After the Halloween party we caught Callan 'red handed' in the hallway. He had just spilled the entire container of powdered food coloring on the floor

Brother Tada on the right of Melissa joined the church when he was fifteen ( he was an english student of my Boss'). He is now 25 and is serving in the branch presidency.

Callan took first prize in the costume conest with his superman pajamas.

You can see a missionary with an Afro in the background of this church party picture

Superman getting ready for take off (he and mom went to the church halloween party on Saturday while dad taught classes at home

This is Melissa's pumpkin. She found a website that lets you design a pattern and print it out. Pretty cool.

Joey carved this pumpkin to resemble a famous cartoon character named ampan man.

Pat, the other teacher at our school, was a gypsy, and behind us is the pin the nose on the pumpkin game

You can't really tell, but I am supposed to be dressed as a nerd. I had a pair of big glasses that I left in the other room.

By the time I was done giving directions in Japanese to 100 gabbing children and parents, my voice was really tired.

Lois Lane and Superman were very popular.

Lots of witches, a bunny, Harry Potter, and Our cheesy decorations on the wall.

Lots of the kids dressed up. The yellow pikachu (Marina) is of my students, as is the pink princess (Yuuka) in the background (she reminds me of Olivia). The two boys on the left (Hiroki and Hiroyuki) are also mine.

One of the biggest problems with having 100 people gather for a party in a small school is that customs like taking off your shoes are hard to break. You can wear shoes in one end of the school but not in the other. I suggested to my boss that we let people keep their shoes on, but she wouldn't have it, so, as you can see in the picture, there was quite a bottleneck.

It doesn't usually take much to get Callan to sleep, but it takes even less to get Melissa to sleep. Joey found them this way on Saturday afternoon when he came home from teaching.

This is a slightly dark picture of the incredible walls at the castle. The castle itself is nothing but a memory now, all except one tower that has remained for the past 342 years. These walls are famous on Shikoku, though many people I talk with think they are over-rated

These very japanese brooms were on the ground at the castle when we went to visit. They look handmade, but notice the price tag. They actually mass produce these!

The smoke in the background is fires from post harvest field burning.

More Callan

Callan could see the castle moat from here and kept shouting 'water, water, water!'

This is the view of Marugame from the top of the castle. You can see the seto bridge in the background.

October is harvest month, and many local farmer still hang their rice out on wooden racks that are built up in the middle of the harvested fields

I picked up a movie

I picked up a movie from the video store the other day and the receipt read “Please return by November 3, 2005.” Seeing November written there, and realizing it was only a few days, I took notice for the first time about how long we have been here.  We left in July, and now it’s the last weekend in October.  We are one fourth of the way through, and it feels like we just started.

In addition to that I have a birthday coming up and I will be twenty five.  If I live to be 100, then I am one quarter of the way through this life.  However, the feelings of anxiousness about getting, and seeing, and doing that I have about this year in Japan are much different than the feelings of anxiousness I have about death.  The anxiousness associated with this trip is very tangible.  There is a beginning and an end that I can see on a calendar, I can count the days,  I can plan a budget, I can prepare for everything I will need to do when I get back. I know how much time I have, and I can pace myself.

I have no such luxuries with this earth life.  I know it will end someday, probably many many years from now, but there is no way to tell when or how I will end this journey.  And now, being as young as I am it is difficult to feel any sort of anxiousness about life.  It’s as if I have a project due in Heaven, the biggest project of my life.  I have all the instructions, all the help I need, and I am supposed to be anxiously engaged in the work, but with no ‘due date,’  it’s difficult to be conscious of the ticking clock.   Perhaps the answer is to assume the project is due today, and live so that I am prepared to turn the project in when the teacher calls and says its due.

Who are these guys?

We're not really sure. They were spotted on the rail of an overpass in Sakaide. Any guesses?

The Monster at The End of This Book

Callan is apparently too young for sarcasm.  Tonight while reading him stories, we tried to read “The Monster at the End of This Book,” which was one of my most favorite books growing up.  It’s the sesame street book in which Grover tries to keep you from getting to the Monster at the end of the book by tying the pages shut, building a brick wall, and even begging.  Mom used to do a pretty good Grover impersonation and I loved to turn the pages, even despite pitiful Grover.  However, Callan merely got concerned, and then scared When Grover told him not to open the book.  He took Grover very seriously when he said not to turn the pages, and when I did turn the page, Callan was bewildered that I would do such a horrible thing in the face of such desperation.  He closed the book and said, “Scared, scared, Grover, scared.”  I guess we’ll have to wait on that book, and stick with Thomas the Tank engine for now.  

More about the garbage bags

So I did some calculations.

One bag costs 40 yen. In Marugame there are 300,000 people. At an average of 3 people per household that's 100,000 households. If each household takes out the trash ten times a month (twice a week for burnable, twice a month for non burnable), then they are using ten garbage bags a month. 10 bags x 40 yen/bag x100,000 households equals 40,000,000 yen or a bit less than $400,000 a month in trash bags x 12 months is 4.8 million a year in trash bags. For our family that means 48 dollars a year on trash bags, just for burnable and non burnable garbage. Hmm....

Happy Halloween

For class tonight I taught three of my students to carve jack-o-lanterns out of small green Japanese pumpkins. They did really good considering it was their first time.

Halloween in this country is not really celebrated, except by English teachers and Mormons. The Japanese occasionally have parties, but most people I have spoken with outside the church have never been to a Halloween party. No one in Japan does trick or treating of course, and pumpkin carving is so uncommon that everyone has been really impressed with even the simple carving I did to show my classes.

The Halloween phenomena at church is likely a result of many years of missionary influence. Every ward and branch in the country has a Halloween party, but no one seems to know why. My boss said to me the other day, "Every year we have a Halloween party at the church. We don't know why we have it, but we must have it." I wasn't sure if her English use of the word 'must' meant that she really thought that somehow church policy or culture dictated that this little branch in Japan should celebrate a commercially driven pseudo-pagan holiday that promote adolescent mischief and premature tooth decay, or simply that because they have been doing Halloween parties for so long that to not do them would be weird.

This is Shoichiro. He is 14. Incidentally, his grandfather is a farmer on shodoshima island near here and he grew the second largest pumpkin in Japan this year. He is in Portland this weekend for the international pumpkin carving festival.



















This is Tatsuya. He is 13 or 14 and he plays soccer with Shoichiro every Saturday pretty much all year long. His pumpkin was the most artful of the three. The girl in the white shirt in the background is Tatsuya's little sister, Ai. She was the first to get her pumpkin cut open and I think had the most fun of the three.

This ain't no Soccer Mom Minivan!

Joey took Callan with him to work this morning. I wanted to go for a walk and we needed to buy wipes and diapers so I thought I would walk to the store about 1.5 miles away. Often, when I go for a walk I wish I had brought the camera with me. Well this time I remembered! Here's the awesome van I saw. Would a van like this help my coolness factor when I have teenagers?!?

Pork Barrel Garbage Bags

Pork Barrel Garbage Bags

Last month someone from the city delivered to our door several packages of amber colored transparent plastic garbage bags along with a letter stating that the bags were the new official city garbage bags for both burnable and non-burnable refuse.  The letter explained that the new bags were supposed to be less harmful to the environment than the various bags currently in use and that starting in October everyone would be required to purchase and use the new bags.  

I was initially pleased with the idea of new bags because they were larger and better quality than the current bags we were using.  But then I went to the store and saw how much the new bags cost.  Each large bag, which is probably about 20-30 gallons, is forty yen, or about 35 cents.   The bags we were using before cost about a third of that, and they were bigger.  Somewhere in Japan sits the fat politician responsible for the legislation that brought these bags to my door and I am convinced that he either owns stock in or is otherwise financially connected to the company responsible for making the ‘environmentally friendly’ garbage bags, and I hope he chokes on his chopsticks.

More about the bags later...

Wanna see a fun car?

We often see funny/goofy or otherwise weird looking cars in Japan. Here's one we chased down in the grocery store parking lot and waited until the people got out of the car so we could take a picture! Isn't it fun!?

Grammar

Have you ever wondered about the difference between the following two phrases: ‘I got in the boat,’ and ‘I got on the boat’? Neither had I, until tonight during a private adult lesson with a man who works at a shipyard.  We were talking about ship building and I said ‘on the boat,’ and he thought I met ‘on top of the boat’ and then I spent a half an hour trying to explain why in English, we get ‘on’ a bus, a plane, a ship, or a ferry, but we get ‘in’ a taxi, a car, or a canoe.  The more I talk with these poor Japanese people who choose to subject themselves to our silly language, the more I am amazed that they can speak English at all.  Not that I think English is impossible to get a handle on, there are plenty of fluent foreigners, it’s just that as a learner of Japanese, a language conveniently built upon an organized framework of strict rules and principles, with few exceptions, oddities, irregularities or contradictions, I can’t imagine putting up with a foreign language so inconsistent, illogical, and full of wholes as is English.  

This problem pops up almost every day in my teaching, and makes explaining grammar practically worthless.  Last week while trying to teach the phrase “I have to go to (blank)” to a group of ten year olds, I repeatedly had to correct their use (or rather misuse) of the ‘particular the.’ After one student said, ‘I have to go to pool,’ I explained that he should say, ‘the pool,’ which only confused another student who then said, ‘I have to go to the house.’  To him, I suggested saying ‘my house,’ to which he responded, ‘I have to go to the my house.’  Still another student offered the sentence, “I have to go to the school,’ which I stopped short of explaining was okay in some instances but not in others.

Though I admit it is a great disservice to my students, and I am sure it is the reason Japanese English learners have such a problem with the nuances of English, at this point in the grammar tailspin I usually choose to do what most English teachers in this country have chosen to do, and ignore the mistakes and focus on helping my students with the overall meaning, hoping that someday they’ll figure it out.

Falling Asleep in Class

Takatsugu is a mystery to me.  Takatsugu is the ten year old boy I teach for an hour every Wednesday night and his is the only class I have ever fallen asleep in.  I didn’t think it was possible to fall asleep in a class I was teaching, especially not a private lesson where I am front and center the whole time, but every week without fail I find myself nodding off in front of this boy.  It’s as if his mere presence drains all the energy from the room.  I don’t get it.  Taka, as I like to call him, is a quiet boy who appears to have some sort of speech problem, but other than that he is a fairly normal Japanese 10 year old.  He likes playing video games, reading comic books, and watching anime on television.  

Part of me thinks the hour long lesson is just too long for the both of us.  He is far from talkative, and though he knows quite a bit of English, his speech problem means he doesn’t say a lot.  It’s not that he is unenthusiastic—more like tired of studying.  I haven’t asked him, but I am sure that he, like most of my other students, in addition to their regular school day, attends not only my English class, but other after school tutoring programs as well.  If I were 10 years old and had an hour long English class, by myself, at 7 in the evening, I would be a little stir crazy too.  

I’m not sure if he has noticed me nodding off, but If I don’t figure out something soon, he is sure to notice, and I don’t know what I will do if my boss calls me up one day and says, ‘Joe, Takatsugu says you were falling asleep in class?”  

Energy Hogs

I like to conserve energy. Electric energy that is. So for the most part washing and hanging clothes out to dry here hasn't been too bad. But today I miss my energy gobbling American washer and dryer. Three days ago I had to wash Callan's big blanket he uses as a sheet on top of his tri-fold mat bed. (My fault, I should have changed his diaper BEFORE his nap). Our washer, as you can see is very small. And taking anything to the laundromat is very expensive and a big hassle since Joey has the car most of the time. So I washed the blanket in the bathtub. Then hung it up on the bar over the tub (the other picture) and sprayed it on both sides to rinse it out. Then I tried to squeeze out most of the water and let it drip for a while. Then I dragged it outside to the clothesline (bar) oustide and left it to dry. Well, it was sunny when I put it out there. But after it dried the rain came again and ruined all the work the sun had just done. It finally dried and I put it on Callan's bed. It only lasted one night however, this time needing to be washed because of a leaking Poopy diaper. Ugh. So I dumped it back in the bath tub and repeated the whole routine. I guess expending human energy is preferable to electric energy, but today I want my Kenmore Energy Hogs!

The Harvest

An essay I’m working on. Very rough…grammar police beware

After finishing the Sunday afternoon conference session today we dropped Callan into his stroller and went out to enjoy autumn as it settles in around our little neighborhood.  As we turned off our street onto the main road, the first evidences of fall began to appear around us.  Many people were out with their children or pets enjoying the cool air and the high dark clouds above us that cast a warm evening glow on the green fields of rice. 

All of the neighborhood rice fields were alive with the bustle of the harvest.  Much of the rice farming done on a local level is overseen by elderly couples who work together planting, caring for and harvesting the crops in much the same way their parents did before them, except that most now use miniature rice combines that look a bit like big riding lawn mowers.  It is not uncommon to see a man in his seventies riding one of these miniature rice combines around a small field not much larger than a convenience store parking lot.  Along side him, working the large burlap bags used for collecting the grain, is often an old woman whose back is permanently arched forward from years of rice field labor.

On this day we saw what looked like a granddaughter in her mid twenties working along side her grandparents in the fields.  Together they stacked nearly a dozen burlap sacks full of rice onto the back of a small tractor and drove it down the narrow rice patty road to a farm house for processing.  I imagine that young woman sixty years from now, hunched and weathered, leaning on a rake as she watches the rice roll down the narrow road for processing and I wonder if she’ll ever make it that far.  It seems that Japan is at a cultural impass.  The rice farming generation seems destined to whither away.  Of course the Japanese will always eat rice, but what will become of the fields these old people work in year after year when they die.  Is there another generation prepared to take over?  

One woman we talked with today has lived in the same house for eighty years.  She was born there, raised her own children there and now is a lonely widow there.   Her children visit, but not enough.  “We all live apart,” she said, squatting beside an irrigation ditch with her back to a large patch of incredible red flowers that I am sure she cared for herself. “Japan didn’t use to be this way.  Eight people used to live in this house.  When I got married my husband moved in here.” She gestured towards the derelict house beside her and I noticed bare bamboo from the daub and waddle walls poking out from behind the rusty sheet metal siding.  I tried to imagine eight people living in the small home, working the land and eating what they grew.   “Japan is different now, everything is becoming just like America.” She gave me a look out of the corner of her eye that was halfway accusatory, half way apologetic.  I could tell she wasn’t angry, but perhaps disappointed in her own culture for not being strong enough to withstand western influences.  She was right though.  The Japanese even have a cute English phrase they use to describe the phenomenon.  The old tradition of several generations living under the same roof has been replaced by the very western desire for ‘my home,’ a piece of real estate separate from the in-laws, with its own space, its own rules, and its own mortgage. Thanks in part to western influences ‘my home,’ has become the goal for middle class Japanese families, and as a result, the 80 year old woman I spoke with today is living alone in a shanty next to a rice field and a garden patch that her family has probably worked on for hundreds of years, and no doubt wonders who will tend her flowers when she is gone.

A little farther down that sliver of  asphalt that runs between the houses and rice fields we stopped to talk for a moment with a grandpa pushing a wheelbarrow full of uprooted flowers who was accompanied by his daughter and her one year old son.  The grandpa said he’d lived here for fifty years, and from the looks of it he was doing his part to make sure his grandson would carry on after him.

Still farther down the road, we were greeted by some elementary school kids trying to catch fish in an irrigation ditch.  ‘Haro’ they said, eager to practice the little English they knew.  Sunday is the only day I see kids playing in this country.  It’s the day when they exchange school uniforms and a school issued bicycle helmet for cut off shorts and loose t-shirts printed with unintelligible English.  As I looked at them I thought of the students I work with.  These kids are still young, but as junior high school approaches, they will, like so many of my students spend much of their extra  time in cram schools with tutors like me, trying to get a leg up on the next entrance exam.  

We wished them well and headed home.  The fall is beautiful here.  It’s a rare time in Japan when progress in the western sense is overshadowed for the tiniest moment by the Japanese version of progress that grows in small family owned fields and is harvested into heavy burlap sacks by elderly farmers who may not have a future generation to whom they can pass on their craft.

Raising Children part 1

Lying in bed last night, trying to overcome a caffeine buzz induced by a few handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate chips (which for a no-coke, no-coffee drinking Mormon is quite a buzz), I turned over to Melissa and said, ‘Do you realize Olivia will be five when we get home?” Four year old Olivia is my Brother Jason’s oldest child, and until that moment had remained in my mind very much a baby.  I lived with Jason and his wife for a few months after Olivia was born during my first year of college, and remember the nights they spent calming her colic, the systematic way in which they manufactured her bottles of formula, and the tears they shed as they adjusted to being parents.
At the time I was an indifferent observer, a single sibling with nothing to worry about except homework and hormones, and could not have imagined what they were going through.  I could not fathom the sleep deprivation that came from trying to teach a new baby to sleep, nor could I have guessed the stress my brother felt as a full-time student trying to raise a family on a part time salary.  
Likewise, I had no taste of the joy they felt as they watched Olivia bend her face into the first inklings of expression, developing the beginnings of a little human personality. Certainly I had no idea how quickly they would begin to feel like their little girl was no longer a baby.  I regret the disinterested attitude with which I came and went while I lived there.  

"Daddy, can I have another one?"

Mikans (Mandarin Oranges) taste better inside your playhouse!

Cool Cal (with Daddy's sunglasses on)

This is the sign for a children's clothing store in Takamatsu that we saw on our way to dinner friday night.

This is the huge wooden barrel that was actually used at one time for fermenting soy sauce and the warehouse this picture was taken in still smelled of real soy sauce! 

(common mormon) 

You can't read the label on this butterfly, but it is called 'the great mormon.' The room we saw these in had several of this species, and also a 'common mormon .' Apparently their are general authorities in the animal kingdom too.

These jars were are at least 100 years old in some cases and were used to store what else? soy sauce. There were about 100 of these stacked on a wall next to the 'soy sauce factory'

This is a reconstruction of the type of vine bridge that was used extensively in many parts of Shikoku. Yes it is as wobbly as it looks. 

Callan playing in a cool waterfall that sends water down a canal that is cut into the stone beside a long stairway, 

This is a fountain at Shikoku Mura, an outdoor historical center near takamatsu that presents reconstructed traditional architecture from all over the island. This fountain is has some sort of connection to Monet, but I couldn't understand the sign completley.  

Nursery: "The entrance to Hell?"

Today Melissa’s translator for primary couldn’t come to church so I got to spend all three hours of church with her.  There are eight or so kids in primary ranging from age four to age 10 and they come from three different families.  Melissa taught a lesson about following the counsel of the prophets and she passed out little slips of paper with either good things (i.e. be honest, read your scriptures, be kind) or bad things (steal, fight, be lazy) written on them.  She then asked each of the students which things were likely prophetic counsel and which were not.  When ever a ‘bad thing’ was read Melissa instructed the students to tear up the pieces of paper (which they enjoyed thoroughly and which I thought was rather effective).  

After Class, there was a fifteen minute lull before sharing time started and the kids got a little wild.  Someone had taped a sign on the nursery door that read ‘This is the place to play.’  Apparently one of Melissa’s students didn’t like that sign because I saw him put up a sign on the door that read ‘Entrance to Hell.’ I couldn’t help but laugh pretty hard before I kindly suggested that we take it down.  Church is great.