to the difficulty in keeping our balance as the ground beneath us rocked and swayed.

GustoKai

2011-03-08T01:14:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday was a day that will go down in the books as a day to never forget!!

We, and our dear friends, spent 12 hours--Yes, 12--at Skylark Gusto!!!!!!!!

A little background, Gusto is a nation-wide restaurant chain that is famous for its drink bar. No, it's not an alcohol bar silly! It is just like a salad bar but with drinks such as coffee, tea, juice, and soda. Now to many of you this doesn't seem very exciting, "Who needs a drink bar when you can get free refills anyway--duh!" you may say, but no my friends this is not true. In Japan very few restaurants offer free refills, which indeed is a great tragedy even more when the normal Japanese large size would easily match an American small size. Therefore, all this makes Gusto so greatly appealing to all who enter its doors.

Next piece of background, Gusto allows you to stay at your table for...well...forever. Either this is its policy or they are too Japanese and don't want to confront any customers to make them leave. In fact, our own eye witness attests to this remarkable truth as we one time observed a girl sleeping at a table for two hours with no interruptions. Regardless, the time is idly spent once at a Gusto table. Three hours is a standard.

Now with all this background you can see the reasoning we have in our endeavor. We have dreamt of this day for many a moon, and the day came and went--in all its glory. We arrived in time for breakfast at 9am. The party started with only 4 but quickly grew to seven, and then the games began. We started with a great: Imagine If. Lunch came with appetizers such as french fries, pizzas, and salads. Following lunch was a game of Citadels; a great little strategic card game. Next up was a round of homemade Who Knew It. Dinner followed with regulars like hamburger steaks, Gusto burgers, Gratin, and Pasta. The day was finished with a rowdy game of Apples To Apples. Through out all the festivities was the common trek to the drink bar and the also common trek to the bathrooms. We finally walked out of Gusto at 9:15pm. A short day but a most splendourious superbly awesometastic day!

Graduation Graduation

2011-03-04T15:19:00.001-08:00

Last Tuesday was our last ever Japanese graduation. This graduation meant more to us than all the others because the students who graduated this year came to Toogijuku with us, so we know all the students, except the college course students. (We don't teach the students in the college course because speaking English is not important for getting into college). So we were extra sad this time seeing all those students move on in there lives. We will dearly miss many of these students and hope that we can keep in touch with as many as possible. We did get a chance to give hugs (awkward at it was!) and say goodbye to many of the dearest students we had.

To drown away our sorrows we followed up the graduation ceremony with some very professional styled karaoke. Suits only!!

Last and Late Valentine's Day Party

2011-02-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

Though we were a few weeks behind, we had our annual English Club Valentine's Day party last Saturday. This party was a little bittersweet because it is our final holiday party for our English Club. We'll be having a "Good-bye" party in a few weeks with some of our English Club members, but this was the last official English Club party.

Of course we ate lots of delicious sweets, including raspberry chocolate mousse, oreo pudding, strawberry cake, strawberry cheesecake, and a peanut butter cup dessert cake.

The festivities included a rhyming/unscramble the letters to make a word game, some lovey dovey related skits to commemorate what Valentine's Day is really all about, and of course, it wouldn't be a Valentine's Day party without some Spin the Bottle!!!! Before you start freaking out and think we forced our high school students to kiss one another, you must realize that we would never do that!! We ingeniously swapped kissing for asking questions! Now we said any question was okay, but the students still related all of their questions to love, friendship, or Valentine's Day, so we got some pretty interesting questions, such as, "How will you treat your girlfriend when you have one in the future?" or "What did you and your boyfriend do on Valentine's Day?" Though these seem like harmless questions, to Japanese high school students these are cheek-turning-red questions, even if they aren't the ones answering them!

All in all, it was a great final Valentine's Day party, and to make the day even better, it was followed up by a night at the movies watching the newest Narnia (Voyage of the Dawn Treader) in 3D!!!

31 on 31

2011-02-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

On Friday we celebrated 31 days until we leave Japan and head for home. As we were walking to school exclaiming that we only have "31 days!!!" Travis decided to use the Japanese pronunciation of 31 that goes something like, "Sati won (31)!" which, unfortunately reminded us of Baskin Robbins here in Japan. We say unfortunately for 2 reasons:

First: Baskin Robbins' official name is "Baskin Robbins" NOT "31"

Second: IF you are going to call Baskin Robbins "31," you should atleast do it in correct English, not in Katakana (the Japanese pronunciation for foreign words) English!

In spite of these disturbing factors for us, we decided the best way to celebrate "Sati won" days until we go home was of course to go to "Sati won" (Baskin Robbins)!

6-Day Party!!!

2011-02-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

We are currently in a 6-day weekend (yes, we can just say we have a week off from school, but 6-day weekend sounds much better!) due to a public holiday and testing at our school for the junior high students who want to attend To- O Gijuku next year. Luckily, the winter festival fell at exactly the same time as our holiday, so we got to spend Thursday night with friends marveling at all the amazing snow sculptures, eating yummy festival food, and riding down a snow-slide for kids!

Since we had a whole 6 days off, we thought we had better do something even more special, so we headed to Tokyo on the night bus.

On Saturday we spent our final day in Tokyo in our favorite place, Minato Mirai in Yokohama, with Saori. We did some random shopping and then headed to our special place- TGIFriday's to gorge ourselves! You see not only is this our special place where we always eat together when we come to Tokyo, but it was also a special occasion this time. Last April, the day after we returned from visiting America, we went on a morning run because we felt so gross from all the traveling, and upon our run, we happened to come across a bill laying on the ground! This wasn't just ANY bill, it was a 10000 yen bill (equivalent to a $100 bill)!!!! Well, after much deliberation and talking with friends and family, we decided to keep the bill and spend it on something special during our last year in Japan. And what better way to spend it than with one of our closest friends at our favorite restaurant!

Needless to say, by the end of the full-course meal- appetizers, burgers and fries, and 3 desserts- we were too stuffed to even talk! Eventually we made it back to the train station to head to our hotel where we rested up for the following day's adventure- Tokyo Disneyland!

We met two of our old students, Rei & Mizuho, at Disneyland bright and early and had a fun-filled day of rides, attractions, chatting, and delicious food! Some of our favorite rides and attractions were Big Thunder Mountain (an awesome roller coaster which was so good we had to ride it twice), Winnie the Pooh Honey Hunt, a just-opened attraction Mickey's Philhar-magic, and both the day and night parades!

We finished the night exhausted, yet greatly satisfied! It was nice to get to spend time with some of our old-students/friends as this will be one of the last times we'll get to see some of them!

Goodbye Seniors Goodbye

2011-01-31T03:06:00.000-08:00

Last week was our 3rd year's (senior's) final week of school. (Yes, school ends in March but they get about a month and a half off from school. While some students must prepare for college (they are given college homework even before they get there) most of our students don't do anything cause they will just get a regular job). This year was particulary saddening to us because these 3rd year's were the students we came into Toogijuku with and these are the students we will leave Toogijuku with (Remember, Japanese high school only has three years). So it was very sad to see them go. For most of them, unfortunately, this will be the high point of their English ability. We do love them all though, and we hope they realize that.

Even more saddening was the loss of our 3rd year English Club students. These were the students we have grown closest to in our 3 years over here. They probably know us better than most of our friends here in Japan. We had our final English Club two weeks ago and had a treasure hunt extravaganza! We had all their favorite games compiled into an activity based treasure hunt with everyone winning a prize at the end!! Last Friday we gave them their graduation presents and said, "See you next time!!" as we hope to gather together before we leave Japan and they leave for college. NO goodbyes yet!! But needless to say, we are going to miss these six dear friends of ours!

They have "come of age"!!

2011-01-17T03:28:00.001-08:00

About a week ago we experienced, for the first time ever, the Coming of Age Day. Well, not exactly experienced but saw what it was all about. The students who were seniors our first year have or will turn twenty this year. When you turn twenty in Japan, you are officially an adult. This is a much bigger turning point in a Japanese person's life than in America. They have a big ceremony to congratulate the newly turned adults. Since our students were a part of this group we decided to venture out to see them...

As you can see the women (not girls anymore!) dress up in the traditional Japanese style kimono with vibrant colors along with elaborate hair and make-up. We look pretty drabby next to these stunning ladies!!

It was heart-warming to see our students in all their splendor come to maturation. We were happy to see some of our old students, some of which will probably be the last time.......

"A" Happy New Year

2011-01-07T03:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, we did have ourselves "a" Happy New Year but for some reason our students can't grasp the fact that the "A" is dropped when used as a greeting. Somehow they have added the "a" making a specialized, single event of happiness in the New Year, as we understand it!

Oh well, at least they greet us with something! And so we greet you too with all the happiness for the upcoming new year. Here is a short overview of our "A" New Year's celebrations:

On "A" New Year's Eve we had ourselves a small gathering of close friends. "A" New Year's here is a family event and so we only had our foreign friends over to our apartment for food and fun. Around 11pm we headed to the city park for the special count down. You see, our city castle is turning 400 years old this year (even though it was actually burned down shortly after it was built as it was struck by lightning) and they are having special events all year to celebrate. Well, to open the 400 year birthday there was a special count down with fireworks!!! It wasn't much of a celebration seeing how our group of 7 foreigners were louder than the hundreds of Japanese people there.

In the picture below, this lucky castle "guard", got to pose with all 7 foreigners...one at a time!!!

Later on in the week we had our traditional mochi eating celebration. Mochi is a rice based gooey, stretchy, mostly tasteless, partially edible, cake glob. This is eaten every "A" New Year's by Japanese people. It is to symbolize the hope for a long life due to its stretchiness, although every year people die from choking on it because of its elasticity!! One of our friends came over to show how to cook and eat it. Ours didn't turn out so well since we bought the cheap stuff from the hundred yen (dollar) shop here!

The picture above shows the mochi before cooking.

And here we have the cooked mochi blob.

And finally, in all its stretchiness, the edible mochi dipped in sugared soy sauce!!

Overall it was "A" Happy New Year for us and our dear friends we spent it with!!

The Final Christmas Celebration

2010-12-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

The stockings were hung....

carols all sung.

The presents were stacked under the tree...

for all eyes to see.

And as always, the joy of the Lord filled the air
wiping away all doubt and care.

For this day was the last lonely Christmas
for the Appelgate team to take bliss.

Presents were unwrapped
although the joy never untapped.

The candy lay about the floor
with all the tummies oh-so-sore.

For the parents had sent in the mail
packages of love and candy without fail.

The previous day was just as joyous
with lots of fun and not so much fuss.

The hot spring was comfortable
while the train staff dressed up merriable.

Songs were all sung with cheer

With friends so close and dear.

And what would a Japanese Christmas be

without a lovely cake to see!

On Christmas night all merriment was had

with friends all around to make us glad.

The food and fixin's were oh so wonderful

talkin' and laughin' never a moment too dull.

Although turkey was out of the question....

A glazed ham would do for din-din.

And to finish off the Christmas joy

was free coffee from Mister Donut, oh boy!

Nativity Play

2010-12-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

Here is the celebrated Nativity play we promised!!!!

Hope you enjoy this version.......

Best Christmas Party Yet

2010-12-18T04:45:00.000-08:00

Today was our best and final English Club Christmas party! It was full of non-stop laughter, joking, and fun times!

We started the party off with a cookie decorating contest, in which each student was able to choose and decorate 3 cookies any way they like. Here is a sampling of some of the finished products (the one in the center of the tray took FIRST place actually!)

Afterwards the students finished decorating the rest of the Christmas cookies.. and last year they made us matching "boy and girl" cookies, well this year on their attempt, they accidentally gave Angie a giant eye, so she figured she should probably make her eye the same so they didn't feel too bad about making her look like "EYE-gore!"

We also had a fashion design contest, in which the students were given 2 rolls of wrapping paper (we should be specific- Japanese rolls of wrapping paper, which means only about 3 feet of wrapping paper/roll) and could make any fashion they wanted.. here were the final designs from the left- the "the Tin-Man," "Santa-Pebbles," and "the Parisian-Christmas Queen!" In case your all dying to know, the Tin-Man won!!!

We played many other games, ate tons of delicious food, did a White-Elephant gift exchange, and laughed a lot! Best of all, we did a nativity play, complete with costumes and everything, but you will have to wait for us to upload and edit the video before we put it up on here! Hopefully we'll get to it this week, since our vacation starts on Wednesday!!!

103... Do we have to go?

2010-12-15T02:44:00.000-08:00

Today we had one of those days in which we had to ask ourselves, "Why are we leaving?" and we also remembered, "Oh yeah, this is why God has brought us here!" It was one of those days that makes us super excited and joyous but also makes our hearts break as we think of the impending good-bye.

Sometime last month, one of our English Club students asked us if the students could have one of the English Clubs in December to do something for English Club. Of course we said "Yes!" excited that they were wanting to plan and run an English Club. Up until a week ago we had no idea that they were actually up to something quite suspicious. After seeing them come in and out of the teacher's room numerous times a day to discuss things with the Japanese teacher whose the head of English Club and having them dodge us in the hall with things hid behind their backs, we realized, "Oh, maybe they're doing something special for us." But of course, we had no idea what this would entail.

As we entered the English Club room today they informed us that we-Travis and Angie- would be partaking in some special games:

The first game: Taboo, in which the first round we could only say 1 word to describe our word, and the second round we could only do gestures. Sounds easy enough, right?! That's what we thought, until for the "one-word" round they had their own names, Mickey, and other famous characters, and then for the gesture round they had things like, shrimp, Snoopy, Obama, and compass! Yeah, they definitely made it harder on us than we ever do on them! But, we all had great laughs as Angie tried to act like a shrimp and Travis frantically crawled around on the ground like Snoopy!

The second game: Treasure Hunt, of course also had a twist. To get our clues we had to partake in mini-challenges or answer a question about English Club; for example, "Where was the first English Club party held?" or "Whose speech title was, 'Studying Abroad?'" We had untli 4:30 to find 9 clues, and we made it back at 4:26- just in time!

Our last hint for the Treasure Hunt led us to unlock the English Club room, where we were surprised with confetti, poppers, baked goodies, and shouts of "Congratulations!" That's when the party took on a more serious tone and the tears started coming. Each of the students went around and shared their favorite memory or experience about English Club and gave us a "good-bye/thank you" present, including a memory book with each of their pictures and a letter.

Needless to say, this was one of our best experiences in Japan, not because of some cultural experience or some awesome sight-seeing place, but because of the love that we felt from our students. Times like this remind us why God sent us here and shows the work that He has done through us here. We know that God has reached each one of those students and each student has grown because of it, and we are excited to see how much more God has in store for them in the future.. . even if we aren't here to witness it first hand.

Last Year of Santa-san!

2010-12-07T01:45:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday was a sad day for Travis as he was "Santa-san" (a.ka. Santa Claus, though Japanese people don't realize that Claus is Santa's last name, so it's just 'Santa-san') for the last time ever in his life! Seeing how it was his last year, he went out with a bang, and wrote an extra long script in Japanse and dazzled the students in his red costume and big belly!

And of course he wasn't the only thing that wowed the crowds...the local elementary school unicylcing team was quite spectacular as well. Unicycle is a very common elementary school sport here in Japan, and is something that is always quite surprising and intriguing to us whenever we watch them!! We hope you enjoy it the same. Here is a small clip to demonstrate their mad-unicycling skills!

Twilight Re-Dubbed!

2010-11-24T01:13:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday we had an outing with two of our students. Twilight Eclipse FINALLY came to Japan after releasing in the rest of the world 6 months ago!! So the big fans from our English Club were dying to see it. The picture below represents the love each as for the opposing boys.

Because the enthusiasum was high, we bought our tickets early at a discount. So we bought the tickets without realizing that the only theater showing the movie in the area was dubbing it in Japanese! We were in quite a pickle, should we watch a movie we will hardly understand??? Or, just let those two go alone to enjoy it?? We finally decided that we would go. Even if we couldn't understand it at least we could hang out with our students...

...but then...an idea...what if we download the audio for the movie and put it on our mp3 player...yes that would work, we thought. But instead of just the audio we ended up with the entire movie (oops! we will buy the real one--promise!). So yes indeed, while at the theater, we watched the screen and listened to the mp3 player, which was playing the movie at the same time--in English!! A double dub!!! and it mostly worked! At times it felt we could really hear the words come from the screen but other times we would know what would be said before they actually said it...or catch it a little late...all in all, it worked and we were satisfied!

A Good day!

Thanksgiving and more...

2010-11-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! Hope everyone is enjoying the festivities at home cause we sure are here!

This year at Thanksgiving we had a few special guests with us. Some of our friends came to the feast just like the Native Americans did so many years ago to help people they knew very little of. And a challenge it was for the students who had to participate in activities to test if all their years of English training is paying off, which, to our joy, it has!

After feasting and playing a few games our special guests left, but we continued the festivities with watching "This is America: Charlie Brown, The Mayflower Voyage" and quiz, a Pilgrim simulation, skits, and picitonary.

In the Pilgrim simulation, the students had to hunt (shoot a plastic toy crossbow at paper cut-out birds) and fish (use a magnet fishing rod to catch magnet paper fish) for their food. It was a game of mostly luck but fun none the less.

For the skits the students had to work out a conflict they were given about a foreign looking person in some difficult situation. Basically, we remember all the times we wished someone had helped us in some difficult situation and wrote them down and had the students reinact them. This was prep work for future interactions they will have using English to help foreigners.

We also had a "Thankful Tree" as you can see in the picture below the tree is full of things we are all thankful for including family, friends, good students, good teachers, Jesus, and...rock bands.

Last of all, after the Thanksgiving party we were invited by 2 of our students to join them in watching the newest Harry Potter movie. So we rushed out the door, ran (literally) to the station, took the $1 bus, ran (yes, again) to the cinema to make sure we got our seats. Although we really enjoyed talking and hanging out with our students we were rather dissatisfied by the movie as it didn't line up much with the book...

One more thing, last week at English club we had the students make commericials. Sounds easy yeah, but not with nonsense items such as a squeaky hammer, peace-hand stick, and huge bowtie. We had such a laugh we thought y'all'd enjoy it too! (sorry, you'll have to turn your screen on its side or just turn your head!)

Colors of Fall

2010-11-12T01:57:00.000-08:00

Though we've been super busy these last few weeks, we did have some time last weekend to go to the final days of the Fall Festival and enjoy the beautiful fall colors. Maybe we just haven't been home in awhile and can't remember what it's like there, but the colors of the changing leaves in Japan (atleast Hirosaki) are so vibrant and beautiful!

This spot here (with all the red behind us) is our favorite place in the park in the fall. The leaves are so red, it's simply amazing to look at!!

And Iwaki looks just wonderful with the mixture of the colors of the setting sun and leaves.

Also, though nothing to do with the colors of fall, yesterday was a special holiday here in J-pan:

POCKY DAY!!!!! (11/11- 1 looks like a pocky)

.. so of course we had to do some major celebrating by buying some delectable special edition Pocky!

YUM!

The Last Halloween

2010-11-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

Well, we had our final To- O Gijuku English Club Halloween party, and at least we can say we went out with a bang! We "bribed" the students into wearing costumes with a bag full of candy-goodies for 1st and 2nd place and a $5 gift card to McDonalds and $5 gift card to Baskin Robbins for the 1st place winner! They must have really wanted those gift cards because everyone turned up in a costume, with many of them being homemade (including a wolf and Disney Halloween Mickey)!! One of our students even made her Halloween costume the night before while listening to Christmas music- now that's the spirit :D

And, we had the traditional game of "Bobbing for Apples" with a twist. Each apple had a challenge on it, and the teams fought for candies!

Of course a Halloween party wouldn't be complete without some scarecrows, so we did a scarecrow relay race with a student from each team as the scarecrow! We have to admit that they were some rather stylish scarecrows!

And, this year we decided to add in a boot stomp contest, as this was one of Angie's favorite activities that she remembers from her childhood days. It was rather chaotic and wild, but definitely a blast! After the boot stomp we had a scary-treasure hunt, in which the students could only use flashlights (the party was at night so most of the lights in the school were off) to find the clues to the final treasure of candy! Our students absolutely hate going through the school at night in fear of the ghost that haunts the school, so of course we made sure to put some of the hints in dark, secluded places! One of the teams had to sing a song to keep their spirits up as they went down the dark stairs to the kendo room for one of their clues.

Finally, to top off the night we did the traditional "pumpkin" carving or as close as you can get to pumpkin carving in Japan. We were very happy to finish our third and final Halloween party with all of our fingers and no loss of blood! We must admit that, although we had a great time at the party, we were rather sad at the same time as we realized this was the last Halloween party we'd get to have with our students. We're on the verge of 150 days (TOMORROW!) and are starting to feel the sadness set in as we come closer to saying goodbye to our students. And actually the day after our Halloween party, we had a speech contest at our school (we've been helping 2 of our students prepare for it over the last 2 weeks), and one of our student's speeches was about how we and his homeroom teacher have influenced his life since he's been at To- O Gijuku, which only made us even sadder to leave. We know we need to make the most of our last 150 days with our students and are looking forward to it!

Annual First and Last Ever English Club Olympics

2010-10-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

Today we had the Annual First and Last Ever English Club Olympics!! It was an hour of frenzied battling of English questions, trivia and spelling for Gold and Silver "medals." The day was full of spoils and splendor as the two nations (teams, that is), Japan and America, dueled for the championship of the Annual First and Last Ever English Club Olympics.

Here's a member from the Japan team as he humbly accepts the Gold "medal" in the Basketball Trivia Competition winning the medal with a last minute two-point shot into the trash can. The Basketball Trivia Competition was followed by the Spelling Bee which was then followed by the Baseball Questionaire Competition.

Team USA couldn't hold up to the fierce combat issued out from Team Japan. Here is the US Team in their defeat as they eye the Japanese Team and the championship prize!

So, the Gold "medal" champion was Team Japan pulling out a stunning and overwhelming victory over Team USA. These "Big Leaguers" know how to fight to the finish.

A special Gold "medal" and an "honorary" American one dollar bill was given to the MVP of the Annual First and Last Ever English Club Olympics who managed to sweep the boards earning a total of three "medals": two gold and one silver.

A round of applause for all who fought valiantly in todays Annual First and Last Ever English Club Olympics!!!

Fabulous Fall!

2010-10-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we ventured to the top of the Hakkoda Mountains for the last time. Last weekend was the peak for the fall colors so we decided to make our last trek in Japan a memorable one. And it was quite a sight to see. We both agreed it was refreshing to be out of man's creation and into God's creation. We ascended the slopes with the sound of the wind rustling in the multi-colored trees and the smell of the crisp and cool fall, mountain air. This is opposed to the sound of cars zooming, smell of garbage and gas, and the sight of claustrophobic concrete.

Words don't do justice for how great it was to be in the Creation that the Lord breathed into life...

World Wonders

2010-10-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of time, our time in Japan that is, we have witnessed an incredible sight. Every morning for about a year on our walk to the train station, we saw a true rarity--

SHOVEL TRUCK!

This is a jeep with a detachable shovel of various shapes and sizes instead of a spare tire. The uses of this special tool are entirely innumerable. A regular truck is just a worthless pile of metal next to the magnificience of SHOVEL TRUCK. ("it can't be helped" but to write the name in capital letters it is so powerful!) What would a regular truck do if a difficult situation arose? How would a regular truck move a pile of rocks blocking its path? Or how about an avalanche of snow? How would it dig a hole if the need came?

But a time came when we saw SHOVEL TRUCK no more...and many days passed without a sighting...until one day, last Saturday, while riding bikes....

There it was, in all its greatness!! Not the original, but SHOVEL TRUCK nonetheless!! Tucked deep within the gravel side-streets of Hirosaki, it lay waiting...waiting for the time of action...waiting to dig a hole!

But wait, the story is not finished!!

Last night, Tuesday that is, just three short days after our long absences without SHOVEL TRUCK, there upon our walk home from singing our hearts out at karaoke for 4 hours, the beauty, the amazingness, was before us again...this time with twice the greatness. Check it out for yourselves, although the video doesn't do justice, viewers beware, this might knock your socks off.......

We thought this was also a nice picture.

Makin' the Best of the Halfway Point

2010-09-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we felt the itch to get out onto the open road, so we decided to make the journey to a small town nearby, Hirakawa, that has a famous house that's Japanese style on the first floor and European style on the second floor. As you can see in the picture, the house is pretty neat. It was built close to 100 years ago probably and is situated in a luscious Japanese-style garden, which is next to a big park/temple ground. On our way to leave, we even got free apples just for being different!! Talk about the advantages of being a foreigner!

Then, on Sunday, we were on the road bright and early at 5:30 to visit America!!! or the closest we can get to America here! We traveled 3 hours by car to go to the American Air Force Base in Misawa for the Misawa Base Air Show. Although we were mostly looking forward to all the American food we knew we'd be able to eat on the base, we were quite surprised to find we were literally blown away by many high-speed, crazy-loud fighter planes!!! Yes, these planes our upside down!!

Anyways, back to the important stuff, the food! There were cakes, turkey legs, steak, cupcakes, pulled pork sandwiches, pizza, chips, pop, and even Starbucks Frappucinos!!! We were also able to leave the area where the show was held to go to 2 of the fast food restaurants (Burger King & Popeyes) and a mini-supermarket! Of course we couldn't buy any food at the supermarket, but we enjoyed some Popeyes chicken for lunch!

After the show we went into Misawa City for some authentic Tex-Mex, which was absolutely AMAZING!!!!

And, today, Thursday, we had no school thanks to the start-of-fall!! Thanks Autumn Equinox! So, to celebrate the coming of fall, we decided to do something that we have dreamed about since our first month in Hirosaki, Japan- eat the "monster parfait" (the name is the literal translation from Japanese, obake parfait, which actually means ghost or monster.. we think monster is more fitting, don't you?!) With 9 of us, us plus 7 of our english club members, we dug right in....

but, if you look closely at the "after-shot" we have an extra addition to our party!!! We realized after about an hour of eating that we were not going to be able to demolish the parfait on our own. We had to call in the reinforcements, so Kevin decided to join us!!! Finally, after much team effort, stomachaches, and some close calls for vomiting, we completed the mission!!! As you can see in the picture, although it was an amazing parfait, we were not very happy leaving with bloated stomachs!

Although it seems like that would be enough excitement for one day, after sitting and watching a movie to let our stomachs settle, we decided we needed to burn some of the sugar out of our bodies, so we set off on another mission- to climb the dog in the dog-park! Mission success, even though Travis busted his knee cap! That's all.

The Last; The First and The Last; The First

2010-09-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

The past two days have been monumental moments in our final year in Japan. It has been filled with many first's as well as many last's and has made our days bitter sweet.

The Last:

We had our final All-State English Speech Contest on Tuesday. The students have been vigorously working away at their speeches for at least the last month, with the last two weeks focusing on speech etiquette: intonation, gestures, facial expressions, pronunciation, etc. This has included many long evenings at school preparing and practicing, which is trying but also fun. We get a chance to spend extra time with the students and question them on their speech topics such as bullying, studying abroad, and differences in culture. They all practiced very hard and poured their hearts out at the contest on Tuesday. Although they did not win any prizes, they did really wonderful and we were quite proud of them.

The First and the Last:

Usually the speech contest lands on the same day as the field day at our school, so we have never been able to attend the field day; however, this year was a change of plans. A typhoon came to town delaying the field day to a day later which meant we were able to go to both the speech contest and the field day. The field day is an event held at all schools across Japan. Our field day consists of many running events, long jump, shot put, three legged race, funny relays, and tug-0-war. It was fun to cheer the students on as they spilled their guts for the glory of best class!

This video exemplifies the hilarity of the relays. Here the students have to duck a hurdle, grab a bag of bread with their teeth, and run with it backwards.

The First:

After the field day we took a little trip with one of our coworkers to the brand-spanking new, oh so wonderful and highly anticipated, Starbucks, which opened up about one week ago in a city about 45 minutes from us. This is HUGE news for the area as it is the first to open in our entire state. Because it was the first store to open (workers there confessed there would be more!) there were special Tsugaru (our part of the state) mugs and tumblers with Tsugaru symbols on them: apples, Neputa, The Shinkansen (another highly anticipated event of the bullet train coming in December to our neck of the woods that is hoped to enliven our not-so-thriving area). Unfortunately, they were out of tumblers already; but we were able to snag one of the mugs. Even though we love our local stores much, we are happy to see Starbucks so close to us (the closest one is 3 hours away). This brings our area a little closer to modernization.

Summer Fun!!

2010-08-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we had our annual Summer English Club party! Of course, we had lots of the summer goodies, even Frank & Beans (which only Travis enjoyed!). We started off the summer game fun with a city-wide scavenger hunt. Last year the students had to walk around town taking pictures of various things. This year they had to actually collect the objects which ranged from a city tour guide to a toilet seat cover, from a Baskin Robins tasting spoon to a used umbrella. It was interesting to see what they came up with!

After dessert, we headed to the Dog park to play some outside games. We started with the word on the back guessing game. They had to ask questions to find out what their word was.

Next was Blindfold Water Balloon Dodgeball! In pairs the blinded person was guided by their teammate to search out and hit the other teams. The students had a load of fun with this one, but we found out that it is rather difficult to throw when blindfolded! We ended up getting wetter than the students!

We went on to water balloon toss with shirts and bare hands. One team made it to around 10 yards, which is pretty intense for water balloon tossing standards.

The Case of the Disappearing Donuts

2010-08-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have heard from us the question, "What does Mister Donut do with all their donuts at closing time?!! Where do all the donuts go?!" We have pondered this question since our first Mister Donut experience. Well, tonight we have discovered the secret of the lost donuts.

After a long day's work we decided some Mister Donut would be delightful. Upon our arrival, we were pleased to see one of our former students working behind the register, as she often is. We are always excited to see her, but tonight our excitement was close to overflowing as we realized closing time was coming, and we could ask her (in English and a little Japanese since it was such an important question!) about the mysterious disappearances of the Mister Donut donuts.

Well, Travis bravely went up to ask her and found out to our astonishing disapproval that: "donuts wa gomi ni narimasu" = "donuts become trash." What?!!! Really?! This has been one of our deepest concerns since being in Japan. We just can't imagine all those delicious donuts not going into our stomachs!!!

As we were returning our tray to leave, with sadness in our eyes as we knew all those donuts would go to waste as the clock struck 9, our former student ran over to us and proceded in a broken English/Japanese mix to ask us how many of those preciously wasted donuts we wanted. Of course we were flabbergasted due to our excitement of possibly receiving more donuts, but also because we weren't quite sure if this would be a legal transaction!!?? What should we do?! After many "okays" "nods" and "smiles" we went back to the counter and picked out some of our favorite donuts. In methodical Mister Donut fashion our former student dropped the donuts into the "to-go" bag, rang us up, gave us a receipt with a charge of 0 yen!!, smiled largely, and waved as we walked out the door!

For the whole 5 minute bike ride home we debated if this was a moral decision or not! Angie insisted that our former student said "Prezent-o de" as she "rang" us up, which would prove that our actions were ethical as they were a present from Mister Donut, but we both still worried that our former student would soon become a former Mister Donut employee!!

To our relief, upon scrutinizing the receipt, once at home, we found that it truely read "present" so now we can eat our free donuts with a smile on our face and a good feeling in our tummies and hearts!

{Evidence #1: プレゼント = Present}

A big thank you to our former student for filling our tummies with JOY :D

Southern Japan Sojourn

2010-08-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

For the last week we have been touring Japan. We bought the Seishun Ju-Hachi ticket which allows you to ride the trains all day at a cheap price for 5 days of your choice. The catch is that the trains must be local, so that means they are really slow. We spent 3 days, from 6am to 10pm, just riding trains!! So we took along books to read, games to play, and movies to watch!

We had a little set back in our plans...Travis had to make a surprise visit to the ER the first day we arrived in Tokyo! We and the doctors, both in Japan and America :), think he had a kidney stone--Ouch!! "Yes, please everyone be sure to drink lots of water," pleas Travis. "You never never ever want to feel that much pain!" It was a little scary, but we trusted that the Lord would get him through it. Five hours later we were out of the hospital and on our way.

At the time Travis went into the ER, we were to meet up with one of Travis' high school pals. Obviously that didn't work out, but we were able to meet up for dinner at Outback Steakhouse where we ravishly ate our little Japanese tummies full-up. It was quite a once in a lifetime chance to meet our friends while IN Japan!!

The following day we spent in Osaka. We were able to see some old famous temples, and we went to see the city castle. As you can see in the picture, they didn't mess around when it came to castle building. The picture below is not the castle, but the huger than huge castle wall and moat.

And here is the castle! Huge isn't it! 8 floors! Obviously this is not the original; the Japanese had a thing about burning castles when they took over the city and it also was destroyed in WWII. But they fully restored it and what a sight! Inside is a museum of the castle history and artifacts from the castle and leaders of the clans that ruled it. It was quite interesting.

Of course, we went for the skyline view at the Floating Garden Observatory (not really a garden?). It was an interesting building and an amazing view! But we decided that we don't like Osaka very much :(. Sorry friends from Osaka...but that city is kind of dirty and crazily full of buildings. As you can see in the picture, as far as the eye can see are buildings, execpt of course the mountains. We felt that this town was more confusing than Tokyo, which is hard to believe.

The next day we visited Hiroshima. Now this city is very beautiful! It has many large parks, trees, an easy street car system, and of course many extremely famous places. Our first stop was the A-Bomb Dome. We don't think we can really explain this in words, but it was saddening and really touched the heart.

The Peace Park area has many many memorials and monuments dedicated to people who died in the bombing or gave their lives to helping the suffering people. The picture below is a monument to all those who died that infamous day. Under the dome is a grave with all the names of those who died. Beyond the dome is the eternal flame of peace that will be extinguished when all nuclear bombs have been destroyed. And just beyond that is the A-Bomb Dome, a standing reminder of the utter destruction of these bombs.

In the musuem are many artifacts, pictures, and stories of the destruction of that bombing. The stories are sickening and painful to read. The pictures below are a scale model of the city before and after the bombing. 140,000 people lost their lives from just this one bomb. It is interesting to note that today's hydrogen bomb is 1,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

In the evening of that day in Hiroshima, we went to visit Miyajima. This is one of the three most beautiful views of Japan, which means that we have seen two out of three of the best Japan views (check out our blog of our visit to Matsushima from our first year in Japan). Miyajima is an island which was held as sacred in the past. Nobody could step foot on the island so they built a temple on the beach on stilts. They had to reach the temple by going through a huge red tori (gate) in the water.

Now a days, it is more of a tourist trap, but it is still quite beautiful. The deer on the island are quite tame and even though you are not to feed or touch them, it is rather difficult to avoid a tame, hungry deer that can smell the food in your bag or that wants to take a bite of your shirt. Here is a picture of Angie trying to "avoid" one of these "pets."

And here is the beautiful view of the "floating" tori (its not really floating, but appears to be). It is really cool to see, but we found that God's creation around the island: mountains, sea, sunset, etc; were much more inspiring. We would have loved to take more pictures of this famous sight, but once the tide went out, people thought that it would be cooler to walk out under the tori to take pictures, which obviously ruined everybody else's pictures of the view.

We headed back to town, Miyajima is a ways out of town, and took one more walk by the A-Bomb dome and some of the other monuments. At night the dome has an eery green glow from the lighting that is visible only in pictures, which makes for a very beautiful scene.

Wednesday was Angie's 25th birthday!!!!!! So we celebrated American style with Starbucks for breakfast, Subway for lunch, and TGIFridays for dinner. We met up with our friend Saori in the afternoon to hang out. She took us on a boat cruise through Yokohama bay! Then we headed to TGIF for dinner. It has been Saori and our tradition to eat TGIF for our birthdays, but this time we ate ON Angie's birthday! We had a blast!!!

Final Conquerization

2010-08-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

The weather was gorgeous on Sunday so we said, "Let's do it!" And we left to make our third and final hike up Mount Iwaki! We were planning to go earlier but the weather never turned out well, so we went for it, and it was a beautiful day to hike!! Our trip started with a 7am bus ride out to the base of the mountain. Our starting point was Iwaki Jinja, the mountain temple.

This is a picture from the bottom fo the mountain. This is what we hiked--3 times!!

Although only half way to the top, we were already tired and drenched in sweat!! Don't we look so excited to climb this mountain!

Using the sunglasses filter technique, we were able to get some pretty neat pictures!

Travis thought he spotted a full-on double rainbow, but it was just a bird!

We were nearing the top but even 3/4 the way up the views are already amazing!

The last trek is about 400 meters in length but it seems like 1,000 meters in height! What the picture below doesn't show is that there is another straight-up climb after this one! These last two vertigos are obviously the worst!!

We finally! reached the top!!! What a hike! We made it in a record time--about 3 hours 3o minutes! We were practically running up the mountain, but we made in alive! 3rd time's a charm.

Even though we were almost delirious from exhaustion, we were pretty happy with our conquerization! This mountain can't stop us--WOOT! Take that mountain!

The trek up was entirely too exhausting so after eating our PB&J's, Travis decided to take a short nap.

It was a pretty clear day so the views were quite marvelous! Here are some spectacular views from the top.

We took some time to hang out with the dragonflies that were zooming around the peak. There must have been hundreds of them, and some were the size of our hand. We stuck to the small ones!

We booked it down the mountain to catch the early bus back home, so by the end we looked more like zombies drenched in sweat!! So in our final conquering we hike from the bottom to the top and the top to the bottom, without cheating and taking the ski lift or the bus! But overall it was an amazing last journey to the top!!!! And we conquerized unscathed, besides a few scratches!

Final Nebuta

2010-08-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we travelled to Aomori City, which is about an hour away, to watch our final Nebuta. This is quite similar to Hirosaki's Neputa, but much more up-beat and the floats are 3D instead of fan-shaped. So we left at 1:00pm and did some random shopping around town. We are super excited about the city's (as well as the whole Tsugaru area) new developments. As the Shinkansen (bullet train) will be coming to town in 115 days (they have a count down too!), they are preparing the city/area for its arrival. For example a new Mister Donut in the station, a coffee shop in the station, new bus platforms, new much nicer tourist office just outside the station, and a Nebuta Museum. Anyway, after doing some shopping Angie went to get her hair cut at our regular location.

After running our errands, we went to stake our spot for the festival. Fortunately, we had talked to a very nice man about the festival, so, to our dismay, we found that there was no parade tonight. They would only float the floats in the bay, which is the main reason we went. The very nice man also told us not to go to the regular location to view the floating floats but to a different location that would be much less crowded. So we headed there and found one spot left, luckily!

Well, that was at 5 and the parade didn't start till 7, but as the evening marched on, in marched the people to take hold of the positions they had laid claim to earlier.

So the parade started but we were a little disappointed because the floating floats did not come very close to shore, but stayed just beyond good picture taking distance. We attempted to snap a few but the quality was rather poor. As you can see in the picture, the floats were floated on barges while the people sang and played the common song.

A bit further offshore stood a cruise ship that went to sea just to view the floats. Wonder how much that spot costs and how early you have to claim it! Ours was free and we claimed it 2 hours before, but the floats didn't come 10 feet from us.

During the parade there was also a fireworks show. We didn't stay to watch the fireworks, but did get a few nice pictures of them! Although it wasn't the night we expected, we did see the floating Nebuta for the first and last time of our lives!

HSM Mania!

2010-08-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had a High School Musical marathon with two of our students. After seeing the first one at the English camp, they decided they wanted to watch all of them. So we took the whole afternoon to watch High School Musical 1, 2, and 3!

And it was a good idea to take the WHOLE afternoon because it was deathly hot! After watching the first one dripping with sweat because it was 97 degrees IN our apartment, we decided, for the first time in 2 1/2 years, to turn the AC on! Boy was that a wonderful idea, but now it will be difficult to refrain from using it, especially on deathly hot days like yesterday.

After watching the movies, Angie and Travis braved the heat of the evening to watch their final of all time Hirosaki Neputa. Tonight is the last night, but we will be venturing to a different city for their summer festival (stay tuned in). It was a joyous yet tear-jerking night of Neputa viewing as we realized our approaching return to America.

This is a panoramic from the night before when we returned from Goshogowara. The picture is not very good but the floats pass by the train station and we stood out on the second floor deck to watch!

Tullet and things

2010-08-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

Last evening, we ventured to the nearby city of Goshogowara for Tachi-Neputa, which as you can see by the pictures means "Standing-Neputa." These floats are gigantic! See the wee-little policeman guarding this massive float, the float is 10 times bigger than him!! Watch out wee-little man; you're about to be hacked to death by this outraged samurai warroir clouded in fire!!

The monstrous float below is the opening float. The drums are loud enough to make your heart mummer!!

These gargantuous floats are pulled around the down town streets by strings of dancers followed by drummers who are followed by flutists who are trailed by cymbalers finally followed by a mass of dancers. These three instruments are the common ones used in all Neputa related parades.

One unique characteristic to Tachi-Neputa are the many groups of choreographed dancers clad in traditional Japanese styled clothing.

Another unique characteristic of Tachi-Neputa and quite obviously not so impressive is the amount of drunkenness allowed. Although we enjoyed the humongous floats and the traditional dancers, we were not so fond of the drunken revelry which trails the entire parade. Those of you living in America should be quite thankful you live in a country that prohibits public intoxication and public indecency because it was rather sad to see young women running around in their bras and children being dragged around by their intoxicated parents. This video only gives you a little idea of why you should be so thankful.

On a more positive note, an aspect of the festival that is not unique to Tachi-Neputa or any country it may seem, was the appearance of the wonderfulness of the Mullet. This one was worn quite beautifully, which we feel immensely lucky to have witnessed twice! in one day!! We believe this is of the species known as the Tiger Mullet or Tullet for short. Although the picture does not provide a perfect viewing of the rareness of the Tullet, you may be able to observe the varying colors of orange and brown within the mane. This must have been a very mature specimen as the mane was rather long reaching to about mid-back. A rarity indeed! This was quite possibly the best part of the day!!

In the Parade

2010-08-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Last evening we had the rare chance of a lifetime; we joined the Neputa parade!! One of our friends invited us to join Neputa with her friend's group, so it was a friend of a friend of a friend kinda thing. We were super excited to join the event and it was a pretty neat experience!

To prepare for the parade we had to put on our yukatas, which are the lighter summer kimono. This was a little trying seeing how we rarely wear them, in fact this may be the second or third time we have worn them. Angie had bought one previously, but Travis had to borrow one from the friend we joined with.

We joined our friend at the start of the parade. Most of the people who join also wear the yukata or something similar in the Japanese style.

If you are reading our blog you just read the last blog about watching the parade with one of our English club members. Well, she was telling us she would also join the parade, but we were all upset because we wouldn't see each other. But as it turns out, with slim chances as there are close to fifty groups, we ended up in the same group with her!!! (The girl on the left is our English club student, the girl on the right was a great student of Travis' from last year.)

Just before the parade started it began to downpour! And because it was raining, they didn't put the ropes out to pull the float but just pushed it. This meant we didn't have anything to do but walk and yell the war chant "Ya Ya Do!", which was fun any way. At least for most of the parade it didn't rain, but they moved the parade along quickly because the rain destroys the hand painted floats.

What a great way to make the most of our 240th day until we return and a great experience for our last year in Japan!!!! Here is a video so you can see the parade from our point of view.

Final Neputa Festival!!

2010-08-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

We watched our final Hirosaki Neputa last night, and we did the full on celebration. You see, people around here don't mess around when it comes to Neputa. They mark their positions early in the morning to be assured to get the best position. So early, 6:30am, we went out to stake our claim. In the picture below you can see our little green tarp marking our position for tonights festival. Also in the picture you can see that others have come even earlier to make their claim, even with chairs. How and why nobody steals or rips up the tarps to put theirs down is a mystery.

So just to make sure nobody took our carefully selected parade position, we went out to anticipate the parade at 5pm, 2 hours before the parade starts. We brought our dinner, mini-chairs, free-read-books, and games to entertain us during our wait.

Here you can get a visualization of our delicious dinner consisting of ham and cheese sandwiches, yamabudo (mini-grapes), clementines, spare-rib pringles, and chocolates--Yum Yum!!

For most of the evening throughout the parade we were joined by one of our English club students and her friend. We enjoyed getting to spend extra time this summer with her as she is our only first year English club member. Although conversation is broken, she is quite a trooper in speaking English, even when she figured out last night that Angie (but not Travis) could speak Japanese! Our little green tarp served as a staging ground for her "boy watching" although we highly discouraged it and attempted to tell her that the heart is more important than the face!

So finally to the highly anticipated Neputa parade! It was a night to remember with 3 hours of fascinating lantern floats, drum beating, flute tooting, and mini-cymbal crashing. Each float has a different hand painted design and they compete for the most creative and well painted of the city. In this picture you can see the front of the float, depicting a warrior defeating his/her foes.

In this picture you can see the back of the float depicting a beautiful geisha that the warrior is fighting for.

Here is a video for you to enjoy the sights and sounds of this exuberant parade!!!

Summer Festival Approaches!!

2010-08-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

These days we are delighted by the sounds of summer. By the sounds of summer we mean flutes and drums just outside our window. Yes, we are lulled the evening long as our neighbors practice for the Neputa festival that just started yesterday. Also, if you listen close enough you can hear our other lullabiers: a massive amount of birds who have invaded the trees next to our apartment. As you listen to the video you may notice that there is a lot of static, but that is not static, that is the massive, invading, bird flock!! This continues from around 6pm all the night long, long, long until the weeee morning hours when they fly away for the daylight hours.

Stay tuned for our Neputa festival parade stake-out!!!

Randomness of Summer Vacation

2010-07-25T17:18:00.001-07:00

Just over a week ago we went to see the famous Tsugaru rice art that we've only seen pictures of before, and we must say it was just as cool as it seemed in the pictures! They plant the different colors of rice in different patterns every year to make different "pieces of art." This year the picture is of two famous samurai who fought one another. The samurai on the left lost, and was under control of the samurai on the right.

Then, on Saturday, we got to have a special treat in Aomori. Our friend signed up to join a "Special Starbucks Seminar" where we got to have a special taste testing party. They tought us how to make coffee using a coffee press, taught us about the different kinds of coffee drinks, and most importantly, let us try different drinks that we got to make on our own!! They had this special tasting party because FINALLY our state is going to get it's own Starbucks in a city that's about 40 minutes by train this fall!! Needless to say, we can't wait!

And, then on Sunday, we went to a special Korean event at the Zion church (it's ran by a missionary from California, and we sometimes attend the services there). Some Korean people came to do Christian outreach, and last night they brought the traditional wedding clothes for people to try on, cooked delcious (but VERY VERY spicy) Korean food, sang Korean/English/Japanese/Indonesian worship songs, did a skit, and gave a sermon. It was a good opportunity and really revived us spiritually, as we haven't been alongside people who are so on fire for God in such a long time!! It was super refreshing to see God's work through them!

The Taking Down of the Last Link Chain of the First Wall

2010-07-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

1 wall down . . .

. . . 2 more to go

We enjoyed many things during that first wall.. one of them being the Gijuku-lympics, the sports' festival at our school, that we had earlier this week

though we enjoyed watching the many sporting events (the picture above is a group of our girls' kickin' butt in volleyball, #1!!) and cheering on our students, we mostly enjoyed walking around and just chatting!!

Here's a collage of some of our students! We couldn't choose which ones to put on here, so here's a whole bunch for you to enjoy!

The Adventures Part 2

2010-07-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

Just in!!! The latest video from the Big Red and Silver Bullet series!!

100 Days In

2010-07-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

We have accomplished 100 days since the start of our third year in Japan. So we have 256 days to make the most of our time left here!! So on this monumental day we managed to create a fun-filled day of acivities.

Our day started as usual with an early morn run around the mostly vacant streets of Hirosaki. It is so beautiful to run down the middle of the streets with only the crows watching us.

Following our morning exercise, we got off right away to forage in the country side for a secret adventure which we will be unveiled in movie format once we are finished. So stay tuned for the premier. Here is a sneek-peek.

Since today was the 100th day in, Baskin Robbins decided to celebrate with us with the last day of "Challenge the Triple" which means you get 3 scoops for the price of 2. What a deal!!! So we have been "challenging" since the beginning of the sale for a total of around 10 times. The girls there practically know us by name, well at least they don't ask us if the bill will be together. Anyway we went for our last "challenge" of the year!

The day was filled with other various activities such as games, movie, bike riding, and other common funs. Overall, a good use of the 100th day in!

Gijukusai

2010-07-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

Last week we had our school festival on Friday and Saturday, which meant we had an extra day of work, but it wasn't so bad since we didn't have to teach on Saturday!!

It was full of festivities, including the usual- a class video contest, a class t-shirt contest, performances by the cheerleading team and brass band, a cross-dressing contest (in which we won't post any pictures to save our students from humiliation), a karaoke contest (which we got suckered into joining to sing "A Whole New World" and only slightly embarassed ourselves b/c the pitch was higher than what we had practiced prior to the contest), and of course all the shops for each class, selling different kinds of food, everything from "American dogs" (corn dogs), slushies, fried chicken, yakisoba (Japanese noodle), cotton candy, mini-pancakes, and our favorite, fried cheese!

A few things that stuck out to us at the festival were:

2 of our students surprised us with candied senbe with our names in Katakana!!

Also, in Japan, they often change the quote, "All for one and one for all" to "One for all and all for one." This has been featured on at least one class t-shirt every year we've been here. When you think about the difference in meaning between the 2 phrases, you will understand what Japanese culture is all about!! And for the 3rd year in a row, the Student Council staff shirts have had a nice English mistake on them. This is one of the most difficult things for Japanese people to get correct in English. If you look closely, you'll see that the shirt says, "The 63th Student Council Staff." Luckily, the next 7 years will be correct!!!

And, next week we look forward to the Gijuku-lympics, our annual Sports Festival at To o Gijuku!

English Camp 2010

2010-06-28T04:46:00.001-07:00

Well, we officially had our second and last English Club Camp, and we must say it was much better than last year's camp!! Although we enjoyed last year's camp, we were much more prepared and had a lot of fun games and good food planned this year. It was a lot of work, but it definitely paid off, and we were able to share with the students the importance of "Being True to Yourself" as it was our theme for the weekend, and of course, we talked about the ONE true path, Jesus. The students really seemed to understand the theme and even expressed how much they had learned and enjoyed discussing being true to themselves, during the weekend. We hope it has lasting effects and the students see that following Jesus will help them be true to themselves and bring them the most joy!

Of course, we have some pictures from the good-times (though this is only a limited amount, as there were many great moments and some hillarious videos, but there are too many to share!!)

Here, the students are working on the speech for the annual "To O Gijuku Speech Contest" that will take place on July 9th.

And, here, the students are attempting to play "Jenga" with the mini-cereal boxes that we brought for breakfast (from America of course!).

And.. how do we describe what is going on here... can you guess what it is?! That's right, a car with the seat-belt included even!!!! This was one of the many attempts at winning the group charades challenge. This team definitely won, with the aid of the seat-belt :)

And, lastly, we had to get in a shot of the whole group before leaving!!

The next day we luckily had Monday off from school for Foundation Day, since we were rather exhausted! But we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the students smiling and having fun over the weekend.. . and who knows.. . maybe if we have tons of extra food and prizes before we leave we just may have another English Camp!

She's a biggin'

2010-06-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

Although we have been overly busy with tests, English Camp planning, and Angie working on her grad school stuff; we have also had our days of excitement. So sorry for not keeping you up to date with our adventures that you have been so anxiously awaiting to hear, so here we go...

Where to start??? Let's go from the most recent:

On Sat. June 19 was the annual fireworks festival. It was as explosive as ever!! One of the best parts about living in rural Japan is that we get to see our students quite often. So at this event where most of the city turns out we meet a lot of students. Just by chance in the vast crowds we met some of our English club girls, which was of course a joy. Afterwards they were going to have a slumber study party, don't know how much studying they actually accomplished.

Of course we had our fill of karaoke in the last few weeks, 2 doses to be precise!

On June 11 we had the annual school hike around the mountain. Also a great time to chat with the students. Here is a picture of some of our favorite boys acting just like any other good high schooler would--goofy!

A couple weeks ago we went on a preliminary hike for the summer. We took to the lower hills to practice for the real mountains later in the summer that we will conquer. The hills that we climbed that day were just behind the school, but that doesn't mean they aren't wild! Signs told us along the path that "bears frequent these areas" and to be cautious, which we were as we ferociously jingled our "bear bells" to ward them off. And it looks like it was successful since we are actually typing this, and all we saw was a fresh, very fresh, bear track!!!!! AAHHHH!!!

In the first week of June we made the most of our five day weekend, for the sports competition, and went south to the bustling city of Morioka. Well, more bustling than Hirosaki that is to say. We rented bikes and saw the sights. Angie got to cruise the streets on the "Bat-mobile." Her bike was stylishly black with cool Batman stickers! What more could you ask for!! She flew through the streets as Travis could hardly keep up on his "regular" bike.

Morioka is famous for many things but one of the better known things is the 500 Buddha statues that were hand made like a long time ago, and line 3 of the walls top to bottom in an old temple. Each of the buddha statues has a different face or sitting posture and some are rather strange....can't see how this brings someone to enlightenment...

Overall, we really enjoyed Morioka and can't wait to go back and finish the exploration and get some more Starbucks (it's the closest town to Hirosaki with Starbucks, and it's 4 hours away)!!!!

Topping the Charts

2010-06-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

Today in school we had many students missing due to the big sports tournaments, which is quite normal of course. Along with those students the coaches also go of course, leaving their classes for the day. The students practice all year for this tournament so it is a big big day! With the coaches gone (quite a few actually) other teachers have to fill in the classes. At our school, and Japan in general most likely, there is nothing like a substitute teacher. The other full time teachers at the school must fill in for the absent teachers. This becomes a big hassle as teachers have to work out the schedule to fill in the classes. Today we learned that the absent teachers do not prepare anything for the "fill-in" teacher to do. They only monitor the students, lest they get out of control.

As Travis was walking by one class he noticed that the students were quite talkative, this is to say they were out of their seats, walking around, and talking to friends as opposed to sitting in their seats talking to their neighbor which is the common activity during class...yes, truth. Upon looking into the class Travis seemed to notice there was not a teacher. As one student casually walked out of the room to her locker Travis asked her, "What's going on [in the class]?" She replied, "Mr. Jin is absent from school today." "So...you have no teacher?" Travis asked quizzically. "No." She replied with a slight blush.

So, yes indeed, this class was left without even a teacher to observe the class. They were left to fend for themselves. Untaught, unbridled........while the teacher who is specifically hired only to fill-in classes is sitting right behind us at this moment?????????????

Japan- The Good and the Ugly

2010-05-30T04:29:00.000-07:00

Over the last week we have seen some of the great things of Japan as well as some of the not-so-great things of Japan. I suppose we should start with the bad and progress our way to the more positive things.

Probably the worst thing about Japan is the fact that they still love their cigarettes over here. This means when you go to a restaurant you want to die because the smoke is so thick, and it billows over the "wall" that they put up to separate the smokers and the non-smokers. For some reason, unbeknownst to us, these walls always only make it to about 2 feet below the ceiling and have a huge open door that allows all of the smoke to make its way out to the non-smoking customers. Anyway, this trend of smoking leads to some pretty ostentacious advertising that would NEVER be seen anywhere in America! It seems for the Japanese that smoking will cause you to form large muscles and look good in mini-tight-jean shorts (a.k.a. jorts)--soooo sexy, I better go buy me some Winstons!

Moving onto less uglier things, but almost just as frustrating as smoke.. .the elusive oven. Since our microwave/oven (though not really an oven) has slowly been diminishing in power, we decided to ask our school to buy us a new one, and they were kind eniough to give us the money to buy one. So, we went out and bought ourselves a "real" oven/microwave. Though outwardly it still looks like a microwave, it doesn't have the spinning circle thing that microwaves have, so it must be a real oven, right?! Well, we still can't decide if it's a microwave or an oven, but unfortunately we're going to have to go with the former over the latter, even though it is an upgrade from our last hunk-a-junk!

Finally, we have something in Japanese culture that is truely neat and has no ugliness about it- 1,000 cranes. These cranes took one of our students about 1 year to make, and she very kindly gave them to us as a gift because we were so mesmerized by the weight and uniqueness of this craft! Though the cranes are very tiny, when put together they're actually quite heavy. This picture just doesn't do justice for how neat it is! If only all things in Japan could make us as happy as these cranes and the student who gave them to us!

Birthday Blog

2010-05-23T17:08:00.000-07:00

Well, this last weekend was Trav's last birthday in J-pan, so we tried to go out in style..

This included a total 30 mile bike ride on the backroads of Japan to Kuroishi (a small town near Hirosaki) and the kokeshi (wooden doll) museum. We've been wanting to go to the kokeshi museum for a long time, so we figured a nice birthday-bike ride would be a good time to go. However, upon our arrival, we realized the 3 1/2 hour bike ride to get there wasn't worth the rather small museum of endless kokeshi dolls on display. Once you've seen one wooden doll, you've seen them all. There were some cute tiny ones and some unique ones, but still, we quickly realized the journey was much better than the goal itself.

Of course after 9 hours on a bike, we decided to stay home for the night and make pizza and simply relax for the next day.

On Trav's official birth-date (Sunday) we had a picnic in the park with some Settlers, went to an Azelia Festival in Owani (though unfortunately they weren't in full bloom yet, but there was enough for it to still be rather pretty), and finished the day with some delicious pasta at a small local Italian restaurant.

All in all it was a rather good last birthday in Japan!

Happy Quince de Mayo!?

2010-05-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read correctly, we had a Quince de Mayo party for our English club.. it was actually to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, but we were a little late and had it on the 15th of May! None of our students have ever tried Mexican food, so we thought it would be fun to open their eyes to the deliciousness of authentic Mexican food (and by authentic we mean bought in a Mexican supermarket in Marshalltown, Iowa).

This was a shorter party, but we enjoyed the wonderful food, which included tacos, taco dip, spanish rice, mexican rice, rice pudding (alot of rice!), spanish peanuts, empanadas, pistachio gelatin stuff, and of course, it wouldn't be a Mexican party without Jumex!

The party was complete with Mexican music from Guadalahara (spelling?), the oh-so-famous telenovellas (Spanish soap operas), in which our students had to "translate" what was going on into English and perform their version of it, and of course the beloved game, Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Here is the winning skit for the telenovella (the winners won ring-pops, which in turn dyed their mouths blue and dark red!)

We finished the party with tie-dying our English Club shirts, which we will later decorate with puff paint.

Family Vacation

2010-05-08T21:53:00.000-07:00

Well, for the last week and a half we have been sight-seeing the local area and Tokyo like new-born tourists to Japan because Angie's Mom and Aunt Marilee came to visit. We did all sorts of activities and ventured out to all the famous sight-seeing spots. Here are some of the high-lights, though these pictures don't even begin to describe all the fun, food, and aching feet and muscles that were experienced!!

Of course we had to go to school so our students could meet them!!

and we enjoyed the beautiful cherry blossoms in the morning, for o-hanami, and of course late at night!!

we spent a day in Aomori and went to the Jomon site, the giant Buddha, and the ASPM building

then in Tokyo we enjoyed the fish market, Tokyo Tower, Asakusa, shopping, many other things, and as you can see from the picture above, the Imperial Palace gardens

we even got to go to Yokohama and meet up with Saori where we rode the giant ferris wheel, went up the Landmark Tower, and had a delicious Japanese meal.. and tried "slurping" ramen.. needless to say a good time was had!

Misunderstandings

2010-04-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

There are just some things we'll never understand about Japan (things that probably shouldn't be understood)...

for instance, the "pimped" mini-van. though we wish this were a rare sighting, it is actually quite common here to see these sweet rides cruisin' the streets of Hirosaki. These are the Escalade of Japan.. since they don't have SUV's, these are the biggest vehicles they have!

Following the pimped out ride is the unusual playground equipment that we sometimes stumble upon. Of course they have the regular swingset and slide, but every park almost always has some unknown-never before seen- awkward structure to which to play on somehow (usually we don't quite understand what you are actually supposed to do on these structures, so we just make it up as we go!)

Here we are demonstrating how to play on these "alien ships" connected by a "dangerous walkway"

Easters

2010-04-20T02:57:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we had Easter...again! Hence "Easters."

(Can you find the egg in this picture!)

This time we had Easter with our English Club. We had a joyous time with all of the Easter paraphernalia. The rain held off just long enough for our Easter egg hunt. To receive the candy in the egg the students had to answer a command such as "Run around a tree," or "How old am I?" Yes, the question refers to the questioner which was us. Not only did we hide the eggs from the studnets but also from the roving hungry crows that managed to open and eat the candy in two of our eggs!!

Our Easter lunch consisted of a mixture of goodies: shepherd's pie, lil' smokies, rye bread, quiche, carrot cake, chocolate cake, chocolate peanut butter eggs, eclair cake. Thanks to all the good sales back in the States, we managed to get all the Easter goodies before we returned to Japan: Cadbury eggs, jelly beans, peeps, reese's pb eggs. We make fat little children out of our students, that's for sure. (Go America!)

Most importantly we talked about what the Easter holiday is truely for: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. We read the Easter story and the students had to put the story in order, which they did handily in all English!

We also decorated eggs and made cool little Cross crafts. We all had a blast, but the students definitely don't have the years of egg decorating mastery to which we have all attained and so they proceeded to get it everywhere: clothes, table, floor, socks.

Overall, we all enjoyed our first and only Easter party. We were glad to have the opportunity to share the significance of Jesus' life, death, and re-life to our students!

The Joys of Japan

2010-04-15T04:50:00.000-07:00

We (meaning Angie) have officially decided that Angie's music is far better than Travis' because all of her classic favs have made it all the way to Japan!! Of course, this means more dancing in the supermarket...

Expectant Year

2010-04-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well, we've made it back to Japan and are ready to start our 3rd and final year here! We are excited for all the opportunities God has prepared for us, and to insure that we don't waste a single day we figured it was crucial for us to "journal" our activities everyday.. but don't worry it won't be on here (that would be rather tedious and monotonous maybe, though we hope not!). We have decided to follow the advice of a good friend of ours back home, and we made a paper link chain to count down the days! But, it doesn't stop there.. we plan to write a few important things that happened each day on the back of the chains as we tear them down in expectation for the final day!

Only 355 days left.. not a minute to waste!

Leavin' Town

2010-03-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

So, as many of you who follow our blog probably know.. we will be coming home for a visit TOMORROW! Today we still had some last minute errands to run before the long flight home. Of course we had to walk because it snowed about 2-3 feet of snow yesterday (yes, 2-3 feet!), which meant we couldn't get the bikes out just yet!!! As we were walking down the street we noticed to conspicuous Japanese girls taking pictures of an ordinary taiyaki shop (this is a Japanese dessert), and they happened to cross the street and get right in front of us while we all had to wait for the light to change. One of the girls looked at us a little too happily, but we tried to ignore her as we do all of the stares we get from Japanese people from this area (yes, they have a tendency to look at us like we're zoo animals!) But then, to our relief, we realized she didn't think we were zoo animals! Instead she thought we were celebrities.. she asked us if she could take our picture.. ... on HER camera, not ours! Yes, she wanted a picture of the foreigners!! After we smiled for the camera, we asked where they were from and found out they were from Tokyo and are visiting the "photographer's" grandfather that lives in Hirosaki! And they were lucky enough to spot 2 of the very few foreigners in town!

Anyway, onto more important things.. as we said, we'll be coming home for about a month, from March 13-April 8, so if anyone wants to get ahold of us, you can post on here, send us an email, or post on Angie's facebook wall! We hope we get to see many of you (all would be even better, but we know that's not possible with so much stuff to do!) when we're at home!!

Graduation Conundrum

2010-03-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

Today was graduation day. For many of the students this is a day full of emotion both tears and laughter. It was the last time to be at school with all their classmates around them after their three years of toil through high school. For us it was a day of sadness and joy to see some of our closest students graduate. We will miss many of them and their jokes in class that lighten up our days.

It also was a day of frustration to us and a few others as we were reminded that some students didn't have to work so hard for their graduation. At our high school, as well as others in Japan, as we have heard from different sources, education comes second to following miniscule rules such as hair color (the students must not dye their hair), skirt length (even though it is rarely enforced these days), hair length for boys (not past your ears), and permed hair for girls. Though we agree with some of these rules such as skirt length, we disagree with the drastic enforcement of these rules over educating the students. We have come to realize that many of the students graduate without completing the necessary courses. Yes, in otherwords they fail their classes but are still allowed to graduate. The question becomes, is this really school? What are these students learning? Well, they don't have to work or study to earn their diploma, but they had better keep up the expected appearance.

As you can slightly see here, this teacher is "spray painting" the rebellious student's dark brown hair to its natural black color. We hope this student passed all his classes...well...at least we know he looks appropriate!

Olympic Disgrace!

2010-02-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

Olympic season has begun, which means we are tentatively following the events. The other day women's curling had captured our attention, as it was US vs. Japan, our 2 "home" countries. It turned out that Japan defeated the US in a very close match, that ended with a measuring tape. Throughout the event, American TV was calling the Japanese team, Team "Amora." Which we thought sounded similar to "Aomori," where we live. But, we figured it must be somewhere else because of the different name, and we had never heard of Aomori being famous for curling. Furthermore, the members of the Japanese curling team were speaking English to each other, which is a rarity in the Aomori area.

However, the next day, while passing by the newspaper at work, we noticed a picture of the Japanese curling team we had watched the day before. A closer look revealed this was truely Team Aomori (pronounced A-o-more-y) which the American broadcastors had been mispronunciating! What a disgrace!

Valentines Party

2010-02-13T03:52:00.001-08:00

Today we celebrated Valentine's Day with English Club. Our English Club has unfortunately dwindled in numbers, but the students we have are dedicated, ambitious, and fun which makes for exciting parties full of colorful surprises!

Of course we had plenty of food for all the hungry mouths to eat and hands to take home: rice crispies, jell-o, cupcakes, cherry pie, ice cream cake, as well as others.

The most colorful surprise of the day was some poetry we wrote. Since V-day is all about love we wrote the classic poem, "Roses are red, Violets are blue..." Our favortie is the purple one at the top center about the hamburger.

We also wrote a couple of love stories together. One involved a girl falling out of a window twice into the arms of her lover who was too poor to marry such a rich girl so they had to run away together. We really don't know why she had to fall out of a window but it made for an interesting story. The other story was a Twilight off shoot. This story had Jacob leaving his ex-girlfriend, Cassy, and escaping with Bella from the rage of Edward. Not exactly how it goes but one of our students thinks Jacob is much more attractive than Edward so....

It was a short party but quite fulfilling. It ended up going longer because we were having so much fun!

Rockin' Robin

2010-02-06T18:41:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday we rocked out to some karaoke with our friends, and as always, we were amazed and perplexed by the music videos they choose for foreign songs. Usually the music videos to foreign songs do not relate at all to the song itself which can be pretty distracting as you are trying to give it your all to one of your favorite songs.. such as this video, that we were lucky enough to witness TWICE on Saturday night to two different songs.

On Sunday night we got to go see one of our English Club students sing, but not karaoke! He's in a band called "Jash heart" and they performed at a local venue in Hirosaki. As you can guess, our student, Haruki, is the guitarist, and he definitely rocked it!!

There were a total of 5 bands that performed, but we only stayed for the first 3. This band, which performed after "Jash Heart" was quite interesting, quite out of the Japanese persona, which we can't decide if we appreciate the self-expression of the band (which is basically against the law here!) or too creeped out by them! You can decide for yourselves!

2010-01-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

Well, we haven't blogged in quite sometime, so we scrounged around and came up with some random interesting tid-bits...

Here is a picture of quality cultural immersion. People are a little leery about buying English Muffins. They are a not so common food here so at times one may see advertising to encourage people to buy these delicious breakfast treats.

Directions:

1) Cut the muffin into two pieces.

2) Toast the muffin.

3) Butter and eat.

4) Yum! (our addition)

Since the supermarkets depend on the buyer's demand we are constant buyers of these yummies. We wouldn't want these delicious breakfast items to disappear from the store shelves. This being said, when selecting a package we often exlcaim rather loudly, "Delicious," and various other words to let other shoppers know the truth of these great English Muffins.

Here we have a picture of a picture of us!! Surprisingly, we discovered that we were in the newpaper over a year ago (yes, it seems that bulletin boards are not often updated as in other places we know...). In this picture we are playing a traditional Japanese drum at an event we went to with a couple of our students. Being the only obvious foreigners there...........

This weekend we ventured out to watch the school cheerleaders, many of which also participate in English Club, at the Cultural Center.

Goooo TooooGijuku!!!!

Spare Time?

2010-01-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

Due to our cabin fever we had ample time to entertain ourselves by making a music video. Of course, we couldn't make a music video to just any old song- we had to go with a classic. So, we hope you all enjoy it, because we definitely enjoyed making it (maybe a little too much!)

Scouting Tokyo

2010-01-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

We decided to take a mini trip to tropical Tokyo, well at least much warmer than the distant lands of Hirosaki. We welcomed in the New Year in Hirosaki with 3 feet of snow--smothering cars but definitely not stalling traffic...

We learned a new trick from the locals to shovel snow...use your car to push the snow, or ram it so you can park your car, after which you repeatedly back-up your car to pack the snow down--efficient? Well, it doesn't help us since we are on foot, although Travis has nicknamed himself Billy the Dozer as he pushes the snow around with his not-quite-so-nice black boots since nobody seems to want to shovel the large quantities of snow.

Anyway, Tokyo was quite delightful besides the fact that we were running around the city trying to take all the sights in. Our mission was to scout out Tokyo for the coming of Angie's mom and aunt this spring. We came up with some nice ideas.

Tokyo has a huge fish market that boasts masses of tuna and other strange edible...things.

We also got to spend a stupendous day with a friend of ours in Yokohama!! The second of the three days we were in Tokyo we spent in Yokohama just hanging out and having fun. We visited Saori's home and she took us on a tour of her school, which is located on the top of a mountain. Yes, literally the top of a very steep mountain which she must walk up every day to get to school. Although it is a difficult trek, the view is quite incredible.

Of course all outings together call for some "purikura" which is the oh so famous photo booths. As you can see we threw off all our worries and enjoyed looking ridiculous!!

We continued our joyous activities at a karaoke box singing our hearts out for 4 hours. We were quite amazed with Saori's Michael Jackson impersonation of which she sang, nearly all memorized. All the favorites were had: Chicago, Billy Joel, The Bangles, Cyndi Lauper, Coldplay, and even some Lady Gaga and Madonna.

After filling ourselves with the 4 hours of karaoke, we ventured off to fill ourselves with some amazing food. Although not tempting in America, TGI Friday's is unbearably tempting in Japan where food like this is quite scarce. We had all the fixin's: quesadilla's, mac-n-cheese bites, buffalo wings, BBQ-ed pork ribs, a HUGE sandwich, and even some dessert.

Since it was Saori's birthday, well actually it's in about 3 weeks but hey this is the only time we got to see her, she got a free banana split and they even sang to her!- which is quite unheard of here.

We followed dinner with a stroll around the habor area taking pictures and just chatting. We decided that Yokohama is much better than Tokyo, but that might be because Saori is a really cool friend. We really enjoyed our trip to Yokohama and hanging out with Saori. We are definitely looking forward to our next trip to Yokohama to finish seeing everything we missed, but more so to spend more time with Saori. So Yokohama is definitely a must see for Angie's mom and aunt.

Our last day in Tokyo we spent shopping and visiting some popular temples. At this time of year the temples are overflowing with people coming to pay their New Year's respects so it turned out to be an interesting event to watch. The rest of the time we spent wandering the streets of Ueno taking in some interesting sights.

Happy NEW Year

2009-12-31T18:47:00.000-08:00

Well, for all you in the past, 2010 is looking to be a pretty good year so far. At least on this side of the world. Last night we had a small but enjoyable New Year's party with some friends of ours.

After stuffing ourselves full of food and candies, we ventured out to observe the Japanese custom of the New Year which invovles paying the first dues to the temple. As people lined up for the tradition (which of course we did not) there were shouts of "Happy New Year" and "Akeme" which is the coloquial Japanese phrase meaning "congratulations on the opening of the year." Strangly enough, all these shouts were directed toward the only foreigners in the area--us, so it is rather difficult to tell if these were genuine congradulations.

Here is an example of a festive New Year's bush, but not quite as festive as a Christmas Tree we would like to point out. If you look closely you will observe a cabbage in the middle of the bush.

Well, a Happy New Year to all friends and family wherever you may be!

The Real Christmas

2009-12-26T19:59:00.000-08:00

Well, our first Christmas alone has come and passed. We even got to be with both of our families for a bit via skype! Even though we were far away from "real" Christmas, we had a successful Christmas day with decorations, presents around the tree...

a hearty, although unusual, Christmas lunch...

and even some Christmas turkey!!

Yes, we went bowling on Christmas day! And we were surprised to see the multitude of Toogijuku students at the bowling alley to spend the Christmas Day. Later on we even got to have a "double date" with two of our students for dinner. While we were enjoying our Christmas Dinner at a nice Italian chain restaurant, two of our students came to sit at the table next to us. The waiter was about to sit us together at the same table, due to our friendly chatter, but we all delightfully declined knowing that the conversation would shortly dissolve. So we enjoyed our Christmas dinners separately.

And thanks to all of you who help bring Christmas a little closer with your Christmas cards!!!! We really appreciated it!

Overall a quiet but wonderful Christmas celebration. Sounds better than the snow and rain we have heard so much about in Iowa!!

O' (poor) Christmas Tree

2009-12-26T02:34:00.000-08:00

While Japan (Tsugaru area) is not as festive for Christmas as back home, there is still a fair share of decorations around town to enjoy. Here are some for your viewing pleasure.

Here we have a fine fiber optics specimen of the white genre. Very expressive, the "White Christmas" feeling of this time of year. This one was found in a high-end shopping mall of which name nobody really knows how to pronounce. For now we will call the shopping mall Renais (looks French but with English pronounciation).

Here we have the only real Christmas tree for sale that could be found in our city of 180,000 people (complete with hearts...). If one was feeling quite vigorous about Christmas, that one would only have to pay $315 to purchase this adorable tree. That one was not us, nor anyone else in our city of 180,000 people.

Next we have an excellent example of a Japanese styled lighted Christmas Tree. If you look very closely you will notice a garish little sign that is hung on the top of the tree. This sign reads "Merry Christmas." While quite festive in nature, it is quite a travisty to the ideal form of the Christmas tree. Unfortunately this is the signature decoration of all Japanese styled trees.

Our final example of the Japanese Christmas tree is the all to common "Hodge-podge" form. As you can see the example given below, onlookers cannot help but shudder at the disaster strewn upon the unsuspecting tree. (We actually watched the deplorable decorating of this paticular tree as the employee literally chucked, yes--threw with a strong force, the lights onto the tree.) A slight sympathy is given to these unknowing citizens who only recently began celebrating this wonderful holiday. Many stores have Christmas trees, small of course but still the Christmas season is felt. But all too often these little Christmas trees' branches are not fully opened to present room in which to decorate the already sparce tree; therefore, the tree usually resembles a "just-taken-out-of-the-box" feel. At least they're Christmas trees. Next year they may anticipate some help from concerned foreign citizens...

Happy Christmas Eve!

2009-12-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

A mind-boggling cultural tradition in this country, so distant from the genuine Christmas celebrations, is Christmas Eve. You see, Christmas Eve here is celebrated more than Christmas day. We know it's tough to imagine, but it's true. And, here's just some of our evidence...

The first anomally we have is the "turkey" dinner. Christmas is a holiday for romance in this country. On Christmas Eve, couples commence a gathering at various restaurants (most commonly KFC, which sounds good to you, but American and Japanese KFC are not the same- trust us! and we're being serious, really, KFC, they go to KFC) across town and enjoy a nice Christmas Eve dinner of what they claim to be turkey. After walking around town to decide where we would eat tomorrow- the real Christmas- we noticed all of the advertisements for Christmas dinner ended on December 24th- Christmas Eve! What about Christmas day? What happened? We even asked one nice-looking restaurant hoping their special would continue to the following day, but no, the special ended today, Christmas Eve. Needless to say, we walked away quite downcast. So, we headed to the store and bought some of this so-called turkey (as we didn't want to botch Christmas by celebrating on Christmas Eve), which we true turkey-eaters all know to be chicken. Yes, chicken. But they are adament it's turkey, but no, it's really actually chicken. Sorry!

The second anomally is the tradition of Christmas-Cake eating. When this tradition started is still a mystery to us, but it is still going strong today, as you can see from the above picture. We thought a nice cup of Baskin Robbins ice cream would be nice on Christmas Eve. Well, we were in for quite a surprise, walking into the store, and seeing boxes upon boxes of ice cream Christmas-Cake sealed in dry ice! Yes, all these boxes are Christmas Cakes!!! How unusually splendid! This is definitely one tradition we could get used to- you know how we like our sweets! But, still we are flabbergasted by the massive quantities of Christmas Cake during this season! No, we did not walk away with a cake, seeing how they are about $40 a piece, but we did get some delicious cups of Cranberry & Chocolate Ice Cream!

Yes, this all occurred on Christmas Eve- the peak of Christmas in this country. If you don't believe us, we don't blame you. We had to ask several of our classes before we succumbed to the reality of this truth. Of course, our Christmas will be on the real day, tomorrow. This could be a bonus for us, as the restaurants raise their prices on Christmas Eve and are packed to the brim- ha!

Well, we hope you have a happily, happy, Christmas Eve!

Christmas Here in J-Pan

2009-12-19T04:40:00.000-08:00

Today, we had our long-awaited Christmas party! After much cooking and game preparation, the party came and went- in a flash! But, we are quite happy with the results. The students had fun, and we got to share the Christmas story with them. This year we had them write skits and perform the Christmas story from the Bible, so they really understood what the real meaning of Christmas is! And, of course, they had some fun doing it...

This one especially made us all chuckle heartily :D watch carefully as Mary gives birth to baby Jesus!!

Of course we had all the Christmas goodies: oreo balls, chocolate covered pretzels, jell-o jigglers, sugar cookies, brownies, 2 patisserie cakes, a jell-o cake, walnut brownies, oh yeah, and we also had some other food for supper (but of course, we all know Christmas is about the sweets!!)

Now, we are quite tired, and are just waiting for the real Christmas to come! We are sad to not be with family this year, but we know that God is with us wherever we are, and He has greatly blessed us this year through friends and family at home and here! Please continue to pray for our students and that the time the students spent at the party and reading the Christmas story real sank in, and they see that Jesus came to this earth for them. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers of us when we are so far away.

Another Marathon..

2009-12-14T23:15:00.000-08:00

Well, last weekend we had another marathon, but this time we watched the Twilight movies! Seeing how there are only 2, this marathon was much shorter than last weekend's, but just as fun!

We started off by watching the first movie- Tiwlight- at our apartment and then headed to Aomori to watch New Moon. New Moon only came to 2 theatres in our entire state, and one of those was in the city near us.

On the way there, despite the cold, we saw some Cherry Blossom trees blossoming! We think the weather psyched them into thinking it was spring, because on Saturday it was quite warm.

Most of us agreed that the 2nd movie was better than the first, but it was about half and half as to who's cuter- Jacob or Edward (just so you know Travis thinks Jacob is cuter, or in his words "he would rather be like Jacob!)

HP Marathon

2009-12-06T04:06:00.000-08:00

This weekend we endeavored to have a Harry Potter Marathon!! That's right a whole 16 hours of Harry Potter. One of our students had specially ordered the newest movie--The Half-Blood Prince. She was really excited to watch and asked us if we would be interested in a marathon of all the older movies to which we replied, "Of course!!" Since Angie really loves the movie and the books, she just couldn't resist. So in two consecutive days, 16 hours, one pan of brownies, one cake, taco dip, 2 dozen cookies, and various other junk food later; we achieved the dream.

Stay tuned to next weeks Twilight Marathon.....(unfortunately there are only 2 of those!)

What Christmas Means to Me...

2009-12-01T23:56:00.000-08:00

Guess what we heard tonight in the grocery store...

that's right- Hanson Christmas!!!

Of course, Angie used this moment to point out to Travis that Hanson really is quite popular as she continued singing and dancing down the aisles once taping was over :)

sorry that it's sideways (that was Travis' doing- probably trying to sabotage the moment!)

Fun-Fact-Friday

2009-11-27T01:26:00.000-08:00

This has been quite an interesting and somewhat trying week, but we came out on top.. and we'll share some of the better moments with you!

As you may know the dollar weakened to a 14-year low against the yen, which earned us an extra $400 in our monthly transfer today.. talk about a deal, making an extra $400 for NO work! Sorry, everyone, we know the economy is bad back in the states, but we are reaping the benefits over here :)

We also found out today that many of the teachers find it difficult to understand Angie, due to her thick southern Iowa accent. Ya'know, it's so close to the Missouri border, and ya'know how them Missourians are :) Unfortunately, we came to this conclusion when no teacher showed up to teach one of our classes. Angie had confirmed that another teacher would take over the class, but that did not happen, due to her uninterpretable accent!

On a final note, we did have a delicious-home-style dinner with a "Walking Taco" (or for those of you from way down south in Burlington, Taco-in-a-Bag)

Thanksgiving!!

2009-11-22T16:19:00.000-08:00

On Sunday English club celebrated, with tons of food and dessert, Thanksgiving!!!

The food included mashed potatos, stuffing, green bean casserole, and even a real turkey!!

The dessert included pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, puppy chow, and apple crisp!!

A special thanks to all those who provided the "fixin's" for our splendid meal!

After the meal we explained the story of Thanksgiving and that Thanksgiving is a time to thank God for all the good things we have. To explain the story the students conducted a short skit in which they were given a short part of the story and had to write a script in pairs. We ended up with some pretty wonderfully creative parts to the play.

Overall the party was a success! We all had a great time and stuffed ourselves full of food, and yet there are still leftovers!!

We Didn't Start the FIRE!

2009-11-09T02:35:00.000-08:00

Last night at 1:30am we awoke to yelling, sirens, and the smell of smoke! Drowsily we pulled ourselves out of bed to assess the situation. In a matter of seconds that drowsiness disappeared to be replaced by surprise and confusion. Upon opening the window we were astonished to see that our neighboring apartment building was on FIRE! Firemen were rushing frantically and smoke billowed out of the windows (it was more like flowing but at the time it was much different!). A big fire truck was filling the entire parking lot with its presence and many of our neighbors and bystanders were gazing in awe of the catastrophe. Fortunately, as far as we could tell (as it is rather difficult for us to understand frantic Japanese yelling), noone was hurt and only one apartment was damaged to what appeared to be beyond repair.

Here is our witness from the precipice of our living room window.

The First of the Lasts

2009-11-08T03:23:00.001-08:00

Yes, the time has come. It all starts here, simply a bag of salt. Who would think that such a turn of the tides would start with such a mundane object as this. Sadness breaks upon our hearts. Confusion stirs our senses- happiness or sadness, which should we feel?!

(just so you know, we have used only 1 bag of salt in a year and a half's time here, so we know this one last bag of salt will last us our last year and a half here)

Happy Halloween!

2009-11-01T20:45:00.001-08:00

Well, on Saturday we had our Halloween party for English club, and overall we think it was a hit! We had all of the old-school favorites: carmel apples, popcorn balls, & pumpkin bars.. yummy!

The entertainment included guessing body parts in bags (it was really food of course), the classic cake walk, a scarecrow buliding relay, and last but not least, pumpkin (Japanese squash) carving!!

Now, it's time to start preparin' for Thanksgivin'!!!

This Just In.....

2009-10-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

The H1N1 Flu, otherwise known as the swine flu, has nailed Toogijuku straight in the face. After two weeks of light artillery with only a few casualities "single classroom cancelations" this week has faced the full head-on blow. Due to the influx of known cases, ALL classes have been cancel for the whole week. But of course, teachers must brave the battlefield until 2pm everyday (for apparently no apparent reason (teachers have already been seen asleep at their desks, playing internet games, and...leaving early)). The hope is to stab off any further cases of the mighty enemy influenza. This may faulter seeing how the flu will continue to travel about the land looking for any innocent creature to feed upon. So the odds are that: 1-classes will be cancelled for months to come, 2-We will learn to brave the infectious disease and things will continue as usual.

This is a breaking news update, please stay tuned for further announcements!!!!

Basket of Harvest Joy

2009-10-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

Today was a good day...

we have a Pumpkin patch, yeah, see that big one in the back- 3 dollas!!

Random Acts

2009-10-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

Due to the coming typhoon, which is the biggest in recent years, our school cancelled classes early! We came to school today just to find out that classes would let out after 1st period. Well, we don't have 1st period so we had no classes today!! Yippy! Unfortunately, if the typhoon is bad enough it will knock all the apples off the trees and the farmers will lose a lot of money!

Also, one of our favorite shopping centers will be closing this weekend! The department store is called Joppal and is the popular hang out for high school students. It has a lot of cheaper fashion shops and a really nice dollar store. We are frequenters to this department store and will be quite sad to it see it go. Many a good memory has been had within the walls of Joppal. What will Hirosaki be without trusty Joppal. Some may say a safer city, but NO! Where will the kids hang out? They will just turn to the streets. For us, it means long, long, long treks through the winter waist deep snow for our supplies. Or we'll just broke spending our money at more expensive (and reliable) stores.

Here is a picture of our stomping grounds: Joppal. Oh! You shall be missed.

All is well though, we are thankful to have learned to cook well enough to make pulled pork!! Yes, thanks to our slow cooker we had a delightful meal! There is a lot to be thankful for!

Hi Ho Silver!

2009-09-23T02:25:00.001-07:00

Well, this last weekend and 3 days we've had Silver Week here in Japan, a string of 3 holidays in a row so we can enjoy the beatiful changing of seasons!

We did a nice array of things..

went to a display of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements)

played badminton and made pizza with some of our boys from English club! (the competition was pretty intense though, so no pictures were taken :D)

conquered Mount Iwaki for the second time :) and we must say it's much prettier in the Fall with the changing leaves and rice patties! Thankfully this time it was clear so we had a pretty amazing view from the top!

went to karaoke and had dinner-and-a movie with some other students..

and if you're wondering who's the only other foreigner in the picture besides us, that's our new foreign exchange student, all the way from Salem, Massachusetts!

went exploring and stumbled upon a KKK building... wonder what this stands for?!

but the highlight of the whole weekend was getting to feel a little bit closer to home..

Thanks to you, Pella windows :) even famous in good ol' Hirosaki, Japan!!

Onto the Big Leagues!

2009-09-09T03:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry we haven't blogged lately; we've been quite busy with the state speech contest here!

After 2 weeks of hard work, the day finally came...

Though all of our students did absolutely wonderful, only 1 of our students got 3rd place!! Still rather exciting! And, of course we had fun along the way :)

We're back...

2009-08-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

and our plants are dead :(

but, we have lots of food!!

Home Sweet Home

2009-07-14T02:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we are leaving Hirosaki tonight on the night bus to catch our flight to Hawaii where we'll be for the following 4 days! Then, off to Iowa for a little over 4 weeks! If you want to see us send us a message on facebook, or send us an email- we'll have access to the internet so we'll be checking it!

Needless to say, we are excited to come home!! Yet we will miss our students!
(I'm attempting to make a sad face here, but it doesn't quite work!)

4th of July

2009-07-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

After days of preparing food and games the day has come and passed--successfully. This was English Club's first party of the year and it turned out quite well, we are happy to say. Unfortunately, there was no fireworks or barbeque due to the fact that the city does not allow fire in any parks near our house. So instead we had ourselves a picnic.

To begin the students had a "camera scavenger hunt" around the main street of our city. The students had to take pictures of random objects that ranged from easy--a bicycle, to difficult--a picture with a police officer (which to our surprise, a few of the groups managed to do!).

Our next event, and probably the most sought and important of the evening, was dinner which included potato salad, Zesty Italian pasta salad, pigs-in-a-blanket, fruit pizza, Jell-O, and many other "american" summer foods. Needless to say, the students did enjoy all the many different kinds of food. Well, all except the lemon merengue pie, which they decided tasted like the smell of bathroom perfume!

The rest of the night was given over to playing various games which were rather out going games based on the Japanese mentality but nevertheless, the students stood strong to the challange. The most resoundingly favored of games played was Red Rover. (although there was one "clothes-line" there were no injures!) Red Rover proves to be a game well met by all peoples of the world!

With all the work and play, we proceed to fall asleep promptly at 9pm.

Who's Ready to go Home?

2009-06-20T17:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was one of those days that you just want to be at home for no reason but the comforts of being home. So we had ourselves a barbeque! A juicy steak seasoned with Lawry's Seasoning Salt, cheesey Johnsonville brats, lettuce from the (windowseal) garden, and Cystal Light raspberry tea--just like home!

Of course a BBQ wouldn't be a BBQ without some s'mores. We have yet to perfect the method of making these delicacies due to the fact that you can't find (cheap) graham crackers here, but we made due with biscuit crackers for now--delicious!

And what else follows the BBQ but a nice night of fireworks! Last night was the Hirosaki fireworks festival and there was definitely not a few people there for the festivities. We had quite a few chats with students we saw. This show definitely one ups the regular 4th fireworks shows back home though as it was almost 2 hours long.

So with only 3 1/2 weeks to go before we head home, we have already started the celebration! Can't wait to see everyone back home!

Seeking Advise

2009-06-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

How do you change what seems unchangable?

Recently we were reminded of the Simon & Garfunkel song I Am a Rock. It has been a frustrating experience attempting to teach English to Japanese high school students. There are few successes. We have come to believe that one of the more threatening reasons the Japanese don't learn English is because they are not only learning a language but a behavior. Learning English isn't just a language, it's a behavior. And it is this behavior that the students do not wish to learn; it is too far from their comfort zones. They have to learn to be free thinkers and not just regurgitate information.

So we are calling out to all those that read, what can be done to change these reluctant students. Any advise would be welcomed, from Japan or America or whatever country you happen to live in.

Monkey Bread

2009-06-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

'nough said

Life in Japan

2009-06-01T05:15:00.000-07:00

Be careful of the Swine Flu, oh sorry, I mean the H1N1 virus (We don't want any Egypt repeats). Well, if you aren't currently wearing your masks or if you are and want more protection. According to this sign, placed in various areas through the city, please wipe off with alcohol just in case you are perhaps contaminanted and will come into contact with other people or their food. We don't want any chances of the flu. And even though we have no confirmed cases of the flu, you just never know!

Marathon

2009-05-22T02:57:00.000-07:00

Today at school instead of classes we had a school-wide marathon. The girls ran a 5k, and the boys ran a 10k. All students in the school partake in the festivities, which means about 900 students running around the school and local roads. The locals came out to cheer them on as they ran/walked by (yes, many students chose to walk the WHOLE thing!) On the other hand Travis decided to run the whole thing- after months of training (well, only 1 month and random days)!

Of course the day began with some old-fashioned calistetics. And, yes, the whole school joined in on these together! I guess it's an old tradition, and the calistetics they do are unique to Toogijuku.

Then, the boys were off, followed by the girls about 15 minutes later.

And Angie went to her assigned spot to cheer on the students and make sure no one passed out or got hurt!

It was painful, but it was enjoyed by all!!

English Camp

2009-05-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

After a rather busy and frustrating week, we manage to hold our first English Club Camp. The camp was held at school (the school has a dormitory area that is pretty cool) for one day. We didn't have time to take many pictures because we ran the show and were pretty tied up running around and entertaining the students. A total of 17 students came (and went when they had other club activities). We played many games and had some lesson time. We had a lot of fun with the students and hope this camp has helped them with English and with God! Even though the students had no Japanese for the entire day we think they enjoyed the time and realized they can speak English.

Prayers please

2009-05-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Angie will give a sermon at chapel. She will be talking about Heaven and Hell and how Jesus is the only truth, and faith through Jesus is eternal life. Without faith in Jesus, you do not have eternal life. Like, in most places, this is a taboo topic. Even more so in Japan because 99% of the population is not Christian. Plus, in Japan people do not like to disturb one another, and stirring the pot is definitely not looked upon favorably. In fact, we just had a talk with one of our co-workers about her sermon and how this topic should be avoided because we don't want to give Japanese people the impression that they will not go to Heaven.

Though her sermon will be a difficult one, she will follow through with it. Please pray that her message will be received well.

75.75 miles

2009-05-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we challanged ourselves with a long distance bike trip to a lake about 50km north of Hirosaki. This challange would be twice the distance we have gone before and would take roughly 4 hours there and 4 hours back. Well, this was our plan...

Thanks to our great friends here we exchanged our 3 speeders for mountain bikes. Sorry Big Red and Silver Bullet, you had to sit this one out.

After a few bike adjustments we set out at 8:30, an hour and a half after our original plan. But the day was clear and cool. The Tsugaru Fuji was as beautiful as ever.

Although we planned well with printed maps from Google and a road map, the roads of Tsugaru still thwarted our efforts to make an easy ride. But even in our mistakes we could still see the Almighty in the beauty of thousands of blossoming apple trees.

Our trip was filled with adventure.

We visited a national park with a beautiful lake and interesting playground equipment

As the trip grew longer and hunger over came us, we stopped at a bakery for fuel.

At 12:30 with 25 more kilometers to Sanjuko we made our turn around at Dekishima beach. This beach had the potential to be a very beautiful beach but as you can see it was much less than that with litter strewn all around.

Although we didn't make our destination, we know it was only time that stop us short. Our trip was filled with adventure which was the original idea of the trip. We saw Japan and found some neat places.

Mountain Vegetables

2009-05-03T16:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went out with some old friends and some new friends to the nearby mountains to look for some mountain vegetables. This is a past time for many Japanese and quite similar to mushroom hunting. But this time we were looking for tree buds, or something like that.

If you look closely you can see the little bud at the top of the branch Travis is pulling down. We guess they are good when deep fried, but we'll have to try it out.

Next we had lunch near Lake Towada, a crater lake in the mountains. The place, being a tourist trap, was jam packed with people on vacation. This weekend is the big travel weekend in Japan.

Sorry, we didn't take a ride in the Swan paddle boats, much to our dismay!!

After our delicious lunch we ventured out on a river walk through a scenic gorge. There were some nice "scenic rocks" on the way including this "elephant rock."

Obviously, since it is at the top of a mountian, there was quite a lot of snow--quite a lot!

Finally, we finished off the night with a climatic ending of eating whale sushi! We know you will all hate us for it, but we promise it was for scientific purposes--promise!

Oh yes, we did have a visit to an Onsen but didn't happen to take any pictures of that!

All in all, a pretty adventurous day.

Sakura Matsuri

2009-04-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

This year's festival was quite splendid indeed. We enjoyed the festival atmosphere upon several occasions:

A very nice man offered to take our picture in front of this beautiful cherry tree, which is quite atonishing since most Japanese run from the nearest foreigner (unless they are junior highschoolers wanting to say hello, since all foreigners speak english!). Perhaps he was Chinese.

Instead of heaving through the vast crowds at Hirosaki Park, famous the country over for its cherry blossoms, we ventured to a smaller less crowded park to enjoy our second ohanami party.

And of course the bees were busy.

And here is a random picture of a flock of night herons making a pit stop during migration at a nearby temple ground. A simply amazing sight of God.

Sakura II

2009-04-25T03:59:00.000-07:00

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom and the park is full once again. Although this season is rather chilly and damp the blossoms are as pretty as ever and the chocolate bananas are just as tasty.

We took some time out to enjoy an ohanami party with our dear friends. Previous to this we made a fresh start to the park at 6am to beat the crowds, but unfortunately this is not early enough. We did get in to see the castle grounds for free!!

Tomorrow adds to the excitement with a second ohanami party and BBQ.

Oh...Hirosaki...

The Elusive Kingdom

2009-04-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

Instead of having an Easter party with English club like we wanted, we began "The Adventures of Big Red and Silver Bullet!"

Barbed Wired Temple?

2009-04-10T02:35:00.000-07:00

In Him and through faith in Him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.
Ephesians 3:12

Tokyo & Kyoto

2009-04-04T04:36:00.000-07:00

Last week we took an adventure down to Tokyo and Kyoto. We had a three day conference with other missionaries in Japan. A great time was had by all at the conference. Testimonies and stories were told and encouragement poured out in the bucket loads.

While in Tokyo we spent time with several friends traveling about the enormous city. It was a sight to see all the many peoples gathered there.

We also made a trip to Kyoto where upon we forced three days of sightseeing into one. It was quite the excursion and most of the major sights were seen. But all in all this was the only temple worthwhile to us to see--Kinkakuji--The Golden Temple.

Thus concludes our first year in Japan.

News

2009-03-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

Never thought this would happen...

Our third year student, Saori, that just graduated, passed the pre-first level of the Eiken test, which is an English proefficiency test. This level is very difficult to get, especially at the high school level, but her English is rather impressive, especially for never studying abroad or going to an Eikaiwa (which is extra-English school that many students go to). For some reason they wanted us to be in the picture with her, which we don't mind, b/c we are super proud of her and are happy to show it!!! As you can see in the photographs we did a more formal pose and as Saori called it, the "American pose" which we quickly told her to change to the "strange pose!" We don't want everyone thinking us Americans are weird or somethin' :)

The End of an Era

2009-03-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Today, while making our weekly visit to the favorable Mr. Donut on the main drag, we found that this favorite of stores will be closing--tomorrow! What a horrible day! Yes, there is another Mr. Donut at the train station, and yes they are relocating but both of which are a lengthy distance. Thus, Mr. Donut will cease to be our refuge of donut paradise and home of long hours of studying. And so we said farewell to our dear Mr. Donut clerk friends, ate our last few donuts and waved goodbye. Oh, you will not be forgotten...

Things could be much worse...like not having any food to eat...alas, a great luxury will be lost.