Mannou Kouen

This park is huge and so much fun! I really want to go back soon. And I know Callan would love to go back too. It looks a little like I'm standing on a mountain of snow but it's really a soft, air-filled jumping mountain. THe signs say adults can only go on with their kids, well lucky for us! It was much more fun than a trampoline and Joey and I both said afterwards, "Where do we buy one of these!" Callan loved jumping on it too, and took a little tumble between the humps on top and gave himslef his first bloody nose. oops! (Grandmas: don't worry, it was very small, he didn't even notice)
Callan is climbing through some rope tunnels but it's more like a big rope tent on top, kids can climb all over it.
The park has a lake, camping cabins, a man-made waterfall, acres of grass to play on, gardens and forest hiking.

Park(s) Day!

(This was supposed to be posted Monday May 15th)
Today started out with a trip to a new little park in Marugame (new to us anyway). And then a failed check-up at the doctor for me. We had forgotten to go to the city hall and pick up the pregnancy record booklet which the patient keeps and the doctor writes in every time. They told us to come back when we had picked up the book! After a 30 min round trip back home and picking up Callan we decided to go to the doctor another day (I guess that's a convience of national health care, you just show up and get in line for the doctor whenever you want, no appointments. But lots of waiting if you show up at the same time as everyone else!) Here's the little park. We loved the long slide but it was nothing compared to the slides at Mannou Kouen later in the day.

Last monday Callan and Melissa and I went to the Takashima's for FHE and hometeaching. They live an hour away, and very near a great swimming beach. Despite looking like a dismal Oregon Coast, the water was pleasant it was a good primer for getting excited about going to the beach when it gets hotter. If you notice, Callan is falling in this picture.

The sand was fun, but as soon as I took Callan in the water, that's all he wanted to do.

Callan loved the beach. We couldn't keep him out of the water.

Tonight, after having 12 people over to our house for a hawaiin haystack potluck, after eating too much cake and pie, after saying goodbye to everyone, after a long evening walk through our neighborhood, after a pillow fight, and while watching figure skating on television, Callan and Melissa called it quits. It was 9:30 PM when I took this picture tonight, and now its almost eleven thirty. Melissa finally moved from the couch to our bed, Callan is tucked in in his room, and I am seriously considering leaving the dishes for the morning.

Here is a picture of Inoyama, the mountain we finally climbed. This shot was taken back in September of 2005, just a little over a month after we got to Marugame. I remember saying to Melissa that I wanted to climbe the mountain when I took this picture. Last monday we finally did.

Last Monday, May eighth, we took advantage of the cool spring weather and hiked to the top of 'Sanuki Fuji' mountain, so called because it looks like a mini mount fuji. It is the most symetrical little hill I've ever seen, and can bee seen from most places in our little city. The trail is 2200 meters each way (about five and a half times around a high school track one way) and takes the average adult 45 minutes to reach the summit. With Callan it took us about an hour and a half, but the weather was great, the other hikers were friendly, and the veiw was fantastic.

Callan looks sad in this picture, but he is actually just protecting himself from the giant bee like insects that gathered everytime we stopped. About the size of a AA battery with wings, the 'bees' weren't actually dangerous, according to a hiker wer spoke to, but they were annoying.

Callan and Mom at a rare clearing on the Inoyama trail where much of the southern portion of our valley can be seen. As you can see, it is just about rice planting season around here.

Callan did great for most of the trip up, and only asked to be carried a few times. One great distraction for him was playing train with the sticks. He always wanted to be the driver, and mom went ahead of us to 'lay down the track.' It was also very effective when he began to talk about going home or sittingdown to suggest we race. He liked running up the trail, and it kept us going at a fairly good pace.

There were more of those huge bee looking bugs at the summit, but by then we'd gotten used to them. Callan is chewing on a haichew candy in this picture. They are like mambas, but way better and come in lots of different fruit flavors.

Callan asked for a snack most of the hike up, so he was glad to reach the top so he could have some of these cashews.

At the summit, we wrote our names in a summit journal at the shrine there, ate a few snacks, and got some water.

On the way down the Mountain, the sky cleared and we got great views like this of the Seto Bridge and the Inland sea. Callan, who did so well all the way up the mountain, asked me to hold him about two hundred yards into our return trip, he asked me to carry him. He promptly fell asleep and slept on my shoulder all the way down the mountain.

Mother's Day

This morning for Mother’s day breakfast we had chocolate crepes with fresh strawberries, kiwi, banana, and vanilla yogurt.  Callan and Dad made little notes for mom and posted them around the house.  When Dad fails to wax poetic, he tends to wax cheesy, and this morning was no exception.  On the fridge was a note that said, “Thanks for always keeping your cool,” and on the sink was another that read, ‘Without you we’d sink for sure!’  On the bathroom mirror was one that read, ‘You’re looking at a great mom,’ and my personal favorite, on the inside of the toilet room door, ‘If you were a poker hand, you’d be a royal flush.’  We finished breakfast at 8:30, and then Mom put some finishing touches on her talk for church, and hopped in the shower while Dad whipped out a chocolate cream pie for the potluck dinner after church.

Melissa spoke on Motherhood in Sacrament meeting and did a great job.  She referred to Sherri Dew’s conference talk from October 2001 about the motherly role of all women.  She talked about the divine role of women in nurturing not only their own children, but all young people, and about the special gifts and traits women have been blessed with that make them such able care givers.  She bore testimony about the powerful example of her own mother and how with Callan, she is realizing how much the good example of caring women has influenced her own parenting abilities.  

She stood at the pulpit with her English scriptures and gave her talk, and I stood next to her with my Japanese scriptures and translated for her. It is unifying to share opportunities like this, and provides the added challenge of trying to internalize what Melissa is trying to say well enough to reproduce it reasonably approximate Japanese.

One thing that caught my attention is that, as Melissa pointed out in her talk, Eve was called the ‘Mother of all living’ before she had children.  Mothering is a divinely given trait, and all woman possess it. She also shared Doctrine and Covenants 138:56 about each of us getting our first lessons for mortality in the pre existence, and commented that surely, among the noble and great ones were mothers and motherly women whose influence for good would be so necessary in this world.  

Whether we had a kind and supportive mother, an absentee mother, or no mother at all, each of us has been affected by the positive nurturing of godly, mothering women.  My own home was built upon, framed by, roofed with, and warmed through the selfless work of my dedicated mother.  I have heard her voice regrets, common to mothers who wish so much for their children and forget that each of us is human and must make decisions for ourselves, but I know that each us, her seven children, owe all that is good in our lives to her example, her faith, and her dedication.  

As I look forward to the motherly influences that my children and I will rely upon throughout our life, I am grateful to be married to Melissa, and to already be feeling the effects of generations of gentle mothering done by mothers who used their god given talents to bless the lives of their children.  My children and grandchildren and their children will for years to come feel the power of the steady, loving, gentle mothering that I see in my home every day.  Somewhere in the distant future, a young man is lying beside his small child, singing a gentle lullaby as the sun sinks into the horizon, and in the soothing sway of the melody, that small child feels the grace of generations of sweet mothers, and that child wonders, as he looks at the fuzzy chin of his father, why he should be so lucky.  

Callan and mom with big Osaka-Nanba in the Background. An overly helpful gentlemen helped us find our way around and tried to hard to speak to us in english. Here in Nanba we bought a few japanese dishes to take back to America and I tried to get a 'foreigner discount' on some sushi plates, but no one was interested.

Callan, asleep at the Caruther's house.

We arrived in Nanba on Friday morning at about 9AM and Callan needed breakfast. Good thing he likes Japanese food. He ate a rice onigiri and a half pint of milk while we sat on a curb in downtown nanba.

In Osaka, we did little more than window shop (since there isn' much else to do in Osaka). We did go to a famous market in Japan where merchants sell everything you would ever need to start your own Japanese restaurant, including this case of fake plastic sushi used for menu displays that are infront of most restaurants. We bought a shrimp sushi on a key chain to hang on our Christmas tree this year.

On Friday we visited Nanba City and Umeda inside Osaka. It was a bit warm, and as we found out after an hour long walk around Namba, much of Osaka is designed with the shopper in mind, and not the tourist. Since we didn't want to buy american import clothing, or anything for that matter, there was little to do in this part of Osaka. (It was here, by the way that I first realized that we lost our keys, and I spent a half hour on the phone trying in vane to track them down.

This is the huge kabuki theater in osaka, which we would have loved to see, but the tickets where 3000 yen each, and the show lasted two and a half hours (much too long for Callan). We opted for the photograph.

While Melissa and Callan waited on the roof of hte train station for me to figure out if we could find my keys, Callan got to ride on a lot of amusement rides. He is not old enough to insist we put coins in the machines though, so we let him ride all he wants. This boy was already riding by himself when Callan decided he was going to hop on the brown horse that was trotting along without a rider. I apoligized to the paying parents who shrugged and motioned for Callan to help himself. He got tired of it before the ride ended though, and I pulled him off.

This is the view from the 35th floor observation tower of the Umeda Sky building.

We arrived in Umeda with two and a half hours to kill before we had to be on the bus back to Marugame, so we decided to walk a few blocks to the Osaka Umeda Sky Building. The problem is we went the long way and half way through we decided there was no way we were going to make it to the building alive so I hailed a taxi (something I have never done before) and asked the driver to take us to the huge building, which we could see in plain sight. He chuckled, but agreed and gave us three minute ride to the building for a total of 660 yen (well worth it in our opinion). Now we have officially taken a train, a bus, a tour bus, a ferry, a high speed boat, a taxi, a local tram, a trolly, a bullet train, and gandola since coming here.

For children's day, these carp flags are hung up all over the country, and they made quite a sight, swaying in the breeze beneath the towering heights of the Sky building.

More carp shots.

Callan insisted that we play on this large blow up structure, which was set up at the base of the building, along with a small stage for some musical performers and some information about volunteer work.

Our last stop in Kyoto before gettin dinner at a department store and driving back to Osaka was Kiyomizu temple. The trees in this picture are all sakura cherry blossoms in the early spring, and brilliantly orange and red and yellow in the fall. In early summer, as pictured here, they are very green and only minorly impressive. The building itself is gigantic, and is built without any nails (The japanese are incredible when it comes to joinery). There were just too many people at this shrine to take in the atmosphere of the place. After our trip to Kyoto, our consensus was that Kyoto is best visited in the off season.

Kiyomizu temple stands at the base of a large green hill, and is flanked by thousands and thousands of family grave stones like these.

This pilgrim was standing here at the foot of Kiyomizudera, chanting in a low monotone voice, collecting coins from passing tourists.

Grave stones at Kiyomizu dera.

Each grave stone represents not a single person, but a single family line, which could have dozens of generations in it. This is a sacred place for literally hundreds of thousands of Japanese people, not only because of its national cultural signifcance, but because it is a graveyard, a home for ancestors, a place to pray for help, and to give thanks to ones progenitors.

More family grave stones. The approximately 1sqare meter piece of property upon which these stones sit would cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase, if you could find one to buy, and the owners must pay an annual upkeep fee. The bonus, you get to park for free when you come to kiyomizu shrine if you are coming to visit the family grave. That is exactly what we did. Nozomi Caruthers' family grave is here at Kiyomizu dera and we decided that buying some flowers and visiting the family grave was a good way to participate in a very japanese custom, and get good parking to see the rest of the shrine. Nozomi's family is not buddhist, but some of her relatives are and there is apparently some discussion about who should inherit the plot (It is usually inherited by the oldest son, but Nozomi's father has no sons). She and Brandon will for the rest of their lives walk the delicate line between their christianity, their Japanese heritage, their buddhist family line, and their familial expectations. If anyone can do it well they can. Brandon has just enough respect and interest in Japanese culture and Nozomi is well enough acclimated to American life for both of them to be able to role with the cultural currents that mingle, clash, and overlap in a cross cultural relationship. More than that though, I think having the common ground of religion to stand on, they automatically are able to clear some of the hurdles that exist for many mixed culture marriages. They are great friends and always have been so open to and interested in our family. We'll miss them when we go back to the states.

Here is another shot of just a small portion of the family grave stones at Kiyomizu dera.

This is the wheel and axel of a steam engine that sits outside the train museum in Kyoto.

Callan and Tyler got into quite a tiff over who should be able to spin this wheel. "I don't want to share with Tyler" became a common theme for Callan as our vacation began to seem a bit long for two year old patience.

The train museum in Kyoto had several large steam engines that we got to climb on. Some of the levers and valves actually moved!

We got to ride the train behind us, and only had to wait in a short line, despite the swarming crowds. Where there were dozens of foreigners at Kinkakuji, we didn't see a single one at the train museum. No one travels with kids.

After Kinkakuji we stopped at Kyoto station to buy real Subway sandwiches before heading off to the West Japan Railroad museum built on the sight of an old tidmouth shed used at the beginning of the last century.

Callan and Dad stood in line at Kinkakuji to give a few yen to the shrine and ring this bell. The crowd was an eclectic mix of worshippers, tourists, and native sight seers. Some came to see a piece of history, some came to worship it, and others came to say they'd been there. I think we fall somewhere inbetween.

Tyler Caruthers is just about two years old, and is a great friend to Callan. They ran together, and played together, and read books together, and posed for lots of pictures together. This seat they are sitting on is a rock labeled as a throne and holds some significance, but we couldn't decifer it.

Now for the rest of the Kyoto Story. We decided just a week before Golden Week to go to Kyoto, which was bad news for anyone trying to find a hotel in either Kyoto or Osaka. If you can believe it, both Kyoto (pop. 3 million or so) and Osaka (pop. 6 million) had no hotel vacancies for May 3rd and 4th. Not to say that there were no vacancies (just none under 600$ per night). According to every search engine we looked on, there was not a single double occupancy hotel room in either city that was in anyone normals price range. We were about to give up when a last minute desperation phone call to the kyoto tourism information center pointed us in the direction of a search engine that produced five vacant dormatory turned hostels that were available for 2500 yen per night (about 20$). The pictures were less than inviting, but the old woman on the phone sounded kind, and we didn't have alot of other options, so we signed up. We were all ready to go when I got an email from Brandon Caruthers, a mission buddy who currently lives in Osaka with his Japanese wife, saying we could stay with them, so as much fun as the no toilet no shower hostel sounded, we opted to stay with the Caruthers. This picture is from Kinkakuji, and despite the peaceful setting, there were really several hundred people there for the view along with us.

Now it's almost 7

It's almost 7 am and I've been up for about 30 minutes, but awake for about an hour. The next door rice field is being plowed (for rice I think!) but they started about 6 am, right outside our window. For their sake I'm glad they got an early start but I could have used a little more sleep this morning.
We got in pretty late to Marugame last night from Osaka. While were still in Osaka we realized we didn't have our car or house keys anymore. Brandon and Nozomi looked all over their house and we tore apart the luggage, but with no luck. So we set off on the bus (it's more like a nice coach, which luggage storage, lounging seats, foot rests and a bathroom) for home without the keys and without our boss' cell phone number (it's in the currently missing cell phone!) We were assigned the front seats on the bus which was okay most of the time until Joey got Callan laughing so hard he started coughing and that made him throw up all over Joey and himself, which I'm sure most of the bus saw and heard! We were laughing though (along with Callan), surely a coping mechanism because by then it was about 8:30 pm, we had been on the bus about 3 hrs and we still hadn't figured out what to do about our keyless car and house when we got back to Marugame! Luckily I had a package of wipes handy, Callan wore my sweatshirt and we got Joey cleaned off quick. When the bus stopped again to let more people off we pulled out the luggage and grabbed more clothes for Callan and reassured the bus driver that we were okay (and hopefully he understood that our kid wasn't going to do that again!)
We pulled in to Marugame about 9:50 pm with Callan asleep and walked over to the school where our car was parked. After one more thurough check of the luggage, Joey found the hidden key for the school, ran inside and called our boss who happened to be coming home from a trip herself and was only minutes away! She and her husband gave us a ride home and found the spare key to house. Callan and I promptly went to bed. Now we'll have to figure out about a key for the car and how to get it back from the school!
Overall the trip was excellent and didn't end too sour (we're just glad our boss was close by and not an hour or more away from home!) Callan is a great little traveler and hopefully the tractors won't start so early tomorrow!

We`re in Osaka staying with Brandon and Nozomi Caruthers who live with Nozomi`s family in western Osaka. Brandon served with me in Hiroshima as a missionary and he now works at Forever Living Products, an aloe vera MLM. Today we took a minivan to Kyoto and visited Kinkakuji temple (above,) a train Museum, and kiomizudera (pure water temple). With Melissa and Nozomi both pregnant, we took it slow, which was just as well. The Caruthers son Tyler is seven months younger than Callan and they both enjoyed having friend to play with (that is of course, when they werent fighting over toys). They did a lot of running and giggling and attempting to play baseball.
From What I have been told, Kinkaku ji is famous for having been founded by the most politically inempt, but artistically inclined leaders of ancient Japan. His inability to lead effectively lost him and his family their dynasty, but the cultural center he founded in Kyoto, with this golden palace at its center, created the foundation upon much of modern Japanese Cultural identity is built. The lake around the temple is full of Koi, turtles, and small trees growing out of the water, resting in elegant poses, as if they could remember the courtly dance performances that took place on boats out on the water so many hundreds of years ago. There were hundreds and hundreds of people flowing down the foot paths surrounding the temple, faces from all over the world come to glimpse the most famous ancient building in Japan. Part of me felt like the gold was too much. In the pictures, it looks very elegant, very imperial, very surreal. In real life, it is just a building coated in gold. The surface is not smooth in some places, and actually looks a little bit like it has been spray painted gold, rather than plated in gold leaf (of course I dont think it has been spray painted. Merely I was expecting the shimmer of gold statuary, and up close the texture is a bit wanting. Still, it was amazing to see, and it has really rounded out our tourist experiences here to have been able to come to Kyoto.
Callan has done very well this trip. For being two years old, he puts up with a lot of being drug around to fairly boring tourist sites, with little complaining. However, these four Maiko (Geisha in training) were too much for him. I suggested we take a picture and he melted into tears, saying he didnt like those girls and that they were scary. He is crying pretty hard in this picture.

At the West Japan Rail train museum we got to ride on a real steam train, get inside the engine control room of several old steam trains, and learn all about how old steam engines worked. Besides a minor tiff with Tyler over who got to spin a wheel inside the control room, the kids really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow we are going to try and get into a bunraku puppet show if they arent too expensive, were going to the top of an huge building to see the observation deck, and well do some window shopping.

Lately I have been feeling a bit emotional about this entire Japan experience. We came nine months ago, in the middle of the blazing summer humidity to an unfamiliar country, and have been trying to chip out a place for ourselves in our new world ever since. As the air has become warmer and the subtle signs of spring have begun to blossom, spin webs, and chirp in the fields, I often recall our first unsure week here in Japan. Sharing a house with seven other people at my bosses house our first week was difficult, but I wouldnt trade the experience. In the evenings, after coming home from work those first few days, after eating a simple dinner and changing Callan into pajamas, we put him in his stroller and took him for a walk in the darkness of our new neighborhood.

Far from cool, but less chaffing than the heat of the day, the quiet evenings provided us the opportunity to be on our own to talk, to soak in our new reality, and to put Callan to bed. For Melissa everything was new, and for me it was like reliving a dream. We had no clue what we were getting into, no idea the friends we would make, the places we would go, the accidents we would have, the blessings we would reap. All we could think about was the heat, the pending move into our new home, lesson plans, bills, and getting settled.

Now, in the pleasant sway of spring, we walk again through our neighborhood, not as strangers, but as a part of the scenary. The homes and fields that once felt so alien to us, have now, saturated with memories, become our backyard. Like learning a new word, and then hearing it everywhere, when a strange place becomes home, we begin to see its value. There are a million narrow streets, lined by rice fields and ramen shops in this country, but it is the ones I have spent the past nine months driving down that have become meaningful. The park in our neighborhood was merely a slide and a patch of dirt, but now it is a baseball field, a gymnastics arena, and a amusement park all rolled into one. The ricefields next to our home were just grass, and now they`re a marker of the seasons, a home to all of the noises that make this place ours; the early morning grind of the tractor plow, the twilight croak of a thousand frogs singing in coolness of the mud, the dialectic chatter of our neighbor as he leans on his shovel and dicusses the harvest with his aged wife, the sound of our neighbors dog, who hearing his masters car from blocks away, lets into a howl of excitement and stands at the fence, chain taught at his neck, in anticipation.