Yesterday I went to renew my Japanese driving licence. In Japan licences need renewed every 3 years – at least to start with – and expire one month after your birthday rather than when you first get your licence, so for me that was yesterday! I had put it off a little bit, then duly forgot about it, only to realise on Saturday that the local police station don’t do it on weekends. So I ended up taking a bit of a trip out to the licence centre on the other side of Sapporo to renew it. An “advantage” was I could renew it and have the lecture all in one go.
Yes, to renew your licence in Japan, you get to attend a lecture about road safety and any changed laws since the last time you were there. First time renewals (me) get a 2 hour lecture and it reduces each time to 1 hour, then 30 mins, then if you manage not to have any accidents or tickets you get a “gold” licence and are spared the lecture (apparently gold licence holders don’t need to know about changes in the law!)
Overall it was fairly straight forward… I learned that Hokkaido’s drivers are the worst in Japan, having most accidents and kill most people, but watching people weave up route 12 is enough to convince me of that! I learned that pedestrians in Japan are liable to wander out into the street. I learned that last year in Hokkaido more passengers died in accidents wearing seatbelts than not wearing seatbelts, but also that many of those not wearing them wouldn’t have died if they had been…
I also learned that most people renewing their driving licence for the first time are about 20 years old, another reminder that I am a bit different than most people here.
On Thursday we went to Zamami Island, a small island in a group lying just west of Okinawa’s main island. The ferry trip across was beautiful, clear blue seas, little sun-kissed islands here and there and even flying fish skimming over the surface to get away from the on coming tourists.
We stayed in a little family run place with our own (air conditioned!) room etc and 15 minutes walk from Furumizami beach, a beautiful coral beach with a small reef no more than a 10 metres offshore. We spent a few hours there after we arrived just swimming around, and then went back for most of Friday doing some snorkelling around the reef and relaxing in the shade.
When we checked in we were greeted with news that a typhoon was heading for Okinawa and it might miss, but it was due to arrive on Saturday the 16th and should be far enough passed for our ferry to leave on the 20th (so we could catch flights home on the 21st). But as time passed the strength f the typhoon was rising and its path changing and in the end we opted to leave on Saturday and spend the remainder of our time in Okinawa on the main island.
Photos from Naha etc.
So we are back in Naha and any more pics from here will be added to the Naha album we started the last time we were here! We will be here until the typhoon passes and expect it could be quite an experience only having experienced them on Honshu, the main Japanese island. Eventually we will head home on Thursday 21st to Hokkaido and normal life will resume!
Emily and I are on holiday in Okinawa! We flew here on Monday via Tokyo and were picked up by Emily’s sister at the airport. We have spent 3 nights in Naha, the main city, and had a chance to do a bit of sight seeing and spend some time with Seika (the sister in question) who is living and studying here.
Okinawa - Naha pictures
Tomorrow we get on a ferry and go to a small island (Zamami Island) for almost a week to relax and enjoy the quiet!Here are some pictures from our trip so far, who knows if there will be any from Zamami, or what the internet situation will be where we are staying!
The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami have not had a significant affect on life in Hokkaido. To me, in some ways watching the TV footage and hearing from others who are going to help feels like it is happening in another country. There have been stories of gasoline shortages, food not arriving, people panic buying goods and worrying about radiation levels, water being cut off, electricity rolling blackouts and all kinds of other things going on in Japan, but in Hokkaido, at least in Ebetsu City, there has been nothing like this. One supermarket had a sign telling us we could only buy 20kg of rice per person and one pack of toilet paper, but we don’t need that much at one time! For most people, life has returned, even continued, as normal here in Hokkaido.
We ourselves are, of course, praying for the people in Tohoku, giving money where we can and helping out others directly involved in helping where we are able. But our church position has meant not being able to go with the team of OMFers who just got back from Iwate prefecture to help clean up and provide food for people in the area. The church pastor of 33 years has just finished and a new pastor is coming today, we are the “link” between the two in terms of filling in and helping the new pastor get up and running.
One affect it did have was on entertainment and media, for about a week after the earthquake, regular TV shows were put on hold and every channel was showing 24 hour news coverage of what was going on. In itself this was a noble effort in keeping people up to date of the dangers that could be coming their way, of government messages regarding safety and “life-lines” (electricity, water etc). But after a few days Hokkaido it meant brisk business for local video rental shops. For some people it has meant feelings of anxiety and concern did not subside and even people relatively unaffected by the earthquake have been considerably disturbed by the continue flow of media.
I hope this post doesn’t seem too flippant, I don’t mean to take anything away from the disaster that has occurred in Tohoku and Kanto, many people are suffering greatly, mourning family members, neighbours, friends who have been swept away. Many people have lost their livelihoods and homes, wondering how to build for the future.
Really the truth is I want to blog about a TV commercial… Since the earthquake, understandably, companies don’t want to be associated with the images of suffering and destruction that have been on TV, and so have pulled their commercials. The result is the Advertising Council of Japan have been given a LOT of airtime for their commercials, including this particularly irritating one about why you should use everyday greetings to make friends (the message isn’t irritating, the constant playing over and over of the same tune grates a bit though). The ads are beginning to return, but aside from news reports in the regular slots, the ever present AC ads are one of the few every day things that reminds me of the disaster that happened just a few short weeks ago.
But it also means the run of a particular favourite of mine was cut short. It’s a commercial for a product to keep pollen out of your nose called Ion Block. Last year it featured a few pollen grains dancing along singing “At last! We’ve arrived at the Nose!!” only to be taken out by Ion Block at the last minute and told not to come back again. This year it is back with “This year too, we’ve arrived at the Nose!” and another devastating tackle, and Ion Block is joined by his mentholated “cool” friend.
There is a TV show here in Japan dedicated to answering just that question. Well sort of…
The show “世界で誰も見たことない対決ショー ほこxたて” (“The Showdowns that no one in the world has ever seen before Show! Spear x Shield”) is based on a Japanese word 矛盾 which literally means “spear” and “shield”, but together means contradiction. There is a proverbial example of the law of non-contradiction (see the title) in Japanese about a spear that can penetrate anything meeting a shield that can’t be penetrated.
But this TV show takes things purported to be un-somethingable and sees if they really are. Last night was an unbreakable chain for securing expensive motor-bikes vs a cut anything industrial set of pneumatic shears (attached to a massive digger). Of course the unbreakable chain snapped like a twig. But to it’s credit it was it’s second appearance having survived a pile driver, “cut-anything saw” and even mining explosives in a previous show.
Other competitors have been a man who can move so slowly and un-human-like that a motion sensor system that can detect any human movement can’t detect him. It did. His nose twitched, and you can see it at the bottom of this post. Another was a type of metal so hard no drill can drill a hole in it against a drill that can drill a hole in anything, a second outing for the metal block. It remained hole-free and the drill company had a bit of a repair bill for a rather expensive, burned out drill.
Last week was an international outing with Blendtec of willitblend.com fame being pitted against an “unblendable” dried fish fillet (鰹節). The blender had one minute to blend the fish to powder, but didn’t make it, so that is one you won’t see on their website!
As if it couldn’t get any better they have a panel of comedians and entertainers who vote each week on who they think will win, then in true Japanese TV style you can watch their faces for reaction while you watch the rest of the show, just in case you can’t tell which bits are funny or interesting by yourself. Then there are the pundits, two “experts” who make calls based on their scientific backgrounds. One of these is a professor who’s scientific understanding has lead him to get every one wrong so far this series (that’s 7 in a row as of yesterday’s show).
The whole thing makes for a great bit of TV and for an interesting cultural experience, which you too can enjoy with this clip! The slow moving guy is actually pretty incredible!
Not exactly. In a few weeks flat3d.org will expire and I won’t be renewing it, preferring the orumu.org domain. So if you want to see this you can point at http://flat3d.orumu.org/
I haven’t been very diligent in updating and blogging really. But there has been some action on facebook and twitter! To give a short update, we are in the middle of lots of snow here in Hokkaido, it seems to snow more in Oasa than in Higashi-ku, where I used to live, but that might just be because it is a bit closer to the country-side and so the road’s don’t get cleared so well… But a guy in a digger comes and clears out the car-park, so we don’t have to shovel so much!
I will maybe post a bit more sometime soon!! No really!!!
It’s not really a big secret that I didn’t really want to teach English when I came to Japan. I told myself English teaching was really not helping to sever the damaging link between Christianity and the “west”, that it wasn’t a viable reproducible way for Japanese churches to work, that I wasn’t qualified to teach English and couldn’t really deliver on the promise of improving your English that English classes or lessons automatically bring with them…
But really, as I shared at JLC a while ago, my problem was partly that I am not an English teacher. The reason people want me to teach English is simply because I can speak it (apparently!) and I was born in an English speaking country, and I look like I was born in an English speaking country.
But a bigger part was just pride – I didn’t like that the most valuable thing a lot of people recognised in me was something so coincidental. There are millions of people born in English speaking countries and any one of them could do English classes as well as I could, if not considerably better. And what about the years I spent at school and university, learning how to program, develop software, work with databases, troubleshoot IT issues etc… Isn’t that something not everyone can do? Shouldn’t I do that while someone who knows how to teach English teaches it?
But the fact is the English is not the most important part. I am a foreigner in Japan, I stick out and am noticed everyone assumes that foreigners speak English. So that is what they come and look for when they see me. I’m not wearing a sign that says “Bachelor of Engineering” or “Master of Divinity” or even “Tries to play the saxophone”, but I am wearing a face that says, or at least people assume it says “I speak English!” And so that is what I can use.
So, in the spirit of swallowing my pride and using the tools that God has given to me, we (Emily and I) are running a kid’s English “club” (I still am reluctant to make the “class” promise that says you can learn anything from me!) and helping mums and kids from the church meet other mums and kids in the area, going to the English Speakers Group at the local university as a kind of living example of how to pronounce things (like towel, or eight… ha!) and inviting them to our apartment for pizza, or taking them to the Hokkaido Centre for one of FM Zero’s international nights
But basically what I have found is that there is no reason not to use the English card where it is appropriate. It isn’t taking away from other opportunities, I can still speak Japanese with the people I meet when we aren’t studying, I am really enjoying my weekly IT time and cleaning up the office systems here, and also thinking about some exciting ideas with our RD about how to use IT to help smaller churches without pastors to worship each Sunday.
About the only thing that I am dreading at the moment is JLPT N2 in December, and the practice in November!!
A lot has happened since I last wrote something of any length on here…
In July I graduated from OMF’s Japanese Language Centre! This means I have finished their course and they need space for new people… Well not exactly, I also wanted, if possible, to graduate before I got married so all the aspects of new life could start together. I am not sure if this was a good idea or not though!! But it has all worked out well so far! Technically then I have been working at Oasa Church and doing IT work for OMF since my graduation, but things have been so turbulent with moving apartment, getting married and so on that it is all only really settling down now!
That’s right! I’ve moved apartment! Now I am out in Oasa rather than in Sapporo City itself. Oasa town falls within Ebetsu City, which is the next city to the east of Sapporo. It is a bit more country side than where I was before, which was much more semi-suburban city-ish! But it seems like a nice place to live, we are very close to the church we will work at (as opposed to taking two trains and an hour like before) and a fellow missionary who has gone on a 7 month-or-so home assignment has lent us their car for the winter, so it is all pretty convenient! at least at the moment!
You probably noticed the other bit of news in the paragraphs above there. Emily and I finally got married on the 21st of August 2010! We had the ceremony in Sapporo Fukuinkan church in Sapporo city, it was a great day with a lot of friends and family to share it with!
Then we went down to Ibaraki on the 22nd and had a good old (Japanese style) barbecue with those of Emily’s family and friends there who couldn’t make it up to Sapporo.
Then we headed for Northern Ireland where we had another great night with everyone in First Antrim on Friday the 27th! It was great to be home and see everyone again!!
After the do in First we finally got some time to ourselves and went up to stay in Portstewart on the north coast! Not the most exotic place to go you might think, but for me it was very relaxing and a great way to spend a few days and for Emily it was a pretty out of the normal holiday (half way around the world from her home!). And it is hard to beat the north coast really!!
We left Northern Ireland, spent a evening and a night in Dublin and flew back to Japan, got back on Saturday at 10pm Japan time…! Time to sort out the flat and get everything organised. Lots of legal bumph to get addresses and names changed and all that kind of stuff to do as well!
So that’s a bit of a summary, spurred on by 5am jetlag wide awakeness! Once we get the apartment sorted out and all the stuff done we need to get past this week, hopefully there will be some photos and more info for those who are interested!
Today has got to be the furthest I have travelled and returned home within one day… I got up at 6am to get the train to the airport, flew to to Tokyo and got the train into town, then in the evening was back at the airport flying back and getting home to Sapporo just now at 11pm! ”What did you forget?” you might ask… But forgetfulness wasn’t the reason for the trip. The whole event was a highly organised and coordinated trip to go to the British Embassy (they only have an embassy in Tokyo and consulate in Osaka) to apply to get a CNI (Certificate of No Impediment) which will let Emily and I apply to get married here in Japan. According to the website I had to attend an “Interview” at the embassy, which I had to apply for (an application so I could apply to get the document I need to apply to get married…), but the whole ordeal took a matter of minutes, with the short walk down the hallway to the next room to pay the fees I was in and out of the embassy in around 30 minutes! All that travelling for 30 minutes!!
But hopefully it will be worth it! I took stamps for them so they could send me the certificate in the post rather than going back again to get it, and I got a form that I need to fill in and post back to pay for the actual certificate as I won’t be there to pay for it on the day of issue. Strangely they wouldn’t let me pay for it while I was there and had the cash, but rather I have to send it. We had a brief discussion about how I could just go outside and fill in the forms and post them in that very day which would only take a day or two off the actual time the embassy was responsible for my money… So I will maybe wait a little while before sending the form in, until that point I was quite impressed by the efficiency of the embassy, but not being able to pay in advance was a sharp jerk back to the reality that the small patch of land I was on was technically British (is it?) and I wasn’t not eager to please and super efficient Japan for that half an hour! Hopefully it will process and work and I won’t have to rush back to Tokyo with a few days to spare before we actually get married…
Anyway! A few days ago I upgraded my (already ageing) iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0 and it was lovely for a little while. But today’s trip to Tokyo tested it to the limit. I was listening to music and catching up with podcasts (and Bill’s latest messages from First!) while finding my way with maps and GPS, looking up train times online, writing texts and an email or two, tweeting the odd tweet and even watching a YouTube video or two at some points of non-activity. This was normally not an issue, it could do all of these things fine, and probably still can as long as two don’t happen at once! But after a short time using it, it started to be unbearable. It was very slow responding to key presses, particularly on Japanese input, it ground to a halt more than a few times apps were crashing left right and centre and even once it needed an all out reboot!
So long story (slightly) short: I want to go back!!
But it isn’t easy. From looking around it seems that I will basically have to go through the “jailbreak” process to install the older version 3.1.3 of the operating system… So my question is, should I just jailbreak it? My reasons for not doing it before were that it just seemed like too much hassle, and the little risk involved was probably not worth any of the benefits…
But if I am going to have to do it anyway to get back to functionality maybe I should just do it? Has anyone out there jailbroken their iPhone 3G and have any experience? Good experiences? Bad experiences? What are the risks and what are the main benefits? Would Softbank go nuts on me? If I went to the apple store (urgh) would they restore me back to 3.1.3 or tell me I should be glad to have 4.0?
This past month has been pretty busy with language school, wedding preparations and so on all taking up time. We also had the OMF All Japan Conference in Jozankei, Hokkaido, last week. I was part of the tech team for the conference and it took a bit of preparation and work while we were there, but everything seemed to go well, except for Tre’s laptop! It was great fun roping Oliver and JP into helping out too! (Thanks guys!) So you’ll forgive me for not updating in a little while!
Japan Field Conference is a time that all of the OMF missionaries in Japan come together and spend four or five days listening to teaching (Patrick Fung, OMF’s General Director), have fun (in the pool and onsen!) and fellowship (over delicious food)!
The field conference actually only happens every 3 years, the years in between have regional conferences instead and we are divided into Hokkaido and East Japan regions.
But this field conference had something special. A team of short ter missionaries came out from Norn Iron to run a kids programme for all the missionary kids!
The team was mostly made up of people from Helen Lyttle’s church, Bloomfield Presbyterian, but also had 3 other guys, Mark, Roger and Jonny. Jonny of course being known by aliases such as Silly McSilly, Marvin the Minstrel and now also Buzz McLightyear!
Now that conference is over I have the priviledge of hosting Roger and Jonny in my flat for a few nights before they head back to Tokyo and on home to NI. Today I took Jonny to Oasa to see the church and meet some of the people. Then we went to the local university’s festival to sample some local delights and see the Yosakoi Dancers performing.
Tomorrow we will be taking the team to a nearby lake and volcanic area, I am looking forward as I haven’t been to that area before either!
The service today at church is the last part of my post title. Here in Japan remembering those who have passed away is a major part of culture, and also of Japanese Buddhism. As in the west such dedicated official rememberance is not part of our culture (we prefer more personal rememberance of Granny and Grandad), and because Christianity doesn’t revere ancestors as Japanese Buddhism and Shinto do, it seems as though we Christians don’t care about our ancestors to many Japanese. Which is a reflection of culture rather than faith.
So to enable Japanese Christians to faithfully remember their parents and grandparents without compromising their Christian faith, churches often buy an area in a graveyard for interning ashes of members. Then once a year they have a special service to remember those who have been called to heaven before them. This service is a very serious affair and is very moving. Pastor Horita gave a short description of each member who had passed away since the church began (it is a bit over 30 years old) during his message and after the normal service there is a short one at the grave site.
This tradition fills many gaps that a plain western Christianity would leave in many people’s expectations and hopes. A Japanese Christian’s non-Christian family might expect to have religious ceremonies of rememberance at the temple and this could result in the deceased Christian being worshipped as a god or spirit. It also shows non-Christian family members that Christians do care about those who have been before. And finally it is just a touching way to remember grandparents and parents who have passed away and honour their memory! But it is a bit unusual to be in the service without knowing what is going on!
