What's this all about...?

"Without a purpose, life is a motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason. Without a purpose life is trivial, petty and pointless. Without God, life has no purpose, and without a purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning life has no significance or hope. The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without a purpose."

I believe in God and Christ's redemption not because I felt my life needed purpose or it would simply be nice to have purpose. I believe because God has shown Himself to us, and also shown us there IS a purpose for life; because the truth has been revealed.

I believe NOT because I felt my non-believing life wasn't good enough. I believe because now that I do have purpose in life, I realized how insufficient my previous life was; how unbearable it is to live without God; how ignorant I was; how frustrating it was to be separated from Him.

People say the reality of death and absence of heaven encourages them to live life as full as one can. I myself believe in a heaven not because I fear death, or fear that I won't have enough time to live well; but I believe because Christ died in order to give us life and life to the full. Fuller and better than what we can do by ourselves. And there's something so much better to look forward to in the future, not matter how depressing, how unjust, how miserable, how cold this life gets. There is, always, hope.

Japanese love affair

Yesterday I went to a beautiful Japanese wedding at this shrine somewhere in Iwaki.

Got up at 7:45am, Hitomi and her lovely grandmother came at 8:00 am to dress 4 of us girls in our new kimonos ('Key-moh-noh'). Each took about 30-40 minutes to put our kimonos on - which was relatively rushed! Kimono-dressing is a long process -

• first you have to wear this undergarment, getting the layering right, tying the strings in the right places, getting the collar right;
• and then wearing this cardboard-like thing at the front of your stomach;
• and then putting the actual kimono on, folding up the middle excess garment bits nicely, getting the length right, again tying the strings to keep the excess garment up;
• and then the obi - a waist-wrap that you wrap around your waist 2 or 3 times and then tying a nice bow or something at the back of your waist;
• and then maybe another decorative string which also holds the obi up
• and then socks and shoes, which...lets just say take some time to get used to.

it was a brilliant day, weather wise, a little windy, not too hot, not too cold. Just perfect.

The shrine was also beautiful, sitting on top of a flight of stone steps.

And the ceremony was really special, traditional, lots of weird fan-waving and blessing-esque gestures, traditional drums and flute, reading vows, and of course, this being Japan, sake-drinking. There was also a great Taiko (big japanese drums) display at the end to celebrate the event, and after that, the newlyweds get a hammer, and together smash a barrel of sake open. Very Japanese - much more exciting than cutting a cake together like the boring west hehe. And so we were all offered sake in a little wooden box, at 11am, on a very empty stomach...

which made walking down those stone steps in funny kimono-flip-flops that little bit harder..~

more signs of deterioration

last monday, I said 'sweared'.

on tuesday I wasn't sure whether the past participle if swim was swum.

...

....if only my japanese were also improving at this speed - i.e. the speed of my deterioration of engrish...

The sound of nostalgia

Last saturday I was invited to the Onahama & Izumi junior and senior high schools' concert, and had little idea that I was in for a big trip back memory lane.

First of all, the standard of music was amazing. Not perfect, but nearly. But it did break a stereotype I had that japanese kids do nothing but study. Its actually far from that. They are amazingly all rounded - most kids stay after school almost every day for sports or music or some kinda extra-curricular activities. Heck they even go to school on most weekends and holidays for that stuff.

Back to the concert - there were about 8 school brass bands that performed, playing all sorts of songs from pirates of the carribbean to 80s japanese pop.

But the best part was, I thought, watching the percussion department do their stuff, while all my secondary school orchestra/wind band/swing band memories flooded back, and remembering how much fun, how much drama it was; all the good and bad times; all the competitions and performances; all the banter...

ahh to be a high schooler again. I won't say I'm living in regret, but I do with I had made use of all those opportunities laid out in front of me, and done more, tried more, seen more. But seeing these kids doing all this was quite heart-warming. It was probably a good thing James was sitting next to me....the japanese probably wouldn't appreciate a crazy freckly gaijin joining the band half way through their ensemble...

On sushi, old salary-men, and sore thumbs.

So a couple weeks ago 3 of the English teachers that I work with took Yee Chiang (my JET colleague) and I to this top notch sushi restaurant/bar for dinner (called 鮨仙 - 'Sushi-sen') for an amazing dinner. I forgot the name of what we ordered, but it was basically a 10-piece selection of all the 'deluxe' sushis in the shop. We sat at the bar, ate sushi, drank sake, were merry, chatted to the sushi master...until Yeech n I started to notice the type of people that went to these places..

...and that's when I realised how we, 3 junior high school teachers, a white girl and a singaporean dude, stuck out. Like a sore thumb.

At the beginning of the night, there were a couple of solitary salary-men, who drank like 4 beers in 20 minutes and ate quietly by themselves.

And then as the night progressed, the restaurant got a little livelier, with more salary-men coming in parties of twos and threes, some eating in the tatami-rooms behind closed doors discussing billion-yen business, some merrily indulging in their sushis and sakes at the bar next to us...

And then couples of rather old men and relatively young ladies joining us at the bar, the girl always perfectly made up, sparkling new jewelry, leaning towards her aged companion; the old man composed, looking like he has no care in the world, ordering the most impressive of sushis and most grand of dishes.

But I don't think that wasn't what made me feel just the little bit uncomfortable. Maybe it was the sake.

Matsuri-tastic!!

('Matsuri' means festival)

I went to a total of 3 festivals during this long weekend, one per day, and they were all weirdly and wonderfully different from each other! Lovin' it.

Festival No. 1 - The Johzenji Street Jazz Festival in Sendai

Over 700 acts performing on 40-odd stages, big and small, dotted around the whole of the city centre, and not just jazz, but rock, indie, R&B, acoustic, spanish guitar, blues, alternative, gospel, country, folk...it was more like a live music festival. And of course, being a Japanese festival, it was all very well organised, everything was very orderly, lots of volunteers, free maps and guides, free shuttle buses, and best of all, the whole thing was free!










And of course, being a Japanese festival, it had to have the usual festival food - Okonomiyaki (photo), tako-yaki, yaki-soba, yaki-tori, yaki-niku...and beer.












Festival No. 2 - The Full Moon Festival 満月祭り @ Iritono 入遠野

























More festival food, lanterns dotted along the way into this remote town in the hills (the name of the town literally means 'Entering the far fields'..haha)

There was koto playing (photo), as well as the japanese flute, craft stalls, and 20 minutes of bucketing-down rain as if someone held Niagra falls above this hill town for about half an hour. Fun nonetheless. At least it cleared the sky to make the moon shine brightly ever after.


Festival No. 3 - The Horseback Archery @ Iino Hachimangu

























This was at a shrine near the city centre, and a couple of men put on the whole set of traditional clothing, which was pretty cool to see since it's probably hundreds of years old. At one point I was also slightly awestruck at how hundreds or thousands of years ago people have been doing this, and here we are, in the 21st century, continuing this little historic tradition. On the car on the way back, someone aptly said how Japan is a country of contradictions - in a way its so far forward compared to the rest of the world, yet on the other its modern day culture is rich with its past, and then there are many backward things that just wouldn't be found in any 3rd world country.

The most suitable analogy for Japan is probably their toilets. At one end its literally nothing but a whole in the ground, whilst on the other there are toilets that talk to you and wash your behind at a push of a button, heck it might even make morning coffee and read you your emails.

This place offers so much to fascinate over. I feel it's going to take quite a while to bore me. Might as well - it's not like I'm going to get a job given the current global economic circumstances!

あかべこ

is it a dog? is it a pig? is it a fox?

no...its a red cow.

and its dangling from my phone.

"Tanaka-san teached Japanese at university...."

........wtf....!?!??

that was me. THAT WAS ME. I said that without even realising my mistake until someone pointed it out to me. OMG. They say when you're in Japan, there's a correlation between the rate of improvement of your japanese proficiency and the rate of deterioration of your standard of English....SO ITS TRUE?!??!?

Somebody save me nowwwwwwww!!!!!!!

Summer conversations

"Atsui-ne!!!!"

Pronounced: Ahht-sue-e nehhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's really all you hear all day, especially inside a non-air-conditioned school staff room, with the sun beating down outside on the dusty school grounds, or the clouds trapping the heat and moisture and air.

Plus its super humid.

So sometimes they say 'Mushi atsui ne!!!!!!', with a plastic hand fan on one hand, (a 'Winnie the Pooh' fan in MISTER Watanabe's case...), newspapers on the other.

phone pics

couple more random photos from Aizu..

These are my 'siblings' -- Utako and Yuma



















<=== The trees have eyes.....o_O"""