Joyful Christmas 2010 was fantastic!

After many weeks of planning, preparing and practicing, Joyful Christmas happened Saturday. Thanks to everyone who was off stage, on stage, and all the others who helped in many other ways. And especially thanks to everyone who prayed!
I'm sure MANY more pictures will be coming to Facebook soon, but here are some that might be a little different (sorry they're a little blurry).  Two of the pictures were taken on stage RIGHT before the curtain went up. The other two were in the lobby after the event.

Christmas cards from one of my first grade classes

I was pretty amazed by these cards-the pictures are great, and the writing (in Japanese AND English) is wonderful! Most of the cards say "Merry Christmas, Robert Sensei" and the student's name, but others have longer messages. The larger images have some examples; two cards have similar messages, "thank you for Monday's English class-I will do my best!". Another says, "Merry Christmas! Happy Year of the Rabbit!" and one other says, "Christmas is fun, isn't it?" I actually read most of the Japanese on my own, and was so excited that I said to Nozomi, "I can read! I can read!" (First graders' writing is about my reading level...)
I really like the free mixing of Santa Claus, Christmas trees, the year of the rabbit, and Pokemon characters.
If I don't get a chance to post again before:  MERRY CHRISTMAS! Happy birthday, Jesus!

Starbucks mini-concert

We played a short set to promote the Joyful Christmas concert coming this Saturday. Earlier in the afternoon, there were people standing RIGHT over my shoulder on the other side of the rail in the mall, which kind of made me nervous, but then security came through and told them they couldn't stand there. It looks like I'm still making my "concentrate! concentrate! imagine there's nobody behind you! keep playing!" face...
It went great-thanks everybody!

Thanksgiving dinner

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, Nozomi and I had dinner with her family. Turkey is expensive and hard to find, so we roasted three whole chickens. We also made green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, mince pie, and pecan pie. Nozomi's mother made salads, including one with kabu no tsukemono (pickled Japanese turnip) which made it into a delicious international Thanksgiving dinner. My original plan of having an early dinner/late lunch at 3:00 turned out to be, well, unrealistic... After the chicken took longer to roast than the recipe said, which meant the drippings weren't ready to use to make the gravy (I see that making Thanksgiving dinner is a series of dominoes now...) we finally sat down to eat at about 5:00. It was later than planned, but very delicious, and Nozomi's family said they enjoyed their first Thanksgiving dinner.

Mont Blanc Pepsi was actually pretty good!

I'm not quite sure what the fascination is here with unusual promotional flavors. If you read my blog, of course you know about all the KitKat varieties. (And Nozomi found a VERY unusual new one today which I'll post later...)
So, friends/family from the States (or Australia or New Zealand or ...), has that become more popular there recently? I just can't imagine Pepsi making "New York Cheesecake" flavor (just an example, but who knows, it might show up here...) or anything similar in the US.

The ginkgo trees have finally changed color

I might have already posted pictures of these trees last year; they're in a park not too far from the church. Last year, they were this shade of yellow two or three weeks earlier. Many people come to this park just to walk along this sidewalk and others that are lined with fall colors. Nozomi told me that the title of the statue of the girl simply says "bubble".

Fall colors

I think I mentioned before that fall started late this year-many trees are just starting to have rich autumn colors now. I took this picture in the play area at the school where I taught today. I just used my cell phone camera, so the light isn't balanced, but you can get an idea of what things look like now. The weather has been fantastic for the last several days, and the blue sky is supposed to continue for a while. Thank You, God, for a beautiful creation!

Kaki + Nashi = yum!

Persimmons and Asian pears are two very good things about fall in Japan. I ate Asian pears in Oregon sometimes, but they were expensive, and I think I only ate a persimmon once in my life before coming to Japan. Now they are two of my favorite fruits. (Another is karin (quince), but I'll save that for another time.)
The nights are getting a little cold, but during the day the air is warm and dry. (Hurray! No humidity!) I hope this lasts for a while, but the prediction is for an unusually cold winter, so I'll enjoy fall and the harvest as long as I can.

Wow! A morning earthquake and an evening earthquake!

The first one, this morning, was small and short. The second one, about twenty minutes ago, was strong enough to make me get up and go stand in a doorway. I started counting seconds because it was lasting so long-I got up to 30, and probably started counting at least 10 seconds after the earthquake began. That's a pretty long quake... But don't worry-no damage and no problems!

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Saturday's Tokyo (Chiba) trip

On Saturday, Nozomi & I had made a plan to meet our friends Mondo & Aiko and go to Umi Hotaru together. A typhoon decided that we should not go to Umi Hotaru, but to LaLa Port and Costco instead...  (I think I've mentioned Umi Hotaru before, but I included a link above, if you're interested in reading more). LaLa Port is one of the biggest shopping malls in the world; it has about 540 stores and many parking structures. We had lunch at a Hawaiian hamburger shop (DELICIOUS!) then looked around the mall for a while. After that, we went to Costco to stock up on some food that's hard to find at other stores including refried beans, salsa and CHEESE CHEESE WONDERFUL CHEESE!!!

Mondo & Aiko, thanks for a fun time!

My last Halloween lesson this year!

After talking about jack-o'-lanterns and trick or treat more than 50 times (to most of my classes) in the last three weeks, I'm ready to say goodbye to Halloween until next year, but the students had a fun culture experience, so it was a success!
These pictures: my entrance into the English room in my Darth Vader costume and the students playing a board game that I made with Halloween vocabulary.
(FYI: one student's face was a little too visible; for privacy concerns there's a blank spot.)

Early Christmas wreath

Last week, some of the second graders that I teach gave me a wreath that they had made in class. I'm not sure why they're making what looks like Christmas wreaths in October, but I was pretty impressed at how well they did.

My Halloween costume for school

I've been teaching many Halloween lessons at all the schools for the past two weeks. I wasn't sure what to wear for a costume, but then I found a cheap cape at the 100 yen shop, and reproductions of paper Star Wars masks from the late 70s. So, say hello to Darth Rob...

Halloween at the mall

Some of you have already heard me mention that Halloween seems to be getting more popular in Japan. This October I've seen the most decorations and store promotions so far. Saturday, Nozomi & I went to the Bell Mall (biggest shopping mall in the area, and closest in style to malls in America). There were jack o' lantern decorations throughout, and even a themed area to take free pictures that provided hats and costumes, so we stopped for a quick photo op...

Star Wars car?

Every time I see this model of car, I hear C3PO in my head: "R2! Where have you been?!"

Wasps and frogs

A couple of experiences with small animals... Yesterday I was teaching at one of the smaller schools I work at a bit out in the countryside. In the morning the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English is what I've always assumed it stands for...) and I were getting ready to go to the 2^nd graders' class. The teacher came into the staff room and asked us to wait a few minutes (I understood that part) and then quickly said something to the principal (I didn't understand that part). The JTE then explained to me that there was a large bee in the classroom where we were going to teach. I asked her if it was THE big bee that is a bit infamous here. She said yes that it was. Suzumebachi. That's usually translated into English as giant Asian wasp, but it literally means “sparrow bee”. Yes, the wasp is so big it's compared to the size of a sparrow. Check on Wikipedia if you're interested; they're amazing, but kind of scary (the biggest wasp in the world). The principal came back into the staff room a few minutes later holding a can of insecticide and said everything was fine, no problem.

Later, right before lunch, I was in the restroom. I reached to take some toilet paper from the dispenser (I was, *ahem*, just blowing my nose). As I pulled on the paper, a small green object brushed against my hand as it plopped out of the dispenser onto the floor. I jumped a bit backwards, and then noticed that it was a small green frog. My startled reaction changed into laughter as the frog seemed to become pretty startled himself and almost hopped into the squatty potty. I picked him up and put him on the outside window ledge, noticing that another small green frog was already sitting there. There was a large rice field right next to the school. The frog had apparently crawled up the wall into the open window. Why he decided to take a nap inside the toilet paper dispenser is a bit more mysterious...

The picture I included is one I took a few weeks ago-I thought the frog looked sad because he was in jail. ("Hey! Let me out!")

Yum!

Nozomi baked homemade butter rolls this afternoon. I ate one with some of the last quince (karin) jam that we made last fall. YUM!
(If anyone knows where we can pick some quince this year, please tell me!)

BIG moth at UICS family camp

The insects here definitely get MUCH bigger than they do in Oregon. Later in the day I saw a very large mantis too.
Actually, this isn't the biggest moth I've seen here; last year at one of the schools where I teach I saw one that might have been almost twice as big, but it was sitting on a window high in the wall, so the perspective made it hard to see exactly how big it was.

Nozomi, my cousin Elaine, and me at my uncle & aunt's house

We returned to our long tradition of taking a crazy "jumping shot picture" this year during our visit to America. Friends who have never seen any of the pictures from the past, if you really want to see others, let me know...

Pictures from my father's birthday party/family reunion

This post is mostly for my family to download pictures, but friends who want to see them are welcome to look!

Update: these pictures were originally posted as a gallery on my other blog, but this blog doesn't seem to have a way to make a gallery, so this is going to be a BIG post... you'll have to do a lot of scrolling...

Nozomi & I made pickles!

During our vacation in Oregon, I copied my mother's dill pickle recipe. The recipe came from her mother (or maybe even her grandmother; she's not sure). I remember eating these pickles on hamburgers when I was growing up, so I'm excited to see how they taste. We'll try them in a few weeks and see...

Roller skating!

Monday evening, my cousins, sister, aunt, and Nozomi & I all went to the roller skating rink together. I hadn't been skating inside since we all went together about five years ago. Very fun, and very nostalgic for us. It was Nozomi's first time on roller skates, but since she had ice skated several times before, she learned very fast and had no problems.

Friday we took an all-day trip to Crater Lake

Crater Lake is a very beautiful place, and all Oregonians, if you haven't visited yet, you should! The water is one of the most amazing colors of blue I have ever seen. We also stopped in the Cascade Mountains closer to Eugene on the way (that's the picture of me with the mountains in the background.)
It seems like this is the "animal tour"--we saw turkeys and a buzzard at my sister's house, a horse and a mule while we were walking, and a chipmunk took food out of Nozomi's hand while we were at Crater Lake.
Shortly before we left, some clouds moved in and made amazing shadows on the surface of the lake. The picture gives you an idea of what it looked like, but the light was much more interesting in person.
It was a busy day and a lot of driving, but it was worth it: a great trip!

Today was my father's 80th birthday party

We had a fantastic dinner and birthday party with family to celebrate my father's 80th birthday. My sister-in-law arranged to have surprise guests: two musicans playing bagpipes and Scottish drums (my father loves bagpipe music). A wonderful time!

My sister's chinchilla, and mule and WILD TURKEYS!

My sister's condominium is on the edge of town, up in the hills. As we were driving, we saw five wild turkeys crossing the street-it was the first time I'd ever seen turkeys in my life (other than cooked on a plate)-amazing!
She has two chinchillas, which are very interesting animals and fun to play with and feed.
Yesterday, on a walk near my parents' house, we saw a horse and a mule. I guess this is going to be the America animal tour!
More later...
P.S. Sorry-bad picture quality-the settings on the camera were wrong, but now they're back to normal.