Skills to pay the bills

Cherry Blossoms of Hirosaki

2008-05-14T22:23:00.003+09:00

These are some pics taken at Hirosaki Park one morning around 8:00 AM.

The cherry blossoms on both sides of Hirosaki Castle's mote.
I'm sure a million pictures are taken from this spot every year by tourists and photographers.

I thought this tree was interesting looking.
Us
We left Itayanagi around 7:30 in the morning and bought breakfast on the way to Hirosaki. At the castle park, we found a nice spot around cherry blossoms and ate crackers with cheese and fruit. We were the only people having a picnic early in the morning at the park, so some people walking by might have thought that we were strange, but we didn't mind. We had a nice time. After eating, we took a walk through the park.
Since we were so early in the morning, there were hardly any people. If we came a little later in the day or at night, this place would have been packed with people. Coming early made our walk easier.
The hidden castle that actually only is a watchtower.
Naomi and I doing the undefined back-peace-sign(I don't know what it means. Maybe nothing. Any ideas?) in front of Hirosaki Castle(弘前城）.
Near the end of our walk we stooped by some swings in the park. My Mom took this pictures of me jumping of the swing. This day was the only time my family went to Hirosaki's Cherry Blossom Festival this year. The flowers were in full bloom and there was only a few people so it was very enjoyable.

Cherry Blossoms of Itayanagi

2008-05-12T22:20:00.001+09:00

On this post I put some pictures of cherry blossoms I saw in Itayanagi this year.

The cherry blossoms ready to burst into blooming.
One day, My Mom and Dad decided that all of us should go to the park in town for lunch. We all sat under a tree and had lunch. After eating we took a picture sitting on a low branch.

I used my terrific tree climbing skills and climbed a tree.

Some people from church on a Sunday afternoon
It's a great park with a Basketball court. I often come here to play.

This picture is my favorite one.
Mt. Iwaki with the cherry blossoms and a ray of sunlight. Tsugaru Church（つがる福音キリスト教会） building with the cherry blossoms.

This is a picture of the flower pedals that fell on the ground. It kind of looks like snow. The cherry blossoms are pretty, but they don't last for long.

Snowboarding in Hakkoda

2008-05-03T18:35:00.002+09:00

On March 22nd, a Saturday, John Orme(from N. Ireland), Beat(Short-term worker from Switerland), Naomi(my sister) and I went Snowboarding in Hakkoda. I really like going to Hakkoda because you get to snowboard in nature, around trees.It was a really hot day. We could have literally snowboarded in our t-shirts.

The beautiful mountain at the top of the rope way.

Beat, John and Naomi at the top of the mountain with Mt. Iwaki on the left.
Chilling at the top me
John ripping the slopes
Naomi making her way down.

I couldn't get Beat in action, he was to fast.

To get a feel of snowboarding in Hakkoda check out this video.
Aaron on the slopes winding my way down Mount Hakkoda.
John put this on youtube.

Mt. Iwaki looked AWESOME from Mt. Hakkoda.

It looked AWESOMER later on in the day.

'Twas nice being on Mt. Hakkoda again.

Michael Mosnster!!

2008-04-25T21:00:00.001+09:00

One night Michael Eastwood, who is from Maryland teaching English as a JET in a small village called Morita, appeared having 10 hands!! That's even more than an octopus!!

Easter

2008-04-24T22:45:00.000+09:00

It seems to be that lately I'm posting about things that happened a month ago.　It's either I don't have time or I'm not making time. I think it's mostly that I'm not making time. Anyway I made time to write about Easter this time. These are the activities and my observations of this years Easter.
On Sunday the 16th of March, we decorated the church with palm branches. Remembering Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey while people shouted "Hosanna" and swinging palm branches in the air. There was palm branches above the church entryway, in front of every window in the sanctuary and on the cross. It was pretty cool. Naomi and I were asked to decorate the front entrance of the church to make it look like we're having a celebration, so we got some streamers and balloons and did some decorating. It came out pretty good. We left the decorations up for a week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. It was nice. People walking by on the street must have wondered what the church was doing.

The pictures above are from the last supper meal we had in Kanagi Church on March 22nd. Since the Messers were still in Sapporo refreshing their Japanese, my Dad, Mom, Naomi and I went up to Kanagi and cooked a meal. We ate food the Israelites most likely ate while they were slaves in Egypt. Lamb meat, unleavened bread(flat yeast less bread), matsoball soup and some vegetables. The same food the Israelites ate for the Passover celebration. The same food Jesus ate with his 12 disciples the night before he was crucified. We also had grated apples with walnuts to show the mud the Israelites worked in to make bricks for the Egyptians while they were slaves. We had wassabi, parsley and eggs, too. Easter is basically the only time I get to eat lamb meat, so I quite like it.

Above are the kids I ate the last supper meal with on Good Friday, the 21st in Itayangi.

Above is a picture of people talking around tables right after the last supper meal in Itayangi. As for the program; we read the Bible, sang some songs, had an explanation given about all the food, ate the food and my Dad gave a message about the meaning of Easter and the passover. At the end we saw a short part of the "Jesus for Children" movie. The part from where Jesus was put on the cross to where he rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples. There was a lot of non-christians at the meal so I think it helped them understand at least a little bit about what Jesus came to do for us and the power He has. It was a nice meal and there were good conversations.

As a church we also had a kids Easter event. The cookies above are one of the things we gave to the kids that came. At this kids event I played Hosanna on the piano. It was my first time playing the piano in front of at least 40 people so it was exciting. I made a couple mistakes, but I think I was alright. At least the kids sang so that was good.

At the kids Easter event everyone got to color and decorate an egg.

After Sunday school on Easter Sunday the church kids decorated eggs.

Everyone liked placing their eggs in the dyed water.

These are two of the eggs that we drew on this Easter.

The one on the left is the one Naomi drew.

The one on the right is the one I did. It's simple, but I like it.

You can't spend Easter without the Easter egg hunt.

You can see that the kids are really excited to find those eggs.

Even I got to go search. It was fun. I got three.

The candy stuffed eggs that the kids love.

Over all it was a great Easter remembering that Jesus came to die in our place on the cross to pay for our penalty of our sin and giving us hope by resurrecting from the dead. It's great to know that we Christians serve a loving powerful Saviour.

Satoru ＆Nobuko's Wedding

2008-04-13T21:05:00.000+09:00

On March 8th, we had a wedding reception at church. They already had the wedding ceremony two weeks ago somewhere in Tokyo area, so we just had the reception. It was nice.

from left:Mom(the cake maker), Nobuko(bride), Satoru(groom) and Dad(the pastor)

Since Nobuko likes purple, the theme color of the wedding was purple. As a result my Mom made a purple wedding cake. It was actually Nobuko and Satoru that beat the cake and added food coloring to the icing, but Mom was the one that decorated it with Nobuko's sister. It was a chocolate cake. I've been to many weddings, but having a chocolate wedding cake was my first time. It tasted good.

This is a group photo of the groom and bride with the Tsugaru church members(everyone except Mary) that attended.

The main reason of this post was to talk about the food that was served at the wedding.
Everyone that came was served a box with two layers of Japanese food. I emphasize "Japanese" because, it was filled with food considered to be luxurious in Japan. Below is a picture of one of the layers.

There was sashimi(raw fish), raw squid, raw shrimp, deep fried ship, crab, sushi, deep fried fish and fried salmon. Thankfully there was some food that was actually cooked like chicken and salmon that I like eating, instead of raw seafood. There was also cakes and pumpkin pie on the table so I didn't need to worry about starving.

I noticed that by eating luxurious Japanese food, you can learn a lot about sea creatures. Such as shrimp, squid, fish and crabs. I really found the crab interesting. They served a little amount of crab meat still attacked to its club. You can sort of see it in the top left corner two pictures above. It was funny, I could open and close the scissor part of the club, by pulling on the white part sticking out. Very amusing!! After the wedding when I was cleaning up, I managed to collect 4 crab clubs and keep them. I think there pretty cool.

Asamushi Aquarium（浅虫水族館）

2008-04-13T10:40:00.000+09:00

I forget when it was but about a month ago, a bunch of kids and parents from my Mom's child rearing class and a bunch of kids from the church English class had an outing on a Saturday and went to Asamushi Aquarium(浅虫水族館).I had a very low expectation of the place, I didn't think it would be very interesting, but it actually was a very nice aquarium and very interesting.

Naomi and Tomomi in front of the Aquarium

Bethany and kids standing in a tunnel looking at creatures swimming all around them
Shark!! He was mean looking.

Sting ray, there was a very big one swimming all over the tank

Seahorse, I'd never seen a real Seahorse before
the coolest fish!

Nimo and his friends

There also was a Dolphin Show. It was pretty amusing. The dolphins did flips, jumped through hoops, kicked a ball hanging maybe about 5 meters above the water and many other things. In the picture above, a dolphin is catching a frisbee.

There was a section in the Aquarium where we could touch such things as clams, starfish, crabs and things like that. It was very interesting. above is Naomi and Tomomi holding strange creatures.

Over all it was a very nice place. It reminded me again how creative God is creating so many different kinds living things. My favorite was probably the Octopus. If I had a chance I would definitely go back.

Japanese Snowmen and American Snowmen

2008-04-09T22:45:00.000+09:00

On the last day of February(February 28th) of this winter me, my sister and 8 kids from Young Life made two snowmen. It happened to be that one turned out to be an American and the other Japanese. I don't know how this started but American snowmen always have 3 parts, but Japanese snowmen always only have 2 parts. Strange!? Maybe I shouldn't say American. I just looked at a picture of a snowman which New Zealanders made and there also was 3 parts. Maybe it's just the Japanese snowmen that only have have 2 parts.

Anyway, one of the activities for the Young Life sleep over we had was to make a snowman. Since we had a lot of people, we made two. That night the weather temperature wasn't too cold for the snow to be powder or ice and the temperature wasn't to warm for the snow to be really wet. It was just the right temperature to roll a small snowball and allow it to get bigger as snow stuck to it. The snow stuck very well. As a result we kept rolling and rolling until the ball got too big and heavy that we couldn't move it any more. It was ok for the first one since it just stayed on the ground, but we had a problem with lifting the second one on top of the first one. Even if two other boys and I tried, we still couldn't lift it high enough. So, we managed to think smart and make a ramp with 3 pieces of 120cm long wood. We laid them side by side 3 ends on the ground and the other 3 ends at the top the bottom snowball. Our plan worked! Instead of lifting the snowball, we rolled it on to the first one with the ramp. We were all happy that it worked. The third one was quite heavy too, but it was a little smaller so three of us lifted it to the top. To look at other pictures of us making the snowman and the other things we did at the sleep over check out Itayanagi Church's Young Life blog(it's in Japanese). The sticks we used for the snowmen is the same sticks we used for the ramp. This is how our American snowman looked a couple days after we made him.

Looking happy with a nice big smile.

This is how our snowman looked several days later.
His arms had broken off and fallen to the ground, he lost his face and he also got a lot slimmer. I guess spring has to come sometime.

Pit Digging in the Snow

2008-04-05T17:20:00.000+09:00

Ever since coming back from the summer of New Zealand and Australia I haven't posted anything, but a lot has happened. Especially things to do with snow. I've dug holes in the snow, I've built snowmen with church kids, and I've gone snowboarding on Mt. Hakkoda. On this post I will talk about digging holes in the snow.

On the beginning of March, I decided to dig a deep square pit at the end of the church parking lot where we get our snow pushed aside. Since all of the snow that snows down on our parking lot gets pushed there, there ends up being a big pile of snow. It took 3 days for me to dig the hole that you see in the picture above. I managed to dig about 2 meters before I hit the parking lot cement. It was a lot of work lifting the snow up above over my head with a shovel. It sure helped me build my arm muscles. Since it was so deep I made a couple foot holes at different heights in one corner of the square where I could place my feet in and climb out. The finished hole turned out pretty cool.

I've actually dug a pit like this two years ago before I even started this blog. I probably would have done this last year too, but there wasn't enough snow so I couldn't. Instead I built a small igloo with the church boys. Here is a picture of the igloo. My friend, John wrote about the pit I dug two years ago on his blog. If you want to read about it check out flat3D.

I was even able to lie down in it with my legs stretched.
Not that I would want to spend a night in there, though.

When I showed the square pit to some kids from church on a Sunday, they wanted to contribute to my project in some way, so I suggested them to dig two more holes and connect them by digging a tunnel between them. So together with about 5 people we took turns digging a triangle hole and a circular hole. We didn't quite finish the circular hole before everyone had to go home, but we managed to finish the triangle hole and connect the square one with it by digging a tunnel between them. Everyone was willing to dig and lift snow so that helped us make progress. I thought making different shaped holes would be interesting.

This was where we dug. The first square pit that I dug is on the left and the triangle one is on the right next to my black gloves. You can't see the circular one in this picture, but it is where the middle shovel is.By the next Sunday, the snow had melted quite a bit. Within a couple weeks the tunnel melted to this condition in the picture above. You can see that the roof of the tunnel could break anytime.

This is a picture from the triangle hole looking through the melting tunnel towards the square hole. Since I didn't start digging until March, the whole thing melted quite quickly. Even though this pit/tunnel digging project didn't last for long, it was nice to make worth of all the snow we had and have fun with it. At least I have pictures to show that the church kids and I dug a cool tunnel.

Bungee Jump in Taupo, New Zealand

2008-03-09T16:04:00.004+09:00

I had a chance to go bungee jumping in New Zealand. The day was February 7, 2008. The place was Taupo and the river I jumped down towards was the Waikato River. The height I jumped from was 47 meters. Naomi and I both did it but I went first. The scariest part for me was standing on the platform right before jumping, when I was in the position of the picture on the left. To think that I was to fall straight down for 47 meters was terrifying. My heart was beating so fast! Even though I was scared, I conquered my fear and jumped!

After I jumped, it wasn't scary at all. It was actually fun. I got dipped in the river enough to get my head and half of my T-shirt wet. The speed when I hit the water wasn't very fast because the rubber rope slowed me down.
After getting wet, I just bounced for a couple times in the air with the rope attached to my feet until a yellow rubber boat came and rescued me. It wasn't even 1 minute long, but it was great!!

New Zealand

2008-03-08T18:01:00.002+09:00

This was taken from a ferry on the way to Ragitoto Island. That is the NewZealand flag and the Sky tower in Aukland city. I don't know why the flag is red instead of blue.

This is a picture that was taken at Covenant church's family camp. Everyone is gathering right before Supper or tea. My dad spoke at this camp a couple times and my mom showed Japanese toys and talked about Japan to the kids. It was a fun camp. It was great meeting people in the church, going on a hike to the dam, going to the waterfall and swimming in the water, playing with other teens. I got a memorable injury at the camp which will remind me of NewZealand whenever I look at the scar. While playing spotlight in the forest at night with other teens, I ran fullspeed into a metal rod sticking out of the ground. It was around 11 o'clock in the night, it was dark so I couldn't see it. My leg was painful for a while, but at least it was worth an impressive looking cut.

Being in NewZealand, we saw quite a lot of sheep including the one above. This huge sheep was right by a sheep farm in Rotaroa. I managed to get on top of the stutue with the help from my dad.

Above is a picture of the waikato River(the longest river in NewZealand). It was very clear and pretty. This is what the river looked like at Taupo. This is the same spot Naomi and I went bungee jumping.

This is the famous Sky Tower in Aukland city.

Not so far from the sky Tower was this thrilling ride called the "reverse bungy" Including Naomi and me, 6 of us from Covenant church did it. It was scarrier than the bungee jump,I think. First, you sit in one of three seats in this ball shaped thing. Second, you get strapped in. Third, you get flung up in the air with the power of 5G. You get swung up and down for a while until you get let down. I sure had an adrenaline riush! It was freaky! I rode it with Naomi and Louise(she came as a short term worker ). The people in the picture above is Jonothan, Tadamitsu and Andrew.The "reverse bungy" is definetly one thing to do when your in Aukland area.

Above is Peter, Joshua, Gabriel, and Jonothan which are the people I went to Ragitoto Island with. The Island was off in the ocean 30 minutes by ferry away from Aukland city. It was cool hanging out with them for a day. We hiked to the top of the volcanic montain, which the Island is made of and went exploring inside lava caves. We didn't take any flashlights, so we used the flash on our cameras to see where we were going. It was fun.

On Waitagi Day(a famous NewZealand holliday), we went to Kawakawa bay to hang out at the beach. We took lunch and ate together. We also played in the sand, threw a rugby ball around, and went swimming. It was nice. 10 of us were there. The sea water was cleaner than the sea water in Japan I've been in.

This is a silly picture taken at Covenant Church in Manurewa the day before we left NewZealand.

From left: Jono, Louise, Mat, Naomi, Priscilla ,me

These are some other people from church.

From left: Jono, James, Gabriel, Tadamitsu, me
And a group hudle picture from the floor.

The main reason for us going to NewZealand was for my dad to speak at the camp and also to encourage people to think about Japan. I had the great 10 days or so catching up with people that came on mission teams in previous years to Japan and making new friends. It was cool going bungee jumping and seeing cool places. The scenery reminded me of Scotland. It was also nice to be in two weeks of warm summer weather while in Japan it was the middle of winter. Now I know more about NewZealand and the culture(Maori/Kiwi) there. I was also introduced to one new christian music band, "Mumsdollar" and one new Rapper, "Rapture Ruckus" both from NewZealand, so that was cool. It was my first great trip to the southern hemisphere. Thanks for all the people that were nice to us.

Sydney Australia

2008-03-08T17:45:00.000+09:00

From January 28th to February 12th we went to Australia and New Zealand. My parents, Naomi and I went. In Australia we just visited Sydney for a couple days on the way to NewZealand and on the way back from NewZealand. Tin-Lok, who was one of the members that came on the Australian team during the winter of 2005, drove us around and took us to many places in the city. The picture above was taken by Tin-Lok. We saw the Opera House at day time and at night.
Under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we saw the city lights. The people in the picture above is Naomi, me and Tin-Lok's brother, Tin-Jon(I think that's right). This picture was also taken by Tin-Lok. We actually walked over the Bridge to go to the Opera House.
This is the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge taken from a distance. We actually went inside the Opera House, but didn't go very far.

This is me standing by a strange big plant which I've never seen before in the Northern Hemisphere at Torango Zoo.
After leaving Japan on the night of the 28th, we arrived in Sydney on the morning of the 29th. In the after noon, the same day we arrived in Sydney, Tin-Lok and Julie took us to the zoo. It was pretty cool. Since we were just going to be in the city, I didn't think that we would see Animals native to Australia, but we did! Obviously not in the picture above of Naomi, me, Tin-Lok and Julie with two gorilla statues, though.
We saw Kangaroos, Koalas, an Echidna,Wallabies and Wombats that are native to Australia. The sad thing was that we didn't see any Kangaroos hop. They were extremely lazy at the zoo. They were just lying on the ground not moving at all, probably because of the heat from the sun. I like the picture above of the Kangaroo. He looks like he's thinking because of the way he's folding his arms.
One of the things I think of when I hear of Australia is the Hillsong United band. They've come to Japan a couple times to do concerts. I've been to two of their concerts. I posted about one of the concerts on this blog earlier. They're a really great worship band. While in Australia we were able to visit the main Hillsong church and also the Hillsong church in the city. The picture above is of the church in the city. We were able to have a simple tour of the church. Both churches were very big. It was great to see where Hillsong United comes from after listening to there CDs a lot. At the church we bought three Albums, "In a valley by the Sea" , "To the ends of the earth" and "Everyday" They are great CDs.

This is a picture at a Chinese restaurant that Tin-Lok's mother took us to. You can see us, the Ghents, Tin-Loks brother and sister and Ms. Hayman(I think) who joined us for the meal after driving us back from Hillsong church.It was a delicious meal. We saw one of the restaurant staff cut up a cooked duck with it's beak still on.
We went to a prayer group that prays for Missionaries in Japan. My Dad spoke for a short time. It was nice meeting these people and talking.
These are the members of the Australian team that came to our church in Itayanagi during the Christmas season of 2005. We were able to see 6 of the people in the picture above again so that was nice catching up.

At one of the airports we actually had to walk outside and walk up one of those movable stairs to get into the airplane. For some reason I thought they stopped doing that, but I guess they still have to do that for small airplanes.
Australia was a nice place.

Snowboarding at Ajigasawa

2008-02-17T21:57:00.000+09:00

On January 4th, on a Friday Micah, Naomi, I and the Harako family went to Ajigasawa ski slope. Everyone except Tomoko and Hikari went snowboarding. Hikari went sledding for a little.
It was my second time snowboarding this season. My first time was with karl before Christmas. This picture above is on the ski slope looking down on part of the Tsugaru Peninsula.

This is how it was like going down the Mountain. I like it when the snow falls on all the small branches of the trees. It really looks pretty. If you look closely you can see that the first person coming down in the greenish jacket and black pants is Mr. harako, the second person on the left of him in the blue and white is Naomi and the farthest person away behind Mr. Harako in the black is Micah. The steepest slope in the Ajigasawa ski grounds is called Nabemori(鍋森). This picture is looking down that slope with Mr.Harako at the bottom and Naomi near the top. It's almost impossible to go straight down this slope because of the steepness and the bumps on the way. I just slid down slowly sideways.

On another day I went snowboarding with my friend from Japanese school in the picture and also with Kris. This was my third time this season. My friend had short skis, but Kris and I had snowboards. It was great catching up with both my friend and Kris on the lift and Gondola.

This is what it looks like while riding in the Gondola. You get a nice view and you get to see people slide down the mountain through the window.

This was also taken from the Gondola window but looking up the mountain. As you can see there are more trees covered in snow at the top. What impresses me most are the Snow Monsters on Mt. Hakkoda.

New Years Eve and Day 大晦日と元旦

2008-01-14T13:15:00.000+09:00

Here are a bunch of photos from New Years Eve and New years Day. The pictures may not appear nicely lined up.

This is what we did on the last night of 2007. 餅つき(pounding rice) in a tree stump　
from left to right top to bottom: me, my Dad, Micah,Mary, Rie

Here we shared Bible Verses for the new year and had a short Bible message. At the end we had a time of prayer right before it turned to be 2008.

This photo was taken the moment it turned 2008. Rie, Naomi and I were in the air.

This now New years day

Everyone had a chance of pounding that rice.

from left to right top to bottom: Mr.Harako, Matsuyama san, Mr. Munakata, my Mom, Naomi, Nobuko

ooops looks like the mochi is reeeealy sticky!
Yuya and Nozomi Kasai

Eating ozouni, oshiruko with the pounded rice while having fellowship.The rice pounding is still going on in the back.

This is the people that gathered at the New Years Day service（元旦礼拝）2008/1/1

Christmas 2007

2008-01-14T09:50:00.000+09:00

These are some pics from the Christmas of 2007. Most of them is me and some other people jumping in front of Christmas trees.

Naomi, Naemi(German Short-term worker) and me
This pic was taken right after the International chapel Christmas service

This was the group of people who gathered at the International chapel Christmas Service

Me and Naomi jumping in front of our sad looking Christmas tree(it started to dry up) in our living room. It actually isn't a tree. It's 2 branches set next to each other to make it look like a tree

Me and Naomi jumping again in front of our impressive looking Christmas tree in the Sanctuary

This year's Christmas was quieter compared to previous years. Usually we have a team from New Zealand or Australia come during the Christmas season to help the church with special meetings, but this year we didn't have any team. Instead my parents and our short-term worker went around several preschools to read the Christmas story and talk about Christmas to the kids. They also gave each kid a cookie and a piece of cake. Other than that we still had special Christmas meetings at most of the places we had the Rocky and Marla Concerts. We had no team, so we had to think of things to do as a family, but I think most of the meetings went well and people enjoyed it, so that was good. For the International chapel we had the Christmas service a little earlier, because a lot of people were flying out of the country for Christmas. On the Christmas Eve we had the Japanese Christmas Eve Service. Each Sunday School class either sang a song or did a Christmas play of some sort. It worked out very well. We sang Christmas songs. Heard a message with candle light. At the end church members brought out cookies and cakes, so we had fellowship with the people that came after the service. Over a hundred people came to the Christmas Eve service so that was great. Later on in the night we opened presents as a family and on Christmas day we got together with the Elliots and shared presents. It was great to remember again this year that Jesus was born on Earth for us to die on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sins and save us. It's great to know that we have hope in Jesus.

Nabe night

2008-01-05T14:05:00.001+09:00

One night when our parents were away for some reason that I don't remember, Emiri who lives in the church came over for a Nabe party. We had Sukisaki. It was so good. We cut up a bunch of vegetables and a pack of meat and cooked it on top of the table while eating it with rice. There's nothing better than a hot pot of Sukiyaki on a cold winter day. After we ate, we played some games. It was nice to have Micah back from Canada with us.

Mt. Iwaki

2008-01-03T18:05:00.000+09:00

Mt. Iwaki always reminds me where my help comes from.

I lift my eyes to the hills-

where does my help com from?

My help comes from the Lord,

the maker of heaven and earth.
Psalm 121:1,2

Rocky & Marla concerts and Thanksgiving

2008-01-03T17:28:00.000+09:00

This year during Thanksgiving season we had special guest singers come from Kitakyushu city　（北九州市）in Kyushu island. Their music was great and it was fun talking to them, especially Rocky. He's a funny guy.

Rocky is Japanese, but he went to Texas when he was young. He speaks very good English with a Texas accent, Which I think is very cool. He is almost totally blind, but he is very good in playing the guitar. Marla is American and she is from Texas. She met Rocky in Japan. She speaks Japanese quite well. She sings very well both in English and Japanese.They brought their 3 year old adopted daughter, Hana(華). I'm sure she will grow up being bilingual. It was fun playing with her. They have a website at http://www.aromaministries.org/.

They did about 5 concerts which came with a Thanksgiving turkey meal and several other concerts without a meal. They also led the worship service 2 Sundays in a row. They were great musicians and speakers. It was sad to see them leave. The picture above was taken on the day they returned back to Kitakyushu. The songs that I really liked were; "I have decided to follow Jesus around the world" in Texan, Mexican, Brazilian, Jewish, Indian and in Japanese music styles. They are surely talented to play one song in so many different ways. "Dareka"(だれか！）, "Think about his grace", "You satisfy my soul","Great is your love/主をほめたたえよ", and" たたけその手を". It was awesome having them with us.

Kuroishi Momijiyama

2007-11-27T21:40:00.000+09:00

As a family we went to see the fall colors in Kuroishi Momijiyama(黒石もみじ山）. We went near the end of October at night. The color on the leaves were very nice so we went at a good time.

My family without Micah(he's in Canada)

my siblings, we even left room for Micah

the night view of the colored leaves from the road

My Mom, sister and I also went on a drive one day to Goshogawara(五所川原）and went to this park where there were also nice fall colored leaves. These are 2 pics from there.

My sista and I balancing ourselves
us in mid-air on a bridge

Lyme Disease

2007-10-31T20:31:00.000+09:00

On August 31, my Mom and I found out that I had Lyme Disease as we went to the hospital. We are guessing that I got bit by a tick that carried the disease in Connecticut when I was helping my uncle with haying in a field where dear had appeared before during Home Assignment. To learn more about Lyme Disease click here to read an explanation about it from wikipedia. The effect it had on me was that the right half of my face had started to become paralyzed. I couldn't move the right side of my face as I wanted too. I realized a couple days before that I couldn't close my right eye without closing my left eye and on the 31st of August when my Aunt Laurie came to our house to visit, she noticed that when I talked my mouth was strange and that only the left half was moving. So that night I went to the hospital with my Mom. At first they couldn't tell what was causing half of my face to become paralyzed, but my Mom suggested that it is most likely to be Lyme Disease. I got medicine to take and went home. We went to another hospital again(the University Hospital 大学病院） and got looked at there. I turned out finding a tick bite on me and I ended up taking medicine for a month and it gradually got better. Right now my face is totally fine. The thing is if I get bitten by a tick that carries the disease again I could get infected again. I just need to be careful to wear long sleeve clothes when I go where ticks may be present.

Flying in a 4 seater airplane

2007-10-25T16:07:00.000+09:00

I forget when it was, but sometime at the end of this summer Bethany and I was able to fly in this plane over the Tsugaru peninsula. Mr. Fujimoto, who took us, comes to the church's Thursday night English class. He has taken previous Short-term workers up in the plane before and he had been asking me if I'd like to go too so on a day when the weather was nice I was able to go up. I never thought of being able to fly in a small airplane like this in Japan so it was really cool. Mr. Fujimoto studied to be a pilot when he was young so it was nice that he offered rides.

When we flew of, the runway at Aomori airport青森空港 seemed very big compared to the small plane we were riding. As we rose in altitude and flew for a while away from Aomori city we came to right above Itayanagi it took a while to find, but Bethany and I were able to spot our house, the church, Itoku, the train station and everything near our house from the plane window. It was interesting to see the town from straight above. I thought that the houses and buildings would be more spread apart, but everything looked so cramped and close together. Obviously not where the rice fields were, though.

Moving on from Itayanagi we went to Ajigasawa鰺ヶ沢 and saw Ajigasawa church and the ocean. On the way back to Aomori we flew above Goshogawara city五所川原市and spotted ELM and all the things we managed to distinguish. It was pretty amazing. After landing safely, we were able to take a look into the control tower at the airport. It was interesting. There was a very clear view of the runway. Even though we went to all those places we were only in the airplane for about 40minutes. I guess this proves that airplanes fly fast. It was an exciting experience.

There's a new blog on the net

2007-10-22T19:59:00.000+09:00

We just made a new blog for Young Life, a kids club we started on every Friday. Here it is. It's in Japanese for Japanese people to see, but check it out anyway!

http://www.itayanagiyounglife.blogspot.com/

Mission Team of the Summer of '07

2007-09-24T09:43:00.000+09:00

This summer we had seven short-term workers with us this year at our church. Three from Canada and four from the US. Karl who is from Canada had already been here with us from a year before. Naomi and I actually flew back to Japan with the four that came from the US. One of them is our cousin and the other three were our friends from the church my cousin goes to. The link to the blog about their experiences during this mission trip is here. We had a great time doing stuff during the summer.

people who came this summer plus my dad

from left:Luke, Amanda, Melody, Sara, Joe, my Dad, karl and Zabrena

We went tracting to several towns and small villages handing out "Power For Living" books and invitations to our church. We stuffed books in backpacks and walked along handing them out to people and putting them into mailboxes. I think we did this for four days. It was a lot of walking. The picture below is us getting ready for tracting. Along with the seven, Naomi, Hoshi and I helped.

We also had several outreach meetings where we sang songs and did skits. We made and performed eight skits during the three weeks. We became very good at preparing skits.

The parable of the lost sheep.

The story of the woman with the lost coin.
The story of the prodigal son.
The parable of the wedding banquet.
The parable of the 4 seeds.
A skit about choosing God or choosing Satan.
Jesus healing the sick and forgiving the sinful woman.
A skit about Missions.

a scene from the skit of either choosing God or choosing Satan

This is at one of the kids meetings we had at our church.

We had two retreats right after another and during the second one, which was in English, we climbed Mt. Iwaki. We drove up the 66 curves and half of us used the lift and half of us climbed from the parking lot. When driving up, a bunch of us piled into the back of the truck. It was fun.

10 people on the back of the truck going up hill

The view from the top was very clear and beautiful. We talked and had some things to eat.

We have conquered the mountain!!!

The Elliots along with other people came from Ajigasawa church and a few English and Japanese speakers came from our church in Itayanagi. One of Naomi's Japanese friends and one of my Japanese friends came, too.

a pic from after a skit

One night we had a chance to go bowling after a party. Naomi invited one of her friends and I invited two of my friends Hiroya and Takayuki. We all played three games and by the time we finished it was late at night.

Our feet!!! Can you guess which one is mine?

We the cool dudes!!

2007-08-21T16:17:00.000+09:00

One day during the Summer we were having a bazaar and since we were kinda bored I got Hoshi(my friend on the left of me in the top picture) to spike my hair up with hair jell or wax or whatever he used to look cool for a day. Hoshi has cut hair and done other things to many other people's hair so I was able to trust him with my hair. Two boys from our church sort of got there hair spiked too. Karl also joined in the picture. Do you think we look cool or just a little strange?

Some pics from time in America

2007-08-03T14:54:00.000+09:00

The pictures above are from when we climbed Mt. Monadnock 3166feet, 965m in New Hampshire

These are from my Grandparents 50th wedding Anniversary

We had great times at the lake in Eastford Connecticut

In the midst of having fun we still did school work when we weren't busy traveling and visiting people

This was a strange tree that I could stand in the middle of

Fun and Exciting Things

2007-07-09T22:47:00.000+09:00

If you read my blog, you might be wondering why I haven't posted in a long time. The answer to that would be that I've been in Canada and in America doing so many fun and exciting things that I never had any time to write about all the things. So right now which is the last day I have before going back to Japan, I want to tell about the things I've done in various places.

Ever since Spring Folly in Sualt St. Marie, Northern Ontario where I saw Manic Drive at a concert, we dorve down to Toronto again and spent some time there. While we were in Toronto we went to go see the sight where the JGCT was going to start building their new church. Thankfully they got permits to start building so they should be building right now. Micah will be working there this summer, so I should ask him how things are going there. Other than that Kevin Ueta from the JGCT took Naomi, Bethany and I to downtown Toronto one day. That was pretty cool. We saw the cool looking city office and stopped by the world's biggest bookstore and went into this huge mall building, so there was a lot to see . One thing I realised in Toronto was that they have so many squerrels living in the city. It was quite similar to Chicago, Illinois. I always seem to see them running across telephone wires and climbing around trees. It was quite interesting. While in Canada we celebrated my Grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. All the relatives on my Dad's side got together and celebrated it. We had a big party in the gym of Faith Baptist Church in Mount forest. A lot of people came. My Aunts family in Missouri came and we even had some relatives come from Sctland. We all had a great time seeing each other as family and hanging out together. Oh yeah, the first time going to a skatepark was in canada. The park ws actually in Mount Forest. Since it's such a small town I didn't think that they would have a skatepark, but they did!!! They had some ramps, poles and a concrete bowl. I always wanted to skate at a skateprk so it was one of my great accomplishments of all the things I wanted to do. I also got a chance to skateboard on a homemade half pipe in Massachusetts, so that was really cool. I didn't start off too good, but as a kept trying I managed to go back and forth so that was great.

We left canada around the end of May and spent time in the U.S. We had two people from our church in Japan come and travel with us in America so that they could cook Japanese meals for us when we had Japanese nights. So Yoriko and Nobuko Sasaki flew from Japan and brought some Japanese ingredients with them. We were able to have a Japanese meal at Eastford Baptist Church and at Sommers Church in Connecticut. we also had another one in virginia. It was great being able to eat Japanese food after being away from Japan for 3 months and talking Japanese with them. At these Japanese nights it was encouraging to see how many people would come to hear about Japan and try Japanese food, but it was very moving for me to hear my Dad talk about Japan and the needs we have there. It reminded me how in need and desperate Japanese people are for the Gospel, for the salvation Jesus gives. The change Japanese people need from worshiping creation(created things) to instead worshiping the Creator and nothing else. To worship the one true God who created everything. It just reminded me how much the One and only true loving God and the hope Jesus gives needs to be heard all around the world.

My parents and older sister, Bethany left America to fly back to Japan on June 10th and left Naomi and I behind to stay in the U.S. for another month. During that time we mainly stayed at Uncle James and Jeans place in Eastford, Connecticut. We studied whenever we could and when all our cousins came back from school we would hang out and do things together. I've helped with haying and bailing on fields for uncle Glen and stacking bails in the barn. It was actually quite fun. Naomi and I were able to help with Eastford Elementary Schools' sports day. We were incharge of the sack race, so our job was to explain the rules and say "Go" and to watch and see who came in 1st 2nd and 3rd. All the kids listened to us so it wasn't too bad. It was actually nice seeing how they do sports days in the U.S. We were also able to attend Johnny's graduation party, so that was nice to see. While in Connecticut we went to the Purgatory Chasm and climbed overand around rocks. There was a place called fatmans misery where there was a slight gap in a big rock a little less than the width of your shoulder where you could walk through, so Nathan, Joe, Johnny Naomi and I all walked through it. It was kind of tight, but we managed to get our way through. Naomi was able to do it walking straight, because her shoulder was narrow enough. It was a short hike, but it was fun. The next day after going to Purgatory Chasm, Uncle Dennis, Michelle, Naomi and I climbed Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. Aparently it is known as the 2nd most climed mountain in the world and the height was 3166feet(965m) It was a very nice hike with a total of 4 hours going up and then coming down. I think it's worth hiking up whenever you can if you get the chance.

While in North America I've visited a total of 5 schools. Uncle James asked me if I wanted to know more about UCONN(University of Connecticut) and Eastern(Eastern Connecticut State University), so we had a tour of both of the schools. I was amazed at the size of UCONN. The university had so many buildings and so much campus land and also so many options of things you could study. It seemed like a really nice University. Naomi and I also had a chance to see Woodstock Academy where all or a lot of the Barlows went to High School or are still going to. It was nice to see where our cousins go to school and to see an American High School. I've also visited 2 Bible Schools. NBBI(New Brunswick Bible Institute)in Canada, Where my parents went and MBI(Moody Bible Institute)in Chicago. We actually ate the school's food and attended some lectures. Both places I thought were very nice. They had good food, nice Professors. I'll be going to a Bible school somewhere after I finish my last year of High school, so please pray for me to know which one I should go to. There are so many around I don't know which one is the best for me.

One thing I will remember for a while is going to a christian music festival called Creation in Pensylvania with Barrie, Tony, Kyle, Uncle Herm, Kristine, Marisa, Tiffany and Naomi. We took such a long time driving there from Eastford,CT and even after getting there we had to stay in a 6 hour long talegate line in order to get to our campsite. We ended up not getting to the camp sight untill 3:18 AM, but it was still worth the great cancerts we were able to see. I saw a lot of bands and artists I really wanted to see like, Switchfoot, Relient k, KJ-52, Grits, Family force 5, Hawk Nelson, Skillet, TFK, Third Day, TobyMac, Casting Crowns, David Crowder Band, The Voice etc... so I really liked it. We were quite hot in a sever condition in the middle of a farm field without any showers, no toilets except Portapottties, but it was all part of the experience. We had fun together with each others company, talking, playing and singing worship songs together. There was something like 120,000 people there all together which sounds like a lot, but it actually wasn't that bad. If I have another chance to go again sometime I would definetly go, either Creation or Soulfest.

For the past week we have been at Word Of Life Camp in New York. If you look at the camp photo gallery of their website you might be able to see me, but I doubt it. We were on the island in the middle of scroon lake from June 30th to July 7th. It was a good week. I stayed in a cabin where all the boys from Eastford Baptist Church stayed in, so I knew mostly everyone. During the camp I was able to meet 4 Japanese counselors so that was cool. I was able to do a high ropes coarse, wall climbing, volleyball, dodgeball, Basketball, tubing and also just meet new people and have fun. Every morning we had a Bible hour and then we had quiet time. The afternoon was basicly free to do any activities and at night there were speaker sessions and group activities and such to do.

The two main speakers, Ron Bishop and Joe Jordan really challenged me and spoke to me. The devotions where each of our counselors in our cabin shared were very nice, too. I remember one of my counselors devotion time where he read 1 Corinthians 10:31 "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." and I was reminded that whatever I do or say I need to do it for God's glory. Bible passages like Revalation3:15, 16 and 2 Timothy3:16 have really stuck to me after camp. The theme of camp was Matthew 6:21. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Ron Bishop talked a lot about the treasures we can have in Jesus. It was really good. He encouraged us to live for Jesus.

I've had a really good time in Canada and in the U.S., but I really miss not being able to do GT this year in Japan. There was a person who kept up a GT blog, so I sort of read it whenever I could. Hopefully if possible I would like do it next year, but I'll have to see how things go with school work and starting Bible school works out.

After coming back from camp we've been able to go tubing and even wakeboarding at Crystal pond so that has been fun. We also had a small Trepal reunion party at the lake so that was nice.
I hope to on the next post put some pictures up of some of the things I've talked about.

Pretty soon Naomi and I will be hedding back to Japan with a cousin and three friends from church to go as a Mission trip to our place in Japan for 3 weeks, so please pray for the 6 of us who will be traveling from NY JFK airport to Narita airport and then from Haneda airport to Aomori airport.

So Far On Home Assignment 07

2007-05-02T02:01:00.000+09:00

This is a picture of me in Maine.

It has been almost 2 months since we've been in North America for Home Assignment. We have been to many places. So far we have visited Connecticut, Maine, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Michigan and Illinois. My parents also went to Newfoundland. We started in New England of the US and went North to the eastern provinces in Canada and then went west to Ontario and went south to the US again and visited states near the great lakes and now we're back in Toronto, Ontario. Sometimes it seems like we've been in the van too long, but it's been good seeing many people and places.

So far Naomi and I have been to 2 concerts this time on Home Assignment. Life Support and Manic Drive. I thought they were both very good christian bands. First when Manic Drive started playing I thought that they were really loud and I couldn't really hear the words that they were singing, so I didn't really like them. But after hearing them talk, buying their CD(Reason For Motion)after the concert, listening to the CD 2 days ago and praying to God after reading the CD pamphlet, I realized they were trying to get a message across.

On Home Assignment

2007-03-11T12:29:00.000+09:00

My family and I left on march 7th for North America to go on Home Assignment. We will be driving to many supporting churches and spending time with family both in the U.S. and in Canada. We have a calander of our schedule on the Tsugaru Church website. Click on staff and it will be there. My Dad, Mom and Bethany will go back to Japan on June 12th, but Naomi and I will not go back until July 10th. Naomi and I will go back with a cousin and two friends. I'm hoping to have a great time in North America.

Kamakura Building and Sledding

2007-01-31T16:55:00.000+09:00

I want to say sorry for not posting for a long time to every one who reads my blog. I either couldn't get on the internet or when I could I was just too lazy to post. This post about making a kamakura and sledding is one that I started to write on January 31st, but I haven't finished it untill today, March 3rd. It's been over a month. Anyways it's about what I did with the church boys.

While I had a sleepover with the church boys we made a kamakura( igloo sort of thing). Since this year it hasn't been snowing very much here in Aomori we had to gather snow from all around the church parking lot to make a kamakura. In previous years, there usually already was a big pile of snow that we could just start digging into, but this year we had to actually gather snow by ourselves. I knew that the boys would like to have a kamakura to see and go inside, so before all of them came I started making a pile of snow. When thier parents came and droped them off at the church they came over to where I was and guessed that I was making a kamakura. They said they wanted to help too, so they started digging snow away to make room inside. They worked on it untill we made pizzas for supper.

After we ate supper, did the dishes and had a devotion time we drove to the park by the river in town to go night sledding. As you can see from the picture above, we could still see grass on the ground. There was quite little snow even though it was January. We all sled down a lot of times and competed who could go the farthest. There wasn't as much snow than what we hoped we would have, but it was still fun. The boys also worked on the kamakura the next day and made a back entrance, too. Even though we couldn't make something big like last year, it was good that we could make this together this year.

Church Winter Retreat in Iwaki

2007-01-24T21:31:00.000+09:00

I haven't posted in a long time, but that doesn't mean that nothing has happened. Ever since Christmas there has been New years celebration, Ski/snow camp, igloo making, sledding, Church Retreat and a bunch of other stuff, but for now I'm going to talk about the Church Retreat.

On the 20th and the 21st our church had a winter retreat. It was only for about 24 hours so we just stayed over one night, but it was still lots of fun. We stayed at a place called 岩木青少年スポーツセンター. It's a building that a big group of people can use for staying over and for doing events and such. I think it's run by the prefecture. It's quite a nice place with lots of space in the building and a good hill to play outside in the snow.

One of the things a lot of us enjoyed was sliding down a hill with a rubber tube. The center staff let us use black rubber donut shape type of tubes to slide down a hill. I've never done it before, but it was very fun. After going down several times the snow got harder so the course got faster and faster, by the second day everyone slid down the hill very fast. To be interesting we made a train by holding each others feet and sliding down the hill. Thanks to karl that suggested it. It was great fun.

We also played in the gym. we played Californian kick ball. That's what I heard it was called in English. Kids and adults both were in the teams and played together. At night we played games with many people till late.

We also had devotions and chapel times to read the Bible and learn about it. The theme of this retreat was neighborly love. So we discussed about how to love your neighbors and things like that.

On Sunday we had a service at the place in one of the big rooms. Some people just came for the service, but most of the people came from the day before and stayed till the end. It was a cool retreat having a fun time with kids and having a good time with people from church.

The New Zealand Team 2006

2006-12-30T23:47:00.000+09:00

Last year we celebrated Christmas with the Australian Team, but this year we celebrated with the NewZealand Team. 12 NewZealanders came up kind of as a Gospel singing group, Malcom, Matthew, Jesse, Rosa, Dwaine, Catherine, Simon, Jonathan, Dawn, Peter, Michelle and Andrew. This is the 4th time a team has come from NewZealand to our church. They went around a lot of pre-schools and some old folks homes singing and performing.

The pictures above is the men on the team doing the Haka. The Haka is the Maori war chant and is ment to be very scarry. I heard that the All Blacks Rugby team in NewZealand do it before games. If you want to know more about the Haka you should check wikipedia. The Haka was one of the things I really enjoyed watching. I wanted to put a video of the Haka that the team did, but I don't know how to put videos on my blog, so here is the link of the All Blacks doing it. Also here is the other one called Kapaopango. The Kapaopango is newer and different, but I quite like it.

My dad and people from church also planed many special Christmas meetings at various community centers, so we invited people we knew and the team also did tracting door to door inviting people to come. The picture above is after the Christmas meeting we did in Hirakawa.

Eating and having fellowship at the Jonan kaikan.

Group photo at Jonan kaikan.

The team with kids at a pre-school.

Over all it was really good having the NewZealand Team over for Christmas this year. Other than seeing them and listening to them sing, I got to know them very well, by eating lunch and supper(or tea, if I say how they do) with them almost everyday, playing Foosball and Table tennis together, getting ready together for Christmas meetings and stuff. After getting to know them very well and having a great time with them, it will be really great if I can see them sometime again.

Still Skateboarding

2006-12-23T23:48:00.000+09:00

doing an ollie beside a snowman the NewZealand team made

As long as there's dry ground, I will skateboard.

Mountain Dew in a Glass Bottle?!?

2006-12-12T20:53:00.000+09:00

On every Tuesday, Karl and I drive up to Kanagi to teach English classes after I have a piano lesson with Armin. I help out with the kids class from 5 and Karl teaches the adult class by himself at 8. Right after the kids class we go to the big store nearby called the Super Store to get some food for supper. It's a little different kind of Japanese store. It's similar to Wall-Mart because it not only has food, but also has clothes, building material, a book store and other stuff. As usual we were hedding to the food place and I saw Mountain Dew in a glass bottle sold for 50￥. I was so surprised. They usually don't sell Mountain Dew at very many places in Japan in the first place so I was surprised to see it in a glass bottle. I don't know how they sell Mountain Dew where you are, but this was something really strange for me.

Reforming a House

2006-12-07T21:32:00.000+09:00

We finally finished working on reforming the inside of an old house today. I talked about it a little when I posted about "Electrical Wiring", but my Dad found an old house in town that we could redo and fix up so that a couple that used to work in the CLC Christian Bookstore in Akita can move up to Aomori and live in it. It was a very old house and needed a lot of repairing. Over the last 3weeks or so mainly my Dad and many other people worked to make it a very nice place. For several days my Dad asked me to help work with the house instead of studying(which was fine with me). So I became really good friends with insulation, drywall, a screw driver, styrofoam amongst many other building materials.

This is the new living room of the house after being all nicely insulated.

This is the hallway floor that I helped insulated with styrofoam. With all the insulation and Styrofoam the house should keep really warm. Not like old Japanese houses that hardly have any insulation.

This is the best friend I made while working. I always had it in my hand when I was drywalling or screwing in outlet wires into it's boxes. It is a Black＆Decker screwdriver that works very well. It was possible to screw in a screw in just 2 seconds. The batteries last for quite a long time, at least enough time to let the other battery recharge completely before running out of power with the one you're using.

It even has special bits attached to it.

The house is now finished with new rooms, a new bath tub, a new entryway etc. and new people. The Chinomi's who will be living there from now moved in today with all their things. Now they will be coming to our church and helping with the Bookstore and cafe.

It feels great to have it done. Thanks to my Dad that did mostly all the work.

Thanksgiving and Foosball

2006-12-05T20:26:00.000+09:00

This year's Thanksgiving meals were really good as they always are. My Dad says that it's good to be a Canadian married to an American. That way he can celebrate Thanksgiving for a longer time. Well, me having a Canadian Dad and an American Mom is great also, because I can celebrate Thanksgiving for a long time as well. This year my family had numerous Turkey meals with various groups of people from church. The picture above was taken at one of the meals we had at a church members house sometime in October(that's why I'm wearing a t-shirt).
I know that you often see the outside of a Turkey bird, or when it's cut up, but how often do you see the inside of a Turkey?
After the last Thanksgiving meal I had this year, which was with the International church service people and other new people, a lot of us played with the the new Foosball table in the fellowship room. Everyone was getting into it and having a great time. We got the table from Bruce Truss who got it from Misawa. It's the really nice kind so it's fun to play with.
The church kids that play with it on Sunday afternoons are really wild with it so it looks as if they will break it sometime, but I hope not. Now we have a great thing to do on Sunday evenings while the table tennis room stays cold.

Pics of United concert and time in Tokyo

2006-11-23T21:38:00.000+09:00

Waiting in line before the concert.

Australian guys were entertaining us.

Right after the awesome concert(we weren't allowed to take pictures during the concert)

The T-shirt I bought at the concert.
This is on Monday morning at MOS burgers.

Naomi, me, Arthur and Adachi in Ochanomizu(御茶ノ水)

Arthur Holland's 1800cc Harley motorbike with a rainbow and olive leafs
Just like in the days of Noah

Naomi at OCC(Ochanomizu Christian Center)
Where I bought the Hillsong London CD.

Mami(真美), Adachi(足立), Naomi and I(taking the picture) at Ochanomizu Church of Christ

Good(delicious,but not healthy) International food.
That is a Big Mac.
Not the American size though.

So ah... yeah, these are some of the pictures of the trip my sister and I had in Tokyo.

Hillsong UNITED Concert

2006-11-23T00:18:00.000+09:00

My younger sister, Naomi and I went to the Hillsong United concert in Tokyo(Shibuya, 青山学院大学)on Sunday night the 19th. We left Aomori on Saturday night by the night bus. 9 hours later we arrived at Shinjuku Station. Our time in tokyo was like this...

From Shinjuku Station we made our way to Kita Urawa(北浦和) by train. Ate a Teriyaki chicken burger breakfast at Wendy's until the wittets came and picked us up to go to Saitama International Church(I think that's the name of the Church) where the Hansens are serving. Then we went to the Wittets house in Higashikurume(東久留米) to have 15 minutes of sleep. While we were still sleepy, we got on the train again and made it to Shibuya Station. There we met with our Church member's younger brother who knew a person that had 2 extra tickets. So, together we walked in the rain(with umbrellas) to get to Aoyama University. We attended the Jesus Lifehouse International Church service from 2:30 PM in the concert hall. It was great! It felt more like a concert than a service.

Then we waited in line for about 2 hours before the doors to the concert hall opened. There were some Australian guys entertaining us with the Aussie call(Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi...)

During the long wait, we met a bunch of people we knew from mostly Hi-ba. During the wait we talked and caught up with stuff. After we went in and found seats to sit in we also met some more people from GT and Hi-ba camp. Before and after the concert we met so many people we knew. People from TAK and such.

The concert was AWESOME!!! The band sang a lot of songs that are worship songs written in the Hillsong church in Australia. A lot of us knew most of the songs from their previous CDs, so we all sang along and were jumping, screaming, shouting and worshiping God. It was totally Awesome. It was definitely worth the long bus ride and the money. At the concert we bought a T-shirt, a CD(United We Stand) and some rist bands. They're really cool stuff. Whenever you see a CD of Hillsong United, buy it!!! Their CDs are great!!!

That night, my friends lead us the way back to Higashikurume by train. There we got some sleep. The concert went on for 3 hours so by the time we got back it was about 11 Pm.

On Monday morning we did some shopping in Ikebukuro(池袋) and stayed in a MOS burger's for a while. At noon we met up with friends in Ochanomizu(お茶の水) and had lunch with them. We happened to order at McDonald's and while we were ordering, the drummer and Guitarist of the Hillsong United band came into the store to eat. Naomi recognised them and we started talking to them. It was cool. They were really nice people. We were very surprised we met them.

After we ate our burgers in Ochanomizu Church of Christ with our friends, we saw Arther Holland!!! Naomi and I were so suprised. We went out and talked with him for a while, while he was covering up his 1800cc motorbike. It was huge. Apparently he parks his motorbike at the church often.

After that we went to OCC(Ochanomizu Christian Center). We went in to the Japanese Christian bookstore and the English Christian bookstore on the 2nd and 3rd floor. They were nice places. I found 4 CDs I wanted to buy, but I didn't have enough money, so I bought the Hillsong London
CD. After buying and looking around the OCC we went back to the church and slept on the coach for a while to catch up on our sleep. That night we spent time near Tokyo Station. We went to Maruzen. If you don't know what it is, don't worry. I'd never heard of it before until a couple of days ago. It was a very nice building with expensive restaurants and shops. We decided to eat at a Japanese restaurant near the station. It was cheap, but really good.

We spent several hours around Maruzen until the bus back up to Aomori left at 11:30 PM. I actually got more sleep going back up to Aomori than going down to Tokyo. We arrived at Hirosaki station at 8:00 Am. That was the end of my 3rd trip down to Tokyo this year. We met so many people we knew and had an Awesome time. We were mostly lacking sleep during the 2 days, but it was all good.

Thanks to Doug Wittet and his wife, Haunani and son, John for letting us stay at their house on Sunday night. Also thanks for the person who gave the tickets for the concert to us and thanks to my friends that I met at the concert and lead us the way back to Higashikurume. Also thanks to Adachi(足立) and Mami(真美)who took time with us in Ochanomizu. Most of all I thank God for ableing us to go down to Tokyo and providing tickets for us to go to the concert. It was all really good.

I hope to put pictures on the next post.

Electrical wiring

2006-11-14T21:20:00.000+09:00

Bruce Truss and I did some wiring work in the newly built sound room back above of the church sanctuary. My job was to put in 6 outlets(sockets) and to put in an earth wire through the ground.

Bruce worked on switches for the sanctuary. He put in three-way light switches so that we can turn on and off the light switches from the sound room and also from the back of the church. He dealt with a bunch of old wires so it looked very complicated.

Bruce and I were also working on the Electrical wiring in an old house today that will be used by a couple that used to work in the CLC Christian Bookstore in Akita. It's a house that was going to be torn down so we need to put in a lot of work in to it to make it look better. We basically replaced the old wires with new ones as well as adding more outlets and lights. It's quite interesting running wires through walls and ceilings and connecting them to outlets and switches.

The last mountain climb of the year

2006-11-14T20:52:00.000+09:00

On November 3rd(culture day), which was a while ago, Karl and I climbed Mt. Iwaki. First we drove up these 66 curves going up the mountain. I know it's not really climbing the mountain if we drive up(it's actually cheating), but we didn't have much time and we wanted to get to the top before the weather got bad.
After we arrived at the parking lot, we walked up through this very narrow path with bamboo leafs on both sides and slowly moved toward the top. After about 40 minutes of climbing we reached the top of 1625m. The view from the top was pretty good. It was a bit hazy, but that was it. We saw the Japan sea and saw as far north as the Goshogawara sports dome.

On the way down we decided to write our names on one of the big rocks. So if you see my name whenever you climb Mt. Iwaki, be sure to tell me.
We drove down the mountain and came down to Ajigasawa. It started to snow on Mt. Iwaki a couple days later so we were glad that we made it up before it did.

Cement Mixing and Daylight Saving

2006-11-02T23:17:00.000+09:00

This week I learned how cement is made! I found out that it's quite simple. You just have to mix a bunch of stuff as if you're making a cake. The ingredients are 4 things. Gravel, sand, cement powder and water. Thankfully we didn't have to mix these stuff with a bucket and shovel or something. We used a very nice cement mixer(runs with electricity).

The amount I mixed was 10 scoops of gravel, 6 scoops of sand, about 2 scoops of cement powder and about 1/3 a bucket of water. My Dad figured it out by making the first batch. We worked together while I did the shoveling and my Dad did the spreading and smoothing.

That was a lot of shoveling. I got to tell you. I shoveled all the sand and gravel that was on the truck, which was quite full and shoveled a bunch of sand and gravel that was a pile on the ground after we ran out with what was on the truck. By the time we finished I was cream crackered. It was good exercise though.

I know that some countries in the world just moved their clocks one hour ahead. I think it's a brilliant idea. My question is "Why hasn't Japan started doing it?" It will save farmers to not need to wake up so early in the morning and help people like me to be able to skateboard for extra minutes(not that I can't skateboard at night). You basically can't shoot a basketball after 5 o'clock, because it's too dark.

Oh, well I guess I just need to get up earlier and and go to bed earlier until summer comes along again or when Japan decides to save daylight.

School Festival

2006-10-24T20:55:00.000+09:00

Last Sunday, my old Jr. high school was having their school festival(文化祭) so I went to go see it after church service. It is a big deal for the school, because it's the biggest event of the year. It was nice seeing inside my old school after over a year since I last saw it. I walked through the school seeing a bunch of art work and stuff the students made.
Each year every student has to draw a poster for the school festival during summer vacation. I always find it interesting looking through them.
There is a part of the festival that bands perform and people sing and dance, but there usually not that good at my school so I didn't stay and watch. I was able to see and talk to some of my old friends, so that was cool.

Farewell Toyota TownAce

2006-10-20T22:16:00.000+09:00

Our Toyota van has been junked.

It was a diesel engine car and the exhaust it let out was getting bad. The inside was kind of falling apart in places, too. It was a nice van though.

Now we have this Mazda car. A church member is letting us use it until her son finishes college. So for now it's a temporarily replacement of the van(kind of). It can fit 5 people and is very nice inside. Probably a brand new car. Right now, our new short-term worker, Karl is driving it to go places and teach English classes and such. It's nice having a new car, but I really miss the van which could fit 8 people. Now we pretty much always have to take 2 cars if we're going some where with lots of people. I miss not having the van.

A Problem with the Basketball Net

2006-10-14T22:30:00.000+09:00

My basketball does not go through the net!! The previous net I had was big enough that any ball I had could fall through. But since that net was hung up on the ring for over a year it got weak and started to rip. Probably the rain and the winter snow wasn't good for it. Last summer when my cousins came to Japan they were able to bring me a basketball net, just in case I needed it sometime. The time came for me to put it up, but it's probably meant for quite smaller size balls cause even by smallest ball won't fall through. It only falls through when the ball falls from high above with great force or when I do a three pointer, but not when I do lay-ups. It's a pain jumping and knocking it out whenever it gets stuck, but oh well, I'll just have to practice on my dunks and long shots from now until it stretches or until I get a new one.

Some unusual thing flying in the living room

2006-09-30T22:24:00.000+09:00

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.

Crazy People!!

2006-09-29T13:48:00.000+09:00

Last Sunday, Kris was wearing his socks in a weird way and since I was board I did the same.

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

Are we crazy or what?

Camping in Owani

2006-09-26T16:33:00.000+09:00

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 vs Pikachu

2006-09-11T21:35:00.000+09:00

Buddy had a battle with Pikachu. It was gruesome. Buddy won by tarring out the inners of Pikachu.

"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.

Nebuta Festival

2006-09-05T23:51:00.000+09:00

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!!!

Handstand on street

2006-08-05T22:15:00.000+09:00

My good friend Hoshi and I are into breakdancing and so we try new moves all the time.

me doing a one handed hand stand on the street at night

Hoshi doing a much better form of a one handed handstand

If you really want to do it the cool way, you grab your left foot with your left hand and hold it there for a second. We didn't quite do it like that, but I think we're good enough.

Various things

2006-07-31T14:04:00.000+09:00

Since I haven't posted in a long time, I'd like to update with some stuff that I did.

My sister and I went to the Hi-ba International camp in Chiba for a week. It was great!! We were able to meet new International teens in Japan and make a lot of friends. During free time We were able to go to the beach, play soccer, play volleyball, play ping-pong and a bunch of other stuff. The worship sessions and the speaker session was really good. We sang a lot of good worship songs and the speaker from south California was very interesting.

It was a great time spending time with other Christian High schoolers and drawing closer to God.

4 days after camp, my brother Micah, left Japan to go to Prairie Bible school in Canada. The night he left by bus, a lot of people from the Church came and sent him off. While we were waiting for the bus to come we did some hanging and climbing on cars.

It's kind of sad not having my brother around. He and I used to share a room, but now I have the room to my self and I don't really know how to use the extra space.
Now that he's in Canada I have to take out the garbage myself and help in the yard without him so that means extra work to do, but my Dad has short-term workers to do some work so I guess it's not that much hard work for me.

Still, it's different not having him around.

Speaking of shortterm workers, a lot of shortterm workers who were helping out at the church for a while have recently left to go back to their countries. They were really cool people to hang around with.
Matthew and David who came from England were great talking to. We always talked about American English and British English. It was fun. John, who came from Northern Ireland stayed with us a longer period of time and during the winter I went snowboarding with him several times. It was great fun doing stuff with him. Now he's in Tokyo area doing a thing called Kids Gospel Team with OMF. Tim and Miho Walker, a couple who came and helped us at the church were nice people. Miho, who is Japanese, helped a lot with translating things so that was very helpful. Now their in Sapporo and soon be going back to Bible school in the UK. It was great having all these shortterm workers around, seeing them help with anything they could help with. I will definitely remember them even though I may not see them in a long time.

Recently, I've been doing handstands and breakdancing stuff with my friend, Hoshi and I hope to post pictures of it soon, so be waiting.

No hands!

2006-07-03T12:51:00.000+09:00

Here you go John. Here's the no hander. It was very difficult to balance my body just using my head, but I did it!

One hand!

2006-07-01T10:41:00.000+09:00

This is me doing a one handed hand stand in a building in 城南(south Hirosaki) that we just started moving in to. One of the rooms had a wooden floor and was just right to do breakdancing stuff, so I did this. Cool eh?

Gospel Team was awesome!!

2006-06-26T14:26:00.000+09:00

All you who read my blog must be wondering why I haven't posted anything for a long time.That is because I was in Tokyo for 2 weeks doing Gospel Team. Gospel Team is a Hi-ba sponsored, 2 week mission outreach targeting High school students in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya and Shizuoka. Early each day, team members travel to different places to hand out tracts to Japanese High school students inviting them to evangelistic rallies called "Let's Be Friends" which are held later in the afternoon. These rallies are done in cooperation with local Japanese Hi-ba clubs. High school students on each Gospel Team help lead the meetings and do skits, sing songs and share our testimonies.
Our daily schedule during the 2 weeks was waking up at at least by 5 o'clock in the morning and driving to the place our team is doing a rally that day and hand out tracts in front of train stations and High schools from about 7:00 to 8:30. After that we have breakfast at McDonald or somewhere. Than we slept from 10:00 to 12:00 and had lunch. During the afternoon we practiced our skit and songs and have a time praying for the rally. Than right before the rally starts we do last minute tracting hoping to get people that are just standing around doing nothing to come to the rally. Than from 4:30 to 7:00 we do the rally. We play games, sing songs, do a skit, share a testimony and there also is a message clear enough for a new person to understand the Gospel and accept Jesus as their saviour. At the end we would break up into small groups and talk to the Japanese High schoolers about the message and what they thought about the rally and various things. After the rally we would walk the High schoolers to the station and say good bye. Than we had supper at a restaurant somewhere and drove back to the place we sleep. Every night we got to sleep by about 12:00.
Here is a picture of the people that came to one of the rallies.

During the small group time I was able to talk to some Christian High Schoolers who want to live out their faith and want to bring their friends to these rallies, but find it hard because their afraid of what people will think of them and scared of being rejected. So I was able to talk about my own experiences and encouraged them in any way I could. During GT I was able to learn how to start talking about spiritual things to totally new people who have never had Christian influence before. Through my team I learned how to work together and encourage each other.
Through GT I was able to make a lot of new friends so that was really good. I will meet a lot of my new friends when I go down to the Hi-ba camp in another 2 weeks time so that will be cool.

GT drew me closer to God in a great way, so thank you everyone who prayed for me.

Dunk!?!

2006-06-09T17:46:00.000+09:00

This is me on the left dunking a basketball in a hoop that is in the our yard.
Don't you think it's amazing?

I think a normal basketball hoop is about 2.5 meters off the ground and my height is about 1.6 meters, so I would of have to jump at least 0.9 meters off the ground not including my arm length.

Who thinks I can do that?
A bit latter John(a short term worker) did it too.

Don't you think were cool!

actually we jumped off the fence

Kyushu report party

2006-06-08T22:42:00.000+09:00

My parents went to Kyushu for a week to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. When they came back we had a Kyushu report party and they showed us cool stuff and nice pictures. You can see them above. Aparently they saw a lot of waterfalls. The castle right above is Kumamoto Castle they said. By the pitures Kyushu looks like a really nice place. Hopefully I can get down there some time

Sukiyaki　すき焼き

2006-05-30T12:51:00.000+09:00

My parents went away for their 25th wedding anniversary, so last night Daisuke and Airi came to our house and made supper for us . Daisuke and Airi are college students that come to our church and because they were so kind they came over and made Sukiyaki for us kids who stayed at home while our parents were gone. I haven't had Sukiyaki since I graduated from Japanese Jr. High school and it's a really delicious nabe(鍋). A nabe is not exactly a type of soup, but it's basically a bunch of vegetables and meat in a pot with some soy sauce or something. In our nabe we put in spring onions, tofu, pork, mushrooms, 糸こんにゃくwhich is something I don't know how to explain and 源たれwhich is something like soy sauce that we added a bunch of water so it would taste similar to sukiyaki. We put it on the oven and talked together. When it was ready we ate it together. Their was my brother, sister, Daisuke, Airi, Daisuke's friend who joined latter and me, the six of us. The flavour of the soup sank into the vegetables and meat so it tasted magnificent. I was really happy to be able to eat it again after a long time.

Basketball

2006-05-25T22:37:00.000+09:00

Basketball is one of my favorite sports. I've liked it ever since I was in elementary School.

Yesterday I went to the park in town by the river where there is a full Basketball court. There also is a place to skateboard or rollerblade and a small Soccer field. It's a very nice park where you can do a bunch of stuff. I went down there just to play Basketball and to practice my skills. It was a bit windy so I would take a shot, but the wind will blow it a bit off course so it woudn't go in. I don't like it when there's wind. I can still do lay-ups when there's wind so that's cool.

Basketball is much more fun when you play it with a bunch of other people. That makes it possible to play games with teams. I like playing one-on-one with people. It makes you think of how and what you can do to get pass the other person.

I say I like Basketball, but I don't really follow it much. I have a Jersey of Ben Wallace(#3) who plays in the Detroit Pistons, but that's about it.

Well... I hope to post about once or twice a week, but we'll see how it goes.

Welcome to my new blog

2006-05-18T22:04:00.000+09:00

Hi I decided to start a blog.

This is me hitting a waterballoon. I was teaching John and David how to play baseball with a waterballoon.

I hope you return to see a bunch of cool stuff on my blog.