He is Risen! Happy Easter!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Vigil and Easter morning!!

We didn't have a Latin Exultet at my parish here, but that didn't stop me from gleefully humming it all the way home. This is the one I always remember, sung by Fr. Zuhlsdorf at the Church of St. Agnes in St. Paul, MN.

Now I can eat chocolate again! Funny, I don't really want it anymore.

The past four days have been an intense and blessed experience. One of the reasons is that in a location where Mass is usually only available once or twice a week, in a place where the only Christians you see are the ten or twenty at your church, it's beautiful to be able to go and to be with all the other believers for this most holy feast.

Alleluia!

English Camp

Over the last three days (Thursday-Saturday) I went up to the northern end of the prefecture to help out at an English camp for middle- and high school students. Since all the staff had been asked to come up with an English language activity, there was plenty to do every day. In addition, we all enjoyed various cultural experiences, such as making chikuwa, a kind of tube-shaped fish patty roasted over an open fire, and going to a Buddhist ceremony at a local temple. By far my favorite was takekomi-gohan: camp staff had hiked up the mountain and chopped down some bamboo trees, then they taught us how to cut and split the bamboo to make a natural rice-cooker! After rinsing the inside of our bamboo cookers, we added washed rice and water, and then this too was cooked over a sort of barbecue. All the preparation kept us up till the sky was dark and the air was quite frigid, but I often find that the meals you appreciate most are the ones for which you've worked the hardest.

One activity the kids had to do was to create and perform "commercial" skits. I loved my group. They seemed so shy and uninterested in the activity at first, but once we had put something together and practiced, their smiles started slipping out all over the place. We decided to make our commercial about a hip hop dance school, and the best part was that they all learned a routine and performed it together. Even though a local TV station was filming, nobody tripped anyone else or had a meltdown. I was so proud of those kids!

I didn't bring my camera to camp. I know some people have to film, for work/reporting purposes, but I always feel like a camera ruins the moment, or at least makes the kids feel more shy and awkward than they already do.

I think it would be nice to run a camp like this here in inaka-cho, too, eventually. I was impressed with the number of staff that were gathered together, though, and I'm not sure I could pull those numbers off in the immediate future.

Another egg, and a surprise

This egg was about two weeks in the making, since I kept putting it down and getting busy with other things for days at a time. There's a butterfly on the other side, too, but it didn't turn out very well. According to the symbology guide I was sent with the egg decorating kit, butterflies stand for Christ's resurrection. Intuitive!

It's been so cold, rainy, and all around dreary lately that I haven't been opening any windows. And as a matter of fact, most of my windows are frosted glass, anyway. However, today the sun was out and it seemed a little bit warm, so I opened a window a crack to check. It's a lovely day! Now all the windows are open. But imagine my surprise when I opened this window:



Well hello!

It really feels like spring today.

catching up...

Christmas and New Year's at home were lovely. There were twelve of us! It was so good to see how each of my little siblings has grown over the last year and a half; my sister can make so many more sounds to communicate with now, and my little brothers are slowly become better behaved and even gentlemanly at times. I'm sorry I didn't get to go sledding with them-- first, I was too cold (and unused to the Northern winter temperatures), and then the snow got too hard on top.

Our internet went out for about a week, and while it was inconvenient sometimes to be unable to Google a location or check inboxes or movie times, it was a really wonderful opportunity to talk with my older-younger siblings and my older sister, too. It seems like everyone is doing their best in various challenging situations.

I got to meet a nice group of former high school classmates one night at a bar in St. Paul. (As luck would have it, I'd forgotten my US drivers' license in Japan, but they let my alien registration card and expired US drivers' license pass... whew) It's strange to see people I used to take English class with now married and having babies and out working in the real world! Of course it's only natural that they are, but some part of me just feels like that whole high school universe is still preserved somewhere in a time capsule, and everyone else is just the same as they always were... It was a good night, and it put me in mind of the pub scene in The Return of the King, where the four travelers sit down once more in the Green Dragon after many adventures.

I spent a lovely afternoon with A, my old roommate of college days in Saitama. She is getting her teaching license, and hopefully will be joining the JET team in Japan this summer! I hope she is placed near a big city so I can visit her there.

Perhaps the best meeting was the furthest away. I didn't really want to sit in a car for five hours one way and five hours back, but seeing my grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins again was worth every minute! And such food as you can't get in my neck of the woods... cheese curds and cheesecake and cheeseburger soup and lasagna! (And someone made puppychow, too..... mmmm)

What's up with this picture? Not much, you might say. But there are so many wonderful things about it! The bread came from a long, thinly-sliced loaf from the grocery store, toasted in an actual toaster, and slathered with wonderful chunky peanut butter and the best strawberry jam in the world! (because it was homemade, with the best strawberry jam recipe in the world) Beautiful.

Just like coffee shops, and old friends.

Since coming back to my town, I started panicking about finding a new job quickly enough to finish my time in inaka-cho this summer. It was so good being home that all I want to do is go back--- but, after all, it's not so bad here that I'd rather be unemployed for months. I think. I could do a much better job applying to grad schools and hunting for jobs if I start at the end of the summer. Then, you see, I'll know for certain that it's my last year in inaka-cho, unlike this year where I've been swinging back and forth about it.

I've been looking into other work in Japan for a long time. Yet the simple fact is that the system is set up so that English teaching/tutoring is about the only job someone like me could get. If I had special technical, engineering, computer, or financial skills it might be a different story, but I was a liberal arts major and so, to all prospective employers here, insupportable. When the time comes, I will certainly look for work in the Kanto and Kansai areas, but I don't want to settle for just anything. I'd rather be able to use existing and develop new skills in international exchange, whether here or in the US. Eventually I'd like to train as an interpreter.

I never thought I was the type to "get the ball rolling," but I guess I just ran out of patience for someone else to do it, so I got all the local English teachers and one girlfriend to come to my place for dinner and Monopoly last night. It was great! I really hope we can do that more often, and A already offered to host the next one. Sweet.

Isolation is so much easier to bear when you don't have to do it alone. Solidarity!

Lake Biwa

Lake Biwa was gorgeous!!

It was the first time I'd been to that part of Japan, and pleasant surprises waited around every corner.

I got a couple of calls from the hotel I stayed at Sunday night, making sure I was on my way and letting me know they would have my dinner ready when I came in. When I got to the station, they sent a shuttle van over to collect me, and dinner--! Well, I was a little worried I had misread the amount I was paying for the hotel. They brought the dinner out in courses, classical music played softly overhead, and Christmas lights twinkled outside. Breakfast wasn't done in quite so formal a manner, but it was all laid out for me at a table with my name on it. The room was lovely. The hotel is right on the lakeside, so the sunlight reflecting off the surface in the morning filled the whole first floor with brilliance.

Then it was time for the translation/interpretation seminar, which really, I suppose, ought to be simply interpretation seminar. We students have ample opportunity to practice the translation part of the course in monthly workbooks and tests that are sent out, but even though there is a CD/cassette portion for interpreting, we can't get much feedback or practice different styles of interpreting well that way.

Truth be told, I was pretty nervous about spending a week in a "training facility" where everything necessary for existence is on campus, and people need to sign out when leaving it. Nevertheless, it was an extremely enjoyable experience. We got a sort of double keynote speech from Mr. Tatsuya Komatsu, who is, if not the most famous, then at least one of the most famous interpreters in Japan. He interpreted for the Apollo 11 landing, and more recently for the Dalai Lama. He told us a little bit about his experiences, in a way that most of us found highly amusing.... except for a couple of students from China/South Korea who somehow managed to take offense at the fact that Mr. Komatsu had friendly words with the Dalai Lama. But after that speech we separated into language groups, and he addressed us again on the topic of note-taking during an interpretation session.

From the next day onward we divided further into classes, and spent the day studying with a professional interpreter.

Meals were in a large cafeteria. It was awesome to have so many people to say hi to and strike up a conversation with! I remembered one of the reasons I really loved living in Japan in the past... here, you can run into all kinds of interesting people, particularly from other English-speaking countries but also of course from anywhere in the world. By the end of the week I felt that all of us, especially with regards to our classes, had bonded, and I wished we had another week to study and share together!

Evenings were free, so sometimes I went to bed early (oh, how heavenly!), once I hopped on a treadmill (hurrah for being able to exercise again!!), one time a few of us borrowed bicycles and ventured out to a convenience store (more for the heck of it than because we actually needed anything, but it was exciting!), one night a bunch of us played volleyball (I could feel my competitive side rising to the surface, but it was just a fun, fun game with no time limits and no scorekeeping), and the last night I worked on a short speech for part of our last class.

I never have a chance to interpret at my current job, but I feel really inspired by last week, and I want to improve my language and interp skills and try to become an interpreter. It's really challenging, but exhilarating at the same time!

Other awesome things... I finally kicked that state of unhealthiness and started exercising again, I started feeling normal and happy again (hey hey!), and I met a few amazing CIRs who encouraged me one way or another to do more with my position and time. Furthermore, I realized again that I won't be in inaka-cho forever, and I don't need to get caught up in the whirlpool of grumpiness that persists here. It was like a curtain lifted and a clean, sharp breeze blew all the murk and the cobwebs away.

I'm so thankful!

my apologies

I've been sick, again. Sigh. I'm quite sure it was something I ate again, just the way it happened in Tokyo.

But you know what? I'm not letting it get me down. Nope. This just means I should stick to coffee shops or conbinis, or perhaps start bringing a stash of PB&J sandwiches with me whenever I go out of town. The other thing is, once I do finally kick all of this under-the-weather business straight into the touchdown zone,* I'll be so mellow and pleasant to be around it will all have been worth it. I might even start giving random people hugs!

I must say, though, a diet of white bread and all the green/herbal tea I can drink is not as hard as I thought it would be.

Please say a prayer for me, because I have a week-long business trip coming up this Sunday.

*I know nothing about football.

the event

The busy hour before the event... I have a clown hat in my hand, for some reason, and we're checking all the rooms to make sure they're laid out properly.

During the preliminary explanation, I asked the kids what to call this large, orange pumpkin (one of those we got on the memorable day of the flat tire)..... do-te-ka-bo-cha! No one was actually brave enough to carve this one, though.

Staff was stretched pretty thin, but I loved my group of little kids. Here we are trying to come up with pictures to carve into our pumpkin. They had the cutest ideas!

I did convince them to try just reaching in and grabbing a handful of pumpkin guts, but these kids were pretty neat. They mostly used spoons. It slowed us down, but hey, we weren't in a race with the older kids (were we?). ;)

The pumpkins the kids came up with! The one on the top right is supposed to be a kabuto-mushi (a type of large beetle some kids keep as pets).

Happy Halloween! Mwa-hahaha-hahaha-ha....

around and around

Pretty soon it's going to be this time of year again, at least in inaka-cho. That's right, we celebrate Halloween and we do our celebrating nice and early before the clingy, warm humidity is all gone. Actually, the reason is that last year, the international association had a windfall of large, orange pumpkins in early September and had to use them before they rotted into putrid orange puddles. (A couple of them did anyway.)

Using the same reasoning, I planned the party date this year nice and early, but, due to the flat tire we got on our way to picking up the pumpkins, we were only able to claim four. Therefore, the bulk of our pumpkins this year are going to be native Japanese kabocha, which you can buy any old time all autumn. Ah well. Live and learn.

Speaking of which, in my recent offline endeavors, I've started Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, since it seems to be one of those books you just HAVE to read before you choke. It influenced a lot of educated men in Europe and North America when Smith published it in 1776 (followed by four new versions in rapid succession). It's most often linked with the "invisible hand" theory of economics; that is, markets produce the most wealth for a nation when they are least regulated, because a benevolent "invisible hand" can then guide the process. Smith only wrote the phrase in his ponderous tome once, actually.

It's slow going. I've learned about the division of labor and the efficiency and progress it brings to society; about prices being based on rent, wages, and profits; about the development of metal money and how sovereigns manipulate it; that the true price of a commodity is based on the amount of labor used to produce it; about how corn is a better indicator of a society's affluence than silver; and a lot of things that Smith just seems to speculate on in a rambling, ambling, don't-care-if-I-get-anywhere fashion. So I started to supplement my book-reading with Wikipedia and an online collection of notes.

I laughed out loud when the author of those notes wrote something to this effect: "I'm not really sure what Smith is trying to say here, but I hope my notes are at least less incomprehensible than his."

All this, and Amazon touts the book as being "highly readable."

(By the way, I once tried to read Tristram Shandy, for much the same reasons as this book, but gave up because of its labyrinthine sentences. I'm determined to plough through Smith, though.)

In other news,

Why is it that it's just when you get a mad itch to leave everything behind and start exploring, perhaps holding your magnifying glass to a fascinating object on the ground near a burbling stream in a sunny meadow on a gorgeous day, that something, let's say a pterodactyl, comes rushing at you and lifts you high up into the atmosphere before letting you hurtle back down to earth with stars in your eyes while it goes on its merry way? You can't get it out of your head, and you can't go back to your single-minded exploration, even though you know pterodactyls don't exist and the chances that the one that grabbed you will come back are nonexistent. In other words, well, no, I can't explain it. You either know what I'm talking about or you don't.

Getting offline to live a little

I haven't blogged in a few weeks. Let me tell you about what I've been doing.

Since I've been in inaka-cho, I've been a pretty heavy internet user. Well, I rolled my suitcases into my apartment, stood in the middle, and all I could hear were crickets. Nobody seemed to care what I did or how I lived as long as I showed up to work every day. I already had decided that TV could become an addiction and a waste of time, so instead when I was at home, I created a sort of bridge to America by keeping up with numerous blogs and vlogs and having the iChat program running all the time 'just in case.'

Then it became something of an addiction. I needed my computer time to wind down from a day where the only conversations I had were short exchanges with an immensely unreadable boss who sometimes seemed to have something in for me. It might have been more productive if I had made an effort to connect with more people at work and in the JET network. But after work I was always tired, and I hated to bother people who seemed just as tired as I was.

Anyway, a few weeks ago it finally all came to a head, and I realized that far from relaxing me, the now pervasive internet was making me increasingly impatient and irritable. We all know what it's like to dredge multiple e-mail boxes and come up with just spam, for example. Furthermore, I had less and less to say to people on the occasions I did meet them. I wasn't studying Japanese. I was in a rut.

So I decided to cut myself off. I kept my computer shut down for a week, so when I came home after work, I had to find other things to do.

I put clear packing tape around all my sliding door and window screens to keep bugs from coming through their spacious gaps. I read books. I journaled. I worked out with Billy Blanks and Chalean Johnson. Spent time with some JETs. Slept more. Ate less. Started knitting.

All in all, it's been a most beneficial exercise. The internet is a great tool, but I think it can easily take over your life. People must have had longer attention spans, and been more interested in asking other people about things before Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia came along. (I know it's modern common sense, but nothing irks me like someone saying, "just Google it" in response to a question.)

So while my home is still a bit of a world apart from the rest of inaka-cho, it's no longer so sharply delineated. I like to hear the crickets and cicadas chirping while I read or journal. Even if nobody cares what I do outside of work, I try to keep everything in readiness in case someone should come to the door. And I mostly keep my computer shut off. Try it sometime, if you can!

fun and games

Well, it seems the time for fun and games is over as a new school year begins. Maybe. It's not a new school year for me, although in some ways I miss that feeling of slinging the backpack over my shoulder, full of blank notebooks and crisp, empty folders, a perfect assortment of writing utensils, and a bus schedule. Except for the bus schedule part. Really never liked the bus.

Today I went driving off with my supervisor to a city several hours away, which was holding its annual pumpkin festival. These are the real deal pumpkins, big and orange and just right for making into creepy (or cute) jack-o-lanterns. However, we'd not been on the highway much more than an hour when we started hearing a sound like a motorcycle riding on our bumper. There wasn't much time to wonder, because in the next couple minutes, there came a noise like a shot and the car slowed down, its left rear dragging.

Thank the Lord we weren't in a tunnel, and that there was a bit of a shoulder we could ease onto to survey the damage. The tire was completely shot, a big strip of it had blown off, and there was a mesh of rubber and wires exposed near the puncture.

The sun blazed down. We considered calling JAF (Japan Automobile Federation, I think), but then she fished the manual out of a compartment and we decided to try changing the tire with the spare ourselves. Fortuitously all the right tools were in the car and the spare tire was still useable. But we spent almost an hour wrenching things here and there, trying to get obstinate levers to rotate. We'd gotten the jack in place and had just given up trying to unscrew the bolts holding the ruined tire on. My supervisor walked down the road to try to find the name of the last tunnel we passed, to let JAF know where to find us. But then I picked up another metal tool of some sort and sort of attached it to the lever already in place, and wonder of wonders, the bolt loosened.

So in the end we were able to change the tire. Then we drove into the big city and found a repair shop, where they showed us a dangerous crack beginning in the rubber of the spare tire as well. We ended up getting both the ruined tire and the spare tire replaced. All's well that ends well!

Unfortunately, we were only able to pick up about 4 pumpkins from the pumpkin festival; all the other manageably-sized, relatively whole ones were already taken. Still, this means we'll have less pumpkin to chop up and throw away when the Halloween carving festivities are over. :) Since the weather is still quite hot and humid here in Japan, you can't just keep a carved pumpkin on your doorstep or wherever-- it'll just turn into putrid mush oozing smelly orange water. I know. We had to clean up a mess like that last year, after we thought it would be a good idea to put a jack-o-lantern at the entrance of the community center. Therefore, after our Halloween party, the kids couldn't take the things home; we had to sit there for a few hours chopping up the pumpkins and wrapping them in newspaper to put out on Monday morning.

I think it's safe to say we're a bit wiser this year! We'll use mostly regular kabocha-- Japanese pumpkins-- for the event, and that way they'll be small enough for the kids to take home or for us to easily dispose of.

A large cup of tea, a kabocha, and a mikan (mandarin orange).

---

I would like to take this opportunity to say "Thanks" to my dad, who made us all demonstrate changing a tire before letting us drive the family vehicle. Thank you, Dad!

things I've been up to

Helped out with an event all day today. It went down excellently, and I'm really happy about that. The theme was Hawaii, and yesterday I had a flash of inspiration for some decorations. The tables we'd set up were looking awfully spartan or industrial, so during my lunch break I zoomed off in my car to pick up some artificial stalks of hibiscus and leis at the nearest DAISO. Add some colorful plastic table"cloths", some jars for vases (I've been saving them for the next time I need to mix up egg dye), paper placemats and some confetti, and boom~! Instant mini-makeover. I felt like I wouldn't mind decorating for events as a living, while I was prettying the place up.

Alas, I was too busy and took no photos. Perhaps I'll get some from someone else later.

We made locomoco (rice + hamburger + fried egg and gravy), ahipoke (raw tuna and onion salad with sesame seeds and garlic soy sauce), and mac salad (macaroni, peas, carrots, cucumbers, mayo, salt, and pepper); and we watched the lovely intern's demonstration of how to make haupia (coconut pudding). She also brought some delectable fudge. Everybody was ravenously hungry by the time we sat down to eat (about 1:30), but likewise everyone's stomachs were then filled enough to satisfy, I dare say, even a hobbit.

I'm re-reading the Lord of the Rings these days, and am about 3/4 of the way through The Two Towers. What a fantastic writer Tolkien was!

It's hard to be patient. I think I used to be a fairly patient child, but since graduating high school I seem to be in a greater and greater hurry to do everything. Do you know any good tips, exercises, or prayers for patience?

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!

May Basket Matsuri

It's the beginning of another week. This last one was pretty crazy; between frenzied talks of canceling the summer international exchange program, apologetic and heated e-mails being exchanged between the sister cities, last-minute recruiting for my end-of-spring event, the first intermediate eikaiwa of the season, and a new preschool to visit, I was almost wiped out before Friday. On Friday, I had to get everything together for the May Basket Matsuri.  I was exhausted, but really excited, because suddenly another three families had decided to come, raising the participant numbers to 30!

Since by necessity the event fell at the end of May, we decided to make it an end-of-spring party incorporating a few notable traditions. We decorated Easter eggs, made May Day baskets, skipped around a May Pole, and went on a plastic egg hunt. With some time to spare, the event wrapped up with duck-duck-goose outside in the sunshine. 

5月病 May Sickness

Go-gatsu-byou is the Japanese term for getting completely sick and tired, mentally (and sometimes physically), in May. New hires and transfers came in April, and by now everyone's adjusted just enough that they're tired of the whole situation. Also, Golden Week is over and there's no hope of another renkyuu (3-day weekend) until July 20th. Spring is swiftly passing into the rainy season. 

I'd scoffed when I first came across this in a newsletter article my predecessor wrote. I'll never get that, I thought. Maybe I haven't, and maybe I won't. But there's no denying that my fragile equilibrium has broken down in the depths of melancholy and depression for some weeks. At first I thought it was just an annoying someone I have to deal with every day. Then I noticed myself getting more despondent and next, irrational and irritable. Everything was getting on my nerves. I disliked the whole country and this town most of all, but the US didn't seem much better. I felt like I'd wasted years of study just to come to some poky little town and go crazy. 

But thankfully, it's impossible to keep one emotion going constantly forever, and little by little I'm starting to get back up and see the silver linings again.    

Time to keep going, again.

A bowl on my head,

Some kind of cardboard armour--

Almost a year now.

Write your own original haiku in the combox. 

What are you waiting for? (];^)

Saturday

Oh, how I enjoy Saturdays!

It's not just being able to sleep in, although as someone who really despises early rising it is a big bonus. 

On Saturdays, I clean. 

Now, I know what you may be thinking. Now, JT, you live by your onesie and don't have any little kiddies running around causing havoc; what could you possibly do all week to merit a day of cleaning each Saturday? The answer is... I don't know. Somehow things get tossed about and move from their proper places, dust and crumbs and things accumulate on the edges of the floor, and the laundry piles up. 

I don't have a set routine yet, but I might start with a load of laundry, then move to the kitchen to get caught up on the dishes, wipe down the countertops and stove, floors, and go through the refrigerator to thin out anything past its due date or getting overripe. Then it's time to put all the dishes away and hang up the hot mitts. 

Check all the drains and clean up accumulated mold... eewww... but it has to be done.

Sweep. Vacuum. Vacuum tatami, which is a little bit time-consuming, especially going under furniture. But if you don't vacuum that tatami, you get tatami mites. Then, spiders come to eat the mites, and then mukade come to eat the spiders. So, you see, frequent vacuuming is informal insurance against marauding beasts with too many legs. 

Clear up the clutter, tie up the trash, put the books back on their shelves-- and organize the egg-decorating-tool explosion on my table. Do other laundry loads in the meantime.

Ahhhhh, one feels so much better, and there's still some daylight left for reading or praying or taking a walk. 

Palm Sunday

Well, it's Palm -- Passion -- Sunday 2009.

At Mass, Fr. reminded us that this Holy Week is not last year's Holy Week, and that we've got to focus and prepare ourselves anew to consider with repentance, thankfulness, and joy the mysteries of our salvation. 

Afterwards, we held a meeting to go over some of the details of the Triduum, and when we got to Holy Saturday, Fr. said we're going to go all out (again?) this year and put flowers everywhere, read all eight readings, and try to get the church to really pika-pika suru (glitter and sparkle) like a bride for the Easter Vigil. Yay!!!

Incidentally, since there aren't that many parishioners to begin with, I get to do one of the readings-- the fourth, from Isaiah. 

I've been busy, when I could manage it, with some of my own preparations...

But anyway, here we are in the home stretch of Lent, so I rented The Passion before coming home today. I wasn't sure at first if I really wanted to see it again, because I had listened to a homily where the priest said of Jesus meeting the weeping women of Jerusalem, that Jesus rebuked in them a purely sentimental sorrow for His Passion, without attendant compunction and repentance. "Weep not for Me, but for yourselves and for your children."

After thinking about it, though, it's all too easy to forget what Our Lord endured, and this movie really brings it home in a way that doesn't permit you to just go back to business as usual. I think that setting some time aside, not only for the movie but also for prayer and reflection, is a worthy pursuit, particularly for Holy Week. 

gearing up

Some good news:  I seem to be becoming slightly more productive recently.  Today, I translated some stuff, visited a school, translated some more stuff, prepared, and taught two hours of English conversation. During my downtime I read from an amazing book called 『これだけBOOK    英語より敬語！』Hurrah! 

I am preparing to change my international driver's permit over into a Japanese driver's license, and the procedure is going to be long and costly, as well as bothersome and inconvenient.  But, if I don't get it switched, I won't be able to legally drive here, and that would be a real wrench in the works. So please pray that I pass all the tests and hurdles as quickly and cheaply as possible. :)

something amazing ショック!

In the bread section of the grocery store today, I came upon... THIS... NOVELTY!!!! 

Are we perhaps seeing an end of the six-slice-maximum reign of terror in the bread aisles of the country??

Actually, this loaf is not sliced at all. But it's large enough for much more than the usual six. It and a few others like it were selling for 498 yen each, or about 5 bucks.