America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!

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.

New Years Resolutions

I got started on two New Year's resolutions this week:
--I finally found a music book I'd been looking for: "Jazz Hanon" (you pianists and former piano students out there probably remember Hanon . . . finger exercises!) I'm going to get serious again about improving my piano technique and theory, specifically in jazz, so I started practicing from the book this week.
--I've been working on memorizing katakana, the writing system used in Japanese to transliterate foreign words. It's also sometimes used in a way similar to the English usage of italics. I'm over half done with that. Also, I ordered a book that just arrived today. It teaches kanji, the last (and most difficult!) writing system that I need to learn to be able to read Japanese. It's the system of characters originally borrowed from Chinese. I'm planning to start that this weekend.

And for anybody who hasn't already heard, recently I was officially invited to return for a second year of teaching at UICS, and I accepted the offer, so I will start the 2008-2009 school year in April.

Snow In Utsunomiya

A couple of weeks ago very light snow fell for a few minutes, but this morning we had our first snow that stayed on the ground. Only for a few hours, but it did stay. Here is a short video that I took this morning, the first one that I've posted on YouTube for a while:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQ7Y-HuMP0

Comments?

I just enabled the comments feature on this blog, so now you should be able to send me comments/messages directly through this site. I have at least one friend who was worried about accidentally posting comments; fear not! I have the moderation feature turned on, so I will see the messages before they're posted, and if you accidentally send something you didn't mean to, just send me a second message telling me what to delete, and I will (unless I think it's really funny, and then maybe I'll post it anyway---JUST KIDDING!).

Crispy crunchy chickeny chippy

I've seen some flavors of snack foods in Japan that are very strange by American standards including consommé flavored popcorn and curry flavored, well, just about anything curry flavored (even donuts---no, I'm not joking).

When I saw this in the store the other day, I had to buy it! "Fried chicken taste" chips. Okay, I'm opening it right now . . . it tastes... WOW!!!!!! It's pretty good! I can't say it tastes exactly like fried chicken, but it's pretty close!

Hmm....maybe I should make a regular feature on unusual foods in Japan. Well, we'll see . . .

Back In Utsunomiya

I had a fantastic trip visiting family and friends in the U.S. Here are just a couple of quick pictures, and hopefully I'll get a more complete trip account posted soon.





I took the train from my city to Tokyo and then on to Narita near the airport. My friends Mondo & Aiko met me and we visited Narita temple, had lunch together, and hung out until my plane left. The first picture is Mondo and Aiko standing in front of the main entrance to Narita temple.








One of the things I love about my city Portland, Oregon is all the beautiful lights at Christmas (and at other times too, actually). This is a photo of an old Victorian style house that is decorated with 1,000,000 lights every Christmas (yes, really-one million!).










The second half of my vacation was spent in San Jose, California with family including my cousins and their families and my uncle & aunt. The first and last days I spent there, the weather was fantastic--unfortunately, an Alaskan storm front arrived the day after I did, but that's another story... This is the sunset the FIRST day I was there.

More later . . .

Happy New Year!

This is my first post from America since . . . well . . . March, I think! I'm in the States now on vacation enjoying some time with friends and family. I spent the first 1/3 in Eugene, Oregon; the second 1/3 in Portland, Oregon; and I leave for the final 1/3 in San Jose, California tomorrow morning. Thanks for everybody who hosted me, and sorry that I couldn't see everybody in Portland that I wanted to.

Happy New Year / ake mashite omedetou gozaimasu!
and God's blessings for the new year!

Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas!
I managed to get a picture of Santa and Rudolph on my recent trip to the North Pole. (If you look at Santa carefully, he might look a little familiar . . . )

I leave for my vacation in the States tomorrow --I'll see some of you soon!

Christmas plans and Utsunomiya Central Park

Just a quick note--many of you have already heard my vacation schedule, but probably not everyone, so here it is:
--arriving in Oregon December 24th; staying with my family in Eugene/Springfield
--traveling to Portland on December 29th; staying with ???? (anybody want to host me?)
--traveling to California on January 2nd; staying with family in San Jose
--returning to Japan on January 8th

The three pictures are from a walk I took a few weeks ago in Utsunomiya's Central Park. The leaves were just starting to change color at that point. Fall seems to come later here than in Oregon, but when the weather changed, it cooled off very quickly. The days now are in the mid 50s, mostly sunny, and the nights are quite cold.

Guests part seven

Our last day in Nagano we spent the morning at Zenko-ji Temple. It is very important both to the culture and history of Japan, and is a very impressive site. Because of the large number of buildings in a fairly small area, it was difficult to take any pictures that show the scale of the grounds. The first picture, taken from one of the main temples with other buildings in the background, is as close as I could get to showing the size of the site. If you want more information, Wikipedia has a good entry on Zenko-ji.




Besides all the umbrellas (the rain wasn't really that bad-by Oregon standards it was just sprinkling), in the second picture you can see the incense burner where people sometimes stand in the smoke and rub it on themselves in hope of a blessing.




In the final picture, you can see priests performing a ceremony. It was very fascinating to watch, but it reminded me of the difference between religion -- rituals that try to reach god(s) -- and faith -- relationship with the God who reaches to us.




That's my (relatively) short summary of our travels; Randy, Diane, and Paige, thanks again for a fantastic experience together!

Guests part six

On the day we visited Happo-One, we also traveled to the Sea of Japan/East Sea. The closest large city in the area we visited is called Joetsu, if you want to check a map.



It was a beautiful, clear, warm day, and as you can see in the picture, Diane and Paige enjoyed the warm water. It wasn't quite "Hawaii-warm", but I was surprised at how nice the water was, considering it was October.

Guests part five: Nagano and Hakuba

I've got to get my posts from the end of the summer done so I can catch up to fall before winter starts! . . . so here's the next part:

Continuing from last time; our last big trip before my brother and his family went home was Nagano, Hakuba, and Happo-One (pronounced "hah-poh-oh-nay") which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1998.

The city of Nagano is not extremely large (the population is about 400 thousand) but it seems to have a lot of personality. My included picture of the area near our hotel doesn't really do it justice; it was fun to walk around that neighborhood and get a feel for the character of the city. We had a fantastic dinner in a wonderful restaurant there that had traditional "horigotatsu" seating (seating arrangements on Japanese tatami floors where there are sunken areas beneath the dining tables for comfortable leg room).

Hakuba and Happo-One are in the mountains near Nagano. The architecture looked like pictures of Switzerland that I've seen--it was truly a beautiful place. We rode the gondola part of the way up the mountain, and the third picture I included was taken there.

Last week I went back to Hakuba with my school for a conference, but that will have to be in a different post.

My latest guests, part four

Continuing from part three:

Before we entered NijoJo, a friendly-looking man approached us on the street as we were walking. After showing his "credentials" (an article in the local newspaper about his art), he asked if we'd like to come to his studio, see him work, and learn about his artwork. We were intrigued, so after leaving the castle, we walked to the address on his business card (easier said than done-see my previous blog entry about finding addresses in Japan!) and received a warm greeting at his studio/house.

In brief, he paints on silk to create family crests that are incorporated into kimonos. The name for family crest in Japanese is "kamon" (see Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamon). It was absolutely remarkable to watch him painting these intricate designs, mostly by hand. For the basic outline, a stencil is occasionally used, and for geometric patterns, a compass is used, but all of the fine detail is done manually. As you can hopefully see in the close-up picture, each pattern is exactly the same. The amount of practice (and patience!) required is astonishing.

In one of the pictures you can see some of the kamon in color and the pattern book for the designs. There are thousands of designs and the artist, Toshio Kashima, has a couple hundred committed entirely to memory.

After enjoying his demonstration, when we told him our plans for the rest of the day, he offered to give us a ride up the hill to the Kiyomizu Temple (from my previous post). On the way, he gave us a mini-tour of that area of Kyoto. He is an amazing artist and a kind and gracious host. Kashima-san, doumo arigatou gozaimashita!

And now for something completely different...

"We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this special feature"




One of my conversation class students, Tamami, often brings her very entertaining cat, Kewpie, to class with her. As you can see from the pictures, she is NOT a small cat! Kewpie likes to hang out while we're having our lesson. She wanders around the room, chases dust bunnies, and jumps on the furniture, making a loud *THUMP* sound (she's one of the noisiest cats I've ever met, which makes her even funnier). Tamami, thanks for bringing Kewpie; maybe someday she'll learn to meow in English!

My latest guests, part three

Two other places we visited in Kyoto are NijoJo (Nijo Castle) and part of the grounds of Kiyomizu Temple, two of the most famous sites in the area.

Nijo Castle was built in the early 1600s during Japan's feudal period. If you want more history, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_Castle but I'll quote one short section:

One of the most striking features of Nijō Castle are the "nightingale floors" in the corridors. To protect the occupants from sneak attacks and assassins, the builders constructed the floors of the corridors in such a way as to squeak like birds when anyone walks on them.

After walking through that section and listening to the interesting sounds of the "security system floor", my brother commented that it was amazing workmanship that 400 years later the intricately constructed floor was still functioning exactly as it was designed to.

Surrounding the castle, there is a series of gardens and pathways. Walking around on the grounds and seeing the gardens with the castle in the background was as beautiful as touring the building itself.

Later, we went to Kiyomizu Temple. Unfortunately, we got there just about 15 minutes before the grounds closed, but we saw as much as we could in the short time we had, and then continued looking around from outside the area that had been roped off. We could still see quite a bit of the temple complex from there, and I continued to take pictures.

All of the pictures I'm including in this post were stitched together from multiple photos, which is why they have a long, panorama perspective.

My latest guests, part two

Our first destination after Asakusa in Tokyo was Kyoto. Kyoto is an amazing city-a very interesting combination of very old and very modern. That can be said of many places in Japan, but it's especially apparent in Kyoto.

We arrived by shinkansen (bullet train) at the first example of very modern: the station. It's actually a huge complex of buildings that includes all the train platforms, many restaurants, a mall, and the hotel where we stayed. It's one of those places that's difficult to photograph, but I'll include one picture I took to give a little idea of the inside of the building. Click on the picture to open a larger version, and then zoom in on the upper part-a series (five, I think) of long escalators heads outside of the building.

For an example of the very old aspect of the city, I included a picture of Gion, which is a beautiful district of temples, shops and restaurants, partly along a small canal.

More later...