Still Cold

Despite the fact that the sakura are now out in full bloom, we still have cold nights and mornings. It is nice to see the sun burn away depressing shade, but we still have to turn the heater on first thing in the morning and at night when the cold creeps back in.

I managed to retrieve a hinamatsuri photo from my phone:

Hinamatsuri cake

I captured the last snow of the season near the end of school. It is still cold enough to snow up north, but here the weather should only get warmer.

The last snow of winter 2010

Last Monday, it was a public holiday. We went to Kochi and had a picnic at One Park. We also looked at the animals at the small zoo there. There was a "bird show", with falcon trainers sending a bird between them. It flew really low over our heads and even caught a training pigeon in mid-air. Afterwards, people queued to hold the falcon and take photos.

Holding a peregrine falcon

On our way home, after shopping at Aeon mall, I saw the following pimped van. It was worth a keitai snapshot. ;)

Pimp my van

Next weekend is Easter. Yesterday, after preparing throughout the week by blowing the contents of eggs out of their shells each time we used eggs, I filled the empty eggshells with chocolate. Some are less hollow than others, but I did leave air in most. Now, we're ready for our chocolate fix!

I am also going to make hot cross buns on either Wednesday or Thursday, so that we can eat them on Friday. Easter is not celebrated in any way here in Japan. It's understandable, as it is a Christian celebration, but you'd think that with the affection that Japanese have for festivals, they would have at least embraced the commercial side of it.

So until the celebration of the greatest and most amazing sacrifice this world has ever known, be at peace. ^^

Timotheos

Blooming Kochi

It's the end of the academic school year. Everyone moves up a grade or finishes school at the end of this month. I had my last chuugakkou classes today.

We had graduation on Saturday. I attended the one for Shouwa chuu. Now that I have no school, it will just be office work between now and when the new term starts.

On Sunday, we dedicated our daughters at church. It's always important to pray God's blessing on your children. Because Eddi had never been dedicated, we had her prayed for at the same time as baby Maya.

Dedication at church - 14 March 2010

To backtrack a bit, it was my birthday on the 28th of February. On the 27th, we went out for dinner to a steak restaurant with Mika's brother and his family. We went back to their place for cake.

30th Birthday Cake

The Cutting of the Cake

A couple of weeks ago, it was Hinamatsuri, the Doll Festival. We also had cake for that and Mika's mum set up a doll display according to the tradition. Unfortunately, the photos we took have been lost, otherwise I would put something of ours here.

Hina Matsuri - The Doll Festival

Two weekends ago, Michael came for a visit. He and I watched a couple of movies and went to Yamagoya to eat. It was somewhat nostalgic (in a recent sense).

Now that spring is almost here, the sakura -- cherry blossoms -- have started coming out. The weather has struggled to warm up and we even had a smattering of snow this month. But it will get warmer, the blossoms will come out and we can enjoy new life among all of the changes that come with April.

Sakura - Cherry Blossoms; The First Sign of Spring

That's all for now. Sorry about the lack of updates. I had to cram a lot into one post. I'll try and be more diligent in posting blog entries throughout the rest of this year. ^^

Timotheos

Infrequent Updates

I'm not sure what it is, but I just don't fell like blogging these days. Even when I find myself with free time, it is difficult to sit down and do anything like this. And the more time that goes by, the more I have to try and pack everything into one entry -- or at least remember the notable things that have happened since last writing.

The photos are coming, as soon as I can find the time to work out how to get them from my phone to my computer at home.

School is school, and sitting in the office hasn't changed. I am still studying Japanese and living each day as per normal. Everyone is gearing up for Christmas and this month has gone pretty fast. Just over a month and we will be in the next decade. Contemplate that for a minute.

Mika and I went for a walk yesterday, and I kept coming back to the issue of learning Japanese. It has been a real struggle for me to motivate myself to actually study effectively or consistently. Renshuu.org has been a great help, as it is an interesting way to see what I remember. The way it is set up, where it tracks your review progress, is interesting enough to keep me coming back regularly.

Reviewing vocab -- the English meaning, kanji characters and pronunciation -- is about the highlight of my Japanese study. Sure, I delve into whichever chapter I am currently studying, from time to time; but I just feel as if I am not getting anywhere. It's been an uphill struggle the entire time since I began studying 14 months ago (from September last year, when my first JET-based study book arrived).

Part of me really wants to improve and be able to have a conversation in Japanese, if not be able to read and speak to people to improve more and more as I absorb more of the language. But the difficulty of it all, and having to read things over and over, only to not have them make sense or see how to utilise them, or even remember how they should be used or what they mean, has dissuaded me from getting enthusiastic enough about learning the language to really make good progression.

Things just do not make sense. The whole structure of it is so alien and the thinking behind how to say things doesn't even make sense to me. But I will keep trying and keep slowly making my way through my textbook, and keep coming back to review words and their kanji and what they mean.

I don't do enough speaking or listening practice. I think that's pretty obvious. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I don't ever see the opportunity to. Japanese TV? It's really boring and pointless. What they show on TV doesn't interest me. It all seems so foreign and uninteresting and doesn't make sense at all.

Speaking to people? I try to do this, but if they ever respond -- which of course is a pretty normal thing to do -- my brain freezes as I struggle to pick out the words that I know. And even recognising words doesn't really help, as I don't know the form, the tense, or the context within which they are being used. Not to mention that I have absolutely nothing to say to people to begin a conversation -- and blurting out random sentences from a textbook would only make people think I've lost my mind, I think.

That said, there have been the occasional times when I've been able to involve people in what I am struggling to grasp. And I do ask people -- especially JTEs at the junior high schools I teach at -- to explain things to me, or to check my attempts at Japanese sentences, or even to just try and elicit a response from them so that I can better understand what it is that I'm learning and practising and trying to embed into the language centre of my brain.

It's not all negative. I don't want this to be a gripe post about the near impossibility of learning the Japanese language. Perhaps I am just not happy with how seldom I tend to practise speaking and/or listening to the language. When you live in a country where the language is different to your own, you are supposed to have more opportunity to learn the language. But that just hasn't been the case here. After 15 months, there is so much beginner stuff that I just don't know, and it is frustrating week after week to not make any progress, or to make progress and then realise that I've forgotten what I should have learned, or don't fully understand it.

There was a festival in Nakamura from Sunday. Why it wasn't happening on Saturday didn't really make sense to us, but we found out that it hadn't started when we went into the city then. It was nice to go over and do some shopping, though.

Yesterday was a public holiday. We just stayed at home while Eddi's grandparents took her over to the festival. It was simply a lazy day for us. I even baked cookies from some cookie dough I had made the previous day. :)

So we have a four day week, I don't have Taisho chuugakkou today because Kitazoe-sensei is away, and I don't have any school on Friday. It's a good week!

Well, back to my headache-inducing studies / internet browsing. ;)

Peace.

Timotheos

A Year In Review

My experience here in Japan seems to differ somewhat from other people's. Not only am I in a rather isolated place, but culture shock has never been an issue for me. Sure, I have been surprised at some of the things that I encountered here, but nothing really life-changing -- in the sense of cultural differences and adjustments -- has occurred. Getting married within a year of coming to Japan was pretty huge (and unexpected), but that's beside the point. :p

And in reverse, I really can't see myself having to readjust to life in New Zealand, if we move there in future. If culture shock was the boredom of not having a laptop on arrival or experiencing a very chilly Christmas, then reverse culture shock will be surprise at petrol costs or how cheap milk from Pak 'n Save is.

When I write a book about my experiences in Japan, I'll have to exaggerate everything, including my sudden plunge into Japanese society. But the truth is, I don't feel as if I interact with Japanese culture enough for it to really affect me. All of this bowing and being polite hasn't really rubbed off on me yet; and I have passed the one year mark.

Mind you, the language sure is taking its time to sink in. You'd think that after a year I would be highly motivated to dive into my books and really focus on shoving Japanese into my head so that I could communicate. But without the dire need to converse in Japanese, the motivation just hasn't come. But I'll get there -- I know I will...

So yes, it has been over a year. Which means that life will begin to repeat itself. This last week was Kochi's infamous Yosakoi festival again. I, however, didn't see any coverage of it. I did see some people practising when my family were here, though.

Then, of course, is the upcoming Ayu festival, which takes place around these parts. And then we will be graced with various summer fireworks displays. This year, we plan on seeing a bigger display than Nakamura can offer.

Mika and I still have two houses between us; we will hopefully be able to paint Mikey's old place next week. She is back at work on Monday so it might have to wait until the weekend. I just want to be done with this whole split between two houses arrangement that we have going on. We are both still paying rent plus all of the utilities that come with having a place -- twice. So, the sooner the better for us, both financially and as a family.

Yesterday, I had a migraine, so was resigned to take a day off and suffer in pain. My head actually started hurting on Wednesday afternoon, so I finished work an hour early and went home to bed. Mika was away for Tuesday and Wednesday nights, staying with her brother's family at their new house in K-city. I didn't eat between Tuesday and Wednesday lunchtimes, but after talking to my wife on the phone, she encouraged (read: ordered) me to go to her house and make something to eat. Which I did, despite the agonising pain in my head. It was also good to get out and about, and I was able to recover enough to not have to go back to bed after returning home.

It's no wonder I suffer like this, though, sitting for so long in front of a computer screen. I should be dividing my time between browsing, learning and preparing. It would actually be quite wise to get onto more preparation for the new term, as I may not have as much free time during the week to prepare shougakkou lessons. It seems that I have a more permanent schedule after summer, teaching at four shougakkou consistently and an extra chuugakkou (Taisho). Because now that Michael has gone, they need me to fill in at least some of the gap -- the new ALT is living in K-town, which makes teaching all the way out here too difficult, I guess.

On a final note, the weekend is upon us -- well, pretty much. Mika doesn't want to do any driving this weekend, after all the driving she has done this week. I am going to assume that that means no long-distance travelling, which puts the idea of looking for a bed and/or table out of the question; at least for now.

What's most important for us at this stage is getting the go ahead to paint up the place we are moving into so that we can begin moving our stuff in. My biggest issue is getting rid of these JCF library books. We are still looking for a replacement librarian. Hopefully it will be someone in this prefecture, as that would save a whole lot on courier fees (if I were able to take the boxes somewhere myself).

Here's to continued beautiful weather!

Peace.

Timotheos