Rollerskating Aliens

Many months ago I posted on my blog about the next generation roller skates that I bought and started using for exercise. The weather the last few days has been amazing-great temperature, sunny, and a cool breeze-so I finally decided today that I had to take advantage of it. I found my skates, dusted them off, made sure they were still safe to use, and headed out the door. By luck (good luck if you like attention, bad luck if you don't like being a spectacle) the elementary school three blocks from our house had just released the students a few minutes earlier. I walked out the door of the apartment building, sat down on the front step, started to put on my first skate, and the mini-parade of children started to walk by. The looks and stares that I received ranged from "what's that guy doing?" to "I THINK AN ALIEN JUST ARRIVED FROM ANOTHER PLANET!" After four years, I'm pretty much used to sticking out as a non-Japanese living in Japan, so the stares usually don't affect me much one way or another anymore. But the innocent amazement in children's faces still makes me smile, even if it reminds me a little bit that I'm different here. And I have to admit, I'm VERY different zipping around the neighborhood on skates...

Goodbye, cicadas; see you next year!

I had never heard or seen a cicada (other than on TV) until I came to Japan. For many people here, hearing their noise above in the trees is part of the experience of summer. But summer is finishing, and so are the cicadas. I expect that I'll only hear them for a few more days. The evenings now are filled with the sound of crickets chirping.

The video I'm including was taken just a few minutes walk from our apartment. There's a neighborhood where several older houses have large plots of land with many trees. In the clip you can hear the cicadas, a couple of crows, and a dove.
(Video is offline right now...)

U.I.C.S. Family Camp

Friday afternoon, evening and Saturday morning, Nozomi's school (where I taught before) had a short camp for the students and their families. In American culture thinking, I would probably call it a retreat--staying together in a small hotel. I took a video of one of the ice breaker games in the afternoon: one person in the circle is the (secret) leader and randomly changes the actions everyone copies. The person in the center tries to guess who the leader is by watching the actions changing. Funny game, even to watch!

(Video is offline right now...)

After Roke

The typhoon was mostly finished by about midnight last night, and this morning the weather was sunny and beautiful. It's rather common for that to happen here; I'm not sure if that's typical in other areas where typhoons occur or not.
Early this afternoon, an amazing storm front moved in, maybe one last arm of the typhoon as it headed out into the Pacific Ocean. It's cloudy and drizzly now, but the forecast is for beautiful weather again starting tomorrow and continuing for a few days with warm, but not hot temperatures. Sounds wonderful!

Typhoon Number 15

This has been a long, active typhoon season this year, and there's still one more month to go! The areas around Nagoya were hit pretty hard again, but as usual we're fine here.
Today I found out what dragonflies do during a typhoon: hold on!
Culture note: typhoons do have names just as hurricanes have names in America, but here people rarely use the names, usually referring to them by number. This typhoon's name is "Roke".

(Video is offline right now...)

The Wizard of Oz

Last week, Nozomi & I watched "The Wizard of Oz". It was the first time that Nozomi had seen it, but since I'm a typical American, I've probably seen it at least a dozen times. (Well, OK, maybe I'm NOT a typical American in many ways, but I AM in how many times I've seen that movie...) However, it had probably been 15 years since the last time that I watched. That gave me a very new perspective on the film.
It seemed much more sentimental than I had remembered; not necessarily in a bad way, I was just surprised at my reaction to viewing the movie now versus my memories of the feeling of the film. Also, I was struck at how art deco the design of the Emerald City was. I suppose some people might think, "of course it's a sentimental film and of course it has strong art deco style--it was made in 1939-what else would you expect?" Yes, rather obvious, but I guess that just reinforces how different the film seemed to me after not watching for so long.
Nozomi enjoyed it too, and it was fun to share a piece of American culture with her. Americans (and English-speaking North American culture sharers), have you ever thought about how much that film influences our culture? All of the phrases that are used in common speech as idioms? ("I'll get you, and your little dog too!" "Help me-I'm melting! What a world-what a world!" etc.) So, for your 1st, 10th, or 100th time, enjoy "The Wizard of Oz".

ANOTHER typhoon!

A typhoon is just about to make landfall in Shikoku (southern Japan). Extremely heavy rain and high winds are expected there, but we are far from the main path, and no trouble is expected here other than lots of rain. So we're fine, but please feel free to pray for the areas that will be directly hit. The TV news is showing video of streets that have been turned into mini-rivers with people crossing in water up to their ankles.