Flat3D

Winter sports!

As you know, living in northern Japan has the perk of being able to go skiing and snowboarding without having to fly somewhere, so I won’t go on about it again!

On Saturday a bunch of students from the OMF language centre hit the slopes at Teine with all our gear and our resident snowboarding instructor!  JP and Nora came to Japan from Germany with OMF and JP shared his testimony at a Olympic themed night for students last week telling us how he came to faith after breaking his back and missing out becoming a professional snowboarder.

It was a great day and thanks to JP for teaching us what we really should be doing!

Snowboarding 2010

Microsoft SeaDragon

I’ve just been playing a little bit with Microsoft Seadragon…  It’s pretty cool!

Click more to see one I made of a panorama from our holidays in the summertime! More »

Tags: high res, panorama, Photos, sea dragon, senjojiki, 千畳敷

Surf envy…

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a beach near the Ferry Terminal Emiri and I went to Ibaraki from.  We were celebrating Stephanie’s birthday (A JLCer with Pioneers Mission from Canada).

The beach wasn’t the cleanest of beaches, quite a few of Japan’s beaches or coastal areas that haven’t been turned into cliffs have the misfortune of being dumping grounds for the Pacific’s garbage…  That combined with prolific fly-tipping in Japan and more relaxed views on garbage dumping in other east asian countries brings a lot of garbage to Japan’s coastlines…  This beach wasn’t so bad though, most of the drift was wood and natural stuff, but the odd piles of plastic bottles, a tv here and a sofa there, probbaly dumped and washed up in a storm.  This particular beach also had the privilege of being next to a ferry terminal and a port that is home to an oil processing plant!  But, all things considered, the water was pretty clean, and pretty nice temperature for swimming!

JP, a surfing and snowboarding missionary, was along with us, the waves were pretty small, but there were a lot of surfers out in the water.  I had a serious bit of surfing envy!  The beach was fun, and I did a bit of swimming and even brought the volleyball to the sea to have some fun, but the sea isn’t nearly as much fun when you aren’t catching waves…
So I’ve been searching for surf kayaks on yahoo auctions…  I need a kayak, a paddle, a car, wetsuit and all the gear….  I don’t think it’s going to happen!!

Here are some pics from our day at the beach!  It was still fun, and I got a bit of sun too!!

Saturday at the beach

Tags: beach, birthday, envy, japan, jlc, sand, sea, sofa, surf, want

Summer Holidays – Week 2 – Aomori

Over the past weeks I have had a lot of things I wanted to blog about, I thought there and then, “This would make a good blog post!” however, I usually forget to blog about them.  Which is probably for the best as often things that I think will make a good blog post turn dull and boring when I get my typing fingers on to them!

The big news of the past few weeks however is that in the second half of my holidays, for which Emiri and I went up to Aomori on our way back to Sapporo, we got engaged!  After three years of getting to know each other and ultimately seeking God’s guidance, it was finally the right time.  I had hoped to propose to Emiri on her birthday, but as it landed on a Sunday and we were back in Aomori, Emiri had been really looking forward to going to the various church services she had been part of for years, and helping out at as she spent her last months in Itayanagi helping out at the church there.  So my plans were postponed til Monday, maybe we could go to the seaside and find a nice quiet spot on a beach…  maybe we could have if the heavens hadn’t opened and poured all day!  We ended up going to see a (mediocre) movie, but having a very nice dinner at a shabu-shabu restaurant in Hirosaki.
In Japan the traditions before getting engaged are a bit different to the UK, so when I went to talk to Emiri’s father about the whole thing the week before in Ibaraki, he was extremely helpful and understanding.  At the end of the day I think our approach ended up somewhere lost between the UK and Japan, but regardless of cultural affects we were both aiming to arrive at a place where we were both clear as to what was happening and had expressed any thoughts and asked any questions.  The four of us (Emiri’s parents, Emiri and I) ended up sitting down and having a good talk about the future and how things would pan out etc.  From my current understanding , in Japan usually the guy proposes and then together the pair seek approval from parents (on both sides…This is all a bit complicated and would take a bit to explain here, so I won’t bother…)
Anyways, upshot of all that is we are engaged!

So here are some photos of our time in Aomori, and I will post some on Flickr for all the folk behind the great firewall who can’t see the picasa ones!

Summer ‘09 in Aomori

Tags: aomori, engaged, holidays, summer, summertime

Summer holidays! Week one – Ibaraki

Here are some pics from the first week of my holidays with Emiri, we went to Ibaraki and stayed with her parents there.  It was a good week and below is a link to some photos with lots of captions!

I just realised that although Emiri’s littlest (although final year in highschool) sister, Seika, was there too, but she was studying everyday (in summer holidays!) from early morning to late at night so she could do well in university entrance exams!  So there aren’t many pics of her, but I am not sure it will necessarily be a summer she wants to remember!!

Anyways, here are some pics:

Summer ‘09 in Ibaraki

Tags: blueberries, duck, emiri, family, holiday, ibaraki, japan, lucky, raspberries, soba, summer