Giant Hornet

Andrew had a science lesson today...

"I was taking down laundry, grabbed my sock and... Ouch! It felt somewhat like an injection or someone poking you with a needle, or a jellyfish sting, or something. I went into the house and told dad that I though that I had been stung, but I hadn't seen it. We went back out and found a wasp still in the sock and smacked it with a shoe, but it didn't smash it-- it's really tough. We held it with a clothes pin, since it was only stunned, and sprayed it with poison.

My hand swelled up really big right away. Dad put some medicine on it. Wasps don't leave their stingers, so we didn't have to pull it out, We looked it up on the Internet and found that it's the biggest hornet in the world-- and the most poisonous. More people (in Japan) die from it every year than from any other insect or even poisonous snake."

Here is a Wikipedia article about it.

10,000 Mile Loop

That's a comedy performing team that Andrew and I met on our way to Tokyo on January 10th. That's Mount Fuji in the background.

I'm posting today from San Diego, California, the start of the rail-pass portion of a one-month trip around the United States. I flew in yesterday from Japan and will be in trains, buses, cars and planes for much of the next 30 days-- mostly in trains-- about 12 days-- and another three days in the others.

The other half of the trip will be my stops in twelve cities at the four corners of the US. From here I will go to Dallas, on to NYC, West Virginia, New Jersey, Florida, Seattle, Las Vegas, Nevada, Flagstaff, Arizona and Twentynine Palms, California. I'll be vistiing my parents, and many of my children, grandchildren, and brothers and sisters and a couple friends- twelve cities in all.

I always invite the folks I meet to visit this blog-- so, welcome! I'm not sure how soon I'll have the photos and details of this trip posted here, so please explore and bookmark (Control-D in Firefox, 'Favorites' in Explorer.)

And to everyone in my big 'loop'-- see you soon!

Out and About

Well, Andrew and I are off for another summer holiday adventure. We always meet lots of interesting people and they often visit this site, so... HELLO! Welcome.

To see how we will be traveling, check this post from last year:


Holiday Hitching Japanese Style


We'll post our adventure's story and some photos in about ten days.

Nagano Skiing

We've been snow-covered continually nearly all winter-- with temperatures hovering right around freezing in the day and well below at night-- of course colder in the surrounding mountains.

And that's just were we went two weeks ago. That's Andrew in the photo. He did quite well for his first attempt.

The skiing here is world-class-- impressive and beautiful, even to a non-skier like me. My big dare of the day was to sled halfway down one of the slopes-- the fastest I've ever gone on a sled!

Photos of the resort we went to:

http://www.kashimayari.net/album/index.html

Kashimayari English Home Page

http://www.kashimayari.net/eng/index.html

Intensive Study-- Intensified Experience

A few months ago I started formal Japanese studies-- a textbook, teacher and weekly classes-- after three years in Japan. This was a mistake-- not the studies, but the wait. The best way is to jump into learning a language as soon as you arrive-- as I did with Spanish and Chinese-- but I failed to do with Hindi-- during the five years I was in India-- and now, Japanese.

Trying to make up for my lack with a big push, I'm now past chapter three in my thirty-chapter Japanese textbook. I recently started carrying all my Japanese books with me everywhere to build up my muscles... well, not actually. The truth is that it's to help me to be less embarrassed when I have to face my teacher each week.

Besides avoiding humiliation, I've discovered that when I'm studying, people who would usually not speak to me, often do. On three successive train trips I've sat across from young persons on the train who asked how my studies were going and were glad to help as I struggled to read and pronounce my Japanese assignments.

An older couple joined one conversation-- first the wife, commenting in a mixture of English and Japanese-- and then her husband began making comments to her in Japanese like, 'How many of those 'ABC' things do they have in English?' 'Twenty-six', she told him. 'So few!' he responded, 'It must be difficult for them to learn ours.'

And it is! Forty-six phonetic characters duplicated in two sets-- one principal set and a second set mostly for foreign words and emphasis--like italics. There is also a third set which uses our 'ABC's to approximate the sounds of Japanese.

Besides these, there are thousands of ideographs, each one representing a word-- object, action etc. At the top of this post, the first two ideographs mean Japan, and the third, language.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system

And the grammar!-- If it wasn't for learning Chinese tones, I'd say for certain that Japanese was the more difficult of the two languages... but back to my conversations.

I gave the first person I met my email address on the back of a small flyer called, 'Professionals'. She seemed especially interested-- saying that she was studying to be an occupational therapist, and adding that her sister is handicapped.

I suggested that life's difficulties can help us to become kinder and more unselfish. I pointed her to the tract, which says that we all want to excel in whatever we do-- be professionals-- and, importantly, that with God's help, we can all be 'love professionals'.

I further explained, 'Kamisawa aidesu [God is Love]' and 'Anatao aiteshiteimasu [He loves you]'. I invited her to repeat a prayer, accepting God's love, forgiveness, His gift of eternal life-- and His power to be a 'love professional'-- which she did.

She then asked for my notebook and pen and wrote a few lines saying how glad she was to have met and had our conversation, and asked me to write her every day-- in Japanese-- so back to my studies! I'll keep you updated on my adventures in Japan and in Japanese-- Mata! [Later!]

Fukuoka 2005 Earthquake Story In Photos

As I promised in an earlier post, these are newly posted photos from our time in Fukuoka, Japan.

You can see the entire story in photos and text here

'Fukuoka hasn't had an earthquake in 100 years-- nor a major one for centuries!'

they'd told me -- surprising for this earthquake-prone country-- however, this changed March 5^th, 2005, when our home in western Fukuoka shimmied and shook for nearly a minute. A major earthquake had struck just off the coast.

We survived with minimal damage, checked our neighbors and called our friends. One, alone with two small kids in a badly shook up top floor apartment, was panicking with the frequent aftershocks (BTW, they continued for weeks), so a few of us went to help.

On the way met a friend gripping newspapers with graphic photos showing nearly every home on her island destroyed. She told us, 'They had to leave without even their shoes.' and asked us to help.

At the shelter with a team of 'Family International' volunteers, they nearly turned us away, saying they'd provided everything, until the island's kindergarten teacher excitedly asked if we could do something for the kids...

You can also read more details on the quake at wikipedia

Tokyo Trip and Record Heat

Here are some photos with detailed captions from my five-day visit to Tokyo-- just click on the photos.

We spent a lot of the time escaping the heat-- yet I chose the hottest day (40.9C/105.6F-- and humid!) -- a record for that location-- for a afternoon sight-seeing adventure with Andrew.

Naomi is staying on for a couple more weeks to do some shows and adding her vocals to some more recordings. She already recorded for an ad company, but we're most excited by a chance she may have to contribute to a CD being created with original Christian music in Japanese.

An update to the above: I've since learned that 40.9C/105.6F was not a local record , but a new national highest temperature ever-- breaking one set in 1933. Two locations share the new record-- one where we were and the other in Gifu prefecture.

I also learned that on the street-- and my feet confirmed this-- it was 43C/ 109.4F. This isn't that high where it's relatively dry, but with high humidity it was cooking!

Visit Endtime News on the Family International site for more on how current events portend the future.

Gondola to an Alpine Meadow and Hike to a Peak

We survived, as you can see, our one day camping trip. Andrew and I along with his friend Lena and her mom, Lelani, drove into the mountains, camped the night and left early (the kids made sure of that) to climb one of the- thankfully not too high-- mountains that form a chain of peaks know as Yatsugatake, with Akadake (2,899 meters above sea level) as the main peak.

Our peak, Kitayokodake, was 2,480 meters (8,136 ft). We had very good weather and the black flies from our campsite had left enough flesh on our legs to make it up and down.

The views, plants, butterflies, and mountain panoramas were beautiful! I'm posting the pictures so that, after everyone forgets how their legs felt at the bottom, we can look at them and plan another trip.

A further note on the black flies mentioned above:

I was used to 'No-see-ums' in North America, but these had a more painful bite and caused swelling and bleeding, even if we didn't scratch.

So I wasn't overly surprised to see this article in the news today:

A plague of black flies has prompted authorities in Spain to issue warnings to cover up and avoid riverside areas in the early morning and dusk. The fly is only two to three millimeters long-- much smaller and harder to spot than most mosquitoes-- but its voracious blood-sucking bite sent more than 2,000 people to hospital last year in just one area of Spain. In Switzerland an attacking swarm reportedly killed a calf.

(taken from a report by Dale Fuchs, The Guardian)

Holiday Hitching Japanese Style

Andrew (10) and I took advantage of our being free from school for about three weeks to visit our friends in Fukuoka (see pics here). We used our (now) tried and proven method of travel- hitchhiking at toll-road service areas with signs.

The 'thumb' method isn't really understood by Japanese motorists, but by positioning ourselves near the restaurants and restrooms with signs explaining what we're doing and where we're going, we get plenty of interest -- especially as 外国人 geijin (outside country people). A few folks picked us up for free English lessons, but most seemed to be motivated by a blend of various degrees of curiosity and kindness.

We had beautiful weather nearly the entire week that we were gone-- though we had to wait out the typhoon that grazed Fukuoka the night before we left to come back. Even a late night wait on the way down meant I could put my feet up and enjoy the full moon while Andrew dozed beside me.

A big THANK YOU to all the folks we met along the way and to the families with whom we stayed and played-- the Fukuoka Firecracker Home and Crystal and family-- also Funatsu-san, Aiko, Pamela, and their families-- Claudia, Megumi, and others . We love and miss you (that's why we visited!) and will look forward to seeing you again.

Earthquake on the Sea of Japan

I know it's a bit late, but I want to assure anyone who wondered about the effects of the recent earthquake on the Sea of Japan-- we're fine. We just got a couple gentle shakes lasting a minute or so.

Of course nearer the epicenter things were more serious-- with hundreds of houses collapsing under the weight of their tile roofs. Here's a link:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/photogalleries/japan-earthquake/index.html

Again, we're fine. Naomi left today to stay a month in Tokyo- where they're still waiting for 'The Big One'- and will be helping record some new songs. Mom (Sharon) will be joining her next week and Andrew and I will be visiting Fukuoka the week after that.