The Continuing Adventures of John & Holly

It's a Girl!

2011-01-01T11:43:00.009+09:00

Eleanor Faith Quant was born today (12-31-10) at 12:00 noon at home. She measured 20.5 inches (same as Joelle), and 7 lbs 6 oz., 5 grams more than Joelle. The plan had been to have her born at North Fulton Hospital (where I sit at the time of this typing), but the baby had other plans. Fortunately our doula is an apprentice midwife and did wonderfully (as of course did Holly!). The midwife we were going to see at the hospital and Joelle's pediatrician both agree that when you're fully dilated and the head's right there the choice is home or the car (and home is a much better option). I'm really too tired to do this justice, but we ended up with a truly optimal birth experience, and everything was practically perfect in every way.

The meaning of the name Eleanor is disputed or unknown. I take it from Hebrew Eliner (My God is a lamp, compare the names Ner, Neriah, & Abner in the Bible), so once again a masculine Hebrew name into a French feminine name (compare "Joelle"). Faith happens to go with Hope (and although Faith was chosen months ago it seems all the more fitting after today). Finally, just as Joelle Hope (J. H.) was our first initials, Eleanor Faith (E. F.) are our middle ones.

Cries in the Night

2010-12-29T10:18:00.009+09:00

No baby born yet, so don't get too excited. I thought I should write one more post to round out the year and include a few things I intended to mention previously, but haven't.

We got a little snow on December 26th, raided all the near-by lawns, and gathered just enough snow to make a little snowman. Joelle has been asking to make a snowman weekly for the last four months, so I couldn't let the opportunity slip.

In the early years, Joelle cried at night. Then it became "Maaaamaa" and so forth. It varied throughout the summer, eventually becoming "Mommy-and-Daaaaddy! Mommy-and-Daaady." This fall, as Holly became less and less able to climb over the gate at night, it solidified simply as "Daddy!" with a few interesting twists. The following are a few of our favorite memorable night-cries and their interpretation:

"Have to go potty!"

Followed 30 seconds later by

"I'm wet!" Followed a few seconds later by,

"Wanna wake up! .....It's wake-up time!" (This last bit can be said anytime betwixt 8pm and 6am).

"A poopoo! It's a poo-poo." (This is actually most frequently heard at nap-time, but I thought it fit).

"It's the wrong way!!" -- Something is not right about the way Joelle is tucked into her blankets.

"Pink-and-Yellow-Blanket are lost!!" -- Joelle can't find her pink-and-yellow blanket (this can also happen to Tigger and Elmo).

"There's too many things!!" --This is my personal favorite. It means that Joelle has climbed out of bed, taken a long turn and instead of arriving at the gate and door is lost among her toys in the corner of the room behind the rocking chair.

I bought Joelle "The Wind in the Willows" for Christmas and we're four chapters into it now... by far the most difficult book I have read to her (actually a much bigger step up from Winnie-the-Pooh than I guessed). Holly's going to start her on Laura Ingels pretty soon, and I think it will be a little easier going.

For Christmas Joelle also got Elmo slippers and a little broom.

Fall Update

2010-12-09T05:30:00.006+09:00

Ok... It's been months. I know. The problem is always that the longer it's been the more difficult it is for me to remember everything. Here's the last three months in fastworward:

September: John studies every day almost all day in preparation for exams (the big last hurrah of academic hazzing known as "comps," "candidacy exams," "doctoral exams," "prelims," and other names designed to frighten small children). Joelle spends her days with books, play-dough, coloring, her little instruments, and making big messes. Holly spends her days reading to Joelle, wishing John were home, cleaning up messes, and being pregnant with girl number 2.

October: John takes his four exams, one per week (every Thursday), 6 hours each and studies on the off-days. (My four exams were 1. Survey of scholarship on the Hebrew Bible in the last 250 years, 2. The manuscript tradition, ancient translations, and textual criticism of the Bible, 3. The Old Testament in the New Testament, 4. Ancient Near-Eastern Art & Iconography as utilized for understanding the Bible). Holly and Joelle's activities were similar to September.

November: John passes his oral defense of his exams and starts being home to read books, clean messes, and otherwise be present--other than brief disappearances on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays to work on Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic) and Middle Egyptian (Hieroglyphic). We had a huge to-do list that had been waiting until after exams were over, and once they were over we had plenty waiting for us.

To Present: Holly and I have been reading baby & birth books together, going to the YMCA, eating at Chipotle, and trying to keep Joelle happy/in-line (she's definitely in the midst of the terrible/terrific Twos) as we prepare for our lives to be yet again changed forever in another month.

Fall was pretty fun. We did some house/dog sitting for friends, and made it out to a few places including the botanical gardens (see Joelle slipping under the gate of "Mr. McGregor's Garden Patch" in the Beatrix Potter-themed corner of the children's area).

Joelle has been on a "Winne-the-Pooh" kick for several months... I bought a collection of the original A. A. Milne stories over a year ago and we've been through all 370 pages of it several times (and some stories multiple times). She quotes the book all the time, often adding a "says Eeore" or "says Rabbit" or "says Owl" after the line. She'll also randomly use lines when we least expect it, like declaring "Joelle wants to eat us out of house and home" or "It's a horrible heffalump, run for your lives!" She quotes other books too. For sevearl weeks see was saying "Want to lock her in the green house." Eventually Holly realized that this was from The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, where Benjamin's father locks the cat in the green house and rescues Bejamin and Peter Rabbit.

Yesterday we read the entire Old Testament from her Sunday School Bible (275 illustrated pages in one 90 minute sitting!). Later, she remarked, "Baby Jesus died on the Cross?" It's not easy to put Advent/Christmas stories together with her Easter books, but she's clearly trying.

The above is not the family recipe it appears to be, but is in fact a crazy idea I've wanted to try for a few years. The top layer is made of blended berries (which needed a little more Chia seed to gel properly), the middle layer is made from almond slivers which were blended into a cream, and the bottom is a walnut and pecan crust. It went over well and was pretty good. It didn't taste exactly like the original, but it was definitely similar in a good way. A no-bake, all natural version of it. Holly gets credit for doing all the work on this one... If we get all the recipe together I may play with it next year (or next month).

This may be the last post I make until I announce the next birth. The due date is New Years, but Holly suspects that it will probably be a few days after (like Joelle was). Check back around New Years, and again around the 5th if you haven't heard more.

The Summer Thus Far

2010-08-11T09:46:00.012+09:00

Joelle turned two years old in June during our big trip back to Minnesota.

We spread the drive out over three days. Joelle drove her share.

In addition to lots of other fun things, Joelle got to ride her Aunt Aria's horse. She still talks about it fairly regularly.

The big Becker Family Reunion had lots of fun things to do (including some juggling by yours truly... my first solo performance in over four years! Not counting some tennis ball juggling I did for my students in Japan).

Our last stop was a "Microtel." As befits the name, it was so small that we could only get Joelle's bed to fit in the closet. Joelle loved it. "Joelle sleep in the closet!" (she said for several days thereafter).

There's been a number of new developments in the last few months. We've been reading lots of library books (Emperor's New Clothes, Three Little Pigs, etc). I was reading a pre-1950s classic text of The Three Pigs when we got to the part where "the wolf blew down the house and ate up the first little pig!" Joelle (who was hearing the story for the very first time) said, "Oh, no!" My thought was, "Yes! We have comprehension!"

Another great book is "Margarite makes a book," which was designed by an Art History professor. It's a great story for little girls, gives a historically accurate depiction of medieval France and the entire process of book making, and helps teach words like 'Manuscript,' 'Parchment,' and 'Lapis Lazuli.' We've also been reading a fair amount of Dr. Seuss and Beatrix Potter too.

We've been house-sitting and dog-sitting for most of August (for some friends from church). We didn't even bring any toys over here, and Joelle has been perfectly busy with books and dogs. Now we are finally back home. There is tons more I could/should write, but I just haven't the time so I figure it's better to get this much up than nothing at all.

I've been reading away as much as possible. I fear I'm not much more than half-way through my 10,000 pages for exams (which may start the last week of September...eeek!), but I'm pressing on.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly--We are expecting another Girl!!! Due New Year's Eve (or New Year's Day?)--Pregnancy pictures will follow once we have some to share. The big question I've been asking is, 'Do I hope for the tax break (12-31-2009), a memorable birthday (1-1-11), or a memorable birthday that happens to line up with the quad-centennial of the KJV (1-6-11)?'

Morning Exercises

2010-06-01T10:57:00.010+09:00

Some mornings Joelle joins me for morning exercises. She calls them "sizes."

Reach up!

Touch your toes!

Kick your legs!

Time for push-ups!

'Help' Daddy do push-ups...

These pictures are all from a few weeks ago. Just after the end of my semester and final papers, but before I had disposed of my annual "finals hair." Although it's been a full two months since I've written here, it's rather late so I will have to leave it brief for now. Simply put, Joelle is talking up a storm. She still loves books, coloring, dogs, and Elmo. I'm done with classes now, and have been moving into a summer of reading in preparation for my prelim exams in the fall (often called "comps" for comprehensive exams, but recently the department has switched over to the lingo "prelims" because our 10,000+ page bibliographies are far short of "comprehensive"). I'm actually enjoying this part, and I think it will be nice. I can read stuff in whatever order I want, and I get to be more flexible with my schedule, and I don't have to waste time on busy-work assignments or sitting in seminars (it's kind of like the "home-schooling" or independent-study portion of graduate school).

We missed Easter Sunday due to Joelle getting her first bad case of the croup. Actually, Holly played violin on Easter, but Joelle and I spent the night at the hospital (Holly was with us there until about 2am... ugh). Unfortunately, we also missed Pentecost Sunday (50 days later) due to another case of croup, although this time we didn't have to go to the hospital. Otherwise Joelle has been in pretty good health.

I have mixed feelings about the collections of Curious George books that I bought Joelle a few months ago... my ability to do 30-60 minutes of George is waning. We bought some Elmo books just in time for the Easter-time hospital stint... and after reading them a few dozen times at the hospital and I can only handle so much Elmo too. This last weekend we went to the library and checked out a few books (new books, hurrah!) including recent classics like "if you give a mouse a cookie," as well as older classics like a 70s era version of the Three Little Pigs. The latter has been great because it's the 'real' version that I remember growing up with, not the more modern politically correct or watered-down versions (although the one where the wolf turns out to have been framed is quite amusing). This 70s vintage retelling has features like the escape in the butter churn, the actually eating of the first two pigs (and the eating of the wolf by the third), and the correct rhyme "then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house _in_" (instead of "down." The importance of 'in' is that it rhymes with "hair of my chinny chin chin"). The first time we read the book, I read the sentence "and he ate up the little pig," and Joelle immediately said "Oh, no!" and I thought "Yes! Comprehension!"

A few of my favorite sayings or happenings in the last few months have been the following:

#1 - Joelle and I went for a walk around the condominium complex. We took her bubbles (she loves blowing bubbles!) and her bouncy ball outside. We walked around and met a neighbor with a watering-can who was watering flowers (and who let Joelle hold it when it was empty). On the other side of the fence from the pool, Joelle discovered the big water pump which empties and fills the pool. --fast forward 5 hours later-- I'm putting Joelle down to sleep, and as she is winding down in my arms she starts to recite the highlights of the afternoon... "...Bubbles... Ball... Watering-can... ...saw-a-pump!" followed by "...Bubbles... Ball... Watering-can... saw-a-pump."

#2 - Joelle comes up to me holding a plastic heart (the 2-half kind which could be filled with valentines day candy). She says, "Heart!" I say, "That's a heart." She throws it on the ground where it breaks apart into its two halves. Joelle looks up at me and says, "break-a-heart? Joelle-break-a-heart?"

#3 - Joelle is starting to try to sing. The last two or three weeks Joelle has been trying to sing a lot more. Unfortunately she's so busy that frequently she doesn't sleep during her nap, she just talks to herself either reviewing the days activities, muttering randomly, or singing parts of songs (ABCs, Isn't he wonderful?, Elmo's song, the wheels on the bus, and several others).

#4 - Joelle has finally gotten her numbers 1-10 down in Japanese. We'll be walking through the grocery store and she'll start counting random things... "Ichi... nee.. san.. shi.. go..." She was doing this a week ago when encountered a Japanese student I know from Emory, who was quite impressed.

A belated birthday gift (since it was very very back-ordered) made possible by generous birthday gifts by several of you, was a pair of Vibram 5-Fingers "barefoot" running shoes, which are amazing. Basically they are a form of minimal footwear which makes it as if you were running barefoot (i.e., lots of flex, not extra 'support' etc.) but has enough rubber sole to keep your feet from getting burnt/cut-up/etc. I had to give up running several years ago due to Plantar-Fasciitis, which is a foot condition you would not wish upon your worst enemy. After several years of expensive inserts and virtually everything one could think of, I've finally been won over to the alternative school of thought, which is that most foot/knee running-related injuries or conditions are actually caused by modern footwear, and recovery requires less shoe, not more. Instead of the usual alternative medicine/lifestyle magazines or websites that I occasionally cite on this blog (and for which some of you like to raz me) I'll simply point those interested to the research center at Harvard University which has produced a few papers on foot-strikes and barefoot/minimal footwear running: http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/

Anyhow, all that to say, I've been back to jumping rope for several weeks, and today was run #2 (just a little over 2 miles this morning, but one has to start slow). So far so good. Changing the way one runs uses a lot of different muscles. The street never felt so hard... I've never liked grass so much. Pretty much everything in my feet/legs is sore EXCEPT my heels and plantar-fascia, which I find a nice change.

These are my 5-fingers shoes. They're not too bad for walking either, if you don't mind the road feeling hard. I find my posture is better in them too. For those of you simply interested in 'the look' you might be better off with these.

Here is a shot of Joelle and I with sippy and "the blue one" (i.e., the blue Curious George book). As is all too common, Holly has taken all the pictures, so I haven't been able to included her in the blog. She's been working feverishly finishing Joelle's 'baby book' so that we'll have the first year documented before the second year ends, and planning our trip. Joelle is a few weeks away from being 2-years old, and this year we'll be back in MN for her birthday. I have to get to bed now, and for the record this was all written in May (although perhaps only by an hour or so) but I fear it will be posted as if it were in June. Oh well.

Further Developments

2010-03-22T09:40:00.007+09:00

It's been very hard to get a good photo of Joelle lately. We haven't taken all that many recently, and very very few have turned out well. Here she is waving furiously.

So it's been about a month since I wrote of Joelle's foray into multi-word utterances. The fun don't stop, my friends. The list would be too long, and my memory is too poor to give you more examples. Suffice to say that she speaks in multi-word utterances all the time (all...the...time...). In some cases even three words! Today as we prepared to go to church Holly took Joelle's coat and told Joelle that it was time to put it on. Joelle said "Put-it-on" (with mild rising intonation).

Joelle has become very adept with adjectives like "big," ("big..potty," "big..shoes), plurals ("Two Elmos...Two Elmos"), possessives ("Daddy...pocket....daddy's pocket"), and general associations and comprehension. Last week on the way home from church we said "Joelle, we're going to Chipotle." The reply from the car-seat was, "Beenzraiz....yummy." We always order her a side of rice and a side of black beans.

Books are still the greatest thing in the world (either that or live dogs), and we've begun checking out books from the library. I recently purchased some collections of Curious George books (8 books in each volume for $7.50 a volume). It was a great deal, she loves them, and there are lots of new words and good pictures of lots of different things and activities... however, I don't think everyone wants to know what's it's like to read 196 pages of curious George (a single collection volume), and have it followed by "Aggen, again." Then to reading Curious George and the Dump Truck (again), and Curious George and the Surprise Party (again) (at this point you are past the 220 pages mark in one sitting...not counting all the little Beatrix Potter stories you read before that). Joelle also absolutely loves my copy of "The Biggest Bear" by Lynd Ward (86 pages, but always demanded to be read twice) which had been the marathon leader (pre-George). Unfortunately, the bear's love of maple sugar has led to Joelle constantly trying to get the sugar in the kitchen closet.

Although I wouldn't say that she's "reading" yet, Joelle definitely knows her letters, is very aware of words and letters, and often can identify words (on mugs, sweatshirts, etc. that she's familiar with). She also can 'read' a number of words from a book of words (the words slide, and there is a picture of the object beneath). I suspect that she mostly does it from memorization, but I have given her pages out of order and she'll still point to words and correctly tell me "blanket," "nap," "nose," etc. Her average is even better if I ask her to point to a specific word (she's even paused and starred when I asked for a word that wasn't on the page, and then she's turned the page to find it... so I know it's not pure memorization, she's clued in to either first letters, word length, or something similar).

Potty-training continues to be another huge area of success. The latest and greatest story comes from last week. We were at Ross (similar to Marshals, if you haven't been there) after a good length of time running around the mall--(Holly had gone shopping at Ross, so I let Joelle run loose and chased her up and down the hallways of the otherwise rather empty and quiet mall.) While at Ross, suddenly Joelle turned to us and said, "Potty! Quick!" We suddenly realized that she was wearing one of her training pants (by the same maker as our beloved cloth diapers) which have been wonderful for around-the-house wearing, but which don't really contain enough for long outings or naps. We set Joelle down for a moment as we tried to figure out what to do. Joelle began hurrying toward a changing room, still telling us "potty!" We followed her, explained to her that there wasn't a potty there, and asked a store employee there, where one was. We were told that the nearest restroom was back in with the changing rooms (exactly where Joelle had been heading). We were blown away that: #1 She had to go, and told us so (which still doesn't always happen, but she's getting better at it both with us and with nursery workers), #2 In a strange environment, she assumed that there must a be a potty near-by, and #3 That a specific alcove struck her as the appropriate place to find one. Finally, to her credit, it should be noted that the first stall Holly took her to had no toilet paper, so they had to move over to another one and Joelle patiently stayed dry until then, and we continued our shopping in peace without incident.

When I began researching cloth diapers two years ago, before Joelle was born, one of the things that I read was that children who wear cloth tend to potty-train earlier due to the discomfort of a wet diaper (vs. the chemically ultra-absorbant disposable diapers which I'm glad to say we've recently stopped using at night). We've definitely noticed a difference in that she's significantly less likely to pee in a cloth pull-up or cloth diaper (during waking hours) than the Pamper equivalent. The flip side of not using cloth at night is she needs a mid-night change--usually around 2:30 or 3:30am). For about the last 3 or 4 weeks that has been a daddy-exclusive... "(groan) you change her, I'll feed her... (deeper groan) alright, I'll change her, you feed her." Such is shared parenthood. It also means, in conjunction with using re-usable pull-ups/training pants, that I've been able to revamp and continue a form of my evening washing ritual which has brought me great joy and fulfillment.

I had a birthday recently, attaining to the ripe-young age of 27 (thanks all of you who sent me cards and stuff!!!). One new show-and-tell item is a new set of juggling bean-bags (Thank you!!!). I haven't had any of my own in almost 5 years, so it's a thrill to be back to the world of bean-bag juggling (and I'm proud to say I can still do a 7 ball flash, which for all you non-jugglers means 7 throws and 7 catches, i.e. one cycle; and make valiant attempts at 6. Five balls and less is a no-brainer and I've kept that up due to our frequent purchasing of round fruits). Joelle enjoys it too. "Daddy beanbags...daddy beanbags!....Jugging." I've realized that she's now to the same age as the active little girl I used to baby-sit when I was first learning to juggle (12+ years ago!!).

Word Pairs!

2010-02-23T12:52:00.002+09:00

In the last two or three days Joelle has finally started trying to say more than single words. Of course she's been saying phrases for a while... but only ones that she thinks are one word, for example, "Alldone," or "Akka" (="Our Car"). Enunciation is progressing. "Wa-wa," became "Wadi," and now is "Wa-dur." "Snowflake" is now "Snowflake" (and no longer "nose-pick").

Yesterday I gave her a banana when she said "Mana peez."
Today she's been saying "Yes, Mommy," or "O.K. Mommy."
The first noticeable breakthrough came a day or two a go with "sippy cup" (instead of just one or the other).

Unfortunately Joelle has a little cold right now, and we've run out the product ("Little noses") which we bought back in MN around Thanksgiving. Joelle remembered about it from her previous cold, and when we went to clean out her nose today, she asked "Lit-tle noses?"

That's some of the latest and greatest. She still loves Elmo, loves to see the moon and stars (the first time she saw the _real_ moon back in December just blew her away... only dogs are more exciting). If I haven't mentioned it, she's moved into coloring with actual crayons instead of the pens. Potty training has continued successfully. She never tires of books (and right now we've got our first 5 books from the public library out for her), and she's continuing to have fun with her magnetic letters. She points out letters everywhere. Words, sentences, or any text is "ledy." She can give the names/sounds for about half the alphabet. 'G' is G, 'J' is "Joelle." 'C' is now C (for a while it was "cookie"). She likes to point out the letter 'O's on my U of MN sweatshirts (which she always calls "Soda" for Minnesota).
She knows that one shelf on my big bookshelf is pretty much all Bibles, but she doesn't know which one. She thinks it's the shelf of commentaries, so sometimes she'll point at each commentary and say "Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible" right down the line.

She has enough hair that we've started putting it in a pony-tail or pig tails and hopefully next post will have more pictures.

Once Upon a Potty

2010-01-16T08:14:00.006+09:00

As promised, I will here give a little account of recent potty training. (This was all written several weeks ago, but it's taken some time to get back to actually posting it).

In short, we used the last two weeks of the break as a sort of Potty Training Booty Camp. We started shortly after Christmas. Joelle had used her little toilet before and we had had it awhile, but now we started in earnest. We had been reading a bit on potty-training and the history of diapers and toilet training in the US, and have had a number of conversations with people we know from Slovenia, India, Brazil, and several other places. Joelle is always chomping at the bit to do the next latest and greatest new thing, so when Joelle spotted the Elmo underwear at Target it was pretty much decided right then and there.

During our first days of official training, Joelle would spend the day without diapers, we would put her semi-regularly on the potty and frequently she would do her business and a few times a day we would have an accident. After the first few days of introduction in this manner, we began setting a timer for 30 minutes. That was about the right interval, and began to make some fairly serious headway. I forget the specifics, but I think days 4, 6, and 7 were completely accident free, and on day eight or so she woke up from her nap with a dry diaper and promptly hurried to her little Fisher-Price Princess Throne potty (I thought about doing another "Her Babiness" post, but Joelle has grown up a little too much and is slowly being integrated into being a "helper" rather than a sovereign).

After two weeks, we official pronounced Joelle "potty-trained." She knows what to do, and from here it will just be more practice. She'll be sleeping and traveling in diapers for a while yet, but hopefully the trend of waking or arriving home dry will continue. This has been a bit bittersweet for me... my nightly routine of washing diapers has been spoiled, and I've had to transition into doing other laundry during that period of time. Joelle has been ecstatic about her new Elmo and Zoe underwear, and during the last few days the new thing has been to sit on the big toilet (with the seat of her little potty placed on it). In the above picture, Joelle is holding a container with several magnetic letters. We would give her a letter every 2 or 3 successful trips to the potty.

In other news, we had a few days of snow, and Joelle had a ball running around a newly discovered area behind the building next to ours. She was very interested in the snow, and after investigating it thoroughly, she reported to us, that it was, in fact "ice." I tried to tell her otherwise, but she insisted, and kept repeating... "ice..?" "ice..?" (often with the raising intonation).

New Stuff and Holidays

2009-12-25T03:34:00.013+09:00

We haven't written for a long time, so here's my attempt to catch us up before the end of the year. Tons of things have changed. Joelle has grown a lot, and is now 18 months old. I've finished the semester (hurrah!) so unlike a year ago, I'm not going to spend the next few weeks finishing papers. Holly and I have been doing a number of projects around the house and catching up on things. Joelle has finally moved up into a new car seat. She hasn't been as excited about it as I hoped, but it's good to have her out of the little bucket she's been in ever since we left Saku.

Old car seat.

New car seat!

We bought Joelle her own bookshelf, so now all her books fit in one place in her room. She still loves books. Her first words this morning (and many mornings) were "Mommy? ...(she sees it's Daddy)...books?" We've been reading lots and lots of books. We went back to Minnesota for Thanksgiving and my mom gave us a lot of books that she had been collecting for us. Joelle will sometimes sit through as many as 40 books (I think that was my limit... 40 kids books in a sitting is as much as I can take). If any of you ever want to give us books, she'll read them. We're past the level of single word-per-page books and now we're starting to read Dr. Seuss or the Corduroy books and similar things (with plot!).

New curtains and bookshelf in Joelle's room!

She still loves Elmo.

She rocks!

The new thing in the last month has been coloring. When we aren't reading books to her, she stands by her chair and says "cari, cari?!" until we put her in her chair, give her a Minnie Mouse or Hello Kitty color book and a black or red ballpoint pen. We tried crayons, but she has to push too hard to use them, so she pretty much refuses to use anything but ballpoint pens (she'd try my fountain pens, but I know better than to let her get near them). She still just scribbles and doodles, but it's a good place to start. As long as she can sit in the chair and occupy herself for any length of time (20 minutes! a few weeks ago she'd sit for almost an hour) without destroying property, we're happy.

Joelle had her 18 month check-up on Monday the 21st, and is doing very well. The doctor asked me how many words Joelle new and I told her we estimated around 50. Well, on the way home I began to count on my fingers how many words she said (including Mommy, Daddy, Elmo, juice, broccoli, eggy, uh-oh, hot, happy, stroller, car, airplane, star, moon, doggy, kitty, choo-choo, walk, push, etc.) and I easily counted over 120, and Joelle continued to surprise me with other words I'd forgotten about over the last few days (as well as learning more like "curtains," "nest," "web," "suitcase," etc.). I think a better estimate would be closer to 200. As I put Joelle in her pajamas tonight, she pointed at the "C" in my Cub Foods T-shirt and said "Cookie." We've been reading the Sesame Street book "C is for Cookie," among the throng of titles we go through daily.

The doctor also asked us if we had begun potty-training yet, since she thought Joelle was developmentally ready (and I'll write more on potty-training in a future post. The short answer is that yes, we have begun introducing things and she's been using her little potty).

On Christmas Eve Joelle was a lamb in the Christmas pageant at our church. We stayed in Georgia this year. Although we've missed everyone, it has been really good to have some recovery time. This is our first Christmas not traveling all over, and our first Christmas in the US in which I didn't have to be writing papers over the "break" to finish up the "fall" semester. I passed my classes. It wasn't an impressive finish... other than the fact that I was done a full week before Christmas and have been thoroughly enjoying a week and a half of being a stay-at-home dad and house-husband, and I still have two more weeks to go! Holly and I have been able to divide up the cleaning and other housework, so our overall load has been decreased and we've been able to tackle a number of projects and work on things with Joelle.

Joelle as a sheep in the Christ Church Christmas Pageant 2009.

I'm also glad to have a little break from Sea Serpents. The last two seminar papers I wrote were on various sea serpents, snakes, and dragons in the Bible (Leviathan/Rahab see esp. Job 26:10-13, 41; Psalm 89:9-10; Isa 27:1, 51:9-10), and in material from Ugarit (Litan), Egypt (Apophis/Apep), and Babylon (Tiamat). In case I didn't mention it previously, I did finish my little dictionary entry on 'zbwl,' (which I ended up defining as "heavenly temple; celestial abode") for the Theological Dictionary of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and right now it is being translated at the Universitat Bonn for inclusion in the German edition. That felt good to finish. It's time for Holly and I to play chess now, so I'll leave you all with a few pictures and best wishes for the New Year!

We finally found a park somewhat near our house. Joelle loves slides, and is still uncertain about swings.

Joelle with her two cousins Isabelle and Caitlin.

Thanksgiving with my cousins and their little girls.

The great-grand children of the Becker-Clan (Holly's side): Ethan, Kermit, Joelle, Isabelle, Caitlin, and Felicity.

Joelle "trick-or-treat"ing at the Grocery Store before our annual free BOO-rito at Chipotle on Oct 31st.

The Weekend in Pictures

2009-10-05T09:11:00.011+09:00

New Words

2009-09-20T10:56:00.010+09:00

Since our last post Joelle has been learning more new words every week than daddy in all the languages he's supposed to be working on combined (well we're close at least).
My parents gave Joelle the book "Where's Spot?" in which, on every page, the momma dog asks "Is he in/under ____?" to which some other animal in said location responds "No."

Within a few days of regularly reading this book, Joelle acquired that word every parents looks forward to: 'No.' I doubt it will be equaled until we get to 'why?'
I think she understands it in general, but her interpretation is at times a little humorous. She knows that certain things are 'no,' that is, off limits. One of those things is daddy's fountain pens. Last week at church, as I was taking her out of the nursery, she snatched up one of the pens from my pocket and held it aloft victoriously while proclaiming in a loud squeaky baby voice, "Noooooo!"
She has also been seen waving her hands as close as she dared near daddy's bookshelf calling out loudly "Nooo!" So maybe she doesn't understand that they are off limits... but she definitely understands that the appropriate word is 'no.' Just like when she drops something--or hurls it to the floor, the appropriate phrase is "uh-ooh."

On a more positive note (for one can always be more positive than 'no'), she's gotten to the point of trying to say all sorts of things and she's able to respond to "Joelle, say X." or "What does the (animal) say?"
She's best at dogs, cats, and snakes. Snakes, I think, because the "sssss" sound is easier than more vocalized sounds. The cat sound has been rather new, and she's been getting more excited about kitties (she's always loved dogs. Her dog sound sounds like a stalling engine. 'Ruff ruff' isn't the easiest or most natural sound).
Among words that she's attempting, the ones that come to mind are: noooo, eow (Meow), kitty, uppy (puppy), googal ('good girl'), happy baby, mobu (more books), gogar (yogurt), ducky/dolly/doggy (which all sound very close to her pronunciation of 'daddy'), ca (car), yummy, bebra (zebra), eggy (means she wants to eat more eggs), and wawa (water), but there have been a dozen or two more.

Today we went to Atlanta's JapanFest, ate some Chahan and Yakisoba, listened to a Suzuki violin concernt and some Teiko drumming, and walked around. Joelle had to sit on my shoulders to watching the drumming (which was quite loud and energetic), but she was mesmerized. She seemed less sure about lunch.

We've done major changes on our condo which I'll report at another time. The skinny is that the office is no more. It has become Joelle's room and all of daddy's stuff has been expelled to other locations. The living room has thus been reorganized and now has all of the books and more bookshelves than previously. We have a smaller desk for the desktop computer in the living room which has made it easier for Holly to work on stuff, and for us to watch some movies for the first time in a long time. I built a descent pile for us while garage saling during the final weekends of August and the firsts of September. In doing all our rearranging, we've actually put her high-chair away and moved her up to a new booster-seat at the kitchen table, which so far she's seemed to have taken to quite well.

Holly gave Joelle her first haircut about two weeks ago, but it was just a little off the bangs. I hope the first picture shows that she still has plenty of hair on top. Now it's not in her eyes.. still plenty long though. While re-organizing the house, Joelle found one of my old trophies and decided to plant a flower in it.

The ESL class that Holly volunteers at has resumed now, my classes and teaching are in full swing, and the deadline for my Hebrew dictionary entry is drawing near so hopefully that will be submitted before my next update here. I also have lecture for the undergrads in a week and a half. Things are busy as ever, and better than usual.

Out of the Summer and into the Fall

2009-08-31T07:13:00.014+09:00

Here we are... the final days of summer. My parents visited a few weeks ago and we had a great time with them. We took Joelle to the zoo for the first time, and she loved it. Unfortunately I need to get pictures from them, since we used their camera the whole time they were there. We also took a nice hike at Stone Mountain Park, and at the playground Joelle met a boy her age who had a toy lawn-mower that she liked.

So she took it.

We've just returned home from a shopping trip to the "Your Dekalb Famer's Market" of which I'm sure I've written before. We have a fridge full of produce... dinosaur kale, red kale, red chard, spinach, parsley, pineapple, figs, grapes, peaches, and more. We are ready to kick off our month of green smoothies. Joelle will certain have some. Holly's planning on two a day, and I'm going for three. My reasons?

Once when I was an undergraduate (November of 2002 to be exact) I ate only fruits, vegetables, and water for about three weeks (giving myself a small transition before Thanksgiving). I have rarely felt better in my life. It was a very energizing and cleansing experience, and I've been wanting to do some kind of juice-fast or other detox again, and this seemed like a good way to go. I'm sure that come October I will be more than ready for the return of beans and bread, but I'm looking forward to about 30 days of highly nutritious, easily digestible meals with little clean-up. It's also a good chance to get creative.

One thing we've noticed is that in the last few months since we've really cut most meat and processed foods out of our diet... we actually eat a lot more different kinds of things. We buy stuff I'd never heard of a few years ago (even when I worked at Cub Foods), and eat a larger variety of fruits and vegetables. Early in our marriage we spent a lot of time reading labels at the store, but now if it has a label (i.e., comes in a can, box, or sealed bag) we pretty much don't buy it. Keeps life simple but full of variety.

In other news, I had my big Hebrew Exam this last week, and I'm very glad to have that behind me. I haven't heard the result, but it was pass/fail and I felt pretty good about it. From the 100 chapters that I had been preparing over the summer, my test consisted of translating the second half of Genesis 3, the first half of 1 Kings 18, most of Ezra 3, and all of Psalm 91, and answering several pages of grammatical analysis and syntactical questions. The latter two chapters had the most challenging vocabulary and were the least familiar, but it worked out.

Now the semester has begun, and I'm very excited about being a Teaching Associate for a course on the Pentateuch at Emory College. I'll be giving two of the lectures, leading most of the discussions, and doing most of the grading. Thankfully it's a small class--about a dozen people (about 5 or 6 of whom are Freshmen).

I've finally found a worthy Shogi opponent (Shogi is Japanese Chess, if you don't recall from previous posts). Holly's been volunteering as an ESL teacher at a local church, and one her students is from Japan. Her husband, Shohei, is a student at the business school at Emory, who used to compete in club at his university in Osaka. He's at an even higher level than the best of my former students, and he was quite impressed that I put up a very good fight (I would have had him in one of the handicapped rounds, but I made a mistake at the very end that cost me the game, still not bad for a 外人). Hopefully Shohei and I will find time to play again sometime during the school year. This is the last year of his M.B.A.

Lastly, Holly and I have made great strides in helping Joelle learn to sleep. We got rid of the big office desk, and have turned 'the office' into 'Joelle's room.' (I never got any work done there anyway.) Joelle has been sleeping in there for a few weeks now, and this last week she's gotten much better at falling asleep on her own with few if any tears. If this continues, this year will indeed be a very different experience than last year. I wonder if people will recognize us without the big bags under our blood-shot eyes. We will see.

September Challenge!

2009-08-09T10:04:00.002+09:00

Just about every morning for the past three months, I’ve begun my day with a green smoothie, that is, a blenderized mix of filtered water, fruit, and dark leafy green vegetables. It’s the best way I’ve found to make kale, spinach, and other dark leafy greens into a delicious, easily digestible, and easily consumable form. It’s like taking a multi-vitamin in dessert form early in the day.

Earlier this week, when Holly and I received our pre-order copy of Victoria Boutenko’s new book Green Smoothie Revolution, we were so inspired that we decided we needed to do something drastic. In addition to the 200 amazing looking smoothie recipes, the book also contains the stories of the Boutenko family—who got into natural foods when the various members of their family were simultaneously dealing with severe arrhythmia, edema, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, hyperthyroid, juvenile diabetes, and asthma—and others like Clent Manich, who in the book’s appendix describes how he went from weighing 400 lbs in January 2008 to 170 lbs in January 2009 primarily by drinking green smoothies (and cutting out all processed foods, meat, and dairy).

In light of this and many things we’ve learned over the years, we’ve decided that for the month of September, we are going to replace the majority of our normal meals with green smoothies! To make it more fun we’ve decided to challenge all of you, our friends, family, and random internet readers to consider joining us (if only at the level of one smoothie per week, or trying it out as a breakfast). So, please consider blending along with us for the 30 days of September. You can join us anywhere from the “Joelle level” (which is about half a sippy-cup, or whatever you feel in the mood for in addition to your normal food) to the “John level” (which is 3-4 smoothies per day in place of other meals… with perhaps a few bunches of broccoli or carrot sticks for snacks). Please Note, we are not trying to give anyone specific medical advice and strongly encourage anyone who would like to participate to consult their doctor before starting this or any other dietary program.

My typical breakfast smoothie of the summer has gone something like this:
put three or four ice-cubes in a blender,

chop up an apple, pear, and/or peach,

add a banana or two,

squeeze some lemon, lime, or orange juice (or put part of the peeled fruit in),

add a good handful or two of dark leafy greens (spinach blends the best and is my most common choice, but kale, red kale, dinosaur kale, parsley, collard greens, romaine lettuce, etc. also work),

pour in a lot of filtered water (see the video link below for a good demonstration)

blend for about 45 seconds (or more if it really needs it).

This usually makes enough for Holly, Joelle, and I. Yesterday I made more so I could do a trial-run of bringing a thermos full for lunch (it worked very well). I also recommend adding a good slice of fresh pineapple (Joelle always drinks a lot more of it when I do that, whether it’s kale or spinach based), and some days I’ll chop open a young green coconut (the ones that come shaved down with the point on top) and put the coconut water, plus or minus the meat, in instead of regular filtered tap water.

To see a master at work, click here.

We also recommend the book Green Smoothie Revolution for great recipes, instructions, and inspiring accounts.

I will warn you that kale and collard greens do tend to be a little chunkier if you are using a typical blender (like the Hamilton Beach one that we’ve used regularly since we were married). Spinach is a great place to start because it’s loaded with calcium, iron, vitamins, etc. and blends really smooth, and (most importantly), the taste gets completely covered up by the fruit. Try as many different greens as possible, though, and rotate them throughout the week.

If you need to get some blending inspiration, there are always the “Will it blend?” videos on youtube.com (I recommend the glow-sticks episode in particular). We actually just ordered a more powerful blender (as ours started to wear out from several years of regular use).

We didn’t get the Blendtec Blend-All (like in the videos)… we ordered one that shoves the Blendtec in lockers and takes its lunch money (and could actually take out the Chuck Norris action figure that survives one of the “Will it blend?” episodes).

Those of you on FaceBook can check out the “John & Holly’s Green Smoothie Challenge” event that Holly set up.

If any of you are just going to watch this time around, you’ll have another chance when issue another challenge for January 2010!

I should also add, that in addition to “Dadda, Mamma, and Baby,” Joelle has recently added the words “Uh-ooh,” and “Happy” to her small but growing vocabulary. “Are you happy, Joelle?” “Happy.” (Points at family picture) “Who’s that?” “Ba-by!” (Points at Daddy) “Who’s that?” (with a mischievous baby smile) “Ba-by.”

The Summer

2009-07-18T03:06:00.007+09:00

I've realized that I have never actually talked about what's going on for us this summer, as I promised many of you and as I sincerely planned to post back in late May. The summer opened with the end of one semester and our trip to Las Vegas, NV. Following that I had a summer course on Reading French that lasted until June 24th, and I took and passed my department required French exam. We celebrated our third wedding anniversary and Joelle's first birthday. I've now been focusing on preparing for my Hebrew exam and trying to get to a pair of publication projects.

Whenever I mention this fact, several people have asked me, "French? I thought you did Hebrew and Bible and stuff." Well, I do... and that's why. A decade ago, I had no idea that to be a professional Bible scholar one had to know not only Hebrew and Greek (and a number of other ancient languages) but also be able to read modern French and German.

The reason for this is that unlike most other fields where "anything that's worth publishing is published in English," in biblical studies anything considered worth publishing is published in either English, German, French, or Hebrew, anyone whose worth their salt can read it. That's the top tier. Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Russian are second tier, and generally anything worthwhile in those languages gets put into one or more of the first tier languages. Ironically I took Spanish thinking it would be "more practical," not knowing I would likely be having to read German and French the rest of my life.

A second reason is that the modern University, the Ph.D., the printing press, and academic journals were all started in Germany by the Germans, and since the Bible was central to most of those endeavors, they got off to a good head start. Several of the major academic biblical studies journals are in German (although contain articles in several languages), for example Zeitschrift fur Alte Testament and Ugarit Forschungen. Many of the best dictionaries, grammars, and scholarship related to the Bible, Semtic langagues, Assyriology, Egyptology, etc. is in German.

Thirdly, the French managed a number of important excavations, and as a result a number of important resources on these sites and their findinds are in French. The main journal devoted to the scrolls found at Qumran (known as The Dead Sea Scrolls) is Revue de Qumran, which of course is published in French (but has articles in French, German, and English). French is also a must on your resume and in your repetroire (as evidenced by the need to use French words to describe those things), it also helped me understand the pronunciation of the loan-word genre.

No matter what period or texts I end up focusing on, I'll have to read more than a few dozen articles and a fair number of books and dissertations in those languages. Unfortunately there really isn't time for us to learn either French or German from the ground up and learn to speak it, if we don't already known it. So one takes a course on reading the language, passes a required exam by the department, and then is left to fend for oneself in a huge swarm of fierce, foreign academic prose. Such is life. I am happy to report that both my modern language exams are now passed. I took my German exam in August just before I began the program, and I passed my French exam on June 23rd. As I now approach my final year of coursework I am prepared to be thrown into that deep and unforgiving swarm of prose, and can no longer avoid reading the French and German articles that I've had handed to me in seminars for the last 4 years.
In other news, I have only one language exam remaining.

In August, I will have a biblical Hebrew translation exam covering 100 chapters from the Old Testament (70 were chosen by the faculty, and 30 by myself). At present, I'm about 49% of the way through, and still need to do some grammar review and vocabulary building. I fell a little behind schedule with the French exam, Joelle's party, and Holly being sick for several days. Staying on task has taken most of my weekday school time. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send them the list, but I won't bother to post it here. (Holly would like to add here that she has been dutifully spending hours helping John through his reading list, as he prefers to hear the an English translation after reading his own... Of course, we prefer the JFQ version of the Bible, which has yet to be published.)

The two projects that I need to get to before school starts again are salvaging a paper I wrote two years ago that was accepted to one of the top American journals, but which (upon my own reflection and that of some of the Emory faculty, needs a lot more work than the overly generous anonymous peer-reviewer implied), and a dictionary entry.

I get the pleausure and honor of contributing a single entry to the Theologisches Wörterbuch zu den Qumrantexten ("Theological Dictionary of the Dead Sea Scrolls"), which will be published in 3 volumes by the University of Bonn, in English and German editions. I'm still awaiting the final contract, but my understanding is that my English entry will be translated and also included in the German edition. I'm going to be writing on the word "zbwl" which appears 6x in the non-biblical scrolls and only 5x in the Bible (1 Kgs 8:13, 2 Chr 6:21, Is 63:15, Ps 39:15, Hab 3:11; also the first name of a guy in Judges 9). It means something like "lofty abode," "exalted habitation" or some-such and isn't even translated in a some English translations of the above passages. I'll list its usage in the Scrolls and try to come up with a few semantic parallels from Greek (from the Septuagint, or Old Greek translations of the Old Testmanet) and from Rabbinic literature, if I can indeed find some good parallels. I would give the link to the dictionary project here, but when I went there again all it had was the message: "Die Seite existiert leider nicht…"
Such is life. In answer to the practical question "Do you get paid for this?" The answer is, not directly. I get no monetary compensation, but publications, in addition to teaching, are one of the main things that professors do and proving that you can do so is one of the best ways to get yourself hired in the future (so hopefully it will payoff indirectly in the long-run).

The largest task at hand is helping Joelle learn to sleep through the night. Last night was night #2 of no night feedings... I attribute all misspellings and bizarre syntax in this post to being vastly underslept. This seems the best time to do it though, and everyone I've talked to and everything I've read boils to do no matter what method you adopt, you're going to have a few rough nights and we are in the midst of them right now. One complicating factor is that all of the Joelle's best traits: her energy, excitement, liveliness, intensity, etc. do not lend themselves to being "an easy baby". We prefer the term "high needs" baby, as these babies generally get the attention they need to develop as wonderfully as Joelle has been... though at night it's no picnic.

It's strange to be the parent of a toddler, but we are learning to admit that that's where we are. Joelle just isn't a baby anymore. She doesn't look or act like a baby, and whenever I see a baby or look at new pictures of babies that friends and family members send out, I think, "We had one of those once." It's a great stage to be at, and I'm counting the months until we can play Candyland. Not that it's the greatest game, but you have to start somewhere. In the meantime I've thrilled that Joelle goes into a frenzy of excitement whenever I ask her if she wants to come read books. Now we just need to find her more that we can bear to read over and over again.

Recently she starting putting shoes on the shoe-rack, instead of just taking them off... there may be hope.

The Amazing, Walking Birthday Girl

2009-07-02T11:42:00.010+09:00

Joelle turned a year old on June 20th, and we had a little open-house party for her at our condo. About a dozen people stopped by our home--which was decked out in bright pink Hello Kitty paraphernalia and string of Japanese-style lanterns. It was a big hit. She wore a little Japanese Yukata, and ran around happily to see every one. She had started walking at 11 months (about 3 weeks before the party), and now she hardly craws at all.

She got some cute things, and everyone had a good time.

Lifestyle Changes

2009-07-01T22:40:00.002+09:00

We've been going through some major changes in the last four months. Mostly in the realm of food. Early in our marriage we started avoiding highly processed foods and targeted a number of ingredients that we wanted to avoid (for most of the list and related reasons see my manifesto, "9.5 Theses on Health" ). This led to eating much higher quality of food, but not necessarily the healthiest quantities.
Since February, I, John, have lost 60 lbs, experimenting and learning a lot from Dr. Phil, Dr. Don Colbert, and several people who subsists only on uncooked vegetables, nuts, and fruits (and have come up with great recipes!). I'm happy to offer more insights into what exactly we do, but Holly encouraged me to spare you the blow-by-blow or pound-by-pound homilies. In any case, we've made a lot of substitutions in our diet, and now our weekly grocery purchase is about 90% organic produce (made possible by living near the Dekalb Famer's Market which has a huge produce department whose organic prices are better than the standard prices at the typical grocery stores). Our grocery bill is about the same as it was in the past (we don't eat red meat at home anymore, and we've really cut back on dairy products--except what we get for Joelle).

Holly made me a "Birthday Cookie." This was about three weeks into my diet (which lasted several weeks, then became my lifestyle).

This was my special birthday meal of Japanese soba noodles (a Nagano specialty) on a tofu stir-fry. It was soooo good.

I've learned how to make a mean chocolate-mint ice-cream... out of raw cashews, water, agave nectar, nestle cocoa, and mint. We haven't bought ice-cream since January.

I make a big batch of creamy broccoli salad for my weekly lunches. The creamy part is made from blending up water, fresh lemon juice, salt, and sunflower seeds. In the morning, I pack a little tupperware container full, grab an apple, orange, and boiled egg and I'm set. It has replaced my peanut butter and honey sandwhiches which were way too much fat, sugar, and carbs for my metabolism.

For breakfast everyday, I make a spinach-lime-apple smoothie. Good stuff (and lots of calcium). Joelle and Holly like it too. In the background you can see our new Panasonic rice cooker (we got it about 40% off since it had been a display model). We'd really been missing the one in our house in Japan.

Either she's getting bigger, I'm getting smaller, or both. I do like the fact that Holly can actually get her arms around me. Seeing my toes is nice too.

What Happened in Vegas

2009-06-06T10:03:00.009+09:00

I know some of you have once again begun to wonder if perhaps we had all fallen off the face of the earth, been abducted by extra-terrestrials, or some more heinous fate. Well... we haven't. I finished the semester well with a single A and a bunch of A-'s and a good year-end review from the faculty. Immediately after that review, I biked home, we finished packing, and we went off to Las Vegas (which I learned is Spanish for "the meadows").

The main reason for our trip was to visit Holly's sister and Joelle's newest cousin, but I suspect that Joelle thinks the reason we went to visit them is that they have stairs in their house and a dog. She learned how to climb the stairs and would ascend them repeatedly. The only thing she put more energy into was terrorizing their poor, sweet old beagle. She would get more and more excited and the dog would would quake and cower. Joelle started being able to stand alone on the trip (and staring at the dog seemed to help her focus without distraction).

Since we were so close to the famous Las Vegas strip, we did make two trips down there to walk around (and Holly's sister and brother-in-law were gracious to accompany us and help us out, even though it was hardly on their top list of things to do). The strip is neat to see. It's pretty much all casino-resorts, and all of them have specific themes: Caesar's Palace looks (somewhat) like ancient Rome, Luxor is a huge black pyramid with a sphinx in front and lots of Egyptizing artwork inside, Paris has an Eiffel Tower, New York looks like New York, there are castle themes, circus themes, and lots more I've forgotten. After about 5 they begin to look the same. They have various stores and plazas (all indoors!) in between everything, and number of various street performers. At the Venitian, there are various canals and guys in red and white striped shirts giving gondola rides and singing (for a fee). One guy dresses up as a statue in the street, and only slowly changes his position from time to time or slowly blinks. At first I thought he was a statue. Below is one of the out-door canals of The Venetian.

Holly's parents were visiting at the same time as us, and they stayed a hotel for two nights before joining us. Before they left, we went over to join them for some fun in the pool. Joelle had the time of her life in the pool with us, and I had been enjoying the jacuzzi with Holly's dad.

Unfortunately, what happened in Vegas did not stay in Vegas. I had finally convinced Holly to come join us in the hot tube, and as she walked through the center of the pool, she stepped on a piece of a broken beer bottle which had lain hidden beneath the bubbles (there was a sign at the entrance prohibiting any glass anywhere in the pool area), and it pierced straight into her foot. This put a damper on the trip for Holly, and made a fair ordeal at the time and no slight inconvenience for the rest of the trip (I carried her around for two days, then we bought some crutches). Going back through airport security when Holly couldn't carry Joelle or carry/pull luggage would have been a nightmare without help from Holly's mom and one of the airport wheelchair guys. Holly was unable to walk for about three weeks (and I had to do double duty since she couldn't even put Joelle down in her crib or chase her around the house). We're finally catching up on things now.

While we were in Nevada, we drove up to see the Hoover Dam, just across the border into Arizona... it was really hot, Holly was crutch bound, and Joelle-despite being quite the trooper the whole trip, had had it. The Dam was neat to see, but it wasn't necessarily the best time.

I still have more posts to write, but this had to be the first to begin to catch us up.

Life with Bubba

2009-04-30T00:11:00.015+09:00

かわいい!!

It's been a while. Some may think that we forgot the password to update the blog. Others theorize that we'd given up blogging for Lent. Conspiracy theories have no doubt abounded and flooded the Internet, and we apologize for any inconveniences. The cold hard truth is that Joelle keeps us extremely busy and school keeps me extremely busy, and I simply haven' t found time to do justice to a good update. As a result, I've decided to attempt a series of shorter updates in attempt to catch up.

Joelle or, as we often call her, "the Baby," has continued growing like crazy. She still does everything she was doing before, she just does it with more energy, strength, and reckless abandon. She now has 8 teeth (#8 came just in time for Daddy to loose extra sleep during the busiest part of the end of the semester), and she' s finally fitting some of the yukata (Japanese summer robes) that we got as gifts last year. In the last few weeks she's started trying to talk more. She's been making noises for quite some time, and she's been saying variations of Mama and Daddy for a while (no idea which came first or when exactly). She's added a third consistent word lately, which has become her favorite: "Baby," or as she usually says "Bubba."
Due to our frequent use of "the Baby" in phrases like "Where's the Baby?" (peekaboo), etc. she often adds the definite article. Many times this week she'll be sitting on the floor looking at us and saying quite loudly and happily "da Bubba da Bubba du Bubba!"

As if we didn't know.

Joelle's seen a lot of her friend Leah lately. (Leah is 3 months older than Joelle, and she and her parents go to our church). The above picture was taken a little while ago at Leah's one year old party. She and her mom will be visiting relatives in India for part of the summer, and they will be sorely missed.

Joelle had her dedication at church back in March, and she and Holly visited MN for the following weekend.

I've been thrilled with one of the most long awaited moments of the year: that April day on which we'd have broken even on the diapers. For those who don't know, last year in Japan we began researching cloth diapers. We even bought several in a small size that were sold at
あかさャん王国 Akachan Ogaku (Lit. "Baby Kingdom" in Japanese). If only you could find modern cloth diapers in a US store... oh well [insert big sigh]. We use pampers at night, but I'm always glad to have Joelle out of them. The stuff they put on diapers these days to make them "ultra-absorbent" is a little scary, and we've had all our worst leak problems with disposable diapers. Pampers are bad, Huggies are worse, and Luv's are utterly unusable.

In October, finally, after experimenting with a number of brands and styles, we put in a large order of Mother-ease brand cloth diapers (had to do something with that "economic stimulus package"). Any of you who have been with us lately know that I love them. They are hands down my favorite baby product, and since November I have taken over the responsibilities of washing, drying, and stacking. It's a daily routine, and I tell everyone that it is the great ritual which gives structure and meaning to my life (and some days that feels a little too true). Not throwing away 60-70 diapers and not paying $20-$30+ per week is a double plus in my book. For the record, I also change about 2-3/day on average (in typical day, Joelle goes through 8 or 9 cloth and one disposable). I think I'm beating the national average. There's also the simple fact that I read a year ago from one parent: You will never hear people talking about how much they love using disposable diapers.

Anyhow, the diaper stack is one of Joelle' s many daily rounds. She takes it upon herself to find overly organized areas of the house and systematically dismantle them and spread chaos. This includes (in typical daily order) the box of blocks which needs to be dumped, the stack of rings which needs to unstacked and spread around the living room, the pile of hotpads in the kitchen which likewise needs to be scattered, all the tupperware in the kitchen cart and the one cabinet that we don't lock, folded laundry if they remain on a living room chair, and, of course, the diaper stack. We try to keep this under control, but she pursues it daily as if it were her life mission.

Jan-Feb Update

2009-02-14T23:45:00.008+09:00

As usual, we're long over due for an update. I had tons more to write about Joelle within days of publishing the last entry. Unfortunately this semester is keeping me even busier than the last. I'll keep this short, and try to give a few fun facts and pictures.

We have moved Joelle's tub from the sink into the actual bathtub, and last week she got some new bath toys.

A Japanese student in the NT department told me about The Buford Hwy Farmers' Market, which has a full aisle of imported Japanese food!!! C.C. Lemon, Pocari Sweat, Toppo, Soba, Mochi.... It's AMAZING!! (I still have dreams almost every week in which either I'm still back in Japan, or in which I'm able to go back and get my job at Nozawaminami again).

While Holly was checking in the Indian foods aisle at the same store, I looked down, and Joelle had covered herself with her blanket. As I watched, she quickly pulled it off and stared at me expectantly, then she covered herself again. Since then peek-a-boo has become a little more common (especially with her bathtowel after bathtime).

Whatever 'free time' I had during the 'break' and since then has been consumed in household projects. Some of the main ones were installing a new kitchen faucet, and hanging the pots and pans.
Joelle continues to go everywhere and get into everything.
Climbing and standing by stuff is still the hot thing to do. Also, she can walk around while holding my fingers.
Tooth #5 has been making its appearance, she's finally (in the last three weeks) started to like some "solid" foods (e.g., mashed pears, squash, sweet potato), and she' s just begun to show interest in books (hurrah!). She especially likes the books "Moo, Baa, La La La" and "Perfect Pets." The former has simpler pictures than most kids books and it's easier for her to focus on them. The latter has a little spot on each animal that she can touch (the dog and rabbit feel soft, the fish has scales, the cat's tongue is rough, etc.)

The good news and bad news of this semester is that it's pretty front heavy. That means almost all of my book reports in seminars, presentations, lectures, and other projects are in the first half. The good news is that if I survive, the second half should be smoother sailing (just the usual grind of lots of translation, one paper, and few smaller things).

Today is Valentine's day, and one of my classmates is coming over to watch Joelle so we can walk down the street to one of the local Indian buffets. This will be Joelle's first 'babysitter' experience. She's been doing so well with new people later (and my friend Matt and his wife Abby have been over before, they live three blocks away), so we're not worried. My cousin Tim came over a few weeks ago, and he may get the award for Most Popular Guest. Probably still has the "new father of a little girl" smell about him.

Royal Memoir II

2009-01-16T08:02:00.019+09:00

The great queen, her cute babiness (May she sleep forever! May her smile never fade!), Joelle I, has hereby decreed that more of the royal annals be made available to her subjects throughout the known world.

"I, Joelle I, do hereby recount recent happenings of the second half of my reign over all that is known to me.

We live in uncertain times. Noises unpredictably occur, likewise at times I awake in the darkness, not knowing where I am. The state of the babydom, however, is strong. My faithful servants, the tall ones, M and D, continue to provide acceptable, if less-than-desirable service. Servant D rises early in the morning, and is thus prepared for my awakening. It is his duty to perform the first great ritual of transformation in which My Babiness is purified and changed. This ritual is performed by both D and M, whenever necessary. It should not be confused with the great purification which occurs in liquid in the evening darkness.

The other great ritual of multiple occurrence is the ritual of consumption. This has been performed only by servant M.

For the ease of the reader, it may be best to add vowels to these names and simple reduplication, thus Dada and Mama. Servant D may also be called P, as his other great function is as the royal pillow ('Papa' following the previous vocalic pattern).

Since the great journey that occurred some time ago, my servants have begun offering me new forms of food offerings. These goos have strange odors and tastes, and I am not yet sure what to do with them. I have been long pleased with the state of the royal diet, and if I desire to consume something else, I, of course, shall seek it.
Perhaps the trouble lies in their attempts to offer it directly to me. If only they would place their goo before me, I would happily inspect and taste it. Why have servants do what one is perfectly capable of doing oneself?

I have sprouted fangs, not unlike those of my servants (but far fewer), and I have only begun to use them. Thus far, they seem more pain and trouble than they are worth. They do not assist in consumption, nor they do they lend any great advantage of power. All know that my barf is worse than my bite.

Among other activities, I have busied myself among my library of great literature.

I have also spent much time traveling and inspecting the vast scope of my realm and all that lies within it. I look at everything, I hear much, and I taste all. Let it be remembered that only certain things have sound, but all things have appearance and taste, thus these are the most important means of acquiring knowledge. I am a baby of taste and I rule a world of taste, so it seems proper to taste all which I encounter therein.

I have acquired new powers of locomotion, which I have used to great effect in my journeys, but these have not kept me from making use of the various royal vehicles.

Most notably, the royal pouch:

The royal steed:

The servant steed (in the former steed's stead).

And the servant-propelled tub-sled:

In my journey to the far north, I discovered temperatures undreamed of and their accompanying restrictive fashions.

My current business--to which I devote myself with reckless abandon--is support raising.
I seek out all things that offer the appearance of support, and I use them to raise myself to higher standing, thus achieving a better view of my realm and more accurate knowledge of contemporary occurrences. My servants often discourage such activities, but they cannot know their great benefits and necessity.

Sadly, my servants withhold from me. How and why servants should withhold anything from their sovereign baby baffles me. What is their great secret? What do they think I'll find? What items of my interest could possibly concern them? Their tasks are to serve and comfort me."

Her Babiness (May her smile never fade), has never used a pacifier (unlike so many of her kind), and thus lacks the natural inclinations of a pacifist. Some of her people fear what could happen should dangerous objects fall into her hands. -Servant D/P

(Grenade photo courtesy of Her Babiness' Uncle David).

Who ya gonna call?

2008-12-18T04:50:00.001+09:00

Thank you for calling the baby helpline.

If you know your parents’ extension, please pound the keys, then pound the pound key.

For nap and bedtime schedules, please pound 1.

For feeding schedules, pound 2.

For a diaper change, pound 3.

To be transferred to a new location, pound 4.

For assistance with minor bumps or rash, please pound 5.

For a rotation of toys or activities, pound 6.

Para Espanol 7.

日本語のために、8.を押しなさい。

Ooge ga goo 9.

For teething problems, please chew on the phone.

If you would like to speak with a parent, please stay where you are and one of your parents will be with you shortly.

Thanksgiving (and the left-overs)

2008-12-10T03:31:00.008+09:00

The end is near. I am truly feeling piled higher and deeper, and somehow everything absolutely has to be done in less than two weeks. I will probably not write again until after Christmas, so here is a last little hurrah to fill you in.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Holly's cousin Autumn, and they made some great food (turkey meatloaf, mashed potatoes, some kind of pumpkin and whip-cream dessert, etc.)

Joelle is growing like crazy. Her feet barely fit in her clothes... her clothes barely fit, and I'm talking about the 6-9 month clothes she's been wearing. I think in January we'll have to get her into 9-12 (unless Holly's started that already). The doctor said she was in the 90th percentile for height. Joelle can remain seated now (if you put her in a sitting position), and she has finally learned to scoot forward. She's not up to a full all out crawl, but the result is the same... she goes everywhere and gets into everything. We've been busy upping the level of baby-proofing in our home. Holly's also been very disturbed by the discovery of several cock-roaches in the resent past (including a rather large one yesterday).

I should not neglect to add that Joelle has two very nice bottom teeth coming in at present. They are both quite visible, and as Holly and I tell people (after blood-shot glances at each-other) "this explains a lot."

I am just about done with classes for the semester... one for tomorrow, then I'll be burning the candle at both ends to get two papers finished and a few exams. I'm not looking forward to it all, but soon it will all be over.

It's really been non-stop for me here since I moved down, and unfortunately we haven't had much down-time yet. We're looking forward to seeing everyone at Christmas, but almost just as much to actually having two weeks together to settle in. It's been rather rough diving straight into a new life without much transition time. We had a nice transition into New Haven two years ago, and a decent time between that and Japan. Now with the stress of papers, et. al. I'm having dreams almost every-other night about having my old job back or otherwise being back in Japan. I wake up wishing I were off to Nozawaminami. I do miss it dearly, but I'm also loving Emory and this has been a good move for us. I'm not sure that Holly thinks that cockroaches are an acceptable alternative to rats, but this is what happens when it's 65 degrees F outside on December 9th. The upshot is that I had a nice bike ride home today without coat or gloves... and arrived home hot and sweaty.

Our Little M&M has grown up into a Burrito

2008-11-01T08:49:00.004+09:00

Exactly one year ago in Japan (plus or minus the timezone thing), Holly had her first visit to the doctor, I took half the day off, and we sat together looking at a little black and white ultra-sound picture which, according to the doctor, contained a picture of our baby, who was then about the size of an M&M. For the next two months we referred to our little child-to-be as our little M&M.

Exactly two years ago, I was juggling torches with the Yale Anti-Gravity Society.

Exactly three years ago, I juggling torches with the Yale Anti-Gravity Society in their best ever Halloween fire show.

Exactly four years ago, I had just left Cub after a slow night of work and beating all the grocery and dairy-frozen guys in a push-up contest, and was off to the University of Minnesota campus to catch up with my InterVarsity friends. Chiptole (our favorite restaurant) used to give out free burritos to anyone who came on Halloween dressed as a burrito (which meant having some amount of aluminium foil on them).

I believe five years ago, I also went out for free Chipotle with my foil-clad friends...

Well, in one year our little M&M has grown up into the cutest little burrito around. We saw a sign last week advertising the same free burrito deal on Oct. 31st, so we decided to make it a family adventure. Besides, when classmates asked if I was going to dress up Joelle tonight I had something to say.

For the curious, a roll of aluminum foil can be gotten for $4, a burrito is more than $6, we got two burritos, and we have left-over foil that can be used for other left-over things. (This almost makes me like math, wow).

Tour d' House

2008-10-22T09:01:00.013+09:00

After weeks of cleaning and adjusting we now offer a glimpse inside our condo. Enjoy... but please take off your shoes in the kitchen.
(WARNING: Objects in pictures are as real as they appear. Some insects and numerous dust bunnies were harmed in the making of this entry. All resemblances to actual events or persons living or dead are purely coincidental. To the best of our knowledge no event or person resembles our condo... oh yeah... and I'm really tired tonight).

"I love studying Old Babylonian with Daddy!"

We apologize for the lack of Holly pictures in this entry, but we assure you that she is alive and well and that none of these pictures would have been possible without her (with, perhaps the exception of the bathroom... I cleaned that).

You gotta watch her or she'll get stuck!

2008-10-12T05:05:00.012+09:00

Life continues to be excessively busy. Holly and I feel a lot more stress and time crunch than we did in Japan, and at times we find ourselves longing or reminiscing about those nearly care-free days. As it is, I am enjoying school although it consumes far more time and energy than I have to give it. We're still undergoing numerous adjustments to the house and area, to the school and the South, and of course to parenthood.

Joelle is growing like crazy, and it's nearly impossible to keep up with her. In the last month, she has gotten really good at playing with toys: she can reach for them, hold them, drop them, reach for them again (and sometimes recover them). She wiggles a lot and I've been giving her instructions and demonstrations on crawling for some time now. As a result, she regularly gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth. This ends when she gets tired, or if her feet slip out from under her she ends up sliding backwards and repeats the exercise. The upshot of all is that she can, little by little, move herself backwards. This means that we can no longer put her down for a nap on our bed without close monitoring, and that we need to keep an eye on her when she's playing on the floor. She's developed a knack for getting herself stuck under various pieces of furniture in the living room.

She rolls over all the time, and when she's holding a toy sometimes she'll slip off balance and roll again to her back. This is another of her primary modes of mobility.

I'm glad that the previous post here received such good feedback. It's not easy to get inside the mind of a baby, but I drew a little bit of inspiration from my school work. I had been busy working on a presentation on numerous letters between the Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, and Mittani kings of the 14th century BC (in the Amarna letters, discovered in Tell El-Amarna in Egypt).
Yesterday I had a presentation on the Tel-Dan Inscription from northern Israel (this is the one discovered in 1995 with the controversial "House of David" reference).

I know many of you would like to read more than I have time to write, and that much of what I do write isn't always what you want to read. To make up for this defficiency, I hereby post a link to numerous pictures of Her Babiness, that Holly put together a few days ago. Please go to the following link:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56174&l=c5df1&id=505921435

Oh yeah, and the Johnny-Jump-Up is a new thing for her too! We thought we'd have to wait until she was a month or so older... but she loves it!

Royal Memoir

2008-09-22T03:56:00.011+09:00

I, her cute babiness, Joelle I, do herein reflect upon these past 3 months of my reign as sovereign of all the known the world.

It is unknown what happened in the past, if there is such a thing, nor is it known how my people came to rule, but rule we have. Often I do see others of my people carried upon, pulled, and pushed by the tall servants who have served us from time out of mind. Why they do so, or how it began remains a mystery, it seems that our natural good looks and miniature figures have an emotionally binding effect. Often unknowns of the tall-types will stop and comment to my servants upon the fair features of their mistress and the good fortune of their servitude.

The tall-ones, especially my primary servants, suffer from a severe language barrier. They mumble sounds to one another and seem to have an understanding, but, as much as I enjoy their noises, I truly wish that they had the unmediated telepathy which I enjoy with myself. Even as I know my own thoughts and can distinguish clearly pleasure and pain, good and bad, happy and sad, they alas hear them not, and even when I try to make noises in their own style they routinely fail to remedy the issue. Usually with time and endurance they can be made to understand, but this requires serious labor on my own part, and my people have never been good with delayed-gratification. We are a simple people. We suffer none of the typical social issues: deceit, covetiousness, violence, lust, or greed. We know what we want, and want it now, that is all. Such basic concerns seem ungraspable by the tall ones.

It is very good for myself and my kind to have such servants. We find ourselves unable to do what we want, and the dependence is quite frustrating. My servants do well, yet I find reason for a severe distrust and I fear at any moment that they leave my sight.

A deep fear runs in my people, since (it is once believed) we were nearly hunted to extinction for our oil or other products (I have heard of such products as "baby oil," but as of now I doubt whether they are any longer made of baby). Abandonment or mutiny are never far from my mind as sovereign, and I must resort to various vocalic means to dissuade any semblance of such revolt. Two days ago, by their reckoning of time, they carried me to a number of "garage sales," at many of which I witness my own kind strapped or carried by their respective servants. All manner of fine baby goods were brought home for me, and although I enjoy such things, I fear that they made be used by my servants to restrain or support me in their absence (which I think is not an unfounded fear).

I find it difficult to be happy alone. Especially with nothing to look at or do. Small colorful objects, diddies, silly faces, music, and various forms of carrying please me... if only for a few moments.

A Day in the Life

2008-09-04T06:35:00.001+09:00

Life is very busy. I am starting life as a Ph.D. student at Emory University in Atlanta, in the Old Testament corner of the religion department. Holly and Joelle are finally here, and we've been working on getting the new place in shape. Some people have wanted to know school life is like. Over all, it's going to be really great. The vast majority of the professors in the department at great scholars and great people. Instead of telling any more, I thought I would simply cut-and-paste an email discussion that I (and all the other Hebrew Bible/Old Testament students were privy to). I have changed the names to protect identities, but I have not otherwise editing anything, neither adding nor subtracting. Here is what I found in my email box today:

Friends:

The Fall HB party will be at Chez Strawn (just south of the South Carolina border...just kiddin').

Please mark this important date on your calendar for Sept 28, 5pm. As always, spice (the plural of spouse), significant others, families, etc., are most welcome (please no Iguanas).

More details will follow very soon. We hope you can all make it and look forward to seeing you (t)here.

Best,

Prof1

Dear Prof1,

I want to register a deep dissatisfaction with your invitation. I strongly disapprove of your exclusion of Iguanas. You did not exclude dogs. You did not exclude cats (though I doubt many would wish to attend). But Iguanas are a very popular pet, and have an excellent disposition and a keen sense of humor, which you would realize if you read the comics in the AJC, where Percy the iguana in Foxtrot exemplifies these various admirable traits. Also, you betray a striking lack of cultural sensitivity, inasmuch as our beloved Southern playwright Tennessee Williams is the author of the acclaimed play Night of the Iguana. I think that one way that you could repair your deep insensitivity is to emend your invitation to include iguanas and indeed to rename this event as "The early evening of the iguanas."

Yours faithfully,

Prof2

Past president, iguana lovers of America.

Prof2 and Prof1,

Perhaps, based on this remarkable exchange, we should schedule a colloquium to discuss Anglican and Baptist readings (the two religious communities represented in "The Night of the Iguana" of the Hebrew Bible, with special attention to faunal life present in Job 40-41. Some scholars have suggested that Behemoth was really an iguana.

Prof3

Unless I can bring my Anglican Iguana to the party, I'm afraid I can't come. He's clean, he's green, get used to it! :-)

My goodness, beginning-of-year "stress" seems to be making us all a little silly!

(from Prof4)

Dear President Prof2:

Since it is an election year, please be assured that I did not mean to insult the Iguana lovers of America in any way shape or form. Somehow an inexperienced and now fired speech-writer inserted "iguana" when clearly what I meant to say was "ferret." So, no ferrets are allowed at the HB party but iguanas, in whatever color, or animals pretending to be or dressing as Iguanas are most welcome.

Ferrets, however, are straight out. Unless, of course, this too turns out to be an error from another inexperienced (and soon-to-be-fired) speech writer.

Yours in love of all things iguana,

Prof1

The Move Part 1: How the Quants came to America

2008-08-27T00:43:00.017+09:00

Traveling 7,000 miles with 200+ lbs. of luggage and a baby isn't easy. There are lots of options to choose from.

Babies can be checked. (thus the existence of the "My precious baby" bucket).

They can be a carry-on.

They can be carried on.

Or sometimes the airline will stow them for you.

We tried most of the above. Our friends Mami and Miyuki drove us to the train station as our neighbors waved goodbye. At the train-station we were met by the Nozawaminami Shogi club, our former care-takers, our pastor and his wife, another teacher from my school, and two of the members of my English club.

It was really great that so many people came to see us... and to help with our mountain of luggage. We didn't have a lot of time, and as we attempted to rush down the steps with said mountain, a number of friends, students, and colleagues--who had purchased tickets with the sole intent of waving goodbye to us from the platform--grabbed a suitcase or two each (or baby bucket) and helped sweep us along in a great tidal wave of humanity trying to both say goodbye one last time and keep us on schedule. It was pretty amazing. The last thing I saw after the door closed was two of my English club students waving at us through the window. The fast pulse and dripping of sweat continued for most of the next 4 hours.

We made it to Tokyo, and, a few paces at a time, continued to move Joelle and our mountain of pretty-much-everything-we-own (actually, it turns out we owned a whole lot more as I discovered the following week while cleaning out the houses of parents and in-laws). Joelle slept very well most of the journey and on the plane. We didn't have a lot of spare time at the airport since the local train that we had scheduled to take from Tokyo station to Narita airport (which is actually in Chiba, a fair distance outside of Tokyo) was over an hour late. I got the joy of getting to order at Makudonarudo (McDonald's) one last time in Japanese (of course they know English at the airport, but this was my last chance for probably a long time).

The plane ride was pretty plain. We sat and talked and took turns holding the baby. I didn't play video games or read books or watch movies or study or look out the window (we were in the very center)... it was a new flight experience for me. The 11-odd hours went by fairly fast, and the NW people connected a little bassinet in front of us which freed up the use of our hands and annulled the use of our train tables.

After arriving early, going to the bathroom, and being utterly ripped off by the state-side airport currency exchange, we met up with our family members and were taken off to Denny's (ironically the same Denny's we had been at directly before leaving MN for Japan). This pattern of living life in reverse continued for the next few days. Time was backwards, people walked and drove on the right side (at least other people did), and we had to remember how to order food in complete sentences instead of pointing and grunting.

My stint of re-adjustment went by very quickly and much of my short week-and-a-half was spent in re-claiming all of our stuff from storage (I don't think Holly's parents will know what to do will all the freed up crawl space... or my siblings who get to use their closets... for the first time). These newly re-acquired goods were packed into my parents' Durango, the gutted-out trailer-turned-jumbo-suitcase, and my new ride. In the spirit of Will Smith:

Old and Busted:

New hotness:

And of course "the suitcase." For the record, Joey and Jenna have mad packing skillz.

Joey and I drove down down pulling "the suitcase," while listening to a music playlist of our combined eclectic tastes... we listened to everything from Japanese rock and Spanish rap, to Christian Celtic Punk and re-mixed video game music for brass. We also finished off a whole little bottle of easy cheese, two and half boxes of pop-tarts, and some dangerously caffeinated drinks... such as the new varieties of Mountain Dew, Bawls Guarana (the Geek-drink of choice), and the unfortunately named "Cocaine" (which is not related to the illegal drug. Basically it's the equivalent of 2 RedBulls in one little can conjoined with the sensation of shaking a large amount of black pepper into your mouth). We stayed awake. We stayed on the road. We stopped only for food, gas, and lodging.

I have now been in the new dwelling in Georgia for over a week. I will write more about this later, and more still after Holly and Joelle join me on Labor Day (after Holly's friend's wedding). I have spent a lot of time reading books, getting lost in the city of Decatur, meeting people, and studying... yesterday I had my first departmental exam. It was a German translation exam that took me over four hours. I doubt I have ever felt as drained and fried as I did coming out of that. I won't even know for a good month or so if I passed or not. As there is a lot of scholarship I'll have to read in French and German, I'll also have to take a French competency exam sometime in the next year (after I learn to read French). In the fall of 2009 I'll have the big Hebrew exam, and next week I get to start learning to read Akkadian (a.k.a. Assyrian and Babylonian tablets in Cuneiform).

Japan was great. I put my little hidari-uma do-hicky on my new cell phone, I like looking at my various souvenirs, and I like getting email from the guys in the Shogi club, but Holly and I are glad to back in the states, and I'm glad to be getting back into school. I'm on campus right now, as that's the best way for me to use internet at the moment. Hopefully we'll be wired (and wireless) at home in the next week. Now I'm going to go home, get a coffee maker, and study Greek.

Brothers + Sisters = Siblings

Uncles + Aunts = ...inlkings? (not sure... I'm still working on it)

Fuzzy wuzzy was an uncle.

Taxes are done!

2008-08-02T21:18:00.002+09:00

At last our taxes are finally done and in the mail. Tomorrow we say goodbye to our church, and number of our friends. It's a little sad, but our time has come.
Things are coming together...

...but all we really want is a nice nap on a fully reclined Laz-Z-Boy.

We're Beat!

2008-08-01T08:06:00.007+09:00

Everyone, sorry for the delay in posting. On Monday the English club took me out to my favorite Shri Lankan restaurant (it was a bit spicy for some of them), and we had a nice farewell party. Tuesday night Holly and I had farewell parties with our respective colleagues. She went to an Italian restaurant (see picture below), and I was taken to a really fancy sushi restaurant. I've eaten a fair amount of sushi, so raw tuna, salmon, and octopus doesn't phase me, but I discovered that I can also handly soft shell crab and herring roe. The two challenges were new, but I finished them with no trouble and no ill effects: salmon roe and (raw) sea urchin. Our teachers gave us nice speeches, and Holly tells me that Joelle behaved fairly well (you never know how she'll be at restaurants). I shed a few more tears (the head of our department, who is shy and the least confident and competent in his spoken English read a really nice speech he had written for me. On Wednesday, my young, red-haired British replacement arrived, so I feel like my time is done. Good closure. Now it's getting easier to leave...

After out parents left, we began to have visits from ROUSes (yes Princess Bride fans, "Rodents of Unusual Size"). It took some effort, but they have been discovered, captured, and destroyed. There have been no more sightings or signs since. By the way, you can't put rats in the burnable garbage... nazumiyaki anyone?

Is that smoke coming out of Mt. Asama?

Let's get packing!

We still have to get everyone's insurance in order, we need to have our taxes in by August 15th (we want them finished before we leave), and we have a little more packing and cleaning.

Farewell to Nozawaminami (and Nozawakita)

2008-07-26T22:27:00.012+09:00

Friday was our final day at our schools. I’ll be back for about an hour of final cleaning and I’ll come in again later to show the new guy around, but the school term has ended and the students are on vacation.
Our mornings began with speeches in Japanese at the teachers’ meetings at our respective schools. I think both Holly and I did well, although we’ve been so busy we didn’t have a lot of time to practice. After the speeches, we both went home for a few hours to clean house and look after Joelle together. I also practiced parts of my longer speech for the afternoon all-school assembly.
After lunch, I returned to school, had my picture taken with various students who came to bring me notes or otherwise say goodbye. At 1:10am the assembly started and the principal led me up on stage and gave a long introduction about my education, future plans, and work and participation at the school. Then I gave my speech (which was a bit longer and more personal than my speech to Koumi, since I’ve spent about 4x as much time at Minami). The gym was really hot, and the flood of sweat helped hide the 2 or 3 tears I may have had when I left. Before I got down from the stage, two members of the student council met me and gave me a big bouquet of flowers and a fancy envelope containing 2,000 yen. These two boys then escorted me through the middle of my 840+ former students as I said my final ‘sayanora,’ and left the building. They escorted me all the way back to the English office. My care-taker Mrs. Kiuchi took some pictures of us (she's next to me in the picture below. Mr. Haketa is behind me).

I got a few nice comments on my speech from students and teachers (although I know I read so slowly and broke up numerous phrases in the wrong places that I’m sure it was difficult to listen to).
I spent some time cleaning out my desk and figuring out how to bring everything home. Mr. Haketa, who sits next to me in the English office and is in charge of the Shogi (Japanese chess) club gave me an official shogi tournament fan, a beautiful shogi board made of a single piece of kaya wood (the preferred material for such things) and several books from the great mountain that sits next to his desk.

Me and Ryo Shinohara playing Shogi on Thursday (on the new kaya board). He's one of the best players in the school, and one of the five I have never beaten and probably never will.

Later that afternoon, the Shogi club through a farewell party for me. They had written the schedule on the black board in typical Japanese event fashion, prepared short thank-you speeches in English, and brought tea, soda, and bunch of snacks. It was really fun. Mr. Haketa couldn’t make it since he had another meeting at the same time, but they did amazingly well. I was very flattered by all the work they had put into it for me. On Monday, I have another farewell party to look forward to—lunch with the English club—but this one will be hard to beat. I had had all of the Shogi club members sign the back of my board, so I held it with me in some of the pictures. It’s been a great year and I will really miss them.

On Friday, shortly before my final speech, I accidently broke the little mickey mouse glass that I had used everyday at school. I was sad to break it, but it kind of struck me as the end of an era. Likewise today I realized that the grocery store has just ceased stocking the cereal that we have eaten for breakfast nearly every morning of the past year. It’s time to move on I guess.
Friday night was the end of the term teachers’ party, and I gave another (much shorter) speech and enjoyed talking with other teachers and eating questionable or unidentifiable raw or barely cooked seafood. It was pretty good. The only thing I don’t really like about such parties is that they usually cost 5,000 yen (about $50), which is a lot more than Holly and I used spend on dinner together, but I paid it last night as well. This time however, at the dinner, the teachers union and the alumni society each presented me with cash gifts totaling… 5,000 yen.
On Monday the English club is taking me to the local Shri Lankan restaurant (one of my favorites), and Tuesday night the English teachers are taking me to a traditional sushi restaurant (and for once I won’t have pay… then I’ll know that I am officially out of the group).

While Holly was giving her speech in the afternoon, our neighbor Mrs. Joshita watched Joelle (who thankfully slept the whole hour). After school we stayed at the Joshitas for a little while to talk and have tea. They have two cute little girls who love to see Joelle. They've been really kind and helpful to us all year.

This weekend there is a local festival in the Nozawa area (Gion festival, if you’re interested). I had forgotten about it until I saw some of the roads closed off as I drove through the pouring rain of the thunderstorm on my way to the supermarket. The one thing that made my trip worth while (since they didn’t carry my cereal anymore) was that I saw about 7 of my former Minami students at the store (which is right by school). Several of them where all dressed up in kimono for the festival and wanted to take pictures with me. I didn’t have my camera, but thankfully every cellphone has a camera, so I had them also take a picture of us with my phone.

Holly is a little sad to leave as well. She will miss many things about Japan, and will reflect fondly on many things from this last year. I’m thankful that I had as great a time as I did. It’s been a really good year.

Babies of the world, Unite!

Good-bye Koumi High School

2008-07-22T21:42:00.006+09:00

Today was my last day at my visit school, Koumi High. I gave two speeches in Japanese (which I wished I would have practiced out loud a bit more, but they went well. Japanese or English texts available upon request). This is the next step of saying goodbye and preparing to move on to the next phase of life in two weeks.

Goodbye Koumi High. It's been fun.

Goodbye like-able trouble-makers.

Good Mr. Principal and Ms. Vice-principal. Thanks for the fan, and the green tea (respectively). It was fun talking with you today.

Goodbye fellow bus-riding students. I'll miss you. It's been fun. Masa-kun (the large half-Filipino boy), I'll miss chatting with you. Thanks for being my translator for all the other bus and train-riding students.

And girls, I know you enjoyed seeing all the baby pictures, but when the conductor had to come tell you to be quite (too much "Kawaii!!!" Japanese for 'cute') that was a little embarrassing. Take care! And guys, watch the stage diving onto the train seats, and please no more swinging on the arm holds.

Next time when we return to our previously scheduled program, I'll add more baby pictures, or just fill you in our latest troubles with R.O.U.S.s (and I didn't think they existed!).

Ueda Castle, Joelle, & the 6th Annual English Recitation Contest

2008-07-21T16:40:00.007+09:00

Holly's friend Leith has been in town with us, so we ventured out to Ueda (nearest big city) on Saturday. We had 3 good reasons to go to Ueda. First of all, our favorite Indian Restaurant. Second, we had never been to Ueda castle. Third Ueda has a Starbucks (Saku doesn't.... and it won't until the end of next month). (And fourth, John likes to hunt for old Super Nintendo games that never made it to the US, but that he used to read about in junior high).
Ueda castle is really just a cool looking gate with a shrine, a park, and a garden inside and a moat around it. We didn't know that... later we bumped into the other Ueda JETs at Starbucks... "Yeah... Ueda castle really isn't much of a castle." They told us. Oh well. The garden was gorgeous and we had fun walking around. Lunch at Jaipur was great, starbucks was good, (and John finally found a cartridge of Seiken Densetsu 3, the Holy Grail of good-games-that-were-never-imported-and-now-are-still-really-rare).

Joelle is continuing to go through a cute spurt, and every once in a while she'll sleep for a long time. Not always though. On Sunday she wore the cute pink dress from Grandma Quant.

Most of my "other" time (not teaching, not at home, not traveling, etc.) has been preparing to host the English recitation contest at my school. Over 40 students from 7 high schools came. None of my students made it to the finals, but Holly's students took home the team trophy (see first picture below). Second place individual went to a student from my visit school, and third went to one of Holly's students who had made us lunch (and later come over for scrabble). I was happy that not only all the English club members, but also 5 other students from my school decided to participate (see bottom picture for my and Minami students). It's been busy meeting with all of them to practice, and I could probably quote the Gettysburg Address, Lou Gehrig's Farewell to baseball, and a few others. It's nice to be done. Oo tsukari sama deshitta! (It's been a long day!

Tomorrow is my last day at Koumi. Friday is my last day at Nozawaminami High... I'm going to be crying all weekend, maybe I can write again when I recover from that. I've really liked my job.

Short Greetings

2008-07-12T17:31:00.003+09:00

All is well here. My mom is with us for a few more days, I have only two more weeks of class, and we're down to 3 weeks and four days until we leave Japan. I've been getting a lot of great good-bye notes from students, and maybe I'll manage to post some of them later. I'll be really sad to leave, but I'm also excited to see everyone again in MN and for all the new things in the future. Time is flying, Joelle is growing, and we're doing well. Love to you all.

Visits from the Grandparents and School Festivals

2008-07-06T17:47:00.002+09:00

It's been a crazy few weeks. Both my school and Holly's former school have had their school festivals this weekend which are major events for the students. There are games, activities, food to eat (cooked and sold by students), demonstrations by clubs and classes, and numerous other things which the students have been preparing for hours every day for the past few weeks. Also, last week Holly's parents and younger sister stayed with us and were an amazing help. It was fun to see them here and they helped us a lot with Joelle. Last week they went with us to church (Joelle's first sunday there... see the group shot of our Church).

Today my mom came on the train with her friend Shoko. They came with my to my school festival and then we went home to see the baby. Shoko is on her way home, and mom is still enjoying her big afternoon hold-the-sleeping-new-grandchild marathon and is doing great. I'm going to get up and make a salad in a few minutes. Yesterday we watched a play of "Alice in Wonderland" performed by the English club from NozawaKita (Holly's school).

Also, on Tuesday we went to the US Embassy again and got all of Joelle's passport documents submitted. She was wearing her "All American Baby" t-shirt. Unfortunately, the "All American Baby" T-shirt says "Made in China" on the tag. Clearly we have an All-American Baby, made in Japan.

Home from the Hospital

2008-06-27T07:03:00.007+09:00

On Wednesday I brought Holly and Joelle home from the hospital. It's been good to have them home. Holly's parents arrived in Saku an hour later, so after I took Holly and Joelle home I turned right around to pick them up. It's been really busy, and I've been feeling spread pretty thin with hosting, teaching, planning the recitation contest, and thinking about our return to the US in less than 6 weeks. Things are busy, but things are good. Joelle is sleeping in slightly larger blocks, Holly is feeling worn out but she has more support now with her folks here. I'm off for a trip to Nagano today for the JET leavers conference (affectionately referred to as "Disorientation"). Holly's parents are going to Matsumoto today to see the Suzuki Talent Education school that Dr. Shinichi Suzuki founded. All is well, and we'll send more news and pictures as it comes. Tuesday we plan to go to the US Embassy again to request Joelle's passport.

She can sleep!

2008-06-22T13:33:00.007+09:00

Although we doubted it somewhat at 9pm, 10pm, 11:30pm, midnight, 1:30am, and whenever it was she finally went down (after I held her and hummed the "Jesus loves the little children" through "the Nozawaminami High school song" medley for about an hour). Here are a few more shots. Holly and I finally got some sleep, as Joelle slept for over 5 hours! Holly still needs more rest, but she sent me home to rest, recoup, and update... after all when she gets too tired I'm on for daddy-duty.

The note on her little bed (I call it her baby-bucket) says,
"Omedito Gozaimasu Hori Kuanto" (Congratulations Holly Quant). The numbers 20-6-20 are the date of birth: 20 Hesei (2008), 6th month (June), 20th day.
16th hour 3 minutes (i.e. 4:03pm), 3,340 grams, and the two signs in the box on the right say that she's a baby girl. The shirt she's wearing says "Asama General Hospital" (in English).

Asama Hospital provides "Goon" brand diapers... too bad these weren't invented in time for my brothers.

Two Words: More Pictures!!

2008-06-21T14:38:00.011+09:00

Everyone wants more pictures. I'll also add a few more details. 3.34 kgs translates to about 7 pounds 6 ounces. The hospital and staff have been amazing. We were really blessed to have a nurse on duty yesterday whose English was really good, and that helped a lot. We've gotten to have Joelle in our room with us and I got to hold her almost right away after the initial cleaning and weighing. Last night I brought a futon from home (yes, the English word "futon" is a loan-word from Japanese. Fu tone), which I realized was not a very good one since the support was really uneven... oh well, it's easier to get up from an uncomfy bed every hour. Holly got some sleep finally and she took a good nap today as well. Joelle had her first bath today (yesterday they just washed her off), and a few good bowel movements. She took a nice long nap after her bath (like 3 hours! that's the most she's sleep since she was born). I'm heading back to the hospital in a little bit for yet another night. I just come home for brief periods of the afternoon to eat, shower, and update everyone. The nurses bring food for Holly, and she can use the showers at the hospital... I sleep on a futon on the floor, and ate 3 oranges for breakfast-lunch. Oh well, Holly's been through a lot more (altough sitting on a hard, short stool for 24 hours and watching your spouse scream and moan in pain isn't exactly a picnic). It's really great to be this far, and I'm so glad this happened during the days I was taking off for vacation... other times would have been much worse. Thank you everyone for you emails, prayers, and congratulations. Sometime I'll figure out how to clip and post video files, but it may take a few weeks. That's all for today.

Unto Us a Child is Born -- and it's a Girl!!

2008-06-20T20:26:00.004+09:00

Hey everyone, we had a baby. Here's the short version (usually I like to give everything but I'm on 3 hours of sleep):
About 12 after Dr. Aoki scheduled induction for June 25th, labor began with a vengeance. We knew it would take a while so we did house work, read, and played games for 12 hours before going into the hospital at 3pm (Holly has been up since 3am on Thursday and has not sleep a wink up till the present moment, so I need to get back to the hospital ASAP). Anyhow, we checked into the hospital at 3pm on Thursday and gave birth at 4:03pm on Friday. During that time I got 3 hours of sleep, and Holly got zilch). All went well, and after her water broke at 11:30am, we moved into the delivery room and after several more hours, our daughter was born. Without further ado, I'm pleased to announce that at 4:03pm on Friday June 20th (Tokyo time), Joelle Hope Quant was born, weighing 3.34 kilograms. Holly is recovering well, and I'm going to spend another night at the hospital.

If you are interested: the baby started sucking right away, she reacts to our voices very well, and is precious and sweet. The name Joelle is feminine version of the name Joel (rhymes with Noelle) and has the same meaning (i.e. YHWH, the God is Israel is God. The name Elijah reverses the theophoric elements, "God is YHWH (the God of Israel)." More to come later! Thanks for your prayers, everyone!

P.S. Holly didn't want me to include any pictures with her in them, but the truth is that she looked amazing for someone following 37 hours of hard labor. In the picture you can tell who is crazily excited (and on 3 hours of sleep) and which two ladies just completed a very difficult task.

How Long?

2008-06-19T12:41:00.002+09:00

We've been cleaning the house like mad yesterday and today. I've acquired many pelts, scalps, and felts of dust bunnies (which seem to grow larger and multiply more quickly than the US variety). We've thrown out tons of old junk and garbage the last few days, and the house is beginning to feel cleaner and emptier.
Yesterday (Wednesday the 18th) we had another doctor's visit at the hospital. Everything checked out ok, the baby hadn't dropped yet, and if she doesn't come naturally in the next week the doctor suggested induction on or around the 25th.
Holly was given a non-stress test, and two small contractions did show up (but apparently they haven't been strong enough to feel). So the baby could still come anytime from now to another week or so. Personally we've hoping the sooner the better. Holly's parents are coming to visit next week, and I happen to be taking some vacation this week (while my students have W-Fri tests). We'll write more soon, I'm sure. The time draws close but is not yet. I do really feel the count-down now... things are being packed up, we are corresponding with our successors, family are coming to visit, and my Emory student ID was activated along with my school email account, yesterday. Wow... life is just about to shift a few different gears.

All the Big News

2008-06-15T21:17:00.002+09:00

It's been a busy week. Last weekend was the prefecture-wide English camp at Karuizawa (the famous resort city, also home to many missionaries and missions agencies). I had spent the previous two weeks working a lot with my English club students on their presentation. All the English clubs in Nagano were supposed to present on some legend, myth, or folktale (couldn't be anything Japanese, couldn't be based on a Disney movie). My students presented on Aesop's "The North Wind and the Sun." The students from Holly's school did a nice section of "Alice in Wonderland," a larger version of which they will perform (as a play) during their school festival next month. One highlight for many at the English camp is that all the foreign English teachers (i.e. from the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, England, etc.; your truly included) were given squirt guns to use on any students who whispered or spoke their native language. I was a little troubled by the idea of shooting people for not speaking my language, but the overall tenor of the camp (and the fact that all the students are members of English clubs and want to be there practicing) and a few conversations with students convinced me that it was all in good fun (so I did unload my piece on a few of them). Here's a picture of me and my students in Karuizawa:

A few weeks ago was Holly's last lesson with her violin student. There's a family that we met around Christmas time, and Holly has been giving a few violin lessons to one of the girls for the last several months (I usually get to entertain the two younger siblings outside for about 30 minutes).

A few weeks ago we had two of Holly's student over. Previously (in March?) they had held a little party for Holly and cooked Okonomiyaki at Nozawakita High School. In return, we invited them over for tacos and scrabble. They actually did pretty well. Here I am with them at Holly's school:

Now here's the Scrabble picture from our house:

Now June 15^th is almost at an end. The 14^th of course was Holly's due date, but still the baby tarries. To fill the time yesterday, we went for a long walk, worked on our taxes (we've almost reached the point in the year where we can send in our taxes, to qualify for the US-tax exemption we have to have been in the country for 330 days, which means we filled for extensions as all 1^st year JETs from the US have to do), cleaned the bathroom, gave me a hair-cut, and a did various other cleaning and cooking. I also finally got the scooter running and went for a short little joy-ride through the neighborhood. Today after church we spent the afternoon and evening cleaning the living room. We took everything off the book shelf and out of the back closets and scrubbed away all the dust. We've been throwing tons of junk away that has accumulated over the decades of JETs living in the house. There are some nice things that will stay with the house, for example the Japanese doll in the living room that you can see in the Scrabble picture, a number of books, several movies, and some games. We also found out this week who will be replacing us. A Hispanic girl who is a recent graduate from Berkeley (and Japanese major) will be replacing Holly and inheriting our house. An equally young British dude from the University of Leeds (theatre major) will be getting my desk and students and living the house owned by my school (which I have never actually seen). His birth date was in 1986… boy did that make me feel old… wow.

This past week I finished the final exam for the Greek refresher course I've been taking (getting in shape for returning to school in the fall). Now my next major projects (outside of all the excitements and joys of new fatherhood, of course), will be organizing and hosting the Nagano prefecture English recitation contest next month. I also have to start studying for my German reading exam which will be at 10am on August 25^th (and I haven't looked at German in over a year and a half). The good news is that I've scheduled some vacation this week and I'll only be at work tomorrow (Monday) morning and all-day Tuesday. If the baby cometh on either of those days I'll just have to ditch out early. If she comes at any other times, I should be home and able to take Holly to the hospital. We haven't had any contractions or new signs yet. For the most part things just continue as normal, and I run the risk of forgetting. This morning as we drove in to the parking lot, one of the guys from church said "Uh-oh. You're here… that's not good." Of course, I didn't realize he was implying that we should be at the hospital recovering and connecting with the baby, I simply replied, "Uh… yeah. Likewise."

Much more to come in the future, but for now that's all the big news and some of the best (somewhat) recent pictures I have to throw at ya.

The US Embassy and Ginza

2008-05-28T14:17:00.001+09:00

We’re always at least a week behind on posting… sorry. We’ve been in the midst of trying to buy a condo in Atlanta, and it looks now as if that isn’t going to work out (more on that another time). Last week, we went to Tokyo to get a power of attorney form notarized and sent to Atlanta. It was a really big hassle. I had to take a day off work and skip my visit school, and we had to find someone who could be our “unofficial” witness on the form (the form required our signatures, the official notary, and the unofficial witness. The embassy specifically states in their policies that they will not sign as your witness beyond the actual notarizing). We tried to contact everyone we could think of in Tokyo, and finally had to buy an extra ticket and take a friend from church along.

The US Embassy is different from what I expected… a whole lot of embassy and not enough US. For starters, most of the people working there are Japanese, and the ones working security didn’t speak English all that well. On the street that goes to the Embassy, a policeman will stop and ask you where you are going. When you tell him “the American Embassy,” he will ask “and why do you go to American Embassy?” at this point you tell him several times in different ways, wait while he talks on his walkie-talkie, then nudge the Japanese-speaking friend you brought along to clear things up.

Security was reminiscent of most airports: remove all electronic and metallic items, put certain things in a baggy, get wanded, and wait in line (not necessarily in that order). We made it through, got our form witnessed, signed, and notarized, and departed after collecting our cell phones (and forgetting our lunch… I had to go back for it later… and explain to the new policeman on duty why I was going to the US embassy). After that, we moved on to phase 2… FedX.

Thankfully FedX wasn’t too far away. We stopped at the Starbucks on the way to sit down, scheme, and be caffeinated (you need then when you had to get up early to catch a 6:30am train). FedX looked like a normal FedX, same services, same advertisements, but, like the embassy, a little short on English speakers (which is only a little strange for Tokyo. The people were very helpful, just nervous). By this time, my friend Rob had left to take care of some other things, so we were on our own. We managed to get the stuff copied, faxed, and mailed. Our ability to generally communicate in some Japanese isn’t that terrible, but I think I tipped the cashier off the wrong way when I gave her completely wrong change after we used the copy machine. It was around the middle of our time at FedX I realized that we had left our lunch with the embassy security. After reclaiming our lunch, which was a few sandwiches, a bottle of water, a bag of peanuts, and some chocolates (yes, otherwise we probably would have just left it there), we hoped on the subway and headed to Ginza.

Ginza is the major shopping district of Tokyo, and is often compared to 5^th avenue (wherever that is… NY?). Anyhow, Ginza was my idea since I figured it probably had a good selection of restaurants and would be a fun place to walk around for a few hours before going home. The name of the place actually means “silver mint,” and was originally the site of early coin making operations. “Gin,” is the usually word for silver (see previous posts on the temple “Gin-kakuji” in Kyoto and the Shogi piece “Gin-sho”), but the “za,” is an apparently rare and little known sign. Everyone in Japan is familiar with Ginza, but I had to ask several teachers and have one of them consult the big encyclopedia before I learned what the name meant. In Ginza we found a Quiznos, and promptly left off on our food searching. Neither of us had had a sub-sandwich in a long time, and it was probably a lot cheaper than most places around. Unbeknownst to me (wow! Spell checker is ok with ‘unbeknownst’!), we walked right by the largest Shogi store in the world and was kicking myself the next day when I found out. I did get to look at a small store that worked on and sold katana (traditional Japanese swords, not the long samurai ones, but the shorter straight ones like Leonardo the ninja turtle used to use). I also—by complete accident—wandered into the 6^th floor of an otherwise un-noteworthy bookstore and found myself surrounded by Greek and Hebrew Lexica (and Aramaic, Latin, and Akkadian), shelf upon shelf of commentaries, and a host of really esoteric and expensive Biblical studies related books (like the ones from people’s dissertations that four people read, and the other existing copies wind up the libraries of about 20 universities and seminaries). The Japanese Bible society happens to be on the same floor as this store, and I’m sure it is the only one of its kind in the whole country. Holly had sat down to rest for a while and during those 20 minutes that I wandered around alone I looked at the Katana store, found the Bible society and near-by bookstore, and looked at some fountain pens (I’ve always admired fountain pens, and after reading more recently I’m determined to switch over as soon as I can afford a semi-decent one and use up the host of pens I have… I’ll save my thoughts on the beauty and advantages of fountain pens for later. Some good information is available at: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/pens/ ).

Anyhow, as I wandered back to meet up with Holly, I heard a commercial on one of the larger TV-monitors on a tall, nearby building. It was an advertisement for a radio program. There was a list of Japanese rock bands (several of which I recognized, since my students sometimes write about their favorite bands, like ‘Bump of Chicken,’ ‘Maximum the Hormone,’ and ‘Radwimps’ just to name a few). Well, first, I’ll give you some background. I spent a good chunk of my last two classes, two weeks ago Monday, working with a fellow teacher to explain to students how to differentiate the sound differences of L and R. Japanese has no such distinction so the closest letters they have fall somewhere in the middle. This leads to the inevitable, “Have a nice fright,” “Let’s go eat lice for lunch (runch?),” “I helped my father mow the glass,” “the sun is very blight today,” etc. Now, back to the previously scheduled commercial. The name of this program was “School of Lock!” I almost laughed out loud when I heard the accent-free American sounding announcer voice repeat it again in the background—“School of Loooooock!” The picture that came up on the screen had the logo, which features a nice picture of a big keyhole, so you know it’s no accident. I almost cracked up. It’s one thing when Japanese people make R/L mistakes, it’s another thing when it’s done on purpose. For those of you who have to see for yourself, at either Google or Google Japan you can search for “School of Lock” and then either click the Wikipedia link or click image search.

In other news, Holly is on her maternity leave and is in good health. The baby (whose name will not be too easy to pronounce for native Japanese speakers), seems to be doing well. She’s still kicking up a storm, and, according to the doctor continues to stay head-down (which is good). The due date is June 14^th, so it’s down to 2½ weeks (or less?). There is a prefecture-wide English camp the weekend before the 14^th, but I’m going to try to get out of going to all of it. Currently I’m helping the English club with their presentation for English camp. This year the presentation theme is “Myths, Legends, and Folklore.” My club members decided to tell the story of the sun and the North wind (from Aesop’s fables), so we’re in the midst of assembling their own translation. They’ll have to give a 5-7 minutes presentation about the historical context of the fable, its plot and moral. I’m supposed to help them do this in PowerPoint.

The weather has gotten nice, and we are enjoying a short span of needing neither heat nor AC. I quit wearing a coat to school about a week ago, and this week I switched to short-sleeves. The rice-farmers continue to all stay on the same schedule. They flooded the rice fields on basically the same day (which made it look as if we were surrounded by lakes for about 2 weeks), and now they’ve been inserting the little rice plants (which they grow first in dense clumps in green-houses, and then transplant to the fields by machine). With the influx of water, the frogs have multiplied and the evening is now filled with their constant croaking. We also have some distinct birds. I’m not sure if they’re cuckoos, but they makes some similar sounds. They drive Holly nuts. Also, I think the sun has been rising very early. I’ve been getting up regularly close to 5:30am and it’s always been 4-6 inches above the horizon… I haven’t seen a sunrise in a while.

Too Much Information

2008-05-08T16:20:00.002+09:00

Well folks, as the old poem says, “Spring has sprung, the grass is ris’ / I wonder where the flowers is.” I’ve made it a point to not teach that to any of my students. The conjugation of the verb “to be” causes enough problems for them as it is.

Well, the weather is warm, the snow has melted off the top of our local volcano, the new school year is in full swing, and we are in the midst of my least favorite season. I don’t want to offend all you Spring-lovers out there. I mean, seriously, the flowers are beautiful, the weather is nice, the birds are singing outside, the cicadas aren’t singing outside (yet), and the huge spider hasn’t re-built her web on the side of our house (yet). All that said, I find that spring is the most stressful season of the year. Even during this year where I am not a student, I find there’s still a build up of extra worries, and the spring fever of good weather breaks your resolve to accomplish even half of what you need to do.

In past years I’ve often had juggling performances in April, coupled with taxes and final papers. This time we are 5 weeks and 2 days away from our baby’s due date, we are trying to coordinate our flights home (and hoping the baby’s passport will arrive in time), we are in the midst of buying a condo in Atlanta (where we will move in mid-August), and due to being out of the country our taxes have had to be extended so that we qualify for various treaties and exemptions (which also means that we still have to fill out all the paper-work which most of you finished ages ago). We have at least two trips to the US Embassy in Tokyo coming up (one to get housing paper-work notarized at the embassy, another with the baby to request her first passport), and I’ll probably have at least one more Tokyo run before final trip home. Oh yeah, plus our normal jobs.

This last week was “Golden Week,” which is a series of 4 national holidays in a row (so we did a nice little break from work). Most of the other assistant English teachers in our area went on vacation to various parts of Japan or nearby countries. We stayed home, went for walks, and now that the cold weather is gone I was able to scrub away most of the mold and mildew from the shower room that had accumulated over the last 4 months. We’ve also been playing a fair amount of Scrabble and Chess lately.

* * *

Many of you have asked if we have a name picked out for the baby yet. The answer is yes, we do. We’ve been pretty certain of the name for about the last 3 months or more, but we want to keep it a secret until she is actually born (if she turns out to be a he, we will give him a different name than the one we are currently planning on for her). Until then you’ll just have to wait, and we’ll have to keep being careful not to say her name by mistake (it gets hard, though). You can rest assure that it’s not an overly-used name that everyone has (although there’s nothing with such names, right my fellow Johns?), nor is it as obscure or exotic as I might have picked without the voice of reason (actually, her name is Holly, ‘Reason’ is more of a role we take turns playing… This time it was her turn).

The due date is 5 weeks from Saturday, and Holly is down to 6 more days of work, counting tomorrow (Friday). She’s been well, but the baby is getting larger and causing more discomfort by the day. The time draweth nigh. (Hmm… spell check is fine with “nigh” but not with the archaic past-tense. Alas, whatever shalt I do?). (I know what you are thinking, and the answer is “No, I do not teach my students archaic verb conjugations… although I have written out the paradigms for several teachers).
That’s really it for most of the news. There’s tons to tell, but most of it isn’t really “news.” In closing I’ll share a little from my early April task: grading student’s journals.
The new 2nd graders (juniors/11th graders) were supposed to write 10 days worth of journal entries during the 3 week break between the school years in March. Many of them wrote a full page per day. The math is pretty straightforward: 6 classes of 40 students (some may have 39) many of whom wrote 10 full pages of high school Engrish equals more than 2,000 pages to read and grade. Some of it was great, some journals were unintelligible, and others were enlightening (I learned about “the profundity” of Japanese cartoons and was encouraged to hear that one of my students would slack off no more, but instead would do her homework “more premeditatively.” It’s good to know they are using their dictionaries.)
Some of the highlights of reading student journals are the mistakes or strange sentences you find. Often I can tell from context or experience what the mistake was. For example, one student told me about going shopping at the local sporting goods store with her friends. “We saw snowboard gods. I want to go snowboarding.” I don’t blame her. The second sentence is remarkably good since most of my students still write “play snowboard” (in Japanese it would the same construction as “play baseball,” “play soccer/golf/chess/etc.”). What she meant to say was “snowboard goods,” (i.e., equipment, but the default word students know for talking about equipment, items, or stuff tends to be “goods.”) Another student wrote about how he loves to cook. He told me about many kinds of vegetables, and at the end he finished with the sentence, “Please eat a lot of teachers!” I showed this journal to one of the other teachers and told him, “I have my instructions, you’ve been warned.”
In Japanese, pronouns are not commonly used, so often I will often get sentences like “Does a teacher like ~?” (which is a question directed to me, “Do you like ~?”). In the sentence above I think the student meant to say “Please eat a lot of vegetables!” but accidentally switched ‘teacher’ (the understood subject ‘you’) with the object. I could be wrong, but this how I made sense of it. Maybe he really does want me to go on a cannibalistic rampage through the school, but I try to the benefit of the doubt. There are times, however, when you simply must accept what is written without gloss, amendment or re-construction… another student told me of her trip to Tokyo Disneyland. “We saw Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck.” Good so far. Next sentence: “I want to bite Donald’s buttocks.” I won’t even try to explain it because I can’t. I have a bad feeling that it means exactly what it says.
Donald Duck, beware of students. Teachers of the world, you’d better run too. I have my instructions.

Long Time

2008-04-27T22:12:00.004+09:00

Ok, everyone I know we haven't written in a while, so here's a quick update just so you all know that we're alive and well. A month ago I officially accepted the offer from Emory, so we've been working on figuring out Atlanta housing and we'll write more on that later. The new school year has begun, and is now in full swing. The baby is doing well and is still plenty active kicking and moving around despite becoming larger and larger every week. The sakura, "Cherry blossoms," have come and are now on their way out. The above picture is of a park near our house where we went walking last weekend after we returned from a pre-parenting class at Asama Hospital (one of our missionary friends went with us to translate). The English club has a few new members and I'm back to putting some time in with them once or twice a week. My school will be hosting a recitation contest in July and before that in the beginning of June there will be an English camp that hopefully I'll be able to attend and help out at before we have the baby. Holly is down to her last three weeks before maternity leave, so it won't be long until she's free to write more.

Last week my new shogi board and pieces came (shogi is sometimes translated as "Japanese Chess" and it is a descendant of the same earlier strategy game as Chess is. This can be especially seen through the same strange L-shaped "jump" move that knight-piece has in both games). I still play shogi regularly with the club at my school almost every week, and I will really miss the regular practice in the future. I still think that Chess is aesthetically superior, but in terms of playing and strategy I have to say that shogi wins hands down (there are more pieces, most of them can be promoted, and most importantly, captured pieces can be brought back into play by their captor which eliminates most of the frustrating draws of Chess). Besides, the slower mobility of most pieces necessitates more complicated defensive structures (in the picture of my set, the lower side has its king protected by the famous and ever-popular "Yangura castle" and the top side is "Ginkan" ("Silver-crown"). I played against several of the new freshmen on Friday before the welcome party for the new English teachers (both Holly and I have a few new teachers to work with, and she has a new caretaker who is wonderful). Anyhow, the first student I played was a bit too good. He won both games against me (the first we both played Yangura, I broke his defense down, but he got all my offensive pieces and then it was only a matter of time; the second was better and I might have won if I had been paying more attention and had not my most powerful piece... twice). I'm up to about 6 wins and somewhere too close to 40 loses (not counting all the playing I've done against the computer... which sometimes drives Holly crazy). Ok. Enough of that. It's getting late now and I'm about to turn in. If there are any crazy misspelling in this post, I apologize and we'll try to clean them out later. More to come in the future, but it may be another week. Kyotsukete! (Take care!)

Envelopes of Various Sizes

2008-03-19T17:29:00.004+09:00

Well, let's start with the bad news. Last weekend I received 'the small envelope' from the University of Notre Dame (small envelopes always indicate rejections... acceptance info and forms come in a large envelope), and about a week or so previous to that I heard through the Yale electronic system that I wouldn't be going there either. So that was 2 of the 3 Ph.D. programs to which I had applied. I wasn't really surprised, since both are really competitive and since I hadn't heard anything until that point, I assumed the worst.

On the positive side, I did get nice big envelopes from Gordon-Conwell Theological seminary and from the University of Cambridge. I had applied to the former for an M.Div as a possibility, and I've been taking a distance Greek course for the last few weeks which has been great. At the latter, I was accepted for a year of study leading to an M.Phil... but I heard a few months ago that I had not won a Gates-Cambridge trust fund, and without the Micro$oft money it wouldn't be financially feasible. It was still fun to get the big envelopes.

That leaves Emory. After my interview in Atlanta, I believe I reported a few posts ago that I was not among the initial chosen (they took 3 out of the 5 of us). I was a little bummed, and we've been dreaming and scheming plan A, B, etc. A few weeks ago, however, I heard that one of the 3 had chosen to go to a different school, and that there was a good chance of my getting that open slot. Well folks, today I received an email (sent about 11pm 3/18/08 US time) offering me admission! Holly and I are thrilled. On the one hand, its a great program, and on the other between cost of living, proximity to a decent sized city, airport, and a variety of other factors make it really appealing. I still need to actually receive the big envelope, sign and return the various forms, but at this stage it looks like we'll be off to Atlanta at the end of August (a few weeks after out return from Japan).

There was no Room in the Inn

2008-03-17T17:25:00.012+09:00

Hello Everyone! This is only my second post. We have kept busy with our jobs and the months have flown by! I thought it was time for me to fill in a few details on how life is going here in Japan...

As most of you know, we are expecting a baby in June! We are both excited about becoming parents and are sure our lives will be filled with many adventures because of it. Of course, one obvious reason for this is that we are planning to have the baby in Japan. Overall, things are going rather well. With the language and cultural differences, however, there have been a few interesting situations that we’ve found ourselves in.

In Japan, GP’s or family doctors are very rare. In fact, there are very few clinics for general care as we know it. Instead, everything is located in one big hospital with many specialists. Thus, if you are sick with anything from a cold to the flu, the first place you go is the hospital. This is a bit of an adjustment for those of us who tend to think of hospitals being for extreme illnesses, requiring surgical intervention, etc. Anyway, the ladies at church recommended that I go to the hospital ASAP for a checkup. Of course, I didn’t know which hospital to go to, since there are three main hospitals within 30 minutes drive of where we live. Also, I was really hoping to find a good doctor who could speak English. After doing some research, our church friends were able to find a doctor at Asama Hospital who could speak English nearly fluently. This was a huge blessing! This hospital also happened to be within easy access of our house (only 10-15 minutes drive) with a brand new building! I was thrilled!

For the most part, the medical system in Japan is set up on a first-come/first-serve, or walk-in, basis. I think it is different for those who receive long-term care. At least for new patients, with first-time visits to a hospital, you are not allowed to make an appointment. Instead, you have to get there as early as possible before they stop taking patients’ names, which is usually around 11:00 a.m. Your wait then depends on the number of patients who arrived before you. Thankfully, a lady from our church was willing to go with me to help translate and fill out paper work... and wait. Even though we got there at 10:00 a.m., we only waited about 1.5 hours before seeing the doctor. This was surprisingly fast, since at some hospitals you can expect to wait as many as 4 hours. Since I couldn’t make an appointment, however, I wasn’t able to see the English-speaking doctor at this first visit.

In Japan, prenatal doctor visits tend to center around the ultrasound test (more on that later). Thus, via ultrasound, the doctor confirmed that I was indeed pregnant! I couldn’t wait to bring home the picture (which at 7 weeks didn’t quite look like a baby yet) to show John and tell him the news. We later met up and celebrated with a little cake at the local grocery store… All went well at the appointment until I was informed by the doctor (through translation) that I could not have my baby at Asama hospital. That’s right! In late October, the hospital already knew that they were full for the month of June! Astonished, I was assured that I could continue to have my regular check-ups at Asama, but that I was just not able to give birth there. Of course, I was disappointed. However, the good news kind of outweighed the bad at that point and delivery seemed rather far off. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if that’s where I wanted to have my baby, so I didn’t let it bother me too much. At least I could still have my appointments with Dr. Aoki, the one who could speak English. It did remind me of how Mary in the Bible must have felt, though, when she and Joseph were looking for a place to stay. There was no room in the inn, so they had to give birth to Jesus in a stable.

I had never heard of a hospital turning away an expectant mother 7 1/2 months before she was due… or ever, for that matter. Of course, I had my suspicions as to the cause. I wondered if it was because I was a “gaijin”, a term often used to describe any non-Japanese person. Perhaps there was only room for Japanese women at this hospital. I also wondered if the common trend to keep mothers in the hospital for up to a week after a normal, healthy delivery was the cause for their shortage of beds during the month of June. In some ways, it felt like being turned away from a bed & breakfast, rather than a medical facility. Perhaps if I had visited the hospital the moment I suspected I was pregnant, or even before, I could have made a reservation. Gradually, however, I began to understand the current situation in Japan, which helped me gain some perspective.

Right now, Japan has a surprisingly low birth-rate, i.e. the population is not growing fast enough to replace itself. Some studies have even shown that at its current rate, the population will decline to nearly half by the year 2100. To add to this problem, the number of OBGYN’s is in rather short supply. Just recently, a hospital in Ueda City (about an hour drive from us) completely closed their birthing (and OBGYN?) department, causing a rush of patients towards the hospitals in our area. I also learned that there were some Japanese women who were turned away from Asama hospital before I even stepped foot in the door. On a similar note, since hospitals seem to be very specialized and there is a shortage of doctors, there have even been cases of ambulances being turned away from the emergency room if the right doctor is not on hand to treat the specific case of the patient.

Well, needless to say, the women at church began to worry about me not having made a reservation at any hospital. I wasn’t in too big of a rush, because I wanted to be able to ask all of my questions and make sure I had some say in how things were done. I was also dragging my feet because the other two options for hospitals didn’t excite me very much. One hospital was a little too far away and didn’t have any English speaking doctors; the other one was much bigger , but was also known for being overcrowded. Well, finally, one of our missionary friends agreed to go with me to check out both of these places. The first hospital we visited left me feeling as though I never wanted to step foot in it again. At first, we couldn’t even find a parking spot. Cars were lined up in what seemed like a big field with no designated lines. The outward appearance of the building was rundown and uninviting. As we made our way through the hallways into the main waiting area, we saw what seemed to be over 100 patients waiting to be seen, many of whom were wearing masks (a common sight in Japan). Finally, we made our way to the front desk to inquire about my situation. Though they said that they would have room for me because I was already being seen at Asama, I felt that this was not where I wanted to give birth. To make matters worse, I was later told the doctor in charge of the OBGYN section of this hospital was not very popular and was known to be a drill sergeant. I hoped for better results at the next hospital.

Perhaps because it was after 11:00 a.m., we were able to find a parking spot with ease at the next hospital. The front entrance of the hospital was much more welcoming, as it had been newly renovated. In fact, it seemed that a good portion of the hospital had received a makeover during the past few years. With a much cozier feel, I felt that this was surely a better choice than the previous hospital we had visited. We inquired about the availability for June and were told that they did, in fact, still have room. However, as we began to discuss the language barrier, their welcome turned into a recommendation to go to the hospital we had just come from. Even with the possibility of bringing a translator along to my appointments, they thought it would be better for me to go elsewhere. This left me feeling as though I were back to square one. Our missionary friend apologized for not being able to help me find anything better and recommended that I plead my case one more time at Asama, especially after being turned away from the one hospital due to the language barrier.

As Providence would have it, John and I had been attempting to meet with some Japanese ladies for English conversation practice for several months. Until this point, we had been unable to work anything out between our schedules. Finally, we were able to meet with them for the first time! As we introduced ourselves over tea and rice crackers, we told them that I was pregnant and explained the events surrounding our search for a hospital. They sympathized and hoped something would work out for us. We soon learned that one of the ladies husbands was an orthopedic doctor at Asama. He happened to show up at the end of our meeting and his wife explained our situation to him. A few days later, I received a phone call from this lady saying that her husband had spoken to Dr. Aoki about my situation. At my next appointment, Dr. Aoki told me that they would make an exception for me, since another hospital had turned me away.

So by a miracle of God, I was finally able to make a reservation at Asama Hospital. Though my prospects seemed bleak for quite sometime, God was working on the details all along. I am so blessed to be in a hospital with new facilities and a doctor who can speak English and is willing to listen to my concerns as a foreigner in the system. Just last month, I asked if we could skip the ultrasound test, since I didn’t feel it was necessary every time. He agreed with me and told me that many doctors also feel it is unnecessary have one at every appointment. I don’t know if the other hospitals would have been as flexible. Praise God that, in his sovereignty, he worked everything out. It was definitely a test of faith. Thank you for your continued prayers as we continue through this last trimester of my pregnancy! God is good!

"John sensei makes Englich Club 'better and funner'" students say.

2008-03-03T10:07:00.005+09:00

Saturday was graduation at our schools. There was a fairly short ceremony in the morning (about 1 hour and 15 minutes at Holly's school and about 2 hours at mine), after which the English club at my school took a number of pictures together with the graduating members. The four students in front of me (two boys and two girls holding flowers) are the seniors (Nagisa, Nana, Masahiro, and Yuuma, respectively), the lady on the left is my supervisor and co-club leader and the rest of the girls are current members. In the picture on the bottom, the girl next to me with the flower is another graduate and the rest are current club members. The bottom picture from the top left: Yuka, Mami, Kiko, Akari, (2nd row) Satomi, Arisa, Chiaki, John.

Chiaki and Masahiro (the tall boy in the first picture) were probably the best English students at my school and both came to practice talking with me at lunch a lot when they were getting ready for their university interviews. Chiaki and Mami are sisters. (Yes, "Mami" is pronounced "Mommy" and is a _very_ common Japanese name. I know at least 6 people with that name). The graduates all gave me nice little cards. Yuuma's card thanked me and said that I "made English club much better and funner." I'm sure the others all agree. I will miss them all very much.

Denger! Foreign Doraibas!

2008-02-27T17:39:00.003+09:00

Yesterday was our driver’s test. We have been able to legally drive ever since our insurance got set up in the fall, but when Holly requested permission to drive to school in the winter, the Nagano Board of Education asked that she (and I if I also wanted permission) should take the test to get an actual Japanese license (as opposed to an international permit, which we currently have).

We were scheduled to take the test at a driving school in Nagano City, the capital of the prefecture, about 2 hours drive away. One of the local JETs (who got her license at a different testing center) told us that no foreigner passes their first time at Nagano. That was a bit discouraging to hear, but I wanted to keep positive about it. Worst case scenario, we’ll still be able to drive, so the whole thing is really jumping through hoops to please the Board of Education (BOE). We’re no strangers to jumping through hoops, and our care-takers were excited about the possibility of leaving school for a day for a “business trip” with us.

The drive was beautiful and we had a really good lunch at Mos Burger (the Japanese answer to McDonald’s or Burger King; actually pronounced “Mos” (like in ‘most’ minus the ‘t’) and ‘ba- ga-.’ The “-er” suffix in English gets turned into a long “aaah” sound in Japanese, as do other sounds with a vowel + R. Thus “Supaa Maaketo,” (super market), “Supaa Famicon” (the old Super Nintendo system), “Suripaa” (slippers), “Motaa bai” (Motorbike/scootaa), etc. My first year students often don’t know how to differentiate between “walk” and “work” because when you try to write it out in Japanese it looks like “waak.”

We arrived at the driving school fairly early, and had no difficulties in presenting all our information (MN driver’s licenses, passports, insurance, etc.), and aside from a 1.5 hour wait, all went well. The police man at the window was fairly helpful, and our supervisors were there to help us translate stuff. The only parts I caught from what the man said were that Americans don’t pass on the first try and that Canadians have a much easier time since Japanese people can get a license much more easily in Canada than in the US (I was strongly tempted at that moment to write to my congressperson and ask for a law requiring all Canadians to wear ‘kick-me’ signs, but I got over it. I have too many good friends from Canada.)

Speaking of Canada, I number of my students have pencil cases featuring pictures of Marijuana leaves… which they innocently believe to be the Canadian Maple Leaf. Drugs are _very_ _very_ illegal here (more so than in the US), so if you could succeed in convincing one of these students that said plant is not that of my Northern neighbors, but that which I saw on hats and shirts for sale in the Amsterdam airport, they would be utterly horrified. Many of these pencil cases also have pictures of Bob Marley. Umm…. “Canada” or “Cannabis?” You decide (hint: Marley was from Jamaica).

Getting back to the driver’s test. We passed the written test with little difficulty (that little difficulty was understanding the Engrish questions under the pictures. The English in the government issued driving manual was superb, but the test questions at Nagano could have used a little improvement). Shortly thereafter we were handed a map of the driving grounds with a strange multi-lap spaghetti configuration drawn upon it. We were told to memorize it and be ready to drive that pattern in 15 minutes. I stood outside and stared at the paper, then at the driving area, then at the high voltage sticker on a near-by electrical box with a clear warning below it: “Denger!”

I took the test first and tried to do it with the best attitude and confidence possible. It wasn’t too bad. Our supervisors weren’t allowed to come with us, and if I had known that (I was under the impression it would be otherwise), I would have asked to learn some new words. I know the words for right and left, which I learned from discussing strategic defensive formations in Shogi (hidari mino, etc.), but I learned the hard way that I didn’t know the words for “go straight.” The truth is that we didn’t really have a chance, and our supervisors didn’t realize it. Apparently Japanese students practice driving this strange course for approximately 17 hours before taking the test (which reminds me of those infamous English classes where students are tested on their ability to memorize paragraphs of prose from their textbooks... one of the occasional segments of the Japanese education system for which I don’t really care). We did our best, and I think we failed (my biggest frustration was not being told directly whether I had passed or failed and not being given a breakdown of _why_ I had failed. Undoubtedly I should have exaggerated my shoulder and mirror checks more, but I wish I had evidence to convince my wounded pride that it was indeed because I should have done better and not simply because I was a gaijin (foreigner/outsider). The man at the testing center wasn’t very helpful in that regard. My supervisor was a bit disappointed with their attitudes.

All said and done, yesterday was a bit of long day, and we were pretty beaten down by the time we returned to Holly’s school, loaded up our car, and drove home after our failed driving tests. At the end of the day, it wasn’t really that important, and (if you haven’t noticed) I’m trying to find it as humorous as possible and it will be good story material in the future. Otherwise, most things are well. I was not offered a first-round offer at Emory, but if one of the 3 elect decides to go elsewhere or if a spot opens up at Notre Dame (somewhat long shot) or at Yale (longer shot, but perhaps better than the driving test) I may still have a chance. Various other plans are in the works. I have a small cold, but otherwise we are feeling well. Holly’s doctor appointments have been going well, and our latest past-time has been feeling the baby kick and move around at night. I’ve been asked to preach again at our church, so I need to get that ready for Sunday. There was a bit of a wind storm this last weekend and we were advised by our pastor to skip church, the wind came back again last night and our blue-tarp “garage” has taken quite a beating. It’s not completely totaled yet, but at various times I was sure that it was. The wind and the rain are encouraging as signs of weather change and spring and we are realizing that it won’t be long until our days of huddling around the kerosene heater are at an end.

We are also looking forward to a lighter work load in March. We will still have to be at work, but for the most part we won’t have classes so the time can be used for studying, preparation, etc. This weekend will be the graduation of the seniors at our schools, and after one more week of class with the other students, the term will end and school will recommence with new classes, new students, and a few new teachers, in April.

First Date with Emory

2008-02-16T08:40:00.007+09:00

Last week I was flown to the USA for what one of my friends called 'a first date' with Emory University. Here's how it went.

A week ago, after a long day of trains and planes I arrived in Atlanta, 2 hours earlier than I had left Tokyo (by local time). I was met at the airport by one of the current doctoral students, who was picking up both me and another candidate for the program. I had a wonderful minty frilly coffee drink from a chain called Seattle's best (which was really good), and I was taken to the Emory Conference center hotel where I would spend the next few nights. I had just enough time to take a thorough shower and change clothes before being picked up with the other candidates and brought to one of the professors' house, where we were to have dinner and begin our interrogation at the hands of the faculty.

There were five candidates, all of whom were finishing or had just finished a master's degree. One guy from Duke, two young ladies from Princeton seminary, another from Florida State, and myself. The casual dinner, was actually the beginning of the interview process as we were all asked a lot of questions as we sat eating with the various members of the faculty. Unlike the individual interviews which would follow the next day, here we were in groups (3 candidates at one table, 2 at another, and the 7 faculty members switched tables in between dinner and dessert).

After dinner, I was returned to the hotel, where I collapsed into bed. My first conversations with my roommate occurred within an hour of my crashing into bed. He was also a candidate in the Religion department, but in South Asian Religions (specifically Hinduism). I think we were paired up since he had flown in from India a day earlier and the powers that be decided to put the most jet lagged people together. He was an Emory alum, and had finished an M.A. at the University of Virginia before going to India. We had a good time chatting about various things, and also both managed to get a lot of sleep and not annoy on another (to the best of my knowledge).

Friday morning the interviews began at 9am. Unlike the New Testament candidates who had four interviews on Saturday, we had seven on Friday. From 9am until 2:10pm, I had interviews (minus a brief break for lunch), asking me about my interests, previous coursework, and future hopes as well as grilling me on various aspects of the paper I had submitted. I really like the faculty, and the fact that Emory has _seven_ professors who work in Old Testament/Ancient Judaism/Dead Sea Scrolls/etc. is amazing. Usually really good programs (like the other two I applied to) will have 3-4, plus a few in related disciplines. Emory also has 7 in my department, at least 6 New Testament professors (including some of the most conservative in the major universities), and some great people in Judaic studies. Overall I really had a fun time with the interviews. Saturday morning before the other candidates departed we sat together, ate breakfast, and ranked our interviews (since we knew the faculty would be busy this week ranking their interviews with us... only fair). One person in particular was a the bottom of everyone's list, and that was my most unpleasant interview by far (young guy, bit of an ego, really intense personality, etc), but we really liked the rest a ton. That one person we didn't care for, wouldn't be my favorite to be around, but I probably wouldn't have much coursework (if any) with him, and although almost everything he said to us was really critical, I think he gave me the best feedback on my paper (the one that's going to be published).

The other candidates deserted me after breakfast on Saturday morning, but the NT people were still around (since generally their candidates or faculty don't have religious issues with Friday night/Saturday morning time slots, whereas Jewish studies, etc. often do). Anyhow, two of the candidates in NT had been at Yale when I was there, one of whom was a good friend of mine (and my former Greek tutor). I got to talk with them Saturday night before the journey home on Sunday morning. I spent Saturday morning in the library and Saturday afternoon at Target... oh the things you can buy at Target... triscuits, good Caesar dressing, dove chocolates, anti-antiperspirant, and a few other things that cannot be found here in Nagano prefecture.

Sunday morning at the airport I had the good fortune of having to leave at the same time as my friend from Yale, so we were able to eat breakfast together for an hour before splitting up. The plane ride was 14 hours on the way back, but it went quickly enough: reading, trying to sleep, watching some movies (the Bee movie, Bourne Supremacy, etc.), listening to Elvis' top 30 hits (I fail to understand why the guy was so popular. I also fail to understand what, if any part of his music qualifies as 'rock 'n roll'), and of course fine dinning on the Delta cuisine.

I had the strange experience of "coming home to Japan." After several days in Atlanta, where I had never been before, in which I knew almost no one, where I had no car or independent means of transportation, no cell phone, and little cash. Coming back to Japan everything became increasingly more familiar. I knew the airport. I knew trains and train stops. My cell phone worked, my money was good again, and I could get around without having to rely on other's help (well, I still asked plenty of people about things, but at least this time around I knew how to ask). I made it safely and promptly back, and had no difficulties adjusting to time differences on either side other than Thursday and Monday being very tiring, 24+ hour days.

The rest of this week went pretty well. I won my second game of shogi on Tuesday, and had several close games then and Wendesday. Friday, I was interrogated by one of my fellow teachers (who happens to coach the shogi club) about the secrets of my success. Apparently the club members have all been surprised since for the last 5 months I've been consistently using the exact same defensive strategy--shikembisha, if you're interested--and loosing... recently I decided to try some other things. I figured that if I'm always losing, trying some different things can't hurt.

Anyhow, a brief word on movie sequels. In my absence, Holly watched the first two Anne of Green Gables movies, and she had been looking forward to seeing the 3rd this weekend (which came out in 2000). Well... unlike the first 2... it was awful.
In the past I've always been a fan of movie sequels. The more the merrier in my book. Let's have 6 starwars movies, and trilogies made from everything. ...Well, my opinion is rapidly changing. This year I've been really disappointed by three movie sequels. A few months ago the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out... and it was awful. The plot twists could not be followed, they lacked depth, and the ending was horrendous. Last month we rented The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro. 'Mask' is a pretty good movie... 'Legend' was truly awful. Same characters, but without any depth of character. All that to say that Anne of Green Gables (the continuing story) is also awful. Same cast of characters which were so wonderful in the first two movies... now with no character, a bad plot, and needless trash. Holly and I were incredibly unsatisfied with it and spent the afternoon talking it out and working through our post-movie depression. I don't think we will need professional help, but it will take some time to recover form Anne 3.

Back to Emory. It's a beautiful campus, and one of the top 10 wealthiest schools in the nation (due to close ties and large donations from the owners of the Coca-Cola company). My fellow candidates and I had a decent amount of time with it, and now the university has a few more days to figure out which of us it wants to proposition. I'll wait to see if I have other offers, but if they pop the question, come March, I'm likely to accept.

Various Kinds of Good News

2008-02-03T18:42:00.000+09:00

Well, today has been a very snowy day. It snowed most of last night, and all day today. I shoveled this morning, but all the evidence has been destroyed. Church attendance was at a total of 5 day today (us, the pastor and his wife, and another lady), but was still quite enjoyable. We had a good day and survived the slipping and sliding that comes with inadequately plowed roads.

To start off, since it hasn't been formally announced on this blog yet, it's only fair for all of you to know: we are expecting a baby in June! I expect that most of you know already, but we just thought we'd post the news here in case it hadn't reached you yet. The official due date is June 14th, and we have made a reservation at Asama Hospital, about 10 minutes away from our house. The actual getting of said reservation is an amazing story that I will omit here to give Holly a chance to write in the future. To answer the questions in your mind: the baby won't have dual citizenship, we don't yet know if it is a boy or a girl (but are confident that it is one of the two), and the baby won't actually be named 'Sidney,' that's just what my siblings call our baby, in the same vein as we at YDS used to refer to my friend Chris' soon-to-be-born child as 'Reinhold.'

Less exciting news is that one of my seminar papers from last year, which I've been re-writing since around graduation, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Biblical Literature (one of the main academic journals). The paper was on why the dominate assumptions of scholars regarding the origin of the asylum cities or Cities of Refuge in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 4 & 19, are wrong. If you're curious, the dominate assumptions since the mid-19th century have been that city asylum is a later evolution of asylum law from the time of King Josiah which replaced asylum at a local altar. I won't bore you with details here, but I was quite thrilled to hear that it got a very positive peer review and was accepted for publication.

Now, of course, with a baby on the way, we have decided not to renew our contracts for an additional year in Japan. I applied to three Ph.D. programs in the US (in Biblical studies and ancient Judaism, at Yale, Notre Dame, and Emory University). Usually you hear back in March if you were admitted or not, but some of them like to interview their top candidates first. Two weeks ago I received word that I had somehow managed to make the 'top five candidates' list at Emory, and had been invited for an interview. Now the time has just about arrived. They have bought me a ticket, made a hotel reservation for me, and are covering all other travel expenses. Of the 5 candidates, 2-3 are offered admission, so it's almost 50-50 at this point, and there's always a slim chance I'll hear from one of the other schools in the next two weeks. All that to say that I'm flying to Atlanta on Thursday (Feb 7th), going to undergo thorough interrogation and other forms of torture on Friday, and arrive back in Japan on Monday, all while my body still believes it to be 10 hours ahead of the local time. I will probably crash hard at some point, hopefully just me and not the plane. I'm looking forward to the trip, and during some brief free time on Saturday I hope to photocopy a few articles in the library that I need to read before I finish my article. I also plan to go shopping for a few items that cannot be found in Japan. Things like deodorant, good Caesar dressing, pepperoni, decaf coffee, and grits (whatever that is... one of the other JETs is from the South and offers good money for anyone who can supply her with this strange breakfast substance known as "grits.")

Here is a picture of us from January 6th, with my mom's high school friend Shoko and Shoko's husband Masuharu. This is in front of their house in Kofu, Yamanashi-ken.

Holly's Cafe

2008-01-19T21:37:00.000+09:00

Kyoto also happens to have a certain chain of coffee shops that seemed a fine place for a photo shoot.

Kytoto Trip (the rest)

2008-01-16T20:14:00.000+09:00

So… we’re way behind on posting. Sorry. It’s been a busy few weeks of re-adjustments. Before we get too far away from the events, let me at least briefly finish re-telling our Kyoto adventures of last month.
Days 2 & 3 (and the rest).
On our second full day in the city (Dec 27, I believe), Holly’s friend Hiromi (a former conversation partner, whose husband was briefly a visiting professor at the U of MN) came and met us at our hotel and took us around the city. Hiromi had helped us plan our whole trip, and it really wouldn’t have worked without her help. Our first major stop was Ginkaku-ji, literally something like “The temple of the silver pavilion.” “Gin,” is the work for silver, and “ji,” as already mentioned, means Buddhist temple. The silver temple is not actually covered with silver, but the name stuck anyhow. The temple is rather small, and I don’t think that you can go inside of it. The gardens and grounds were fantastic, and along with Tenryu-ji on the first day were my favorite gardens/parks of the trip. The gardens contain some of the best Zen art in Kyoto, one interesting part of which are rock gardens made of small stones (which are loose, and I believe the monks regularly re-build them so they are in shape for the numerous tourists). The trapezoid thing you see in the picture is comprised of loose stones.

After Ginkaku-ji, we visited several other temples and sites along the nice stone path known as the Philosophers’ walk, and Hiromi took us out for lunch at one of the famous Yudofu restaurants. Yudofu is a kind of boiled tofu, and a specialty of Kyoto. I thought it was pretty good, and Holly loved it.
Before dark set in we made our way to Kiomizudera (“Pure water temple”), one of the most famous temples in Kyoto. Kiomizudera is built on the side of a mountain/hill and overlooks the city (pictures of part of it can be found two posts ago). I liked Kiomizudera, but it was one of the busiest sites and was crawling with tourists (including us).

Hiromi had to catch a train back home, so she left around dark, and I don’t remember if we ventured out for more walking around or if we crashed in early. I think we had Domino’s pizza #2 that night.
The final full day… was overcast, and it poured rain all day. That hardly ruined it though. We still had places to see, and had a great time. The first stop was a temple called Ryoan-ji, or something like that. I may not have the name perfectly right, but it’s famous for a garden of 16 large stones. These stones are unexplained, and it’s left to visitors to seek out their meaning. Frankly, I didn’t invest the necessary years to draw upon the wisdom of the design of that garden… I did stare them for 5-10 minutes though, and Holly discovered while trying to take pictures of them that no matter what angle you try, you can never see all the stones at a single time.

After the stones, we went to visit the cross-town rival of Ginkaku-ji: Kinkaku-ji. “Gin,” as mentioned before means silver, and “Kin,” happens to mean gold (like the English word ‘key’ + n). Unlike the temple of the silver pavilion, the Gold pavilion _is_ actually covered in gold. Kinkaku-ji is the older of the two temples (built by a much richer Shogun that the poor one who later built Ginkaku-ji), but the building burnt down half a century ago, so the current eye-candy is a newer building, and I think possibly the most beautiful building in Kyoto. It was certainly my favorite thing to take pictures of. Even on a rainy, gloomy day it was gorgeous. I took tons of pictures of Kinkaku-ji in the rain, which I’m sure are somewhat rare (since all the post-cards show a sunny or snow-covered Kinkaku-ji).

We spent the afternoon on wild goose chases looking at famous, but closed buildings like Shijo castle and the old imperial palace. It was still a fun day in the rain.
That night we discovered that our hotel was next to a small, absolutely fabulous Indian restaurant. I had become a big fan of Indian food while living in New Haven, home of almost a dozen great Indian places (including the favorite buffet of our church friends). Anyhow, we hadn’t had reasonably spicy food since we left the states. I ordered the spiciest thing on the menu (not the normal chicken curry… the other chicken curry with the warning labels next to it) and Holly ordered an amazing rice and mutton dish. It was soooo good. We talked about it for days. The two Indian guys who ran the place were very friendly, and seemed quite pleased to make the special curry for me (“It’s really hot,” he told me. It was indeed the spiciest I’ve ever had… and I was so spice deprived I won’t have it any other way)… well, before I reminisce too much, let’s move on.
The next morning (Dec. 29th), we took some local trains to Osaka, the third largest city in Japan (after Tokyo and Yokohama), and visited another of Holly’s friends for lunch. Holly’s friend Kazuko had also been a conversation partner at the U of MN while her husband had been finishing up his economics Ph.D. there. Now he teaches at a university in Osaka. They were both really nice and we had fun with them and their two little girls. Kazuko’s husband Michi took us around the city for a little bit before dropping us off at the train station. Our tour included a ride on a Ferris wheel situated on the top of a tall building. Osaka is really just more Tokyo…. Buildings as far as the eye can see… so many you might not even be able to see mountains (a very rare thing in Japan, at least on a clear day). We made it home late that night (or early the next morning… basically midnight, after about 4 hours on the Shinkansen). It was a wonderful trip, and we had a really good time.
It’s getting somewhat late now… I have a bad cold, the house is a little cold, and we have another JET meeting tomorrow (thankfully this time it’s in our city, so I can bike there in 15mins, instead of several hours of train commuting). All is well (except the runny nose, etc.) We love you all.

Kyoto - The First Full Day

2008-01-03T17:04:00.000+09:00

We got as early a start as we could, leaving the hotel at 9am and grabbing a Starbucks drink. We walked to the subway station and hopped on heading toward our first destination. Our first stop was a Buddhist temple called Tenryu-ji (“Temple of the heavenly dragon,” ‘ryu’ means ‘dragon,’ and ‘ji’ means ‘temple’). Many of the temples in Kyoto are very old and they don’t feel especially religious. There are usually some to many tourists snapping pictures and walking around. The architecture is amazing, and the best parts are the parks/gardens around the temple complexes. The ground is green, covered with thick green moss that one could easily mistake for grass, and there are small streams of water and many beautiful trees large and small. The landscaping is very well done and some of the temples have rock gardens, often large shapes made of loose small rocks (which the monks comb, groom, or rebuild every morning before the tourists come).

Tenryu-ji was the first temple I had visited, and the weather was perfect, sunny, warm (for Dec 26th) and not full of tourists. For those reasons the first stop was one of my favorites of the trip. The temple itself was pretty, but looked like most other temples: Japanese architecture, white with the brown beams on the sides, shingled roofs, tatami floors, shoji, sliding doors, etc. The garden/park was wonderful. Stairs and paths around a little lack and up into the mountainside. The ground was covered with a lush, green moss so thick you could mistake it for grass, and there was a little pond with a small island in the center upon which the sun was shining brightly. Inside one of the buildings, there is a famous black and white painting of the "heavenly dragon" on the ceiling. The building was closed temporarily, but we got to to see the painting via numerous postcards and pictures in the nearby gift shop.

After about an hour walking in and around Tenryu-ji, we had lunch nearby at a restaurant. Holly had a really good soba soup (buck-wheat noodles) which I should have ordered (and indeed did eat more than my share of), I had rice with a slightly uncooked egg on it (since there is no Salmonella in Japan—or so I’m told—people tend not to be as cautious with their eggs and many dishes have barely cooked or raw egg in/on it). I didn’t particularly like that dish, but it was cheap and the place I wanted to eat at turned out to be closed.
We took a train (which was more like a street car), and got off right across the street from our next stop, Koryu-ji. It was a temple very similar to the first one, and while pretty, it wasn’t as noteworthy as the former (which had been such a highlight).

Later we made our way back to our hotel, and after we had given our feet some rest, we proceeded on foot to a theatre several miles down the main road. The theatre happened to be closed until after New Years, so we spent a few hours walking around the street (which was covered with stores and crowds of tourists). We happened to stumble of the Yasaka shrine, which is the site of the Gion Festival (a major festival in the city and in Japan). Almost every building and gate of the shrine was bright orange, and there were lanterns and stone statures of lion-like creatures everywhere. It should be pretty easily to pick out from the pictures posted here.
We had dinner at a small, but apparently well-known restaurant. I couldn’t tell you the name of it, but it only served a single dish, which was a bunch of veggies, some meat, and an egg (cooked more than the one at lunch) all cooked together in a think pancake like thing with a thin, dark slightly sweet sauce.
After a little more walking, we made it home and collapsed happily into bed. The hotel bed was very nice, and the bathroom was great too. The major change from our home was heating. Our bed and shower are great… but in the morning at our house it is freezing cold once you step outside of our room (and its cold enough once you get out of bed), so the hotel was a world of luxury for about $60 a night in the center of Kyoto… and two doors away from an excellent Indian restaurant, but that’s another story for another day.

Vacation to Kyoto

2007-12-31T14:18:00.001+09:00

Friends, relatives, and distant countrymen, Happy New Year!
We have returned from our Christmas vacation in Kyoto. We had a really great trip.
We spent last Sunday and “Christmas Eve Day” cleaning our house, finishing up our plans, and packing for the trip. Saturday night it had snowed, so for the first time since we’ve been here everything was under 3-4 inches of snow. I helped shovel the sidewalk and road around our church. We had a big potluck, featuring a delicious wild rice soup that Holly had made (with MN wild rice that we had brought with us). Monday the 24th was cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. I think I did dishes about 3x that day (from the previous day, from post-potluck pans, and then from dinner). I added a picture on the previous post of the snow on Enmai-ji, the temple kittie-corner to our house.

Holly had been to Kyoto 10 years ago, but it had rained a lot then. We didn’t intend to travel a lot this year (some JETs go to Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, or anywhere else nearby since the flights are really cheap, others take the more expensive route of traveling around Japan), but I did want to see Kyoto while we were here. Kyoto is the old capital city (previously Tokyo was known as Edo, but approximately 300 years ago the capital was Kyoto. The name Tokyo literally means “East capital.”). Kyoto was spared from bombing during the war, as were some of the beautiful cities in Europe in the name of preserving art. The city is full of old temples and shrines and is a major tourist draw is the center of traditional Japanese culture.
Christmas morning we took the shinkansen (the “bullet train”) from Saku to Tokyo (a little more than one hour) then transferred to another shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto (about 2 hours). We arrived at the Kyoto station when most of you were going to sleep on Christmas Eve. Our hotel was very nice. We opted to get a more western style hotel for two reasons. One, in a touristy city like Kyoto, Japanese Ryokans are much more expensive than western style hotels. Two, the distinctive features of a Ryokan: Tatami floors, shoji (paper screen frames over the windows), sliding doors, small tables on the floor, (no central heating?), are all to be found in our house. We decided that for a vacation we should get something a little different from the usual.

Our hotel had a flyer for Domino’s Pizza! We were ecstatic! You can’t get pepperoni on pizza in Nagano… no one knows what it is, and none of the pizza places or frozen pizzas have it… but this Dominos in Kyoto had “the American Special” (actually, “A me ri kan su pe sha ru”). What is “the American special?” you may ask… pepperoni pizza of course.

There wasn’t much day-light left on the first day, so before we ordered our pizza, we took the subway two stops south, walked about 100 ft. and took a few pictures of the Nintendo headquarters. Not much to see really. Just a plain white building. All business. No tours, no pretty signs, just a white building with the word ‘Nintendo’ in white. Well, it was a good time to make the pilgrimage. We hopped back on the train and go home just before dark, bought some milk and orange juice for the next morning’s breakfast and ordered our pizza.
For one thing, the weather in Kyoto was much warmer than in Nagano. Some people told us, ‘Don’t visit Kyoto in the winter. It’s too cold.’ Nonsense. We wore our coats most of the time, but I didn’t need my hat or gloves at all. For another the city gets a ton of tourists, international and Japanese. There were still tons of people there, and we were avoiding all the rush times, so I can’t imagine visiting during the busy season. One of Holly’s friends came and met us on Thursday and took us to a few sights. We had sent her our list of places we wanted to see and she had organized them and planned out our train and bus routes and had even calculated the prices of fares, admission to sites, and when we should stop for lunch.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T06:32:00.000+09:00

Merry Christmas everyone! We're thinking of you all, wishing we could be with you today, but hoping that you have a wonderful time. We are leaving in about 2 hours for a several day vacation to Kyoto (the old Japanese capital, home of pagodas, temples, geisha, tradition, good food, and surprisingly, also the headquarters of Nintendo). We'll be touring around, relaxing together, and meeting with a few of Holly's friends. We bought a new camera last weekend and hope to share a lot of pictures with all of you.
It snowed on Sunday, but most of our 3-4 inches melted away now. There's much to write about, but we really need to get moving so I'll keep it short. Two weeks ago, Holly played in a Christmas concert at another church down the road from ours, and I did some juggling there (glad I dragged my hats all the way here, they were a big hit). We had a nice pot-luck this last week at church, and Holly made a really good wild rice soup (yes, we brought some MN wild rice with us!). We been singing a lot of Christmas carols with the kids at AWANA on Friday nights, and I got to do my Christmas presentation several more times in classes (also explained all the words to "Joy to the World" and sang it together with the English club).
We sent out a newsletter last week, so if you didn't get a copy of it, please write to us and we will send you one. Have a wonderful end of 2007! See you next year (and we'll try to bring pictures).

Update and Reflections

2007-12-08T10:55:00.001+09:00

Yesterday was one of those "I love my job"-days, so I figured it was a good time to write. Holly is practicing violin in the other room (for mini-Christmas concert next week, there is a practice for it in a few hours). It has been another series of busy weeks, and life goes on. This week I was asked to revisit and revise some of the Christmas material from my holiday lecture last month, and present it to a san-nensei (3rd grade = seniors) class. So I showed some family Christmas pictures, some clip art, and a few great pictures I found on wikipedia of nativity scenes from other countries (ending with ones from our family). So explaining all that gave me a good chance to introduce basic things about Christmas, and spend the second half of the class listening to and going over the words to "God rest ye merry, gentlement." By the way, I finally realized (thanks to wikipedia, again) that the song is not addressed to "merry gentlemen," but but to 'gentlemen,' and the open phrase is "God rest ye merry." Try to explain that to Japanese students. Anyhow, yesterday I had a really good oral communications class (probably the best class I've taught ever). The JET teaching conference a week ago gave me some new ideas and a little new motivation. Also, as time has gone by, I've become progressively more and more theatrical in classes. When I do, students pay attention a lot better, respond better, and I think remember more.
On Wednesday, at English club it was just me and two of my students, but it went really well. We ended up spending most of the time just talking in English--which was really great. I showed them one of the pictures of Holly and I in Kimono from the festival last month, and I was just coming off a 3-day juice fast. I guess high school Japanese girls are interested in discussing kimonos and diets... who knew? At the end, we spent some time listening to and reading "silent night" and "God rest ye merry, gentlemen."
Last night, Holly brought her violin to church and we sang some Christmas carols in Japanese with the students (Silent night and Joy to the world).

In other news, today is Holly's birthday (at least on the Japanese calendar... there's been some debate about whether or not it really is... but we've come to the conclusion that in this time zone she simply gets an additional 15 hours of birthday). Many of her students were very shocked to hear that her birthday is on Pearl Harbor day (December _8th_ from the Japanese point of view).
Last month on Memorial day I did some reflecting on the situation of living in Japan a half-century and more after the war.
The end goal of all war is peace. The last two years I've had a British pastor at church in Connecticut. He jokes about having to pay US taxes while still not having voting rights ("No taxation without representation!"), but the war is definitely over. My one day in Germany, talking with people and my experiences with six or seven students I've known from Germany has given me the same impression. I wish I could say the same about the South... Southerner states peoples, "GROW UP! THE WAR IS OVER!"
As for Japan, the war is definitely over. I feel well received by people young and old, and on several occasions I've helped teach lessons related to the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I feel the fact that I discuss such a topic and am welcomed into Japanese schools to talk about is a sign that those who fought did not do so in vain.
OK... end serious topic here. Holly's calling me. Time to go to Lunch.... MosBurger... yum.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T22:25:00.000+09:00

Last Saturday was a JET Thanksgiving dinner, and the next day was a international festival at the local community center (see picture). I'm off to bed. We'll be in Tokyo Fri-Sat. Love you all. Happy Thanksgiving!

I love this outfit. Stylish, comfortable, classy... but it took 6 well-coordinated, seasoned Japanese women to tie me into it.

Notebooks

2007-11-15T21:15:00.001+09:00

Today is Thursday. On Thursdays I go to my visiting school in the city of Koumi. After my first class today I was given a stack of notebooks to read over. These are the journals or notebooks where students write their most recent assignments. This week they wrote about their weekends. I got up at… I did …. I went to sleep at…. Stuff like that. Not very interesting, and not very long. What I did find remarkable was the notebooks themselves. Almost every student has a different brand or color. These are not standard issue notebooks. The most interesting thing, to me, was how so many of them, under the title or brand name had a short phrase in English. I began to read these. Pause for a moment. For your information, Japan is full of things with short, English phrases on them which people think look cool and no one really tries to read or thinks about. It's rather hard to find any clothes with actual Japanese on them, but lots of clothes have English. My students have recently stopped wearing such clothes, because they have learned that when they do (wear clothes with English) they will get unwanted attention and questions from me in class. Anyhow, back to these notebooks. I've decided to leave out the ones which didn't have English on them, and I ended up with 10 specimens (there were some duplicates, so we ended up with a nice number). So, without further ado, here are the texts which are to be found on the front covers of my students' notebooks:

John's Koumi Notebook Top 10

#10 VOLLEYBALL PLAY "Let's begin a game of volleyball. We can have the best match."

#9 World Weather Report <cover is full of tedious details in English about the sunrise/set times, tides, rain probability, etc. in several Japanese cities on September 1^st>

#8 CONFERMA "Everything comes to him who waits. He who makes no mistakes makes nothing."

#7 NATURE "The message from nature four seasons create a rich nature."

#6 CAMPUS "Campus notebooks contain the best ruled foolscap suitable for writing."

#5 FASCINATION Monotone + Simple "I want to know things before others…"

#4 Lesson Notebook High Grade Notebook "Care and diligence bring luck. It is dogged that does it. "

#3 Crotchet . R "It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time. The benefit of this notebook is up to the sense that comes from your passion."

#2 CONFERENCE "When I changed concept, I could see genuine articles. A reliable brand selected by those with good taste."

#1 NOTEBOOK "This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into. You will feel like writing with it all the time."

Well, that's the line-up folks. #1 was indeed the most comfortable notebook I have ever run into… actually, it was just a pink notebook, but I almost cracked up laughing in my office when I read it, so I thought I should share. If you're wondering, some of these were made in Japan, some in China. More to come later, but this has been another busy week and this weekend we have a Thanksgiving dinner (with REAL TURKEY!), AWANA stuff on Friday, Church on Sunday, and an international festival Sunday afternoon (Holly's playing violin with another oboe playing JET).

Mr. Jone's Lecture

2007-11-09T21:50:00.000+09:00

Well,
It turns out "Mr. Jone" as advertised on the posters, was indeed me. Today at 4pm local time I gave a lecture on "Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in America." I of course also did some juggling at the end as asked.
I spent most of the day putting things together for this talk, and everything came down to the last minute. My sister had sent me some great pictures and for more general stuff I could use Google (for pictures of pumpkins carved into the Death Star or Captain Jack Sparrow, etc.) I showed a lot of family pictures from Thanksgiving and Christmas, talked about what we did on those days, and the origins of the three holidays in the topic.
My sister had sent me some good pictures of nativity scenes so that gave me some good material to work worth for talking about the origin and meaning of Christmas. I also had a few copies of a handout, for anyone interested, that had the poem "The Night Before Christmas" and the Japanese/English text of most of Luke 2.
I decided to devote a short period of time at the end to discussing the origin and development of Santa Claus (I figured people might ask me, so I may as well have something to say). Wikipedia is a great source of information, and I never grow tired of telling people that the modern red and white image of fat bearded Santa was an artist's creation commissioned in 1931 by the Coca-Cola company for use in their ads.
I also learned that the name "Santa Claus" comes through Dutch (even Old New York, was once New Amsterdam). Thus, Saint Nicolas: (In Dutch) Sint-Nikolaas --> Sinterklaas --> “Santa Claus.”
I find it interesting that the old depictions of Saint Nicolas (the 4th Century saint, famous for his deeds of charity) look nothing like the Coke-santa, but that th e latter is the result of several centuries of syncretism with the symbolic image of Father Christmas as well as the old Norse diety Odin (whose festival, Yule, was celebrated around the winter solstice). In my talk today, I decided to leave the talk about Odin out it. I figured getting modern Santa out of Saint Nick and Father Christmas would be enough (though I also find it fascinating that the name "Kris Kringle" is a corruption of Christkindel "the little Christ child" who, according to tradition started by Martin Luther, brings gifts on Christmas as an alternative to St. Nicolas). Anyhow, I figured that my students didn't need any Norse mythology, and I didn't want to bore them to death.

With all the business of fitting pictures into a PowerPoint slideshow and trying to develop a worthwhile script, I had no time to rehearse or to warm-up on my juggling. I got my handouts printed out and then had to pack up and go to the library.
Things went pretty smoothly, and I had some help from my supervisor translating some of what I said. Juggling at the end of course was a hit. I did get a short but clean run of five clubs and I flawlessly landed a trick I have never performed before. Any of you who used to juggle with me at the U of MN may remember me working on the trick where I balance a cane on my chin and throw a hat from my hand and land it on top of the cane and hold the balance. Well.. I did manage to do it about 3-4x while I was a U of MN student... and for whatever reason I decided to go for it tonight and I stuck it dead on. That was fun.

The audience was mostly students, a group somewhere betwixt 30-40 people. Most members of the English club were there, as well.
Anyhow, I received a lot of good feedback and thanks from the students and library staff. As I was packing up, two girls came up to me. I recognized them as 3rd graders (seniors) who, some time before, had come up to me in the hallway and, after giggling and trying to push each other to speak first, had managed to admit to me how much they loved Final Fantasy 7. I had found this very amusing at the time, and hoped they weren't trying to be flirtatious (though it is common knowledge that I like the FF series, esp. 4-7). One of these girls had also tried to tell me about a manga (comic) series that she liked. These geeky girls are different from the geeky girls that beat me at Shogi, the latter are more the math-major type. These two were more like the kind of girls you meet in the US who happen to like FF (I think I met 3 in my lifetime). Anyhow, today one of them was pointing to a word on her cell phone (most Japanese phones have built in translators/mp3players/internet/globalpositioning/etc.). The word was "legend." By working together, these girls were able to explain to me that one of them was writing a report on legends and mythology and that her Japanese classics teacher (who I'm not sure I know) had recommended me as the person to talk to about such things. I confessed that I knew very little about Japanese legends (aside from a teeny tiny bit about the Tale of Genji), but I knew a little more about legends in other countries.
One of them immediately asked me if I knew anything about "Roe Key" or "Wa deen." I said I didn't recognize those names. One girl said they were British legends, the other hit her and told her Norway. On the last hint, I realized she was trying to say "Loki" and "Odin." I told them I knew a little about those characters (mostly from reading C.S.Lewis' biographies, truly a lover of all things Norse). I also added that there were some connections between Santa Claus and Odin. At this point, they girls grabbed each other's hands, jumped up and down, and screamed excitedly. (Keep in mind that we were still in the library.)
This was the strangest feeling I have had all day. I was a little disappointed that my small familiarity with Odin should elicit the most exited response of anything that day, but there you go.
Welcome to Japan.

It's good to have the talk done. Next week I get to talk about Thanksgiving to the kids at AWANA. Holly's fast asleep now and I should go join her if I want to avoid being a zombie tomorrow (I'm saying that figuratively, I'm not actually at risk of turning into a real zombie...any more.) This week my 2nd grade students will be on a n excursion to Okinawa, so my load will be lightened a little (Holly's 2nd graders were there this last week). Happy Friday to all and to a good night. -Jq

Aftermath

2007-11-06T22:15:00.001+09:00

Ok… we have survived the great two week marathon. Debate team practice every day after school with the English club, and two weekends lost to the great debate tournament. Then it was Monday… what a bummer. We made it through Monday, managed to do shopping (our fridge was empty) and laundry (it was day #2 in my last shirt). Tonight we will do dishes, have a pizza, and relax. Tomorrow we will take the day off, rest and have fun.

The results of the debate were pretty good. My team had really done a good job of showing up for practices, learning lots of new words, doing their research homework, and trying really, really hard. They had four rounds, two as the affirmative side and two as the negative. They won their first round as affirmative, lost the second affirmative round, and tied both negative rounds. The latter two were really close, and I know the judge who voted against them in their last round and he remarked that it was neck and neck and that he thought they were one of the best teams there (especially for rookies!). The other judge who voted against them in their first negative round happens to be a teacher at a nearby "high level" school which shall be nameless, and I fear may have voted against them for that reason only (I took notes that round and I think they should have won, but perhaps my presence sold them out. The judges may not have known otherwise. Oh well).

All that to say, the five girls on our team had a good time and it was a great experience for them. Holly joined our team for the ride home and stopped for dinner at a very good Italian restaurant near our house (REAL SALAD!!! OH!!! Romaine lettuce!!! Oh it was good!!!). Holly's team, being from a nearby "high level" school which shall remain nameless, had a few difficulties. The first being they only had three members of their team (the minimum) and that one of the three hadn't shown up for any English club meetings in the past two weeks or the practice debate, or the first day of the tournament. He had a legitimate excuse (a complicated family situation), but we felt bad for the other two boys who were disqualified from the chance of winning during their first few rounds. Also, because the other English teachers at said unnamed school had conducted all the practices in Japanese and had spent most of their time on the opening speech, they had some difficulty understanding the speeches, questions, and attacks from their opponents. I don't blame the students since they were working their hearts out, and it's not Holly's fault either since she wasn't really utilized to assist very well. My poor team spent most of their time trying to figure out what on earth I was saying, and trying to find ways to get me to stop asking them so many questions.

Holly may be a little upset with me for this blog, but as an experienced debate judge I can tell you that what I have written is the unbiased, fair, honest, unadulterated and unedited truth. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it (unless it starts causing too much trouble, then I'll resort to some peace-making revisionist history).

Due to the grace of my kind supervisor, I had only one class on Monday, two on Tuesday, I am able to take Wednesday off, and have only one class on Friday. I hope to spend a few free minutes this week assembling lists that I can use for future posts. I'm hoping to do a "Top 20" and "Bottom 20" of what I think are the best and less-best parts of our life in Japan. It's a good chance for me to remember to report good and amusing things I would otherwise forget to tell to all of you.

There are various posters around my school advertising a lecture on Friday after school on the topic of "Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in America" by one Mr. Jone.

I plan to attend this lecture. For one, it's in English which will be a nice change. Secondly, although I've never met this Mr. Jone, apparently he juggles too. I look forward to meeting this person and watching him on Friday. We seem to have a lot in common.

I wonder what his connection with Nozawaminami is.

I wonder if his sister has a pet bird named Lucky.

Maybe they misspelled his name. J

Debate, and Tired Ramblings

2007-10-27T20:29:00.000+09:00

Well, tomorrow is the practice for the debate tournament next week. Holly and I have been putting in an extra 1-2 hours every day after school with our English clubs, so that's our excuse for the lack of blogs, emails, phone calls, telegrams, and notes by carrier pigeon. Both our teams have been making slow but good progress, and it's been interesting to watch and work with them. Holly's 'English club' actually consists of one boy. Two other boys were recruited for the sole purpose of being able to be in the debate (the renown Nozawa-Kita, being a high-level school could not bear the thought of not competing in the tournament). I have a larger English club, but most of the 3rd graders (seniors) are busy getting ready for university entrance exams, interviews, and the like, so I have five girls who will be in the debate. One is a second grader, and the rest are 1st graders (10th graders by US standards) like Holly's three 1st grade guys. They've been really good sports about showing up every day, researching facts and statistics, and practicing. This year's resolution is "All Japanese elementary and secondary schools should have classes on Saturdays."
Currently, only private schools have Saturday classes (although a certain high-level school in the northern Nozawa area has classes three Saturdays/month). Prior to 2002, all schools did have classes on Saturdays (it was always a half-day consisting of three classes in the morning), and if you compare the international test results (from the PISA test) you will see that Japan was very highly ranked in most areas in 2000 but in 2003 and 2006 had dropped 3-10 places in most subjects. (If you are curious the top spots in almost every subject area are currently head by Finland, followed by Korea). It will be an interesting debate to watch, since the students have to be ready to argue on the affirmative or negative side and won't know which side they represent until just before each round. I think it's been a good exercise for my students to practice reading, talking, and especially listening to me rant on an on explaining this or that in too many semi-difficult words.
Personally, I've gotten to reflect on education in Japan a little bit lately with the help of this debate topic. Of course I don't think that even a half-day of class sounds that fun, and I don't think that that's the answer that Japan needs to improve its educational policy. Japan has one of the lowest Educational budgets (in terms of %) in the world, and almost all classes are 98% lecture with a class size of 35-40 students. Finland has a very large educational budget and can afford to pay teachers very well and afford enough teachers to have class sizes of between 15-20 students. When I mentioned the 6-days-of-class topic, one person immediately jumped to "But Japan has the highest suicide rate in the world!" That might be true, but I don't think that it is because of having classes on Saturdays. Actually, the statistics I've seen don't correlate suicides with any kind of exam time or results, nor is it concentrated within a certain age group. My opinion is that suicide is high in Japan because, on the one hand, most people are over-worked and stressed (I've put in 50+ hours this week not counting commute and their getting my Sunday tomorrow, too, so I can at least imagine what full work load would be like year after year), and even more importantly, Japan does not have a cultural taboo for suicide that way that most other nations do. You don't have to watch Tom Cruises "The Last Samurai" to get the sense that suicide has been an honorable death in this culture for a long time. The Christian cultural heritage in the west as placed some society pressures against suicide. For Catholics, suicide is considered a sin which one cannot repent of, and therefore it is an unforgivable sin. For Protestants, the stakes are not quite as high, but suicide has still always been seen as a disdain for life and for its Creator. I really think that it's the cultural mentality that makes suicide a more acceptable option in this culture than many others (for example, last month before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned, at least one member of his cabinet committed suicide). Anyhow, getting back to debate.
When I was trying to help them brainstorm pros and cons of the different sides, I realized that we couldn't use the argument "Saturdays classes would be bad for students because they interfere with home life," because, for most of my students, one or both of their parents worked on Saturdays and weren't home then anyway. I don't want to sound critical of Japanese home-life, because I know of a lot of great and sweet families here. My view as an outsider, though, is that people here are larger over worked and the payoff isn't all that great. I don't think that the school load here is overbearing. I think that students have less homework than I had... but I got to go home (or stay home) and do it. Most of my students have club activities for 1-2+ hours after (and/or before) school and on weekends, I know that many of students go to juku ("cram schools") once or twice a week (usually from 9-10:30pm, sometimes 9-11pm) and a lot of them have part times on the weekends. That said, my observation is, at Nozawa-minami at least, that students are pretty happy. I see smiles all the time, and there is hardly a moment throughout the day when you can't hear excited screams or hysterical laughter coming from some corner of the building (usually it's a flock of girls, but the boys laugh a lot and make their share of noise, too).
Well... it's 9pm and I'm starting to ramble so I'll try to wrap it up here. 9pm may sound like an early time... but for some reason I can barely stay awake until 10pm anymore. Usually we crash into bed by 9:30pm and get up at 6am. I know that's a long time to sleep, but I still feel rather tired in the morning and I just can't function much later than this. One theory I have is that I need more exercise. I do bike a few miles a day and walk up stairs, but with my foot problems I can't run anymore and I don't currently have a membership anywhere to do weights or other machines. Last Sunday my order of juggling clubs arrived (they deliver packages on Sundays here), so I spent a good two hours in the afternoon getting acquainted with them. I got plastic, one-piece clubs (Renegade brand "spotlights" for those of you who are interested). I wanted to get clubs which were available in Japan (Renegade distributes here), which I wouldn't cry if I had to leave behind, and which I could justify buying 5 of. So I am the proud owner of 5 spotlights (I know none of my juggler readers like one-piece clubs due to the hard nature of the handles... and its true. I got a nice little black and blue mark on my right hand before the day was done). Anyhow, these will be nice for the finale of my upcoming lecture. I've been asked to give a lecture next month by the students who work with the school library, and they've also asked me to do more juggling.
Closing comments. Holly's work is getting a little more enjoyable and communication with her fellow teachers is a lot better. We played "Amazing Grace" and "Be thou my vision" last week in church (she on violin, I played high and low Irish whistle), and we gave our testimonies. There was a nice pot-luck afterwards. I'm still busy on grad-school applications, and I'm still rather bad at Shogi. Driving is going well, and we're happy to be home tonight after a full day and a half of pouring rain. It's been getting colder and at church and at school people are running the kerosene heaters in the rooms. There is a kerosene heater behind me as I write, but I haven't used it yet. They are the typical economical way to fight the cold in this land of uninsulated and un-furnaced homes.
I hope all of you are well. Greetings from the antipodes! -John

A Few More Pictures (Mostly of Little White Trucks)

2007-10-18T18:10:00.001+09:00

We have a wonderful picture of Holly a few feet from our house with our neighborhood Buddist Temple (kiddy corner to house, that's kaddy corner to all you east coasters) in the background.
Ok, so we a picture of our house (the little one in the foreground, the blue tarp thing is our "garage").

Then we have a picture of our traffic light at the intersection "Kamisakurai." The signs here mark named intersections, not streets. I've told you Cheers' fans that we live where everyone knows our name. Now I'm telling all you U2 fans that we live where the streets have no name.

If you look carefully in the traffic light picture you can find a little white truck. Of course, the rest of the pictures are of the LWTs... yeah, I'm strangely fascinated by them. ...Oh and here is a picture I found on Google to give you some idea of the yellow helmut kids.

Little White Trucks

2007-10-16T08:54:00.000+09:00

This is at long last the post I've been wanting to write. Holly is sometimes annoyed by my two deepest fascinations in Japan: yellow helmet squads and little white trucks.

Very soon I promise a little more serious post, or at least a link to more pictures of the neighborhood and the harvest (right now most of the rice has been cut in the fields and now bundles are hanging out to dry on long wooden racks). Anyhow, back to the important things.
I wrote earlier about our car, a black, two-door Nissan pulsar hatchback (basically the Nissan version of a Honda civic). Japanese cars come in two varieties: "white-plate" cars and "Yellow plate" cars. "White-plate" cars are the larger variety. They have bigger engines, etc. Every car in the US would be a "white-plate" car in Japan. Our Pulsar has a white license plate. The cars with yellow license plates ("Nom-ba ple-to" in Japanese, like 'number plate'), are about a foot or a foot and a half narrower than your average small car. These are the vehicles that you see pictures of in newspapers or in Car and driver and stare at for a while. You get used to them here pretty quickly. The yellow plate cars have small engines and were designed originally to get around certain laws relating to pollution and environmental standards (since their engines are smaller). Yellow-plates are cheaper to own, but I'm glad to have a two-door civic-sized car that I can fit comfortably in (even though I do have quite a time getting out of it when I part next to another white-plate).

The most commonly seen car in my neighborhood--and in all non-urban Japan--is the variety I first heard of at orientation, affectionately known to many JETs as "little white trucks." As the name may suggest, these are... little, white trucks. They are yellow plates, are as bare bones as you can get, and every farmer in the country owns one. They've got great torque, and are used for every imaginable need on a farm. About every third car on the road is a LWT. I don't want you to think that these vehicles only come in white. Of the hundreds I've seen in my 2.5 months here, I've seen them in white, off-white, pearl, ivory, and silver. For the record, I saw one blue one once too. All of my neighbors have them, every school parking lot has one, almost every rice field has one sitting in or near it, and in every line of cars at a traffic light you will see several. I decided shortly after arriving in Japan that one of my ambitions this year would be to drive a LWT (another of my ambitions was to be seated at one of the low tables in a restaurant that actually had a hole under it for you put your feet into comfortably. I completed this last month at a Korean barbecue restaurant with some other JETs). As for driving one of these... that may take some time, as the seats do not adjust. These little stick-shifts are really basic, but they are _everywhere_. They are made by Suzuki, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi and several other Japanese car companies I haven't heard of before, like "Hijet." They all look very similar (and usually white).

Often in the mornings I've heard a sound that I feared was a gun shot... but there aren't really any guns here. In New Haven, I used to hear guns shots from time to time, and just tell myself they were nicely spaced firecrackers. In Saku they really are firecrackers. The farmers are not allowed to have guns, so in addition to their scare-crows (sorry, no pictures, but some of them are amazing) the farmers have in their arsenal not only LWTs, but also firecrackers. The firecrackers are for driving the crows away from gardens and crops, and sporadically throughout the day from morning until sundown, one will occasionally the echo of one of these small explosives.

The final curiosity that I dearly wish I had pictures of, are the elementary school students. Elementary school students in Japan all wear little yellow helmets, which look like hard-hats. If I'm running a little late to school or come home a little early I'll meet full ranks of these yellow helmet squads marching happily home from school. They all have large rectangular backpacks that stick out to the side and look a little too large for them. The backpacks and the helmets make them one of the cutest sights I have ever seen. They tend to sway back and forth when they march. The first time I saw the students in their little hard hats I was a little surprised. I asked my supervisor about it. She told me, "Oh, they are so cute." I agreed. I asked about the hats. I was told, "They are to protect the head when they get hit by cars." I think that translates to, "They wear bright yellow hard hats so they'll be seen and protected from the little white trucks."

Visit from Taiwan

2007-10-10T21:36:00.001+09:00

Today around 60 high school students from Taiwan visited Nozawaminami. The English teachers were in charge of leading the students around, since few if any of the Taiwanese spoke Japanese, and just as few of the Japanese spoke Chinese. There were two official translators, but most of the students spoke very good English and the Chinese teachers were mostly fluent. It quickly became my job to be an English to English translator, since the Taiwanese students had a very difficult time with the Japanese English accent. I had a fun with it. I had to give orders like, "It's time to go now, please line up here and follow us," or better yet, "If any of you need to use the restroom or bathroom, please follow so-and-so, if not, come with me." So that was this afternoon, followed by nice presentations by the Taiwanese students and some songs and demonstrations by the Nozawaminami students. Some of my students did a fairly nice rendition of Handel's Hallelujah chorus (pitch was great, pronunciation was a little bit off at times), but I loved hearing it (I stood up, but apparently that tradition hasn't crossed the ocean this far). There were demonstrations by the Kendo and Kyudo (traditional archery) clubs, and several speeches. All the students had a good time, and I think it will be good motivation for my students to work on their English because the Taiwanese students were significantly better (although many I talked to told me they had begun English at 5 or 6, and one started learning English when she was 3 years old).

I'm sorry it has been so long since I've posted. We've been pretty busy, and the time hasn't always worked out for writing. Holly and I are both responsible for coaching teams from our English clubs which will compete in the English debate tournament next month, so that keeps us after school most days. I've been working hard on graduate school applications, and on the off days from English club I've been learning to play shogi. I had planned to write a post entitled something like " beating them at their own game…or at least playing it," but I never got around to it.

Anyhow, Shogi is a strategy game which descended from the same ancestor as Chess did, so Chess and Shogi share a lot of features in common, but are decidedly different games. Shogi pieces all look similar, with different Chinese characters on them. The board is larger than Chess (9x9) and the pieces tend to be weaker (no queen, only one "rook" and one "bishop" type pieces). To make up for the fact that the pieces are generally weaker, most pieces can be promoted (flipped over to become a more powerful piece, not unlike pawnà queen) and the craziest part: pieces that you have captured can be laid back on to the board on any of yours turns in almost any location. For you StarCraft players, it's like Chess with the possibility of a reaver drop in the back.

Holly's calling me to turn off the computer and go to sleep now… it is 9:33pm, 3 minutes past my bedtime, so I need to get moving. I hope you are all are joyful and in reasonably good health. All is well here. We are fine, the car works well, and I saw another praying mantis yesterday.

What has Four Wheels and Gets Some Amount of Kilometers to the Liter?

2007-09-30T08:21:00.000+09:00

Today is a cool rainy Sunday. In a hour or so, we will attempt to drive to church for the first time. This week I paid our car insurance and other required costs (which pretty much drained my account, since one type of insurance is for the whole year, and the more expensive required one is for two years--it's good we have two incomes.) Yesterday was our first day behind the wheel. We've had the car back from its inspection since Wednesday morning (I paid our insurance on Tuesday--in cash... everything here is cash. I've never carried so many large bills around on my person, in my life), but we haven't been home from work before dark since then so it had to wait until Saturday.

To cut to the chase, driving in Japan is not too big of a switch. Yes, the car's steering wheel is on the right side of the vehicle and you drive on the left side of the road. Yes, many two-way roads are more narrow than US-one-way roads, and there are no shoulders on the road--only ditches. Yes, the shifter is on the left of the driver, not on the right, and one must look over one's left shoulder to back up. The traffic lights are pretty similar: Green means press the gas pedal, red means press the break pedal, and yellow means choose one of the two pedals and step on it. The traffic lights are arranged horizontally instead of vertically, and green arrows come after the green light, not before it.

We had several trips yesterday. First, I drove from our house to the train station, and we retrived my bike (both of our bikes are abandoned every week at the train station when we go to church to help with AWANA and get a ride home). Holly drove around the parking lot a few times, and then I drove back home. I did the rest of the driving, since our goal was get one of us up to par to be able to get to church today. Our second trip was to our Saturday morning Japanese class at the community center, after which I drove to my school and we helped the English club prepare a little more for the up coming debate tournament November 3-4 (Holly and I will both have to be judges at the tournament, as well as coaching the teams from our respective schools). After working with the English club, we went to the train station and picked up bike #2 and went home. Later yesterday afternoon, we set out again for the area near the mall (which is about half-way to our church). The big shopping mall, JUSCO, is surrounded by restaurants and not a few nice stores. We went to one of the grocery stores in that area and spent most of our time at Cainz Home Center (HO-MA SEN-TA), which sells lumber, furniture, bikes, lamps, tools, and a host of other things. It's like some combination of Target, Home Depot, and Fleet Farm.

After living in Japan for close to two months, frequently riding in other people's cars, and daily biking on the left side of the road, now feels like an appropriate time to begin driving. The strangest thing, however, is the turn-signals. On US cars, turn-signals are on left of the steering wheel. On our two-door Nissan Pulsar, the turn-signal is on the right. I almost always get it right, but when I need to quickly turn to change lanes I forget and swipe the left side... WIPERS!!

Culture Shock and Life in Japan

2007-09-22T17:39:00.000+09:00

I am finally sitting down to write my first post. It has been a whirlwind of transitions, adjustments, and new experiences, but things are finally settling down into a nice routine. Having been to Japan three times before, I never imagined that I would experience culture shock. However, the differences between this time and my previous stays are evident. My first time in Japan was when I was 14 years old; the second time was when I was 16. Both times were through a home stay program, ranging from two to four weeks in length. The third time I stayed with a missionary couple from the US for about two weeks during a seminar. A common trend between all of these visits was that I was a guest. Not only that, the first two times I stayed with Japanese families. With a host father, mother, and siblings, I was rarely left alone or unattended. Under the constant supervision of either my host family or organization, my days were filled with friends, sight-seeing, and fun activities. It was truly what they call the “honeymoon” stage of experiencing a new culture.

Having used up most of my honeymoon quota for Japan, culture shock set in shortly after my and John's arrival last month. Tired from traveling, Tokyo orientation, and arriving at our final destination, we were finally dropped off at our new home. Though I was thankful for the chance to recover from our journey, I had a strange feeling of loneliness come over me. For the first time in Japan, I was actually going to have to take care of myself. I felt helpless and abandoned and unsure of what to do with myself... Okay, now for a little perspective, John and I were not abandoned on our doorstep, left to fend for ourselves. Each of us has a caretaker/supervisor from our base schools that have been our lifelines since we've arrived. Without them, it would be impossible to wade through all the legalities that must be set up for us to live in Japan. Help with everything from alien registration and bank accounts to rides to school on rainy days and initial trips to buy household necessities was provided. We are truly indebted to them for their care.

Most of the culture shock I experienced was due to changes in the daily routines we had grown accustomed to in the States. It suddenly became obvious to me how much I took for granted back home. John and I enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of life in New Haven, CT where we could find a Target in three different directions from our apartment, read the labels on food and other household items, and enjoy a weekly Starbucks Frappuccino. While I had experience cooking, cleaning, and shopping in my own country, suddenly I felt incapable of doing any of these things in Japan. Though I had been to Japan before, it dawned on me that my host mother (or grandmother) had always prepared the meals and done the laundry. I never had to purchase the necessary items at the store to do so, nor did I ever have to read the Japanese labels. (This explains the combined 15 pounds we lost during the first month of my cooking or lack there of.) In addition, I never had to operate any of the appliances in the house. I found myself baffled by all of the Kanji (Chinese characters) that were now a barrier between me and perfectly cooked rice. It was a milestone to finally clean the toilet after figuring out which cleaners to use.

There were also a few adjustments we needed to make to living in our house. The first shock was that we have no bathroom sink. While I had previously experienced the little spout on top of the toilet that provides cold (clean) water for washing one’s hands before it refills the tank, I had never been in a home without a place to wash my face or brush my teeth. So John and I keep our toiletries by the kitchen sink. If we want hot water to wash our dishes, we push a button that ignites the natural gas and out comes the hot water. Fortunately, there is a button to push that provides hot water for the shower, although John didn't realize this his first time around. We are glad to have a washing machine in our home. However, if I want to wash our clothes with hot water, I must take water from the tub and dump it into the washer. It takes about four bucket loads, so I seldom used this method. As we do not have a dryer, we hang all of our clothes up to dry. When the weather is hot, this only takes a few hours. However, when it is raining and as the colder weather approaches, I have discovered the laundry button on our dehumidifier. This does about the same job as the summer heat and will hopefully prevent our clothes from freezing in the winter. As with most Japanese houses, our house does not have insulation.

But all hope is not lost. Despite it feeling more like a cabin than our cozy little apartment back in New Haven, we have gradually adjusted to our “new” Japanese home and lifestyle. I have found comfort in knowing that Costco’s ‘theflyingpig.com’ is only a click away - we have already received our first shipment of Prego, Skippy, Raisins, and Listerine. And it is wonderful to know that we can order most of our ‘must haves’ from the Foreign Buyer’s Club magazine. We have also been blessed with a seemingly endless supply of tomatoes (John's favorite:), cucumbers, eggplant, beans and various peppers from the gardens of our co-workers. And in the evening, we have regular visits from the local tree frogs on our kitchen door. They suction themselves to the window to catch the bugs that are attracted to the light, which always brings joy to my heart. We have also been getting involved with our little church in Miyota, about 30 minutes drive from our house. They have an AWANA program that John and I have begun to help out with. Last Friday was their kick-off carnival for the year, which John did some juggling for. In addition, we have begun to attend weekly Japanese classes, offered at the community center by local volunteers. All in all, we are counting our many blessings as we continue to adjust to our new life in Japan!

If there is a Fire Drill in a Japanese Senior High School of Several Hundred Students… Do They Stop to Take their Shoes Off?

2007-09-14T13:27:00.001+09:00

I really wondered about that question when I was told yesterday morning (Thursday) that there would be a fire drill. The answer is no. Those 500+ students and teachers all marched out onto the dirty, muddy athletic field in their colored sandals (Koumi High school is one of the few high schools in Nagano where the students are required to wear uniforms, including their colored plastic flip-flops). I followed the march of these students outside, watched them line up, observed the fire extinguisher demonstration, and followed them back into the school. Now, it took considerably longer to get back in, because numerous wet cloths had been laid in the entry way and all the students and teachers took their time in cleaning their indoor shoes on them. After walking on the washcloths and cleaning off my shoes, I felt better about having soiled my new blue Nike running shoes (which had only been worn before in the gym on Tuesday for basketball). All in all Thursday turned out to be a fun day. I'm only at Koumi High School on Thursdays, so everyone is always excited to see me (not that my students at Nozawaminami aren't) and I feel like the teachers put in a lot of time preparing with me for classes. I on the train ride home I sat with some students and got them to talk a little in English. We mainly went around giving names and where we lived, but one of the guys (from one of my classes) was good enough that he could translate most of what I said to the others. Of course when I started talking more and he was translating in between, a few more students came and joined us (and likewise had to say their names, where they were from, and give me opinions on things like their School Uniforms and whether or not they liked Mos Burger—Mos burger is a burger joint not unlike McDonald's, which for some reason all the Japanese people think is American. I try to tell people that no matter how good the burger is, no burger place with a forest green sign around the name "Mos burger" is going to sell… sounds a little like "Soylent Green," I suppose, or at least "moss." Anyhow, after I got off the train and abandoned the few remnants of my Koumi students, I began to run into my students from Nozawaminami who were very surprised to see me coming _off_ the train that they were about to get _on_. Of course, considering that I teach at two schools with a combined population of well over 1,000 students, and the fact that not only do they all know me, but they all commute from different areas. Senior High School is not mandatory in Japan, Junior high school students study very hard for entrance examines that determine their fate. Students that do exceptionally well in this area end up at Nozawakita (Holly's main school) and students who forget to show up for their entrance exams wind up at Usuda (Holly's visiting school), and the rest of the decent students end up at my two schools where they have the benefit of not being labeled either a "high level" school or a "low level" school. Of course Koumi (my visiting school) is on a mountain, so in terms of altitude, there's no debate as to which is the "highest" school. So anyhow, as I road home on my bike, every corner I reached bikes pulled up next to me from other streets with cries of "John!!" And thus I was greeted at three different blocks on the way home, and from a flock of three students at the grocery store (can you call three students a "flock" maybe a "gaggle" what units do students come in?) who saw me as I hurried in to buy some Hershey's ice cream bars. In fact, I think the only student-aged person who did not greet me on my way home yesterday was some guy jogging in a Nozawakita shirt. So Thursday was good, and now I'm done with my classes for today (it's 1:20pm Friday as I write, although I began to write yesterday). Tonight we will try to eat dinner in haste and catch a train to Miyota where our 8-person church is having its AWANA carnival (which should have been last Friday, but it was delayed/rebooked due to the typhoon). Tomorrow is Saturday, but both Holly and I are required to go to the nearby city of Ueda where we will receive instructions about judging the debate tournament at the beginning of November. So the bad news is that I have to work on Saturday… the good news is that the next two Mondays are national holidays, I get next Friday off due to exams at that time and because I worked on a Saturday, and since there are exams most of next week, I won't have any classes at Nozawaminami on Tuesday or Wednesday, the two days I'll be here. I really hope I can take some pictures soon, I have big plans to write about a few interesting aspects of local Japanese society, but I really need some pictographic evidence to contribute to my summaries and examples. Hopefully soon, Holly will get writing her mini dissertation concerning the quirks of our delightful little house. I hope you are all in good health and reasonably happy and sane. Have a good weekend. -Jq

P.S. Ueda happens to have a StarBucks… so I live in hope of a java-chip-frappucinno (with or without "mint-o").

Rainy Day Games and Fortunate Bug Finds

2007-09-11T20:43:00.000+09:00

Today was sports day at Nozawaminami senior high, which means that there were no classes. Instead of classes, all the students played various tournaments of basketball, softball, dodgeball, and volleyball in the rain. I played on the teachers' team, and survived two games of basketball and a few innings of softball--though my chronic footpain kicked back in shortly after the games and now I'm paying the price. As I sat on the sofa, icing my suffering heel, Holly alerted me the presence of a large bug on the kitchen window, which is normally covered only by 2-3 of the little tree frogs which happen to be everywhere in this swampy giant rice paddy of a land in which we live. I was curious about this large insect and ran outside with a flash light, and as I hoped, it turned out to be a praying mantis. My inability to find a praying mantis in my backyard in 4th grade prevented me from getting a top score on several science assignments... I'm absolutely positive that these critters don't live in MN. Anyhow, I was excited, and called Holly to come out and see it. See took several pictures, the best of which is post above. The poor little bug (which was actually quite large) did not seem to enjoy the flashlight, human interest, or camera flash. In fact, when I leaned in close with the flashlight to see it better, it bowed its head and covered its eyes... truly a most pious insect. Well, surviving my first game of basketball in over 3 years and seeing a real life praying mantis made today pretty worthwhile. Holly had a little harder day that wasn't all fun and games--seriously, my day was all fun and games (and sore foot), but she promises to author a post on here soon. Perhaps describing our house and its fascinating idiosyncrasies (which do not include the frogs, spiders, or mantises to be found on the outside of the house--yes, the spell checker is content with "mantises" I was hoping for mantii or something like that, but I'm not really certain how -is should be declined). That's all for now folks.

Typhoons, Japanese Bible scholars, and the “Mr. Rogers complex.”

2007-09-06T21:22:00.001+09:00

Well, I've got 40 minutes before my last class today and I'm ready so I can probably use 20 of them to write a little update, though I may have to finish later. We've now been living in Japan for a full month. We finally have keitai (cell phones), and of course internet, but still at least a week away from driving. As of Wednesday, next week, I'll finally be done giving my self-introduction which consists of a power point slide show of pictures of family, Minnesota, U of MN/Yale, boating, and fire juggling. For the last week and a half, at least two of my classes every day have been the same introduction. Soon I will have visited every English reading class. I've already been to all the oral communications classes, which are electives for the 2^nd graders (10^th in the USA), <interrupted for important work related reasons> ok… so much for 20 minutes to post. I'm off to set up for class in a few minutes and this post will have to be finished at some time other than the present time of 1:45pm. I'll begin the rest of what I will continue to say below. Today I'm at Koumi, my visiting school, and Holly is back at her base-school. I say "back" because Monday she was at visiting school #1, Tuesday she was at her base school (Nozawa-kita), and Wednesday she was at visiting school #2 the special needs school in Komorro. This is my first full day t Koumi senior high school. I was here two weeks ago to meet people and get set up, and I came here with Holly on Sunday to see the school's annual festival where the drama and music clubs perform and you can have the grand experience of waiting outside for over an hour while you wait for them to finish cooking your breaded taco (not the Mexican food… "taco" is Japanese for "octopus," the school festival was my 2^nd time eating octopus since being in Japan.. the first time was last Wednesday night at Holly's welcome party. I think the raw octopus I had there was much better than the doughy bits I had a school, but I needed to be supportive). Ok… I'm off to set up for class.

<Several hours later> Ok. It's 9pm. I didn't mention yet, but it has been raining all day due to a typhoon moving in. I rode to the train station this morning in sandals and shorts (with a nice shirt and tie under a wind breaker) and changed into my dress pants before getting on the train. I had no trouble making the long commute to school today, and I got to make use of all the shoes I brought. If I haven't described it yet, here is the basics of shoes in Japan. In a Japanese school or home, you take your shoes off before you cross over the threshold of the house. Usually there is a big step and a place to put shoes, so you can't miss it. In a home you wear your socks, or slippers. At school, you change into your "indoor shoes" which are simply another pair of shoes which you don't wear "outside" (actually you do wear them outside, but the situations of what counts and what doesn't is complex). The important thing to know is that when we walk into our schools in the morning, we change shoes and then walk inside. When we leave the office and go to the classroom, quite often there is _another_ step and place to put your (indoor) shoes and change into…. "indoor, indoor" shoes, as I call them. These ultra inner shoes are actually slippers. You won't want to wear your indoor shoes on carpet, you see, so in a carpeted classroom, such as the language lab I teach in, you change into slippers. This means that upon leaving the classroom, I change into my indoor shoes, then walk to the office, gather up my things, and proceed downstairs for a final shoe change before going home. In my mind, I like to refer to this frequent need to change shoes as the "Mr. Rogers complex" although I don't swap my coat for a cardigan (nor do I sing, but maybe I should start). So let's see… shoes, typhoons, and… oh yes. Last week I went to Tokyo. Last semester, around April, I heard through the grapevine that one of my professors would be giving a paper on the Septuagint at a conference in Tokyo… I was really curious as what on earth could be going on in Tokyo that had anything to do with 3^rd Century BC translations of the Old Testament into Greek… To make a long story short and to prevent a longish post from becoming longer I will summarize: A handful of Japanese scholars got funding from the government to host a conference on the interpretation of the Pentateuch (that's Genesis-Deuteronomy, in Hebrew called the Torah) in the Greek and Roman periods. With this funding, they were bringing in all the big name scholars who work in Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Philo, Septuagint, etc. In other words the Yale and Notre Dame crew were there with about 4 scholars from non-USA countries, and about 6 Japanese scholars. My professors wrote to those managing the conference and I was granted permission to attend, and my supervisors at school were willing to let me use two days of my paid vacation to skip school for an academic conference on trivial minutia. I had a wonderful time. I had some great talks with people, I enjoyed listening to the papers, and I had fun going out of lunch and dinner with the above mentioned scholars and several Japanese graduate students that I got to know. One of the things I was curious about was the background of the Japanese Bible scholars, and I was slightly surprised/disappointed to find that most of them (not all) were of the same mold as many University professors in the states. They got interested in the subject somehow, learned the languages, and now research and teach courses on the material. For secular universities I probably shouldn't have expected differently, and in other countries I certainly wouldn't have. Several of the Japanese students/professors that I met were Christians (2 UCC, and I'm not sure about the 3^rd but he teaches at Tokyo Christian University). The others defined themselves to me as Buddhist, Shinto, nothing, or simply "Japanese." I could write pages more on this, but I'll stop here now that you've got the basic gist. School is canceled for Holly tomorrow, but of course that means I have to go to my school. Unfortunately, we may not get to go to the AWANA carnival being held at the church we visited two weeks ago. I was hoping to Juggle there (my hats and the can of 4 tennis balls left by our predecessor have been a real hit at both of my schools), but the train we'd need to ride was shut down today and couldn't operate in the rainstorm. Today I was asked what food I missed most. I said whole grain bread. Ideally as part of a turkey, cheese, mayonnaise sandwich. I haven't found whole grain bread in Japan yet. Good cheese is rare, but small bits of dark turkey leg meat can be had seasonly in exchange for their weight in gold nuggets.

Being an Assistant Language Teacher in Japan

2007-08-26T18:12:00.000+09:00

Last week was our first day of classes. Holly and I each had to give speeches at our schools to all the teachers (in Japanese) and to an assembly of all the students (in very slow English). We have now begun our first lessons. For the rest of the week and most of our classes the week after that, we will be giving self-introductions. We show a nice PowerPoint(tm) slideshow through a projector and talk about our selves, families, state, hobbies, etc. It has taken a lot of time to put them together, and we are still working on them even now, but once it is perfected we can give the same talk over a dozen times--my main school has over 800 students, so at a rate of 3 classes a day, it would take me approximately 7 or 8 days to have a class with every student, and on Thursdays I visit Koumi Senior High, the highest level school in Japan (in terms of altitude) so I'll give the intro a few more times there as well. Holly has a very similar situation. I am primarily at Nozawa-minami senior high and Holly is at Nozawa-kita senior high, the rival school a mile or two away (FYI, minami is Japanese for "south" and kita means "north.") We live 25 minutes bike-ride away from my school and about 15 minutes away from Holly's school. Holly has another senior high school that she vists on Mondays, and I visit Koumi Senior high on Thursdays. Once a month, Holly will be at a special needs school in the city of Komoro. Her supervisor at Komoro is a Christian, and the wife of a local Japanese pastor, whose church we visited today. We missed our first train, and arrived quite late, but the 8 person congregation was still thrilled to have us and we enjoyed visiting them very much. Even though we missed the train, it worked out well because we ran into two students from my high school, one of who had been in my first class on Friday, so we got to talk to them for a little while on the train. It's 6:23pm and we're hungry, so I'll end this entry and help clear off the table and prepare for our reheated spaghetti (the remains of our first real western meal since we've moved in). Love you all.

Satisfaction Guaranteed or Double your Garbage Back

2007-08-26T17:57:00.000+09:00

Well, that previous post was written the day after our arrival in Saku. It's been a good two weeks since I wrote it, though it was posted on-line only just now. I need to tell you some new facts about Japan. Japan has the most complicated system of garbage disposal known to the human race. Our kitchen has 7 different bins dedicated to different types of waste: i.e., burnable, non-burnable, soft plastic, PET plastic, aluminum cans, glass bottles, etc. Each type of goumi ("garbage," or something like that) is collected on a different day. Residents are required to deposit their goumi in government approved bags (sold at all local grocery stores), affix their names to the bags, and drop them off in the local neighborhood goumi drop-off shed. Their are many rules regarding proper binding, ordering, etc. of goumi, such as cutting milk-cartons and tying them with string into bundles. I would have assumed that a country with such a complex system (we have two large government issued explanation sheets and schedules posted in our little kitchen) would use less packaging materials and find creative ways to minimize waste... alas, Japanese store-bought goods often have equal or quantitatively greater amounts of excess package wrap and waste. In short, goumi is the most difficult part of living in Japan. If you don't do it right, the local goumi-nazis will return it to you (thus the requirement of putting your name on it). I still haven't remembered to write our name on the bag... but everyone knows where we live, and the amount of garbage with English labels is rather incriminating. To top it all off is that fact that in the end, most of this is not recycled... it is simply burnt at a different temperature. Welcome to Japan. :-)

New Haven, Minnetonka, San Francisco, Tokyo, Saku

2007-08-26T17:50:00.001+09:00

We've been on the move for a long time now, leaving our first apartment in New Haven, selling our furniture and driving back to Minnesota at the end of June. Six week later we set off again, with four 50 lbs. suitcases, a duffle bag, backpack, laptop, and a violin. We flew from Minneapolis to San Francisco (John's first time in California). We stayed at the Miyako hotel in Japantown for two nights, and went with other new JET participants to the Consulate General of Japan's mansion for a very nice dinner party before we fly to Tokyo on August 4^th. It was very hot in Tokyo, San Francisco had been 20 degrees (F) cooler than Minneapolis, but Tokyo was hot and humid and we wore dress clothes the whole time. Tokyo reminds me (John) of New York city… only bigger. The skyscrapers and industrial buildings go on and on in every direction as far as the eye can see. When we took pictures it was a very foggy day, so please don't assume that Tokyo is as dark and dreary as our photos might suggest. After 4 days of adjustment, instruction, and orientation in Tokyo we boarded a bus with the others going to our prefecture and set off to Nagano. As soon as we got outside the city limits of Tokyo, the landscape changed: everything was surrounded by green, tree-covered mountains, Japanese style houses, and endless fields of rice. Finally I felt like I was in Japan . Tokyo was just a big city, and we were surrounded by westerners the whole time we were there (although we did go out to a Japanese restaurant with our group before leaving, and the first night we ventured off by ourselves into a McDonald's). Our bus went from Tokyo to Matsumoto, stopping to eat lunch next to a large lake (also surrounded by mountains, but after Tokyo, the mountains never stopped being our constant companion), and arriving finally in Nagano city, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. In Nagano city, we were met by our new supervisors, and I struggled to recite the introductory phrases in Japanese I had been practicing the entire trip. Even though Holly and I were destined to go to the same city and live in the same house, we each rode separately with our supervisor from our base school (Holly will be teaching at Nozawakita Senior High, and I will be at Nozawaminami Senior High, kita and minami mean "north" and "south" respectively). Saku City (or Saku-shi in Japanese) is a city of 100,000 people, about 1.5 hours south of Nagano City, in Nagano Prefecture. Saku is a city of Japanese style house, mountains, shops, and rice fields. The long narrow driveway that comes down to our house is flanked by rice on either side. There are lots of new houses around ours, which have sprung up in the last three years or so. Our house is a bit older, and I think of it as a Japanese-style cabin. Our house has a small kitchen, a shower and laundry room, a separate toilet room, and a long hallway connecting the main three rooms: our living room, office, and bedroom. The latter three all have tatami floors, made of straw mats which are very comfortable and give the house authentic Japanese feel. The walls of all the interior are sliding doors, which can be opened or closed to separate or connect rooms. The living room has an air conditioner, which works very well and protects us and Holly's violin from the heat and humidity. On arriving in Saku, I was taken by my house to the school, to get a feel for the route I would bike later. At the school I stumbled through more formal introductions in Japanese to the principal and other teachers who were present. When we returned to the house, Holly and I re-grouped and we and our supervisors went to the grocery store, then after stocking our refrigerator, we went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant which served that coveted and beloved consumable: beef. We collapsed into bed that night, and awakened at 6am the next day. I set off on my bike, determined to arrive at school by 8:30am as promised… at 8:30am I pulled over on my bike and called out one of the handful of Japanese words I know, "Sumimasen," "Excuse me," to a lady and I unfolded a map, pointed and said "Nozawaminami?" She looked at the map, said, "Aaaah, Nozawaminami, high school…." And pointed far off in the direction I had come from. I was several miles in the wrong direction. After another 3 or 4 more people in the same manner I found my way to school, arriving at 9am just as my supervisor was returning from searching for me. I spent the day filling out forms, and looking over lesson plans and schedules left by my predecessor. Holly was chauffeured to her school at 9am in her supervisor's Mercedes-Benz (with "Chevrolet" seat covers), and after filling out similar forms, returned home before me, but I went out to lunch with my supervisor and another of the English teachers from my school, and went to city hall to apply for my alien registration card. The next day, Friday August 10^th, we rode (again separately, even though from the same source to the same destination), with teachers from our schools to the final day of an English teacher's conference in the city of Ueda, between Saku and Nagano city. We spent the day sitting in on the workshops, taking notes, and giving feedback. That night we went out alone by bike and ate at a near-by Japanese fast food restaurant. We were able to order, eat, and pay for food despite our limited language ability, although I could handled "Ice-creamu floatu, onegaishimas" (coke-float please). Saturday we slept in until 9am, shaking off the last of jet-lag (or JET-lag perhaps?) and spent the day cleaning and sorting each room of the house. We rearranged some furniture, finished unpacking all of our clothing did more laundry (we have a washer, but not dryer, so we hang our clothes on the line going back and forth in the office room), vacuumed each room, and shelved all our books and pamphlets (we had been given a ton of stuff in Tokyo) after sorting through them. This brings us up to the present local time of 4:05pm on Saturday, August 11^th, as I sit on the couch typing up our first update to everyone, and Holly cooks our belated lunch. After lunch we plan to bike to the grocery store and buy more food. Our bikes have nice baskets on the front, and the store is fairly close. In a few weeks we should be able to drive our vehicles, but have been asked to wait for a little bit at first. Milk and juice are sold in 1 liter cartons (slightly larger than 1 quart), there are no half gallons or gallons (or comparable sizes) to be seen. Only processed cheese is available… the kind Holly dislikes and that I stopped eating much of since being married. The lack of real cheese will be difficult for me, but I usually snack so much on it, that this can only help my health. Produce is a bit expensive, and a lot of the things we had accustomed ourselves to (whole-grain bread, Italian or Mexican food, etc) is not available. I like Japanese rice a lot, and sushi rolls and most other Japanse fish, meats, and soups I enjoy a great deal, but it will be interesting learning to cook different staple foods. I will miss cheese, and I think even more so I will miss whole-grain bread, but it will probably be some time until then. I've been loving every minute in Japan, and if we're really in need, Saku has not only Toys R Us, but also McDonald's and Mr. Donut. I'm sure when get start driving we'll venture 30 minutes away to the closest Starbucks. –J&H