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- Tim

1) I saw the equivalent of the Japanese raccoon, called a “Tanuki.” It’s actually not a raccoon, it’s a canine animal. I guess they are pretty slow, though, for a canine, because I could outrun it. I trailed it on my bike, then when it stopped, I stopped to, to grab my camera from my pack. It turned and stared at me then ran off. I chased after it. Through the bike racks. Around a pile of wood. Under a fence (@#!! darn thing!!) which I then hurdled. Next to the KGK clubhouse. I cornered it. It tried to climb, then fell off. Then it dashed back under the fence. (I hurdled it again.) And, I lost it in the big mess of bicycles. It was totally cool. I asked Erei and she said that they are very rare in Sendai (YES!!!)

2) Sakura are blooming. I took photos. I will find somewhere to post them. I will take more photos when I go hannami (flower viewing) hopefully this sunday w/friends

3) Taxes April 17th (I just finished mine… I think…)

4) The fact that I needed to print my forms out, and the printer was locked in Dr. Biwa’s office was a great source of stress for me (as well as the other grad students who needed supplies in the room). Until I PICKED THE LOCK!! (Ba-dum-pshhhh)

5) I caught a lizard (tokage) on the way to school this morning. And I took a picture of it. So, now I am… Dancing the Tokage!! (hahaha… ok nobody will get that).

 6) Really tired. My hands have been shaking a lot recently. Wonder if I’m eating wrong. I decided I should start eating more vegetables. I’m really in shape though… leaner than I was in XC (probably because Gwinn Commons isn’t around) and I hammered the guys I went hiking with. Whatev’s.

7) REMEMBER JOHN, HIS ORAL EXAMS ARE COMING UP. GANBATTE BUDDY!

So, today I went hiking up a mountain, Izumi Gattaka, about an hour and a half from Sendai. Nothing really tall, but it’s got a decent view and some snow. My friend Milan (The guy w/the blonde hair, he’s Hungarian) invited me, Fumi, and another friend Peter, who will be seen later. (Fumi – isn’t that a great name? It’s like the onomatopoeia FOOM! + ee)

This was the, uh, “path” we started out on…

Later, however, the path turned to snow

(blast… 96%) and Peter caught up w/us.

We eventually came to a snowy bluff where we took some photos

We got to the top, at which there were no interesting views unfortunately. But Milan and I decided to blitz over to the next peak (Izumi Kita, on the right) while Peter and Fumi would slowly work their way back.

We dashed down the valley between, headed up the next side and came to an area with some really large and cool old twisty trees.

We found it we did… the pathway throuuuugh the miiiists…

(Many who know me know that my favorite weather is mist). Anyway, Milan grabbed the camera. Here’s the Genki shot you asked for Marian, look pretty jolly here, I think

The peak. Woodeedoo, it’s in a cloud!

Anyway, after hanging out for a few minutes, we flew down the hill and managed to catch Fumi and Peter before we reached the bottom.

We got back a couple minutes before the last bus back to Sendai was leaving. Tanoshikatta! I took some panoramic shots from the peak that was not in the clouds. However, they just weren’t that spectacular… the shots of Inawashiroko from the Fukushima trip were way better, and so were the Yamadera shots. Sorry – if I had more space, I’d post them.

 Speaking of: I am now basically out of space. I might buy some more space, I need to check how much that costs. I think, what I will do is set up a new wordpress blog, Oegukin II or something, though I’ve been thinking “Hamburger is my life” would be a great title as well. I can just post a link to it from here, would people object to that? I’ll miss my good ole’ oegukin blog though.

 In other news, I finally got my wind array model for porous tubes working today. What’s so cool about that? Well, most infrasonic arrays now are porous designs. It was by far the hardest to model, however, because you have to basically treat each pore as an input which means you get gigantically huge matrices. Running the program is the computer equivalent of getting kicked in the… well, you know.

Lastly, I should finally have something interesting to post after this weekend, I’m going hiking w/my friend Milan. I might try to get some of my friends from elsewhere (which, as an interesting sidenote, happens to be the term used to describe all places un-reachable to you within a specified time limit, if you were travelling at the speed of light. I think. It just occured to me as I typed.) and we’ll see if they want to come.

Oh, and the Kawauchi Bible reading club finally added me to their mailing list. It’s all linked to their cellphones, so it’s like an autofeed of what everyone’s doing, with a refresh rate of like half an hour or something. Pretty sweet.

 And lastly – John’s first prelim is in 2:40 minutes.

The guy threw up the ball to serve and just pounded the ball at her. I thought: “gosh… he’s gonna kill her.” But she hammered the ball back. Hard. You could have knocked me over with a feather. And, I watched as they volleyed probably 8 or 9 times back and forth, and she returned it in kind every single time.

In other news, I am having a very hard time concentrating.

Stout and loyal friend John Lang is studying like a madman this week for his PhD prelims, on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, with orals following.  He requested prayer, (for good reason). Please do so. He is not one to slack off, and he is more than qualified. So, pray that he has calmness and recalls things well during the test.

“Much study wearies the body.” – Solomon

 On a completely different note. Up until this point I had been completely accident-free on my ultra-hip $90 ”wendy cycle.” You may laugh that I’m riding a girl-framed bicycle with a basket on the front, but you might laugh less when you see me passing everyone riding up Aobayama. At any rate, accident free – then in a span of 15 minutes today: 1) Took a corner waaay to fast.  Yardsale.  2) Crashed into a parked bicycle. Which fell very loudly onto a potted plant. 3) Nearly got hit by a limousine that didn’t see me. And all this was downtown in a heavily populated zone, which means I had dozens of very dignified Japanese people staring at me in their “crazy foreigner” manner that they always do whenever we do something stupid.

 sigh.

Yesterday was Song’s goodbye party. His parents were arriving at the airport, and he was supposed to come to the church afterwards, so his friends came and waited for him. He was surprised that so many people came. I wasn’t – he is obviously a very loved guy. Gosh… I’m gonna miss him, but they are really going to miss him: he’s been there for six years. That’s basically most of the lives of a lot of the kids who were draped over him the whole time. Here’s some pics:

Song walks in the door…

And jokingly runs out of the room

We head in to the kitchen, and the children pile on him

One thing I love about this church is how much they love kids. They’re always running around yelling screaming, playing kakurembo (hide and go seek), or in the arms of one of the parents

We eat some good food, and then head into the sanctuary. A lot of people had prepared songs for him, that was totally cool. First, some of the girls came up and played a song:

Megumi and the pastor’s wife, the saintly Masako-sensei, sang a song for him too…

 Then… darn it I forget his name but he’s a the quiet type except when he plays guitar. He’s really good, and he’s a stud, he came up and played a song for Song, too:

AAAnnnd… (not over yet) then Masato-san and some guy I don’t know, and the guy on the right who’s name I also forget but he’s the pastoral intern came up and sang something too. (They make music at every opportunity)

Finally, Song jumped up there and started playing music with them as well. The girl behind him on the Piano is Ai-chan. She is Masato’s older sister, and a really really good cook.

After singing, we went into the kitchen again and had a great feast of deserts. We sat in a big circle and passed around a microphone. Everybody said something about Song. I couldn’t understand most of it, but one thing I didn’t realize was how long Song had known some of these people. I kept hearing “roku-nen mae” or “go-nen mae” (five years ago, or six years ago), followed by a short story and a bunch of laughter, then Song laughing or covering his face with embarassment. It was good times. And it became apparent how much they are really going to miss him.

Then, we headed into the sanctuary again, and took pictures:

Song and Kawakami and Masako sensei:

And with his parents, also:

Anyway… after giving him a gifts (a whole truckload…) and saying goodbyes, everyone started taking off. This little fella liked my camera. I had a protective lens on it, so I let him run around pretending to take photos.

After a few more jokes and stuff, I finally left, w/Pearl who was also there. Thank you Song! (I know you read this sometimes…) Kaeru no tameni, kanashiidesu, demo, kore wa nozomi desu: Ten ni, subete Kami-sami no kodomo ishoni aimasho. Shinji kudasai! Moshi america ni ikimasu, watashi no uchi kitte kudasai! Domo arigatou, ganbatte!