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Hi all, sorry about the blogless, newless void-I'm trying to get organized, and have LOADS of stuff to add, but will start with a small post. On Saturday I went to Tokyo for the day, partly to surprise a friend/former student. I wasn't sure if he knew I was in Japan; it turns out he thought maybe I was, but he was completely surprised to see me at his art show anyway. Here's a link to the video I took of his reaction when I showed up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPkRzXj-8O4
Hi Toyo! Surprise! I'm in Japan!
I'll add more about my trip in the next post.

Beach Trip, Part Two

Continuing from yesterday: The picture on the right is just a view of the midway area of the park. Fairly crowded, but not "I'm-going-crazy!" crowded. We left well before closing time, but it still took us about 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. Then, after finally getting onto the road, going in what looked like the opposite direction all the other cars were going....we caught up with everyone going the same direction we were going, and sat in traffic. And sat. And sat. And . . . you get the idea. It took us about two hours to get from the park to the expressway, a distance of about ten kilometers. People were not exaggerating when they told me that Golden Week traffic was bad!

The good thing about the crazy traffic, is that I had plenty of time to look at the scenery, and to take the next two pictures (and the video I'll post a link to at the end). We were driving down the road in the town of Mito when somebody noticed a LARGE figure looming in the distance. As we got closer, as you can see in the last picture, we could see that the figure was taller than the houses surrounding it. Nobody in the car knew exactly what it was, so one of the students used her cell phone to call her mother. It turns out that the figure is a giant statue of a local Shinto god. When I got home, I got on the Internet to do some investigating, and found a good summary of the story.

As you can see in the video I'll post below, most of the people on the freeway were going to Tokyo, so after we passed that exit, the road was clear, and we had a smooth trip home from there.

Here are links to...
the story about the statue:
http://www.pref.ibaraki.jp/bukyoku/seikan/kokuko/e-ibaraki-report/0603daidarabo.html
the Disko ride in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpVIcIjf5nc
a funny children's ride and a panorama of the park:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtA0L-Ywkbo
a view of the statue and the traffic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXmHLQNGiq8
and us passing the exit to Tokyo, followed by a clear road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0AtZJwAjxI

Looking east at the Pacific Ocean

Well, I've been fighting with YouTube for several days; for some reason my video uploads have all failed recently, so I only have about half of the videos uploaded that I wanted to link to here, but I'll just post those links for now.

I'll summarize my beach trip and post some pix... May 4th I went to Oarai in Ibaraki prefecture with other teachers and a group of the high school students from U.I.C.S. (Utsunomiya International Christian School, where I teach, for anyone who missed that in a previous post). On the map, it's only about 45 miles as the crow flies, but it took about two and a half hours to drive because of the crazy Golden Week traffic. I didn't really mind, though, because it was a beautiful drive through the country in an area I hadn't seen yet. One of the very interesting things for me to see as we were driving was all the farmers planting rice, which I had never seen before (the farmers planting it, not the rice itself!!!).

Our main destination was a small amusement park near the ocean. The park was having some kind of promotion, so it was free to enter; there was a per ride charge for amusements, and of course the usual fairly expensive "we've got a captive audience" price for food. The park grounds were beautiful and the whole complex was unlike any park I've seen in the US; it was part nature park, part giant picnic ground/sports fields, part amusement park. We walked through the park to the opposite side and then along a road that led down to the ocean. There were a few other people on the beach playing or picnicking, but most of the people there were surfers, which I think you can see in the picture.

After walking back up to the park, we looked around a bit and then had lunch, followed by . . . RIDES! As we entered the park, off in the distance I had seen a roller coaster of fairly promising size, which I was very excited to investigate. Because we couldn't stay for the entire day, I had time to go on two rides. Unfortunately, the roller coaster was fairly disappointing; it had a decent size first hill that disappeared into some trees, but the height was completely wasted. The drop on the other side was very small, and went immediately into a long, slow turn. The rest of the ride was basically a large kiddie coaster. BUT, the ride that was very, unexpectedly fun is the next one in the pictures. In case you can't see clearly in the photo, the name of the ride is "Disko". DUH! I should have known that a ride sharing its name with the world's most fun musical genre would be fun! We didn't have time to go on the large ferris wheel in the background of the picture; maybe next time!

Here's a link to one of the videos I took; it's surfers at the beach we visited:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmbIabbUEi0
I'll continue this next time and post more links. I've got to go to bed . . .

Shakin' N' Quakin'

I was in the middle of a tutoring session this evening when I felt the floor rumbling. My first thought was that it was a truck driving by, but it continued and got stronger. When the table started moving a bit I finally realized, "It's an earthquake!" It stopped pretty quickly after that, but the experience definitely got my adrenaline pumping. I'm told that quakes in this area aren't as common as elsewhere in Japan, and usually aren't too strong either.

I'm organizing pictures and videos I took on my trip to the coast, and will post them soon.

Japanese Mexican-American Food?

Last night Eriya, Shinya and I went to Coco's for dinner (yup, the same chain from the southwestern United States). Shinya said he thinks it's one of the only restaurants around here where you can get taco salad. I had to try it! I was kind of craving Mexican food a while back, so I ordered the salad and quesadillas. (And yes, I realize that those are not REAL Mexican food-I actually spent a couple of minutes explaining what "TexMex" meant.) Well, the taco salad had no cheese, which was disappointing to me because I've been wanting cheese a lot lately (a food that has only limited varieties here), but other than that it was pretty good!

Tonight Shinya and I went to Saizeriya, an Italian food chain, for dinner. I had double cheese pizza and salad with cheese on top. Did I happen to mention that I've been missing having lots of cheese? (Sorry to a certain cheese-despising friend at church in Portland!)

Tomorrow I'm going on a school trip with the high school students to a park near the coast. I've heard that it's kind of a small amusement park and kind of a nature park, so I'm not sure what to expect. I heard a rumor that there might be a small roller coaster there . . . We also might have a chance for a quick stop by the ocean, but I was told that the ocean in that area isn't really that scenic. My report and pictures will be coming soon to a blog near you.

Golden Week

This week is called "Golden Week" in Japan. It's a series of holidays that all come close together, usually at the beginning of May, and sometimes including the end of April. April 30th was one of the holidays, so the young adult group from church went on a retreat to a beautiful resort area about an hour and a half away. The first two pictures are probably pretty obvious: the house we stayed in and a group picture with almost everybody in the picture. I mentioned to Eriya and Shinya that it seems so strange to me to see forests with bamboo everywhere as the undergrowth, so that's why I framed the first picture the way I did, if you haven't already figured that out. The theme of the retreat was "following your dream/vision", and it was a very encouraging time. It was also good just to get to know more people I didn't know, and get to know the people I already knew better.

On the way home we stopped at a beautiful park, and as you can see from the third picture, it also had an observation tower. SO . . . of course I had to pay the $2.60 to go up to the top and take pictures and videos. I think I figured out how to post links more efficiently, so I'll try that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzol9s3yK74

The second video I'm linking to is just us driving through the countryside right before we reached the park. It shows some of the scenery, and also features a conversation (well, maybe it's more of a "verbal exchange"; I don't know enough vocabulary to have a real conversation) about the fact that we suddenly realized that we were near a dairy. You will hear the Japanese words "kusai" (which means "stink") and "ushi" (which means "cow"). Here's that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNUQuV2yfSw