Skills to pay the bills

On Thursdayday night around 11 O'clock I was pealing a pear(梨, the juicy and delicious kind) in the kitchen to eat right before going to bed. Suddenly I saw a shadow of something flying across the kitchen. Thinking that it's just a fly or something I ignored it and kept on working on my pear. After a while the flying thing flew right by my head and frightened me a bit. Curiously I looked up and there was a black thing that looked like a big moth. It was hard to tell adzactly what it was because it kept on flying. I kept trying to figure out what it was as it started to fly in the living room and along the hall way. I opened a window and some doors to try and get it to fly out, but it just didn't go out. It wouldn't stop flying either, so I got a broom and gently hit it. It went crashing down behind our wood stove, so I swept it out of there to see what it was.

It was a baby bat! I've never seen a bat flying in someone's kitchen before, so I was quite surprised. I quickly called my sisters(because my brother's in Canada) to see what I found.

We poked at its very soft body and tried getting it to open and close it's wings. We were able to see its tiny feet Which you can see on the left side of its body. It was a very fascinating fellow.

We managed to get it on the broom and take it outside to let it go. It flew away as if nothing was wrong. The funny thing about all this is that we just saw "Batman begins" a couple days ago.

We did the handstand(Kris's idea) to make it interesting.

Are we crazy or what?

We went camping in Owani(大鰐)with the Kimura family that comes to church. I think it was my first time going there unless my parents took me there a long time ago. It was the first time ever for the Kimura family. The Kimura family has 2 kids Kaede and Nire. 4 years old and 2 years old. We made a fire together and taught them stuff about camping.

We were able to make a flamey fire. We waited till it died down until there was nice coals to roast hotdogs. For some reason, I think hotdogs taste better when you roast them yourself. We also had carrot sticks and cucumber sticks just to be healthy.


With an idea from Naomi, we made art out of the fireworks. We set the camera to take a picture slowly and we waved the fireworks in the air writing letters. It came out good. We didn't realize that the letters were in the wrong order until after we took the picture, though.

Junji, Nire, Keiko,Kaede,Mom,Dad,Mei-Hau,Naomi

It was a nice time sitting around the fire talking and seeing the kids experience their first camp fire. The camp ground was a good place to run around and play, so Naomi and I played with the kids for a while. The next day, we drove up the Owani ski mountain. At the top we were able to see a clear view of part of the Tsugaru Peninsula. I think we saw as far as Kanagi. It was cool seeing the big wide plains of rice fields and far away buildings we reckonized. I've never gone skiing at Owani before, because I thought it was nothing good compared to Ajigasawa, but after seeing it this time I think I might want to try going in the winter sometime to see how it is. There was several lifts and a Gondola, so it mustn't have been as bad as I thought it was. Over all it was a nice camping trip getting away from our house for a night.

"Buddy" is the name of our dog. When my older sister found a stuffed Pikachu in the church nursery that had already been torn a bit, she decided to hand it over to Buddy to let him deal with it. She walked away and we came back a few minutes later. We saw Buddy, sitting in the middle of his mess and Pikachu lying face down, defeated.

It's been a month since I lasted posted. A lot of things have happened since then. One of the cool things I did was going to the Aomori nebuta festival. Japanese people that come to church found some traditional clothes(ハネト）for us to wear, so my family, the short-term workers and our Japanese friends got dressed and went to down town Aomori city.

top:Bethany,Teddy,Tim,Mom
below:Hoshi,Rie,Naomi,me

It was kind that our Japanese friends could get their hands on these traditional clothes so that we could borrow them. Now we look like some kind a warriors or something.

What we do is 跳ねる if I say it in Japanese. It means; to hop or jump, but it's not just randomly jumping. There's a proper way you're supposed to do it.
While there is a bunch of big floats in shapes of scary looking warriors and stuff we get in front of one of them and shout ヤーレ　ヤーレ　ヤーレヤー（yare yare yareya) while we do the hopping/jumping dance thing. You get sweaty and hot very quickly and your throat begins to hurt with all the shouting you do, but it's really quite fun. The picture above is us in front of a float dancing in a circle, because we got tired of the other dance. We did the same thing, but just in a circle.
The good thing about wearing the clothes and dancing on the road is that you have fun and that you get a lot of exercise, but on the other hand you only get to see one float which you're dancing in front of. Not like the people on the side of the road that get to see all the many cool and interesting floats as they move by.

At Goshogawara they also have a nebuta festival every year and the floats they use are giganticly tall. I think they make them as high as 20meters.

One thing I really like about Nebuta festivals are the drums. I really like the sound of the taiko(太鼓) drums. It sounds really great when several people are in a line hitting big drums together with long sticks, making impressive loud beats that you can feel with your heart. It's great!!!