Flat3D

Upgrade…

So I decided the upgrade to Wordpress 2 wasn’t worth the hassle it would bring… At least for the meanwhile.

I have however made a new user so that you can tell when I am posting from my pocket pc!

edit- typo! I haven’t actually upgraded!

Rusuban

A rusuban is some language’s (probably portuguese, anyone want to clarify?) word for caretaker. The Japanese have taken it on board as a word that means caretaker or house-sitter… and right now it is what I am.
Once more the Elliots have had to head off, this time to attend a seminar in JHQ (OMF Japan Headquarters, but JHQ sounds more James Bondish) Ichikawa, Chiba (near Tokyo) to prepare them for their home assignment that is happening in April, also Angela had to go to as she is going on home assignment sometime before the next workshop is being held. This means that for the past two weeks I have been home alone in Ajigasawa in a way that I haven’t been before.

The time has been fairly uneventful, most of my work has been moving snow around, which has gradually worn me down to wondering if there isn’t a better way.
Now to paint the picture, Masa and I were talking about wind power yesterday, follwing on from discussion about the price of petrol and heating oil. We gradually moved from wind power to other types of power, and then onto as-of-yet uninvented types of power, such as Snow Power. This was followed shortly by automated snow removal devices. So picture now painted in full technicolour glory lets go on…
I am sure that there MUST be a way to remove snow that is worthwhile and cost effective. Current solutions are to sprinkle water on the snow affected area through pipes along the tarmac, this melts the falling snow and, as long as the water is slightly heated and continually flowing, stops ice from forming. But it can’t be cost effective, that much water, needing to be heated, not a chance.
Other ways are to pump hot water through pipes below the road or parking surface. This melts the snow and can reuse water, but it requires much more heat to be effective and has shown to only be worth it for particularly necessary and steep pieces of road that would be undrivable otherwise or on the car parks of particularly rich and lazy people who don’t believe in giving the lower classes the benefit of their cash by paying someone to remove their snow.
Another way would be to have no garden, driveway or roof to clear. This is known as apartment dwelling and the only show that needs to be shovelled is your little parking space, the rest is someone elses responsibility. This works quite well for a lot of people and is quite cost effective. But it still doesn’t come up with an effective method of snow-removal, it just passes the buck onto someone else.

So what to do? Well here are some suggestions by me.
Firstly Aomori, where snow is a big problem, is sitting on a huge amount of under ground geothermally heated water. This water’s primary use is in the onsens of Aomori, as described in a previous post. Now if you go past an onsen you will notice that the gutter is positively free of snow and has steam rising out as the old bathwater, still piping hot, is drained out of the onsen (hot water is constantly flowing into an onsen bath and therefore constantly flowing out of the other end). Now to pump onsen water out of the ground you need to get a permit or licence from local authorities. I think a practical solution would be for the authorities to provide a discount for people who want to open onsens at the top of busy hills and then drain the onsen baths through pipes layed under the roads leading up that hill. The cost of pumping the water up that high would be born by the profit making onsen owner and no water heating would be required. As the water is simply waste water that no one wants, no one loses!
Another thought I have had the pleasure of sharing was an automated roof clearing doodle bug that Masa thought of… A little bar on rails on the roof that rides maybe 10cm up, so when you get up in the morning you hit a button and it swipes down the roof, dumping the collected snow down for easy removal. Sounds like a stupid idea, try climbing about a roof for a few hours digging a metre of snow off!
My final solution to the problem of snow is to move. Move somewhere with less snow. Of all my ideas this one seems the most viable and cost effective…

If you don’t really see what all the fuss is about, you can see photos in my photo album (Ajigasawa - Ajigasawa - Snow). I was thinking about it today while shovelling snow, think about all the rain that falls in Northern Ireland (if you aren’t from NI, just substitute the word “lots” in for that amount). Now imagine if the rain fell, but didn’t drain away. Was strangely solid and white, (just off the top of my head lets call it snow) and piled up around your house and car and on the roof and the only way to get anything done was to shovel it all away… no not away, it doesn’t go away… Shovel it all to a big pile somewhere else… Imagine how big a pain in the rear end that might be…

Having said all that I still like snow. I just don’t like moving it!

On a side track, I think this is quite funny…

Natsukashii…

The word “natsukashii” technically means “nostalgic”, but there is more to it than that. It’s more like when we say “ahh the good old days…” or “those were great times…” It doesn’t even have to be that long ago…

In this case I am using it (possibly incorrectly) to refer to last year. Last year I started kayaking, when I say started I mean discounting all the splashing about on flat lakes and the six mile water. I mean white water kayaking and surfing the suckers. You can see some pics from a trip just before I left in the photogallery.

Anyways I was talking to PC just now about it, he has taken up the fine pastime in the past month or two and has been telling me about some trips on the sea and down the six-mile and really been making me wish I had one here. It’s not the first time either.
While at Takayama I went to take pics of the sunrise and ran into a guy who was on his way out on a sit-on-top, there was really no surf that morning though.
And recently I read “In the wake of the Jomon” by Jon Turk recounting his trip from Hokkaido (North Japan) to Alaska by small boat (”windrider” and kayak). I highly recommend any of the kayaking folks to read this (that means you lyle, steve, tom, etc) if the documentary that Ray Mears made in canada paddling a river in open canoes made you want to take a trip, this will make you want to head off to the Aleutians for a wee jaunt!

Anyways, my plan is to alleviate my craving for kayaking with a bit of snowboarding in the next few weeks, Aaron has promised to teach me the basics on how to go about it, so hopefully I will get a stab at that sometime soon!

So lads, first weekend I’m back, Whiterocks beach in a tent, up at 6 on the waves!

JAF

On Wednesday afternoon I packed my books and headed to Hirosaki for a Japanese lesson. I spent half an hour in the morning clearing the little snow that had fallen the previous night to avoid it packing under the wheels of the Subaru (the all wheel drive, mid-mounted engine powerhouse I have to still post photos of…) when I loaded up and headed out into the snow.
Before I left I made sure I had everything: money, drivers licence, alien registration card, emergency mobile phone all present and correct.

The drive to Hirosaki was uneventful and relatively slow. I went over the mountain to avoid the rough roads caused by last weeks warm spell half melting and refreezing some of the snow and ice. It was a good decision despite running into a bit of a small blizzard as restricted visibility is a small price to pay for the smoother ride. I stopped at Lawson’s and bought some onigiri to eat for lunch and arrived without much time to spare. I was going to park in the postoffice carpark, but there was roadworks and I was left a little unsure if I could get in, so I parked in the nextdoor Nakasan multistorey carpark. I parked out the front, not too worried about snow and didn’t think too much more as I left and headed to the information centre to meet Yoshi and study Japanese.

Class went well and I returned at around 4:15 to Nakasan. I put my bag on the passenger seat and put the key in and turned. Nothing happened. I tried again and realised to my horror that I had left the lights on! I had switched them on during the blizzard and due to there not being a beeper to alert you to having them on, it being broad daylight and my total forgetfulness I walked off and left them.

I thought through my options…
1. I could get the train back to Ajigasawa, get some jumpcables and the van, drive to hirosaki, jumpstart the subaru from the van, drive it home, get the train back to hirosaki and get the train back to hirosaki and drive the van back. Good points, everythig gets home safe, bad points, expensive trips on the train, lots of fuel, lots of time and huge carpark bills…
2. I could try asking passers by for help in my basic japanese and see if anyone could help me. Good points, may be less expensive, bad points, chance of success low, high embarrassment factor.
3. I could salvage the vehicle for parts, sell them and live on the streets of Hirosaki. Good points, none, bad points, obvious.
4. I could call JAF! Good points, as a JAF member I could get free on the road help! Bad points, none!

So I got out the emergency keitai (mobile phone) and plugged in the number from my JAF card. Nothing happened. So I called the number to check the balance (pay as you go phone) and was told by the nice person at the other end that the credit expired on the 17th January. Wednesday being the 18th made this a little frustrating…

So I thought again. I am in a commercial carpark, there must be someone around who I can ask for help and more than likely a phone I can use. So I got out my notebook from my japanese class and looked up how to explain that my battery was flat cos I left the lights on. Once I was semi satisfied I went in search of an attendant.

I found one. I tried my japanese. He looked at me. I tried again. He looked at his co-worker then back at me. I gave up and asked him if he would look at my car. He came and saw the non-starting car. So then with some actions I explained that I left the lights on and told him I was a “Jaffu membaa”. We returned to the attendants hut and he used the phone to call JAF.
By the time this had all transpired it had got to 5pm, the Ajigasawa prayer meeting begins at 7:30pm on Wednesdays and I was hoping to get home for 7 as I was due to get picked up for it then.
I remembered breifly when Luke locked his keys in his car at English camp and that JAF promised to be there in 90 minutes to 2 hours. As it takes about an hour and a little bit to get home form Hirosaki I wouldn’t make it in time.
After a little while on the phone the mad told me they would be there by 5:30. So I returned to the car and waited.
Sure enough JAF turned up at 5:30. Jump started me from a batterypack and swiped my card and I was on my way home at 5:35pm. I made it back by 6:45pm just in enough time to gather my things for prayer meeting.

And that is the story of Hirosaki, JAF, expired keitai credit and a lot of praying…

Due north

Last Wednesday when I got back from my first Japanese class with my new sensei, Yoshi, Laurie and John asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking a trip to Hakodate to clear snow from their daughter Mary’s roof. The fact that they had been on the phone already and told their in-laws the Watanabe’s I was coming to stay was beside the point, I was more than happy to take a trip to Hakodate. I quite like going to see new places and experience new areas and I got to go under the longest undersea railway tunnel in the world, (so take that Anglo-Francophiles… :huh_tb:) the Seikan Tunnel

Anyways, the trip was good, I got to meet a Korean Short term team at Nanae Church and a bunch of other nice people including the Elliots in-laws (via their daughter Anna) the Watanabes, and I got to walk on water! Ok so it was frozen, but still, pretty cool. I was also shocked to learn that 3cm thick ice is enough for a person to walk on it, well though that may be the case, you won’t find me walking on 3cm thick ice. Not unless a sumo wrestler in high heels is jumping up and down on it and still not swimming…

And you can see photos of this and other stuff in the photo gallery which I finally fixed (but may break again if I attempt an upgrade to wordpress2, Marky, did you try it yet?)