IrishOboe

As usual we all went out to dinner afterwards, but we stayed out too late! Yuko dropped me and Leslie off at my place, which was very nice because she doesn’t live that close to us. Leslie and I had wanted to talk and to do some knitting but it was quite late so we set up for bed and only talked a little. I wish I were closer to her because we have a lot to talk about.

Sunday, Oct. 24^th I only had a little time in the morning before I had to kick Leslie out and Yuko came to pick me up. I was not at all eager to go with her to the BBQ she wanted me to go to, but it was the first beautiful sunny, clear day in a long time so that helped my attitude a little. Still, I just like to stay at home . . .

How wrong I was! It turns out it was an international BBQ with people from all over the world who live in Japan. There were only about five native English speakers, too! It was mostly people from South American countries and China (plus a good deal of Japanese who helped to bring the event together). We went to a lake in the mountains (I wrote the name down somewhere) and we were assigned to little BBQ fires in groups. We (Yuko and I) were with a group of Spanish and Portuguese speaking people, which worked out okay since one of them spoke pretty good English. My Japanese and Spanish were equally useless. I can follow a conversation well enough to stay engaged but I cannot hold up my end of one. Worse still the Japanese I know is not the get-to-know-you type. I didn’t understand “What country are you from?” Stupid Japanese books that teach all the subtleties of counting before getting to the interesting stuff! It sure has been hard to learn the way I expected too because I’m speaking English all day! So this was another kick in the pants . . .

We had some traditional displays of music, singing and dancing. It was a lot of fun! Watching a bunch of Japanese people do the Macarena was also very interesting . . .

So, I got home around 3pm, but it had been a beautiful, relaxing day with good food, too! A few people in our group played guitar and they played for me and I played whistle for them. I also had a chance to eat bee larva. It’s a bit crunchy, but surprisingly tasty. I can’t believe I almost forgot to write about that experience. They pulled it right out of the hive, which had been on the grill. So maybe my early habit of eating ants finally came to some use after all . . .

Monday, Oct. 24th was a fine day at work and ICC (English club) was fine, too. Yuko was in Tokyo so I went to Bible study alone (I just barely got the train because ICC club leaves me ½ hour to get home and get to the train). I got dinner in Kofu while waiting for Bonny to pick us up. Bible study was refreshing and stimulating as usual. I wouldn’t miss it for the world now. I’m so blessed to have a group that I can go to. I’ve never been part of a group like that before. It’s wonderful even though it makes Mondays a bit tough. I go right from school to ICC club to Bible study to bed, but I feel great afterwards!

Tuesday, Oct. 25^th-28^th were a normal week, mostly. On Tuesday I went shopping using my new way to the Ogino that isn’t as scary a bike ride as the way past the station (and also found a nicer, if not faster, way to get to the station). Just as I was starting dinner Mark and Megan invited me out and since I usually can’t go because I’m in the middle of dinner I decided now was the time. We had a nice time at a place where you grill the meat yourself. It was tasty.

Wednesday I had a nice phone chat with Mom and Dad and Heather. Jonathan’s speech is much more fluent and clear. It’s amazing how he’s changing!

Thursday I got the wonderful news that I’m to be an Aunt again! I also went to the store again to buy stuff for the ICC club Halloween party on Monday. I suggested making cookies (Christmas cookies, but with Halloween decorations), which is more complicated that one would think since baking supplies are not common around here. People cook, but they don’t bake, even though they love the awful baked goods they sell here. They have all kinds of white bread pastries and stuff, but it’s not to my taste and is often filled with cream and bad chocolate . . .

Friday I selfishly took the night to relax in my apartment. I tried to make curry and failed almost spectacularly. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it sounds more fun. Since I can’t read the instructions on the curry cube box I just trusted my instincts, though I should have listened to my brain. As I let the curry simmer I covered it. Thus all the water that evaporated when right back in the pot and turned the potatoes and pumpkin into mush and didn’t reduce the curry at all. Once I figured out my mistake (duh!) it simmered away nicely but by that point it was a little too late. It’s edible, but I’ll be happy when the leftovers are done.

Saturday I got a good morning of work done before Yuko picked me up to go to shopping. I don’t particularly like shopping, especially now that my time is precious. (Hm, do I recall thinking I’d have more time once I was out of school and working only eight hours a day?) We went to a very, very, scary store first. It was like a place on I-Drive. It was big and tacky (the whole place looked like a candy-land Taj Mahal on the outside) and inside was full of video arcades and stores that sell junk. Apparently it’s a cheap store that sells good stuff, but the whole thing was very scary to me. Talk about too much stimulation! The purpose of the shopping trip was to look at digital cameras for Yuko and me, and this place turned out to be a bust on that front, but Yuko wanted a Halloween costume for a party that night and wanted my help for some unknown reason. The costumes were revolting. I would have appreciated a few witches and vampire costumes. Nearly all the costumes there were for women to show off skin in any number of ways. There was even a strip-tease school uniform where the wearer is to janken (rock, paper, scissors – Japanese kids janken for everything, and I mean everything) with a man and if the man wins he gets to take off a part of her costume. For all their decency in office wear, the Japanese seem to have little respect for women (even the women), but I suppose that’s a huge generalization and rash statement that I don’t have time to defend right now. I might also add that this place sold bra straps at the checkout counter. Gotta love Japan.

So, we found a decent costume for Yuko and in the meantime she managed to get me to try on a traditional patterned Japanese dress that looked rather elegant. However, rather than looking elegant in it I felt like an elephant because the Japanese do not have hips! I might have more than some, but it was a little disturbing that I didn’t fit in the size LL dresses. Yuko fit beautifully, though, and she’s quite tall. It is mostly a shape thing, though. The LL dresses were huge around my middle while they fit just right on her. I wonder why it is that many Japanese don’t really have hips (even if they’re not skinny). Anyway . . . After that store we went to a huge Ogino. I like my mid-size Ogino that is just a grocery store better than the huge, multi-storied department store Oginos. However, I found a camera that I fell in love with. Unfortunately, it was an old model and the only one left was on display. That meant I had to make my decision then. I did manage to break away for a bit and look at other things as I thought. We found PJ’s at half price and I got some nice, warm ones for the winter months. I decided to go for the camera since it wouldn’t be easy to come back (I don’t have a car) and I couldn’t really ever know what I was getting into because I don’t know enough Japanese. It’s amazing what I could figure out, though. If I can’t hold a good conversation at least I can find my way around daily life! I haven’t played with it too much yet (I ordered an English manual but it won’t come for a week. Why do all American electronics come with instructions in many languages and a country as interested in English as Japan doesn’t have any other languages in their manuals???), but what I’ve seen, I love! Quickly, the feature that made me fall in love was the rotatable head that stores the lens safely away, makes it impossible to turn the camera on by accident (rotating the head turns it on), and allows you to rotate it all the way back so you can see yourself taking a picture of yourself! I also found a way to display everything in English, so those two points and the 3x optical zoom lead me to take the plunge. Since then I’ve discovered that the movie feature does have sound (a point I forgot to check when I was there), and you can plug it right into your TV to watch the movies or look at pictures! I tried it and it works! It’s a 5M (5 megapixels?) but can take as low as 1M (and lower, I think), and I was sad to find the delay in response even worse than my old camera (which was one of my complaints), until I found that you could push the button half way to charge the battery and then it took the picture right away when you pushed down all the way. I can also take a quick succession of shots and I think there are a ton of other modes I don’t know how to use yet. There’s a good battery indicator (and it supposedly has three hours on each charge). Okay, so that wasn’t in brief and now I have no excuse not to send cool pictures. Well, first I have to get the English manual and pray the software installs on my computer . . .

Church was lovely as usual and a good excuse not to go to any Halloween party. I appreciate the invites and appreciate that they are a lot of fun, but I also appreciate that I don’t care for Halloween parties. I got back from church just in time to catch the 10:45 train home so I decided I’d take it rather than visit some parties and take the 12:57. It was very nice to be in bed by 11:30.

Sunday (Oct. 30) I had a lovely day of refreshment and contemplation. I got to air my futon a little (it was still a bit cloudy, but there was some sun), went for a good run (my knee is getting better!), did some laundry, read more of The Four Loves (C.S. Lewis), started in Matthew with a mind for getting to know which what is where in the Bible and being able to reference things more quickly. For those of you who care, why was Jesus baptized by John? “Let it be so for now.” Okay, but John was baptizing repentance. Why did Jesus need that? Was it just a public display of his commitment to righteousness and a good time for God to proclaim His son? I think I missed this point in my theological studies sometime . . .

When dusk fell my Sabbath was over and I did errands and am trying to prepare for tomorrow. I’m too worried that I’ll forget something and we won’t be able to make the cookies! I did manage to make a pretty good hot cider tonight. Mm, I’m excited to share that with the kids even though the spices were expensive.