2012's Last BBQ

I decided to make homestyle BBQ hamburgers one more time before the weather turns cold.
Sometimes nostalgia grabs my tongue, and says "hey! I want ______!" A few months ago, it was grilled corned beef sandwiches. This time it was hamburgers. They turned out pretty delicious!

So, THAT'S what happened to my ballot...

Several months ago, I tried to make sure that I was still registered to vote. I sent the required information to the DMV office, and then waited for the response. Nothing. I checked online. Terribly designed, confusing website that sent me around in circles. I was too frustrated to try anymore, so I took a break.
Several weeks later I saw links on the Net to a site that helps people verify their voter registration. It redirected me to the site for Oregonians. It had a wonderfully clear, easy-to-use site (they need to give lessons to the DMV...) First the site confirmed that I was no longer registered to vote (even though I had filled out the form when I updated my address for my drivers license--DMV messed it up), and then it allowed me to easily register online and request that my ballot be sent to Japan. I waited for my ballot. And waited. And waited...
My ballot finally arrived today; it had been sent to Thailand. Yes, Thailand. Maybe the United States Postal Service parks the "airmail for Thailand" jet next to the "airmail for Japan" jet at the airport...? It seems like a pretty bizarre mistake to me, but apparently it happens often enough that they have a "MISSENT TO THAILAND" stamp ready for just that occasion. Seriously-look at the picture I'm posting. That's a message you don't see everyday. (I blacked out my address for security, but it was perfectly correct.)
As usual, I probably won't be voting for a major candidate, but I do finally have my ballot, so I can do my duty as a citizen and cast my vote.

American Culture?

Nozomi & I talked a few times about watching the Star Wars movies together because she had never seen any of them. A couple of weeks ago, we finally stopped talking and started watching. In a period of about ten days we watched episodes 4, 5, and 6. (We decided to watch them in the order they were made.) Nozomi thought they were interesting and enjoyable.
(Ultra Star Wars fans, warning: you might be put off by the following...) I enjoyed watching them again for nostalgia and to share part of my growing up and culture with Nozomi, but this time as I watched them I was struck by how much more they seemed like children's movies than I had thought previously. Many people talk about how much better the writing and script is in the first trilogy compared to the second. Uhmmmm.......well.......
Nozomi was inspired to create improvised, "found art" versions of C3PO and R2D2. I started laughing when I saw them sitting on the dining room table.

Harvest Time

For two years we have tried to grow vegetables in containers on our veranda. Last year we were able to grow a few tomatoes and cucumbers, but most of the other plants were eaten by bugs, or just died for no clear reason. This year we grew a few bean plants, but even the cucumbers died (it was a hot summer). But one thing we CAN grow: basil. Each year we've grown two plants without any work at all, other than watering them when there wasn't enough rain for a few days. Last week we picked enough leaves for a jar of home-made pesto. Just for a fun effect, I tried backlighting the jar with a very strong L.E.D. flashlight. It almost looks like an early Halloween picture.

Fireworks and Frogs

Monday was Respect for the Elderly Day (or sometimes just called "Grandparents Day" in English), so Saturday afternoon we went to Nozomi's parents' house in Ichikai to visit her grandmother. We had a great family time relaxing and talking together. Part of the time we practiced English and Japanese vocabulary; I learned soy bean in Japanese is "daizu", which literally means "big bean". The word for green bean is "ingen", which I frequently confuse with "ningen", which means "person/human". I realized you could make a REALLY horrible, cross-language pun using ingen/ningen and human being/bean, but I'll let somebody else work that out...
Later in the evening, we went outside in front of the house and did fireworks. Americans usually think of fireworks as an early summer activity because of Independence Day on July 4th. But in Japan, they are an activity people enjoy anytime during the summer, and packages of fireworks are sold throughout the season in home improvement stores and 100 yen shops.
After finishing, we were talking on the porch outside. I noticed a frog sitting under the porch light, enjoying a dinner that came to him instead of having to go hunting for bugs.

(Video offline.)

Amazing Storm

Many people know that I love thunderstorms. I'm sure I must have posted about that before, and I'm sure I've probably posted pictures or videos that I've tried to take with various degrees of success. This time I don't have any pictures or videos; I don't think photos of the storm tonight would have the same impact that it does in person, so you'll have to imagine.
Earlier this evening, it finally got cool enough to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. Shortly before midnight, I was just about to go to bed when I noticed faint light flashing outside. I assumed it wasn't lightning, because I didn't hear any sound. I looked outside, and far to the east (toward the Pacific Ocean) I saw flashes of light that were slowly and irregularly getting brighter. Thunderstorms here are often strong and loud, approaching from the mountains northwest of here and moving over the city toward the south or east, so it seemed a little strange that the storm hadn't passed through Utsunomiya.
I watched the storm for about 20 minutes, and it's continuing as I write this. From my perspective in our sixth-floor apartment, it looks close to the horizon. The light is an eerie, salmon-color when it flashes. About every five seconds, it looks like a gigantic strobe light blinks on and off a couple of times behind enormous dark clouds, silhouetting them for an instant in the sky. Sometimes it looks like bad special effects from an old horror movie, but the brightest flashes with a sudden bolt of lightning jumping between the clouds look more like computer graphics from a sci-fi movie set on another planet. Except for the hum of an electric fan or the sound of an occasional car driving down the street, it's absolutely silent. The storm is so far away, I can not hear any thunder at all. It is astonishingly beautiful, and as always with thunderstorms, I am reminded of God's power.

More sunflowers...

In my last post, I forgot to include the video I took at the sunflower festival, so here it is:

The original was in HD video, but the file was just too big to upload smoothly, so you'll have to imagine better quality...  ;-)

(Video is offline.)

Sunflower Festival in Mashiko

About 45 minutes outside of Utsunomiya there is a small city named Mashiko. It's most famous for ceramics and it has many shops that sell pottery in many styles ranging from inexpensive cups and dishes to collectible pieces from famous ceramicists.
Nozomi & I noticed information about a sunflower festival, so we decided to visit. It was amazing. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of sunflowers. There is a small, elevated observation deck next to the field that blooms first in the season. That field was mostly finished already, but I'm posting two pictures that I took from there just to give an idea of the size of the fields. Nearby, there was a section with marigolds and other flowers. The other fields had different kinds of sunflowers, including red ones, which I had never seen before. We had a great time, even though it was VERY hot: around 35 C / 95 F!

Ice Cream!

It has been CRAZY hot the last several days, so ice cream has sounded especially good lately. Yesterday at Utsunomiya station, Nozomi bought some at Baskin-Robbins. I didn't realize until checking on Wikipedia what an international brand it is. From what I've noticed here, people mostly call the store "31" ("Let's get some ice cream at 31"). In the States, I always called it Baskin-Robbins. What do you call it?
They included a small pack of dry ice in the bag to keep the ice cream cold, so of course, I had to play with it, and took a video...

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Light House Concert Summer 2012

Light House is a musical outreach that connects people from Minemachi Church with the community in Utsunomiya. Our big event this summer was held on August 3rd. It featured many guest musicians and bands along with the music team from Minemachi Church. The focus was on high school/young adults, but anyone was welcome (and I saw some "older folks" having a fun time too).
This video was made using a new application I have on my android phone that takes time lapse pictures and then puts them together as video clips. I used the application throughout the evening, but I couldn't get pictures of all the performers-sorry! During our set, I put the phone next to me on stage to get a different point of view. While I was editing the pieces together, I realized I didn't have a recording of our band, so I chose one of my favorite songs that we play and made a new arrangement of it. Almost three hours of music in about three minutes of video...

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"the rhythm is gonna getcha...tonight"

August is matsuri (festival) season in Japan. Last night, Nozomi & I heard traditional style drum music that sounded like it wasn't too far down the street. We decided to take a walk and see if there was a neighborhood festival happening somewhere nearby. As we approached the elementary school that's about three blocks from our apartment, the music became louder. We walked onto the school grounds, and could see a group of students inside one of the rooms practicing. Nozomi said it probably wasn't a problem for us to go into the building, so just as they started to take a break, she stepped inside and asked if it would be OK if we watched their practice. The leader said it was fine, so we had an upclose view of them practicing for an upcoming festival. The students were in lines behind different drums, and took turns playing. It was interesting to see them trading off without missing a beat. The video I took is about a minute long, but their practice session was actually about 25 minutes! The youngest student looked like he was maybe a first or second grader; I was impressed with the students' endurance and concentration.

P.S. You get bonus points if you know who sang the song that I referenced in the title of this post ;-)

Reo/Leo, the jumping cat

Another video starring the funniest, cutest cat in the world, Reo.

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Japanese Cowboy English

I was watching TV a few days ago (which is actually fairly rare) and I happened to see this show on public television. I don't know if the cowboy is a regular character from the show, but the kids in the video really liked him. If you are curious about creative English lessons for kids on Japanese TV, take a look...
(The audio is bad, sorry; I just took a video of the TV, and the sound was turned down too low.)

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Leo / Reo

Some of you have already heard: there is a new feline family member at the Kusaka family house. This video was taken right before we went to Hawaii, and he's actually much bigger now. Reo is a usual name in Japanese (pronounced something like "Ray-Oh" in English), but in English you could also transliterate it as "Leo" (as in "Leo the Lion").
He's a pretty typical kitten, and loves to play in baskets, boxes, bags, clothes, papers, . . . well, he just loves to play.
(I muted the original sound, which had no interesting cat noises or dialog, and inserted part of Haydn's "Surprise Symphony", just so it wouldn't be silent.)

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Hawaii Trip Day Two

The second day of our trip was mostly eating, relaxing, walking on the beach, and more eating! After a leisurely morning, we made plans to meet Nozomi's mother and sister for lunch. They rode the shuttle bus to our condominium and then we walked together to a nearby restaurant. The food was delicious (with huge, American-sized servings; most of us couldn't finish ours) and we had casual conversation and made jokes in English, Japanese, and Japanglish. On the walk back to the condominium we found what might have been the favorite 7-11 store of Hawaiian pigeons. We also enjoyed seeing beautiful flowers lining the streets everywhere we went, and stopped to take a picture that was supposed to be scenic, but turned out to be a little bit comic ("Rob, why is your head magically floating in those flowers?").
Back at our place, we shared the family history pictures that we had prepared. My mother showed photos of me, my siblings, parents, cousins, nephews, grandparents, aunts and uncles! Nozomi, her mother and her sister shared family pictures that we brought from Japan, and then we surprised everyone with a DVD that Nozomi and I had transferred from old Super 8 movies. The "stars" were Nozomi and the rest of her family when she was about 5 years old. There were scenes from the house where they grew up, a school sports day from kindergarten, and the Sapporo Snow Festival. Later that afternoon, we enjoyed a walk on the beach before and during sunset.
In the evening, we all met up again for dinner. Our meals were delicious, even though the coconut shrimp was so sweet that it tasted more like coconut-shrimp donuts... Nozomi's sister, Kaoru, and my mother have birthdays only one day apart in March, so we surprised them both with waiters singing "Happy Birthday" and mini birthday sundaes.
Back at our place one more time after dinner, we watched fireworks from our lanai (veranda). From our ninth-floor room, we could just get a view of the Hilton Hotel's show across the street. The following two days we had wonderful tours provided by Nozomi's Honolulu cousin and her husband, so that's up next...

Hawaii Trip Day One

The first day of our trip started much more calmly than previous trips to America, mostly because the flight left much later in the day. We had a rather relaxing morning making final preparations and then after lunch we took the airport bus from Utsunomiya station to Narita. Nozomi's mother rode with us, and she and Nozomi had a long talk together. Even at the airport we had a stress-free time; since we were on China Airlines, we left from Terminal One instead of Terminal Two (which seems to be much busier usually-most of the international flights leave from Terminal Two). Going through security was even easy; no line and friendly staff that said not to bother taking off my shoes and belt-WOW! (My experience waiting in ridiculously long security lines in the airports in Hawaii later is another story...) The flight was uneventful (I watched the new Muppet Movie on the plane-pretty fun!) and it was interesting hearing the flight attendants use Chinese, Japanese or English depending on who they were talking to. The only negative was just before landing I started to get a headache and plugged ears. After getting off the plane I had either a hay fever attack or a cold, I'm still not sure which, and the Honolulu airport has NO amenities other than a Starbucks outside the security gate. It's laughably bad. But, we were in Hawaii, so I couldn't complain TOO much.
After meeting up with my family, we found the car rental office and drove to our condominium. (Nozomi's mother and sister were on a different flight, part of a package deal, so the shuttle bus took them to their hotel separately.) After a bit of relaxing, we drove to their hotel for the first meeting of Nozomi's and my parents. In the first pictures, you can see us exchanging gifts after greeting each other, and then a couple of posed pictures outside their hotel. Everyone was happy to finally meet each other and carefully selected gifts were exchanged. My mother commissioned my sister-in-law to custom make some beautiful tote bags for the members of Nozomi's family; you can see one in the picture if you look carefully. Nozomi's mother brought some hand-made dragonfly brooches that my mother loved. Later in the evening, we met again for a short time at the beach between where we were staying and watched the sunset together. We returned to the condo and hotel to recover from jet lag and get ready for the next day's adventures.

Another Beautiful Waikiki Sunset

Today we hiked to the top of Diamond Head near Waikiki Beach and got a wonderful view from the top; I'll post pictures of that later, but for now here is a video I took last night just after sunset. We were taking a walk along the beach and paused to watch the sun go down.

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THE ANSWER: We are in . . .

Of course, the answer is: Cleveland, Ohio, USA! Just kidding; we are in Honolulu!
Yesterday was an all-day trip to the big island for a volcano tour, but that post will be later.
This morning we went to New Hope Church for a wonderful service and also met some friends there. Later we had a delicious lunch (and you can see a picture of Nozomi enjoying a delicious beverage). After that we went to Hilo Hattie's for some shopping, took a mini tour of Waikiki, stopped at an amazing, historical hotel (the first one in Waikiki) and watched the sunset from the beach. Another great day!

Where in the world are we?

...so continuing from my last post: here are five pictures to help you guess where we are. Yeah, I know, most of you already know. But if you didn't already hear, send me your guesses if you want (and yes, it's pretty obvious from the pictures, I think....)