Flat3D

Alien…

As of Monday I’m an official alien, and I have a card to prove it too. While the atennae are annoying in lower doorways and the silver space suit looks a bit daft, the card does mean I can leave my passport at home, which is a huge benefit as I no longer risk wrecking it or washing it or other not so good things.

Tomorrow I will be going with John (Elliot, or Big John as Masa says) to the Old Smoke, the Small-to-medium-sized Apple, the slightly breezy city, Aomori City herself. Our mission? To get me permission to drive. Assuming this permission is granted I will be legally allowed to drive the Elliot’s Subaru, which will be nice… Maybe I will post a picture of the 4 wheel drive powerhouse sometime.

Other things that have been going on, I wired up the light and fan in the Elliots new bathroom (only blowing the circuit breaker once, the earth wire and neutral wire were both green, so it was really trial and error for the most part) We then put styrofoam and fibreglass insualtion in the walls and boarded up the outside with plywood, sometime we will finish it with siding (Japanese houses don’t use brick, just plywood it seems…well, with a few 2×4s in there too) Then tonight we went and taught a bunch of nurses english, I showed them Lyles photos from the Liffey Descent (so sorry I missed it :() and some other kayak photos in an attempt to encourage talk about sports and hobbies. I also made use of the photo I took of the article Mr Ishihara found in the paper about the glorious victory to stir up some anti-England propoganda, unfortunately they saw the picture of David Beckham and all went “oooooh bekkuhammu! Daisuki!” (”oh Beckham, I really like him” mostly the girls to be fair) and it was difficult to explain why Roy Keane wasn’t playing. But I think I got the point across with many drawn maps and highlighted borders…
All in all it was good fun though.

I’m not dead yet!

Ok so I made it. I survived the kids.

The kindergarten went surprisingly well with Oku (the town area foreign affairs overseer person) translating and insisting on me doing a bit on Ireland… I am from Ireland in Japan because to say United Kingdom gets complicated and I figured I’d tell them Northern Ireland, but they just assume it’s part of ireland and I’m not of a proficient enough level of Japanese to discuss international politics, unless it can be covered by “Hello, I am John, I’m fine thanks, oh look it’s raining, best go home, see you tomorrow!”

So yes…
I did my bit on Ireland which took up half the time! Then we did animals and numbers and other such gunk.

The afternoon was a little harder. To begin with I thought it started at 4:30 (working backwards from a 6:20pm ending with 3×30 minute classes and 2×10 minute breaks between them) turns out it started at 4pm (the classes are 40 mins long…) but it was ok I think as I left early to go to the postoffice and arrived at about 4:10pm, so I just went on through the first break (the kids only have one class each, so it was really only me not getting a break).
But this lead to panic on my part and a total abandonment of any preplanning I had made… Which made for a very haphazard first class… Which was the only one parents sat in for…
The second class was much better, we learned animals and played bingo with first letters…
The third was the best (and the oldest) I got them into two teams (3 girls vs 3 boys, the oldest rivalry known to mankind) and we played “spell the thing on the card in your notebook to get your team 3 points” game. It went down rather well and was hastily invented cos I couldn’t figure out how to play bingo with spelling. But they left with a hankering for some bingo as I think they had been told by John (Elliot) that they would get to play it this week…

So it all went rather well, althought not smoothly at many points.

Today we went to the Aomori Christian Center which is an awesome place with great grounds and Bruce, the caretaker, is kinda like the electrical version of Tim the Toolman Taylor with a garage/workshop full of junk, including his own high voltage Jacob’s Ladder, an in development three-phase power generator and other such goodies.
There we had a short service, a barbecue and a concert. I think it was like a camp reunion for a summer camp that was at the center over the summer (duh).

On the way there and back I had a lift with Masa-san. Masa-san is a member of Ajigasawa church (beside me in the back row of the congregation picture) who drives a Subaru Legacy. Not that impressive til you sit in it as he puts his right foot to the floor and the 3 litre flat 6 engine pushes you into the back of your seat. It’s almost (thought not quite) a rival to Mark boy’s VR6… The biggest problem was his putting his Abba MD on. Acceleration isn’t the same with Dancing Queen playing…
All in all a good day!

I added a few photos to the gallery, one of JET Sarah in a tumble dryer (A JET is a native english speaker who comes to “assist” teaching english in schools on the JET programme…), one of the Aji church congregation (minus Elliots, plus Takases who have just left) and one of some singers at the camp thingy today.

A week in a valley with some fish…

Thats what the name of this town means.
Ajigasawa - The kind of valley thing of the horse mackerel (can you tell I don’t really know?)

Anyways I’ve been here a week now and had the chance to explore and settle and rest and onsen…
The Elliots have gone to Tokyo (yes it’s not Tokyo, it’s Chiba, but if you jut thought this then you are in the vast minority reading this who know what Chiba is and probably also know that Ichikawa is litterally a river’s breadth away from being in Tokyo) for project timothy (Laurie told me what it was for/about but I have forgotten. It sounds more exciting just as “Project Timothy” anyways) So it has been me and their daughter Sarah in the house. For a while an ex-JET, Tricia, came and stayed as well, then she left for Tokyo to fly home to Arizona. It has been very interesting.

So what have I been doing? Well not a lot is the answer! I have been out biking around the town to find out where everything is, I went and downloaded a bunch of pictures of Irish things so I can teach the kids in the Kindergarten about Ireland (at the request of the guy in charge who will be driving me around… whom I met at the russian class on friday, more on that later…) Then I took a memory card of 5 whole photos to the Fujifilm shop to get printed. It all worked quite well, now I just have to figure out what I’m gonna actually teach the kids… As in what English I am going to teach them, that is the point afterall!
I have also been to Church here in Aji and then again at the international service at the Ghent’s church. Believe it or not I actually felt more comfortable at the Japanese service in aji than at the English service. I am not sure if this is due to having acclimatised to Japanese culture but not to North American culture or simply because when you can’t speak the language you don’t feel so much pressure to actually go and talk to people… Although after the service I did go and talk to people and felt much less uneasy. So hopefully that will continue at the next one.

So the russian class. It went well. We made and ate pirotski (which, being the result of being changed to Japanese and back again, is probably not correct, it could be pilotski or protski or plotski or anything really…) but yeah it was tasty and fun and I got to meet some people and practice my Japanese…

Then this week I have moved into my new room! It is in the church building and is above the sunday school room. The stairs are veery steep though, and I have been informed that 2 short termers have already met with the floor at some velocity thanks to them. But since then they have added a hand rail and glow in the dark patches along the edges and things so hopefully I won’t meet such a fate. It is nice to be where I will be for the majority of the next year, now I can finally get settled, arrange things like I want and so on and so forth.

And today the new bath outfit was installed. They will come again tomorrow to hook up the water. but we can’t use it til friday as the caulking won’t have set until then. So we will just have to continue the regular trips to the onsen (Japanese hot spring bath)…. shame…
The next few days will be a little hectic, I have tomorrow to finalise prep for the kindergarten and kids classes. To be honest the kindergarten classes scare me more than the kids class despite the Japanese teacher’s presence. In fact it is because of him that I am more worried! With the kids I can just do stuff and try to get something across, kids don’t really fill me with fear as they might some people. But a supervised class, now thats different, it almost feels like I’m going to be tested!

So yeah, I have taken photos, but I will upload them another time. Too much messing around for this evening.

I have arrived (again…)

So here I am in Ajigasawa (Aomori). I arrived on Tuesday (13th), flew from Chitose airport to Aomori where I was met by John Elliot. We then went to a meeting thing at a conference centre he was attending and I waited in the kids room (without any kids) reading the awesome “Blue like Jazz” book marky and co gave me in the furama the week before I left NI.
Then we went to Goshogawara where we taught a bunch of first year nurses English (taught being a loose term really) and then home. When we got home we went to the public bathhouse as the Elliots bathroom is currently non-existant (they had some kind of problem with the frame of the house and had to rip it all out) but a new one is coming on Tuesday.
Then wednesday was a day of prayer meetings. We went to one in the morning at the Messr’s home (realtivly new OMF missionaries in Aomori) then to one in the home of a Ajigasawa Chapel members home.
Then yesterday (thursday) we taught 2 kindergarten english classes in the morning and then 3 half hour classes in the afternoon for kids.
Then John and Laurie left for Tokyo. Where they will be for the next 10 days or so. This means come next Thursday I will have to teach the 2 kindergarten classes and 3 kids classes all by myself… Normally I wouldn’t be bothered, but the realy issue in my mind is that I have no idea how to speak any Japanese that will be useful. I don’t know how to say “sit down and stop riding on the rollaway tables” or “stop throwing your eraser at people and write something in your book!” I don’t even know how to tell them what I am teaching them means…
BUT when it comes down to it, most of what I will be doing is teaching these kind of classes, which is fine really, as once they get going they seem to be kinda fun. So I guess it’s best I learn now. And I know I always learn the best under pressure!

So yeah. Tonight I am going to a russian lesson… Which suprised me as much as it has probably suprised you. Laurie goes to these lessons on Friday nights to learn some russian (obviously) and as she is away she suggested I go in her place. Tonight is the first of the year (I think) and so instead of learning any russian they are gonna make stuff to eat then eat it. So I really don’t mind going! But the only issue I have in my mind is that everyone there will speak Japanese and Russian, not so much English… And they will probably see me at the Russian class and think “Oh look, sensei has brought a russian person, lets go and try out our russian!” Anyways what’s the worst that could happen?

On a more serious front. I have been reading “Blue like jazz” (I know I said I was reading it, but I can’t really link to the next thought without restating so you’re just gonna have to live with it)
It’s a really pretty good book. The author (Don Miller) writes in a style that is pretty close to how I think and writes about the kind of things (to an extent) that I think about, or like to think I think about. And the result is that some if it cuts pretty close to the bone. The latest cut is what I am going to tell you about…

Two years ago I had a placement in Liberty IT which meant I wasn’t at university for a year. It also meant trying to become part of a new group of people. And I didn’t quite fit into it. The problem is that I don’t drink and hanging around with a lot of people who do gets boring very quickly when you realise that the sole purpose of going out is to drink, the fact that you go in a group is simply because “drinking alone is what drunks do, and we aren’t drunks!” I know everyone wasn’t like that, but everyone drank and gradually as they drank they changed into new people. People who weren’t the same as the ones at work and I suddenly had to adjust to. So I would go home early, or not bother going out with them at all.
Now on top of it my friends at university moved on. I know this is probably as much my own fault as anything else as I didn’t really make that much of an effort to keep in touch…
And now with my friends moving on and with the guys at work I didn’t really want to hang out with much and the fact that I was living on my own as well, my human contact other than for work was very limited. I would go home at weekends and spend time with my family and friends at home, but only short times.
Then when the time moved past and I entered final year I began to get snowed under in work and had to stop going to Tai Jutsu and often CU in order to get through it and keep on top. This limited my contact further.
Now what has this got to do with Blue like Jazz? Well just after halfway through, Don Miller describes a time in his life that he lived alone for 6 years and describes how it affected him. And when I look back I see similar things happening in me. Basically my interpersonal skills slowly dissolving and having more desire to spend time alone and more introverted.

Now here I am in Japan and I have and excuse to be introverted. I don’t really speak the language.
Maybe I am being too harsh on myself, I have always been a shy person when it comes to new people and usually I come out of myself after a short while of getting to know them. But it feels that everyone is new right now and with language and cultural barriers it is going to take a long while to get to know them.

So tonight I am taking my chance to make a start and go to Russian class and meet some people and see what kind of communication I can get across. I doubt I will make good friends with any of them as I probably won’t go to Russian class again (I can’t learn Russian in Japanese if I can’t speak Japanese!)

Anyways, I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or sometime.

KGK (not KJB)

Yesterday I went back to Hokuei church with the Ishiharas. the other times I was there I was made so welcome I figured it was better to go too Japanese church than an international one.

I stayed after with the youth in the pastors house (and made sure to do my homework on Friday this week)
In the evening they took me to a KGK conference (the Japanese offshoot of IFES) where Yuko kindly translated for me (her English is incredible)
After we went to a Mexican place for food and to make fun of the emergency exit man’s strange running style (probably due to his extra long left leg..)

I only went to the church 3 times, but I think I am going to miss it.

me and the ones left at the end:

notice that they are all girls, thee is a severe lack of young men (and older ones too) in the church in Japan. Also most of the youth are only in Sapporo for a while before moving else where. So please pray for them.

In other news, this
is so annoying. it makes me ashamed of my country.