America Vacation 2007: Portland-Christmas Lights, Friends and Chickens

On December 29th my sister and I drove back up to Portland. We looked at some beautiful Christmas lights (the picture is of an old house in Portland that they decorate with over 1,000,000 lights-very amazing place) and then hung out with my friends Betsy & Bryan. My sister stayed for a while that evening and we played Rock Band on the XBox-it was really fun, even though I didn't know all of the songs.

The rest of the weekend I stayed with and visited my friends Scott & Janelle (and Loene and Samuel!) and Doran & Vineeta. We watched movies, looked at pictures, talked, laughed and just generally had a great time! On Sunday I went to church and saw lots of other friends including Kent & Becky and Gale. I enjoyed catching up with everybody, and just relaxing in a familiar place.

On the way across town I took the picture I included of Pioneer Courthouse Square with the giant Christmas tree and the semi-famous Umbrella Man statue. Then I met my friends/Portland bosses Edmund & Carol for breakfast. They brought me up to date with what's going on with the school in Portland (LCIO/PBC) and I did the same with my experiences here.

And now.... the chickens. Why so many picture of chickens? Well, first of all, I just think chickens are funny. I don't know why, but they make me laugh; something about the way they walk or behave--I think they're very silly animals (well, and delicious too, now that I'm thinking about it!). These specific chickens are the pets / mini-farm / egg producers / (neighborhood attraction?) of my friends Jim, Marie, Kerry, Lucas and Nicolas (the official chicken lover). They invited me to their house for New Years Day with their family, and I spent a fun day with them. Thanks for including me in your family!

And thanks again to everyone in Portland for all the hospitality!

January 2nd I flew to San Jose, California to spend time with my cousins and uncle & aunt, for the last part of my vacation, which I'll save for next time.

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene--P.S.

Here are two links to videos that I took on Christmas Day with my family. They are both clips of us playing the card game "Pit".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6HE5D5IVuo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7NBQ3LZ_4E

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene

My flight from Narita to PDX was pretty calm and almost relaxing; probably due to the fact that it was Christmas Eve, the plane was only half full, so I got a seat with extra leg room, and there was even space to move to another area of the plane for a while and take a nap in two adjacent, empty seats. I'm pretty sure I watched a movie, but can't remember what it was-either I was tired, or the movie wasn't that memorable...

My sister was kind enough to take a VERY early drive from Eugene to Portland to pick me up. As we were driving down the freeway away from the airport towards downtown Portland, it struck me that it didn't seem like I had been away from Oregon for nine months. I had the thought "It seems like I was just here a couple of weeks ago!" which I thought was strange. But more and more I'm starting to think that time is what's strange--as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God "has planted eternity in the human heart" (New Living Translation)--we were created as eternal beings. SO . . . no reverse culture shock, or at least not in the way I was expecting.

After a quick detour to check out my condominium in Portland, we headed to my parents' house in Springfield. After all my interest and amusement about KFC being a very popular Christmas dinner choice in Japan, and my assurances to everyone here that KFC is NOT an especially popular holiday dinner in America, for dinner on Christmas Eve my family had . . . KFC! I had a good laugh about that!

The next day, on Christmas, most of my immediate family came for dinner. We had a great time together, and the first picture shows people playing a crazy card game called "Pit", which is a favorite in my family. I showed everyone pictures of my travels during the summer when family visited me here, and it was fun to explain those adventures and remember my summer vacation.

Later in the week, my sister and I also had a good time at my brother, sister-in-law and nephew's house hanging out and playing another very fun card game. The last day before I left for Portland, my third brother and sister-in-law visited my parents' house (the third and fourth pictures) and we also looked at pictures and reminisced about their trip to Japan during the summer. The second picture shows their dog, Sunday, who cracked me up in his Santa costume. The last evening in Eugene I stayed at my sister's place (I just realized I can say that in Japanese! "watashi-no imouto-no tokoro ni tomarimashita" I'm learning-hurray!) and we had fun hanging out with her chinchillas and watching silly videos. She drove me back up to Portland the next day, but I'll save that for the next post . . .

(P.S. After fighting with this crazy software to get the pictures to appear in the right order, I finally gave up, so they might not appear in the order I mentioned in the post above, but I think it's pretty obvious.)

Gyoza Party

A quick detour from my America vacation blogging: last weekend some friends from church invited me to a gyoza and soba party. Some people in the United States now use the word gyoza, but others say "potsticker" or "Chinese dumpling". You can see from the pictures and video how they are made. I had made them once before in Portland; my friend Mondo showed me how. Unfortunately, I didn't get any video of making the soba noodles. Soba is buckwheat noodles served either hot or cold. We had the cold version. Everything was delicious! Takizawa family, thanks again for inviting me!













Here's a link to a video of us making the gyoza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFod807KW_E

America Vacation 2007: Prequel

This is just going to be a short post to get me started on my Christmas vacation (February's half done-I'd better get Christmas posts done soon!).

After a couple of very busy weeks in the middle of December, I left for the United States on the 24th, which ended up being the longest Christmas Eve in my life. Not in the idiomatic sense of "oh, what a horrible day! That was the longest day of my life!" but in the chronological sense: I left Tokyo in the
mid-afternoon on the 24th and arrived in Portland at 7:00 am on the 24th. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself-this is just supposed to be the prequel. On the way to the airport, Mondo and Aiko met me, and we spent a few hours hanging out at the Narita Temple, having lunch and waiting for my flight at the airport. Narita Temple is about a 15-minute drive from Tokyo/Narita airport.

The street lined with shops leading to the temple reminded me of a similar street in Kyoto where I visited last summer. Many of the restaurants lining the street serve eel, and you can see barrels of eels waiting to be filleted and turned into someone's meal. So, how do you feel? Does a real eel meal appeal? (sorry--I couldn't resist the rhyme)

The temple grounds are very beautiful, but we didn't have enough time to actually tour the temple itself-maybe on my next visit. After looking at the area, we had lunch at a little cafe (no eel-I had Italian food) and then headed for the airport.

Even More Snow!

The locals here tell me that last winter there wasn't any snow at all, so this is an unusual year. Just a quick link to another video of snow here. I was practicing using the "Windows Movie Maker" software, so it has several goofy text comments added in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw98ggw2j_E

Tomorrow is a holiday, and I have the day off from school (its National Foundation Day; here's a link at Wikipedia if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Foundation_Day ), so I'll try to get some winter break vacation pictures posted.

More Snow In Utsunomiya

The weather report yesterday predicted snow for today, but there was a similar forecast last week and no snow ever fell, so I didn't expect much. When I woke up this morning, my room was noticeably lighter, so I opened the curtains and was surprised by how much snow had already fallen. Not that it suddenly looks like I'm living in the Alps, but it is beautiful. It's supposed to melt by this afternoon and be clear and sunny again by tomorrow--winter in Japan is MUCH drier than Oregon! All of these are pictures right around my house.