HIS "Once Upon A Christmas"

Our school organized a big Christmas celebration downtown in the Hondori shopping district.  We sold crafts and homemade goodies. There was a storytelling station and a picture with Santa tent.  There was even a big yellow school bus. There was live entertainment by faculty, staff, parents, and students. The weather was cold, but we had lots of fun.

Andy and Rinto just hanging out.


Trying to keep warm while waiting in line for some ice cream.

Yoneda-san's ca. 1985 bus that he had shipped over from L.A., California. It was a haven of warmth!
 

 
 The elementary school choir getting ready to sing.


Here, they were singing "The Lonely Goatherd" song, and Jack was working his eyebrows and eyes like the original Lonely Goatherd. Funny stuff.


Where's Andy?
 
There's Jack!.... but Andy?  Where is that boy?

...In here?  ... I don't see him.


Oh!  I see him. Right under the American flag. Just his eyes and sprig of hair. Now. I wonder if he's singing?

Dating again

Reid here. 
One thing Angela and I do in Japan that we really didn't do very much in Little Rock is go out on "dates." Here, there are restaurants everywhere. Walk just a few short blocks and we're there. The places are small and usually pretty quiet. It's not uncommon for Angela and I to be the only ones there (besides the owner) for at least part of our meal.  Being so close to home makes it easier to leave the kids alone for that time. They'll be well-trained by the time we get back, and we can continue this in Little Rock. I'm definitely grateful for these times. 


The other night, we went out on a more fancy date where we dressed up and ate a nice dinner at a Christmas party for the Hiroshima International Women's Club.

The party was held at an Italian restaurant. The food presentation was very nice. Here's what the desert looked like. (I forgot to get pictures of the other courses.) 

Toward the end of the evening, someone thought it would be nice to sing some Silent Night together. The emcee asked if anyone would come up and sing. Roy Shore (Executive Director of RERF, and more importantly, in our church family here in Hiroshima), Akiko-san (a lady who sings in a local choir), and I went up.  I was glad to be up there with Roy singing about Jesus. And I'm glad I could be there with my lovely wife.

 

Fall leaves at Mitaki-dera

Reid here.

Yesterday, I went to Mitaki Mtn. I had heard that there were a lot of pretty leaves there, but I didn't see very much at all. I was trying to go to Mitaki-dera, but ended up at Mitaki Nature Park. Not surprising as I'm not good with directions, and when those directions are in a foreign language, I'm even worse.  Anyway, my dear wife is NOT bad with directions... even in Japanese. So today after church service, we walked to the correct Mitaki location. Here are some of the pictures.

The deep red maples were beautiful.

A fountain for ceremonial washing.

One of the waterfalls. Mitaki means "3 waterfalls".

Another waterfall

Tea house 

Selfie of Novelynn and Jack.

Interesting tree. Just to the right of the large rock holding up the strangely shaped, near-horizontal trunk is a fairly thin, vertical trunk. I'm pretty sure that's the main source of nutrients ( i.e. a trunk) for this maple.

The trunk of a great big cedar tree. I really like the texture of this.

The Commerce Festival

There was a festival celebrating commerce right down the street from us. It was mostly food (or at least some things that people can eat). Here are some "fish sticks."

   Jack brought Mabel Monkey, and this is some of what we saw, like the "fish of commerce"(??).

And here is a good luck rake that people buy in hopes of raking in the money.

We ended up staying out later than we should've, but maybe the kids will live over it.

First day of school

Monday August 26th was the first day of school.  The school bus stops right outside our door. The kids love not having to wear uniforms.

Apartment Hunting

(Reid here.)  On Tuesday (July 2), Tenma-san (a co-worker) took Angela and I apartment hunting. We saw 3 apartments in the morning, and 3 in the afternoon. A couple or three of them were very large by Japanese standards and sufficient by American standards. 

---Bedrooms---  All but one of them had a tatami room - a traditional Japanese room which can be used as a living area AND sleeping area (because you pick your futon up in the morning). One or two had only two areas that were clearly suitable for bedrooms; and we'd have to be creative for the 3rd bedroom. 

---Bathrooms--- In most cases, the toilets were separate from the bathing area, which is very helpful with 5 people in the apartment. Two or 3 of the apartments had two toilets - a definite luxury by Japanese standards. And one apartment had TWO full** bathrooms - unheard of by all the Japanese I've heard from so far.  (** One of these full bathrooms had the sink separate from the toilet separate from the bathing area - so 3 people can be taking care of business at the same time!)  

---Kitchen--- All had a broiler "for cooking fish." (I doubt we use a broiler to cook much fish.) Ovens, on the other hand, are not the norm. (How do they cook a turkey for Thanksgiving?!?)  Two apartments had ovens.  And these same two apartments were the only ones to have a dish washer - of the electric sort.  Both the ovens and dishwashers are small. 

---Walls---  (I know: "Walls?!? "  but it matters.)  One thing that Novelynn has been looking forward to is decorating her room. That largely means she wants to  do something to the walls that appeals to her. As parents, we thought this was a reasonable request. But as renters, I'm afraid it may not be in the cards. You see, on at least 5 of the 6 apartments we saw, there was wall paper. In fact, it wasn't just wall paper, it was ceiling paper, too. We asked about hanging pictures, and the answer was a (very kind and round-about) "No."  Apparently, if the wall paper is messed up, then the walls must be renovated when we leave. They indicated that this might be quite expensive to do.  So I'm not sure what we'll do about this, especially for our oldest child.   If anyone has some wall decorating ideas that do not leave marks on the wall, we're listening!

---Parking--- Though we don't have a car, we do anticipate that everyone will have a bicycle. So we also had to think about parking for 5 bikes (though admittedly we didn't have to think about it too hard). But when space is tight, parking 5 bikes can be a challenge. 

We had two different real estate agents show us apartments. The first one was a man; he showed us three large, mostly practical apartments. The second was a lady; she showed us three very new- and clean-feeling apartments. The sets of three apartments left Angela and I feeling differently. After some discussion, we decided to go back and look at one that had an oven and dishwasher, and was reasonably large. It had a view of the surrounding hills out of the living room, it was located near a school bus stop, near work, near the train station, and near the heart of Hiroshima. We both had to go into the second viewing with careful eyes and an open mind.  After looking hard at it, and asking a lot more questions, we decided that it would be the place we could call "home." 

So our new apartment will be in Middle ward (Naka-ku), in the Teppocho neighborhood.  We found out that "Teppocho" means "Gun Town." That was an area of Hiroshima where they used to make guns… obviously before they implemented very strict gun laws in Japan. So I guess we'll have to wait a while longer before we get our concealed carry license, but at least we bagged a good apartment!

Sayonara, Little Rock!

(Written June 28 by Reid.) 

We are now really-and-truly on our way to Hiroshima. All five of us are sitting comfortably inside this large metal tube winging over the Pacific Ocean at about 550 mph (900 kph).  It's pretty amazing to think that this sort of thing is even possible - the sitting part, that is.  This past week has been a frenzy of final preparations. And though we all will miss our family and friends States-side, Angela and I have been looking forward to "just getting over there" so that we can slow down and back into some semblance of a routine.  

As for what the routine will be like, I can only guess. Certain things will be similar, for sure: a sit-down supper together most evenings, quiet summer mornings as I get ready for work and the rest of the family sleeps, going to worship on Sundays, goofing around on Saturdays, etc. But one thing will be completely different - transportation. I'll likely be walking or biking to work; we'll walk to the grocery store; the kids will ride a bus to school (an American experience, too, but one that we've not got to do… yet!); and we'll ride buses for longer-distance in-town trips, and trains to places outside of Hiroshima.   

Definitely NOT Little Rock. Sure, we'll miss the freedom that cars bring, but we'll get to be active travelers (walkers/bicyclists) and mass-transit passengers. 

The idea of being an active traveler and/or a mass-transit passenger appeals to me. I anticipate this will give us (or at least me) more time to process things and people as we move about our days. Being in a foreign environment will likely heighten both the need for and frequency of this processing our world. I hope that we learn how to participate in our routine in a mindful way, not in a not-thinking-about-it kind of way. God's made a lot of neat stuff out there, and put a lot of care into each and every person we'll walk, ride, pass by. I hope we learn how to take that in and appreciate it. So sayonara to our old routine in Little Rock (as familiar, comfortable and convenient as it was)!