hiking and cabin-camping!

Yesterday, three friends and I started a 'camping experience' we'd been planning for a few weeks, well, since working together at the May Basket Matsuri. We decided to first climb the trails to the lighthouse and check out the small rocky beaches en route. By the time we were done with this it was past 3pm and time to check in at our cabin in the mountains!

It was overcast, but warm and humid, and we all worked up quite a sweat, and were thankful that the blazing sun was not out to bear down on us, too.

We spent the evening making lunch/dinner, eating together, walking around the cabin area, playing cards (and having way too much fun slapping doubles!), reading/napping, and talking till late at night.

I had to get up rather early to get out to church on time, but that was no problem with the fast-rising summer sun; I got up around 6:30. The others were all still asleep as I got ready to go, but I snapped a few shots of the amazing sea-and-sky at about 7am and got on the road. It was a lovely time for a drive.

Being up so high, and close to the windmills, we were surprised and delighted to see how quick-moving and beautiful the clouds were; some of them blew into our cabin through open windows and cooled it down nicely. It started raining quite hard at about 11pm, but the morning was as glorious a morning as you could ask for!

It was a great weekend. :)

Thank you, Father

This week I would like to wish a very happy Father's Day to my dad, good old Pop. He's almost always juggling ten thousand errands and several of my brothers and sisters' urgent requests at once, helping with homework, giving advice, laying down the law ("turn off that TV!"), cleaning/fixing things like nobody's business, and he usually has something to say or sing to lighten the mood, too ("the REAL song, the REAL song"). When I was growing up, even while teasing me about shipping me off to be a nun someday, he always made it clear with and without words that the Faith is the most important thing we have, and I paraphrase: "You can grow up to be a garbageman if you want to, as long as you keep your Faith."

It was encouraging to know that whatever monotonous part-time job I had (or didn't have), through all the what-should-I-major-in stress, Dad was behind me all the time, and still is. I wish he could somehow get the time to come visit me in Japan!

So thank you to Dad, and all thanks be to God our Father in a special way.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

天におられる私たちの父よ。御名が聖とされますように。御国がきますように。御心が天に行われる通り、地にも行われますように。私たちの日ごとの糧を、今日もお与えください。私たちの罪をお許しください。私たちも人を許します。私たちを誘惑に陥らせず、悪からお救いください。アーメン。

. . .

Getting into my "handyman" stride yesterday, I pried up the tatami mats in my room and vacuumed the depths below. Actually, there was a lot of dust and tatami fall-off, pebbles, and some dead bugs. Luckily, they were dead. I saw only one little silverfish-looking thing that I disposed of immediately. (]:^D

After thoroughly vacuuming the edges and undersides of the mats, the styrofoam beneath them, and the concrete beneath that (and it smelled like a basement, eww), I went to put the mats back down. I thought I would switch up their placements to get more even wear and tear on them, and then I discovered that not all tatami mats are the same size. But I switched where I could, and the room was put back in order. Yay! I set a bug bomb off in there before leaving for church this morning, for good measure.

Next week... the other tatami room. dun dun DUN!

ear to ear

It was a really great weekend, and I feel like tossing my hat in the air like Mary Tyler Moore! Would be even better if I could be back in big-time Minneapolis for a week or weekend, but the past couple of days have been terrific.

A group called me out to lead "American aerobics/kick-boxing" on Friday, and it went really well. There was a scary moment when the cd I brought wasn't playing past the 3rd track, but luckily I'd also brought backup tunes. Everyone seemed to work up a good sweat (I was dripping, anyway), and enjoy the workout.

Saturday I went, somewhat reluctantly, with some aunties on a drive to a city north of here. We stopped at a hand-made tapestry and crafts shop that is housed in an old temple, and after looking around with them for a while, I stopped to play with a gorgeous black cat. After quite a while, the cat decided to get up and go somewhere else, and it was only then that I noticed it had only 3 legs!!- and a sort of stumpy 4th beginning-of-a-leg. Poor thing, it went hobbling into the kitchen area. My heart just went out to that cat, for some reason.

After that shop, we went into the mountains for a "firefly festival," which simply means that everyone is using the current season (when the fireflies come out in droves by rivers and other wet places) as an excuse for a good time. There was another temple in the mountains, and a couple of guys were dancing kagura to traditional pipe and drum music played by several other men. We stopped by to listen for a song or two, then headed down to the local elementary school, where there was a big enough parking space for everyone's vehicles, and a stream. We got out of the car and walked a few paces, and...... WOW!!! There were probably more than a hundred fireflies floating and glowing here and there all along a stretch of the water. It was amazing. I caught a few that came flying nearby, and it was really lovely to see the insect glowing in my hand and crawling around, just like the ones I used to catch in Chi-town.

Today, Sunday, was Corpus Christi, and so we got to sing some good old Gregorian Chant in church. Holy Communion was also distributed under both kinds.

Later, I went to the hair salon and once again received fabulous service. Those people are amazing! They convinced me to try some kind of treatment with sea mud and herbs in it; sounds iffy, but it has a pretty scent and worked very well. While I was waiting, I read through a book of motivational poetry that reminded me of an English teacher I had in high school (although this poetry was in Japanese). One poem read something like this:

楽しんだから

笑顔できるのではなく

笑顔でいるから

いつでも楽しめるのだ

(It's not because you have had a good time

that you can put a smile on your face;

it's because you have a smile on your face

that good times are always to be had.)

I have got the biggest smile on inside and out right now. :D Have a good one, everybody!

Reorganizing

I know Easter eggs have nothing to do with June, but this couple was just too cute to pass up. 

I've been thinking a lot, and exercising a lot, and somehow between the two began to realize that, even if the US or possibly the world is going to be hit by a real financial crisis that sends us all back to the 3rd world, even if I never feel like I'm able to do any important or appreciated work while I'm here, and even if these two years have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of my life, well, it'll still be ok. 

I once, once and irrevocably, turned down the chance to finish training and get an education at the Air Force Academy, because I didn't want to have to play the "game" the cadre upperclassmen make of the new recruits. I didn't agree with the idea of some people stripping down all my self respect to have me earn it back from them. It was excruciating training physically, and mentally I couldn't stand all the yelling and bullying. When I left it behind, I thought, I'm free now! I'll never see those cadre again!  It was a wonderful feeling.

But in the years that followed, I find myself having to face the same or more intense difficulties than the ones I balked at then. Slowly it has become clear that, one way or another, God is shaping me like a potter shapes clay. Maybe the process would have been quicker if I'd just buckled down and finished at the AFA, or maybe it would have broken me after all, and I was only brought there to see a sort of foreshadowing of later struggles.  

The point is, again and again you come up against things you can't overcome-- either you really can't, or you only think you can't, both make the thing impossible for the time being. You can choose to step away, run, or hide from it, or you can choose to face just one more hour, one more day. In the end, you will have to deal with it. It's your cross. 

So maybe I can't take on 14 more months of leper-like existence in a town without a particle of food for the soul. 

That's one way of looking at it. 

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that you should try standing on your head and looking at the world upside-down, for it all becomes much clearer then. Standing on my head, I begin to see that none of this is about me at all. It's about the town, where a lot of good, simple people live good, simple lives. It's about the children and the words or smiles that will shape their thinking. Most of all, it's about the gift of being here, now. In this history, I will be only a transparent shadow, forgotten. 

But so have been many millions of men and women who have lived and worked on this earth. The important thing is not making sure that everyone is attending to you; it's that you attend to your work and do your darndest to love the people you encounter, unlovable as some may seem. Someday, if you're blessed, you'll find someone you can work together with for the rest of your life. And then it will end, and God is the judge. 

14 months? No, not 14 seconds by myself. But with Him, one more day, one more week... little by little, until it is finished. Glory to God. 

...

The sister city program should be able to proceed as planned. There was just a moment of emotion over a perceived pandemic on one side, and a perceived irrational fear on the other. Different cultures meet, and these things will happen.