Typhoon Wipha

It was an unusual event, at least so I've been told.  There are few days when CAJ is closed because of weather.  We have just had our second day where school was closed.  A few weeks ago, a typhoon went right over the Kanto Plain (Tokyo is located on the Kanto Plain) and last night and today Typhoon Wipha went over us.  It began yesterday morning with the rain.  It continued to rain heavily until early this morning, but during the night the winds also picked up.  After the rain stopped, the winds continued until shortly after noon.  At that point, I hopped on my bicycle and ran an errand, taking these pictures along the way.  Here's an article about Typhoon Wipha:  Japan Today.  There are 17 people who died and still a number of people missing.  

Usually this is fairly clean, but there were some branches and leaves all along the bicycle/walk path.

I live near some hospitals and sometimes ride through because there is less traffic.  

I was surprised by the amount of branches and leaves on the road by the hospital. 

As I was sitting in my house listening to the rain and wind last night, I kept thinking about the passage in Matthew 7 about the wise man who built his house on the rock and the foolish man who built his house on the sand.  I kept singing the song in my head.  It was the one I learned when I was very young.  It reminded me to make sure I was on a firm foundation.  

Meds and lush land.

Each year employees at CAJ are required to have a physical done.  One of the days before teaching begins, there is a group of medical folks that come to school, set up their instruments and each of us goes through the process of handing in a urine and stool sample, have blood drawn, blood pressure taken, height and weight taken, an EKG, an eye test, a hearing test, a chest X-ray, and I can't remember what else.  It is all done very efficiently.  A few weeks later, we get a print out of the results with and letter grade beside each item reported on.  Well, when I received mine, I had a couple of things I knew were going to be concerns and that I would have to deal with them now.  Since arriving in Japan, I haven't had too much concern about my health.  I have been bicycling and exercising fairly regularly, but I knew that the diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol may be an issue.  So, I decided I had better take care of that.  Dr. Ishibashi does speak English and also is the family doctor for a number people who work at CAJ.  I did have a consult visit at school with Dr. Ishibashi and he recommended that I arrange an office visit.  I did so and had Nobuko (she works in the Academic Office) come with me in case there is any Japanese translation needed. The result of the visit was 3 prescriptions, one for diabetes, one for high cholesterol and one for high blood pressure.  Later in the day I went to a pharmacy (Nobuko did some research and found one that had English speakers) and I dropped off my prescriptions and had them filled.  This is what I got back...

I take one pill once in the morning after breakfast.  

I take one pill once in the morning and once after dinner.

I take one pill after dinner. 

The white papers are actually an envelop that contained the pills still in blister packs and wrapped with a rubber band.  When I picked up the pills the pharmacist did tell me how to take the pills, in English, but of course by the time I got home, I wasn't sure which pill was which, so I did a little investigating and knew that since I was given 3 weeks of pills, the one with 42 pills would be the one taken 2 times a day.  The other ones I figured out by where the stamp was to the right of where the medication and dosage was written.  I also did a google translate to figure out "after dinner" just to be sure.  By the way, the ランデラーデイニー is how they write my name in Japanese.  It's pronounced something like "randeraa deinii."  The "i" is like a long e sound like the ea in tea.  :)  I have to listen very carefully when they call my name, because sometimes I don't recognize it.  

Saturday, I went to help out at the cross country meet in Tama, for the last time this season.  It was the finals for all the levels.  It was beautiful weather, sunny and not so humid.  I took a couple of pictures.  

I hadn't realized that my brother invested in a farm in Tokyo!

Looks pretty fertile, eh? 

The soil looks dark, which I usually associate with fertile!

Tama River

Next week the top cross country runners from CAJ fly to Guam for the final competition, so unless I just take a bicycle ride down, I probably won't be down this way too soon again.  

Saturday afternoon I spent some time with Norm Overway.  He is taking a 3 week tour here in Japan.  I  was able to show him CAJ and have dinner with him.  It was nice to catch up.  Last March, his daughter, Laurie came out for a visit as well.  

It was a great week and God has blessed me by having the opportunity to be here in Japan, working in a great place like CAJ, with great supportive colleagues.  

The sun after a typhoon

The last couple of weeks, we have had a couple of typhoons not to far away.  The one thing I noticed is how bright the sun is the day after the typhoon.  It is quite brilliant!  Here is a picture of the sun on my morning bicycle ride to school, the day after tropical cyclone 18 came over us.  

It was an interesting week...

Boy am I glad God had weekends put into the weekly routines.  The past couple of weeks have been busy, with a number of different things going on at school.  Much of the activity was good, but by the time I came to Friday evening, I was glad and my body responded by taking the opportunity to sleep.  Yup, got in almost 10 hours of sleep!  
This week the CAJ Middle School standards-based reporting went online, meaning parents would be able to see their child's progress based on the standards we are teaching and assessing.  If you want to know more about that feel free to comment and I will send you an email.  It was a lot of work for our Tech folks, and for the teachers to have their reporting uploaded online, so parents could view the progress.  It is a lot of information to put online.  
Every Wednesday CAJ has chapel.  Aaron is in charge of arranging the chapel band and lining up speakers.  This past Wednesday, we had Alfie Silas and Lena Marie Klingvall come sing and speak at chapel. It was inspiring.  If you want more information you can click on these links:  Lena Marie and Alfie Silas.  Here are some pictures after chapel.  

I know you can't really see them because they both are actually not very tall in stature.  A number of students did go up to Lena Marie and Alfie to talk with them.  
The gingko nuts have arrived again.  We have a gingko tree beside the auditorium along the path to the cafeteria.  If you know anything about gingko nuts, they really give an unpleasant odor when stepped on.  This week the gingko nuts were falling quite plentifully and they were getting stepped on, really they can be hard to miss.  :)  

See how many there are!  

Close up of a couple

Friday morning I went down to the Asabu area in Tokyo for the Kanto Plain Area Middle School Principal's meeting.  It was my first meeting with other Middle School Principals.  I did come last May to be introduced as the new CAJ Middle School Principal.  The meeting was at the New Sanno Hotel, which actually is somehow related to the US Naval Joint Services.  It was an interesting meeting, introducing ourselves and talking about electives and scheduling classes.  
After the meeting, I took a 15 minute walk from the hotel to the Chinese Embassy to pick up my passport and Jacquie's passport that had our Chinese visas.  Later this month, we will be traveling to Guongzhou, China to attend a Standards-Based Reporting Summit at the American International School.  I hopped on the train to go back to CAJ, when on the Seibu line going to Higashi-Kurume, an old man saw me sat next to me and started talking to me in broken English, French and Japanese.  He seemed fairly happy, but I couldn't be 100% sure.  One of the things he mentioned was World War 2, MacArthur, and how nice Canadians were.  I was glad when Higashi-Kurume station had arrived.  Our interaction did draw the attention of others in the car.  He also kept patting me on my arm and apologizing.  :)  
Wednesday was a nice enough day and I went over to the VanderHaak's to take Hana for a walk.  I usually take her along the river and back, although some parts we walk on a road where there are a lot of garden plots.  Many times when Hana and I walk past, there are people working in the gardens. 

Not a great picture taken through mesh, but these are pretty large plants.  I don't know what they are called.

This time I was struck by how bent over this one lady was.  I snuck a picture of her as we were walking by.  

I have to admit, she was working and this may not be the way she stands all the time.  

Yes it was busy, but God did give me a good night of sleep and a restful Saturday.  Since is was raining, I did not bicycle to Tama to help out at the cross country meet, so I stayed home and did some relaxing.  What is nice is that tomorrow is Sunday and I am getting ready for a spiritual boost for the new work week!  

Another bicycle ride

I love it when I can just hop on the bicycle and ride to places unknown or somewhat known.  The aspect of just being able to see another part near where I live can be intriguing.  So, what I usually do, is pick a direction and just bicycle.  There is no real rhyme or reason for what roads I choose, except sometimes if there is a good bicycling path or a comfortable space on the road, I'll take that road.  Sometimes the path doesn't feel very safe for bicycling, I will turn on a road and change directions.  Here is the path I ended up taking.  Do notice that occasionally I end up doing a circle which I am just looking around.  :)  

This is the map, time and distance.

It was an enjoyable ride.  The sun was out and the roads weren't too busy.  I ended up on a long bicycle and walking/running path that I had not seen before, or at least remember seeing (km 5 - 13).  It wasn't too busy, but I did notice that it was following the Seibu track for much of the ride on the path.  Here are some of the views. along the way.  

It looks like a mini-road but it's for bicycles and walkers/runners.

Remember stay to the left. :)

It wasn't until I got to the beginning of this bicycle/walking path that I knew its name.  

The Tamako jitensha dō Ave.  

The reason I knew I was heading to the beginning, is that the km markers were going down as I was bicycling.  Here is the beginning of this Ave. 

It is fun to just bicycle along, but at some point I have to look at a map and figure out how to get back home.  I am very grateful for the map on my IPhone.  It's helped me find out where to go many a time.  Today was no different.  

There was one place where I stopped and took a picture.  Doesn't this look like a fun activity?  It's kind of like croquet but  the mallets are shaped like sledgehammers.  They hit the ball on the side, unlike croquet.  The balls look to be the same size as croquet, but I have no idea if they are heavy or light.  Anyway, they were all busy playing away.  

See the flags?

They were aiming for the flags which had a type of space they had to get the ball into.  There were men walking around with clip boards that seemed to be monitoring the game.  It was all interesting to watch.  

It was a good ride for a Sunday.  During part of the ride, in my mind, I was singing a variety of hymns, especially when I was going down that bicycle path.  Parts of it were quite beautiful and so lush!  It was good to see another part of God's creation.  

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

So, it's Sunday, September 15th.  Today has been a rainy day, although the last couple of hours or so the rain has stopped and I've even seen a few rays of sunshine. 

Taken from my patio door, looking up between the houses.

This is the arch in the garden.  Looks beautifully sunshiny.  

During the dry spot, I hopped on my bicycle and picked up some supplies as well as took a bit of a trek down the river to see what it was like.  The waters were certainly higher, browner and the water was flowing faster.

As you can see the plants, it looks like the water may have been higher at some point. 

This is a playground area in front of an apartment building not far from my place.  

This morning when I woke up, this is what I was hearing and seeing.  Sure was coming down pretty fast.  

Tomorrow is supposed to be Back to School Day at CAJ.  School has been cancelled for the pending tropical cyclone 18.  I've heard there is more rain and wind coming tomorrow which may make things rather messy, but I have not experienced power outages here, even the cyclone we went through last year.  

On another note, I have a tune stuck in my head, it's a song written by one of my former students, Kayte.  I have really enjoyed listening to it and I find myself "singing" it in my head as I bicycle around.  Here's the link to the video and you have an opportunity to download the song.  Fifty percent of the amount you pay for the download  two shelter projects, one in New York City and one in Washington, DC.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.  Thanks!  

Kayte Grace Music Video "All's Not Spoken"

Please feel free to leave any comments you may have.  

Through the Woods...

Today is the first day of many of the sports competitions CAJ is involved with this fall season.  I volunteered to help with the cross country.  Basically I would hand out sticks with their place number to the runners as they cross the finish line or sometimes I have entered their bib number and other info into an IPad.  Usually the meets are at Tama Hills but today we were at a park.  It wasn't as steep of a route for the cross country articipants.  

We ended up getting a bit confused on our route to the park.  I was riding with Bette and we both were using our maps on our phones and the map she received from the cross country coach.  We ended up going in one big circle, which was kind of humorous.  It was an interesting route that had great bicycle paths and some pretty lush scenery.  It was a nice bicycle ride.  

Dome from the Seibu Lions baseball team

The dam between the two lakes. 

Looks pretty lush

This was a bridge we used but parked our bicycles because the path became very steep.

We did walk our bicycles up and down this path.  

Always find some sort of shrines or temples along the way.

Don't know what they were growing here, but it was all covered with a net.

Even though we took the long way to the meet, it was still nice to see parts I had not seen before.