Middle School Brain Bowl!

Last week I went with nine Middle School students from Christian Academy in Japan, to the Kanto Plains Middle School Brain Bowl.  Brain Bowl is kind of like the Reach for the Top TV show, or It's Academic TV show, except it's at a Middle School level, and the teams are made up of students from different schools.

I apologize for the blurriness of the picture.

There are three different rounds.  The first round consists of ten to twelve questions.  The questions can be a variety of topics, ranging from math questions to questions about novels, to science questions to geography questions.  The groups have an answer sheet and write the answers down to the questions as they are read.  There is about 30 seconds between questions and about a minute after the last question is read.  The papers are collected after each set and graded, points awarded for correct answers to the teams. 

The second round is what we call the buzzer round.  Two teams compete against each other on the stage.  They have about ten questions and the first student to buzz in and answer the question correctly will receive points for the team.  There were twenty-four teams, so we had twelve sessions in the buzzer round.  The questions were from a variety of topics. 

The third round consisted of what I call, theme questions.  One of the sets of questions were visuals of famous landmarks from around the world.  Each group had to identify the landmark, the city and the country that the landmark is located.  Another set of questions were sound bites of anthems from various countries and they had to identify which country's anthem was played.  Another set of questions were country outlines that were skewed and the students had to identify the countries.  Another set were pictures of rare animals and they had to identify the animal.  Some of the questions were difficult to answer and I know I wouldn't be able to answer them all. 

The students had fun making new friends and working together with other students.  I am sure they were able to learn a lot. 

CAJ team

The CAJ team funny looking picture

We were at AOBA - Japan International School in Hikarigaoka.  This year the event fell on a Japanese holiday and their students were not at school that day, so it did not inconvenience the running of their school that day.  We are in the gym for the competition and for lunch the students were outside.  It was a nice day, so they were able to be out on the play structure or sitting at tables to playing on the grass fields. 

Image used for the Brain Bowl event. 

If you are interested, you can go to this link that has study stack questions to a variety of topics. 

Winter Break

This past weekend was a long weekend for staff and students at Christian Academy in Japan.  It was our winter break.  The VanderHaak's invited me to come with them to the cabin up by Tagajo, near Sendai.  I do enjoy going to the cabin as it usually is a chance to relax.
It was pretty windy there when we arrived and stayed windy until yesterday, Monday evening.   There have been a lot of construction in the area, but the beach seems to change every time I come back to visit.  They have completed much of the berm, at least halfway down the beach. 

Lone seagull

Part of the beach still being worked on.

Completed berm, so far.

A close up of the berm.

Here they are taking the casings off of the cement jacks.  This is across the road from the beach.   On the beach they have used these cement jacks as barriers and a way to control the erosion.  
Each morning when I got us, I took Hana for a walk around Takayama Beach Company property.  Tuesday morning,  I took my camera along and took some pictures.   You can see that it was windy the last few days, lots of ripples in the sand.  There are some interesting rock formations.

Beach is calm today

Interesting combination of rocks

Distinctive layers

Ripples in the sand

Power plant towards Tagajo

On the last day, before we left to go back to Tokyo, we stopped at the look out, which gives you a 360ᵒ of the area.  At this look out there is a shrine.  I took a couple of pictures of this shrine, as well as taking a couple 360ᵒ videos.

You can see Shiogama through the trees

Add caption

Looking East

Here is the videos that I put together. 

I didn't get as much homework completed as I had hoped, but it was still a great time away from Tokyo.  Tomorrow, it's back to work, although I've had a couple of teachers text me, warning me about snow in the forecast.  😃 

Some videos

Over the last few months, I've been taking pictures and some video of some of the interesting machines, trucks and such around here in Japan.  Some are quite similar to what you would find in North America, some are a bit different.  I have some friends who have children that may find this little video interesting, so I put it together.  If you're interested, you're welcome to look at it.  The best part is the little firetruck you find in the back of the big firetrucks.  I couldn't get a video of one coming out of the big truck, but I did get pictures of the little truck in the back of the big firetruck.

It was fun to look for pictures or take advantage of videoing machines at work.
This past month, I decided to go with each of the homeroom classes on their Homeless Outreach.  We would meet at 5:45 a.m. at the Higashi Kurume station and go down to Ikebukuro to pass out lunches to the homeless who stay in the station during the night.  One of the mornings, I ended up staying at the wickets in the Ikebukuro station and took this time lapse video.

Here is a compilation of pictures and videos of our homeless outreach during the month of January. 

I have just begun our winter break.  I have been invited by the VanderHaak's to go with them to the cabin up by Shichigahama tomorrow.  I am looking forward to a time to catch up on my class's assignments, maybe even work ahead as well as spending time relaxing, listening to the sounds of the ocean and spending some quality time with the VanderHaak's, Gibson's and well, my walking partner, Hana.  :)   

DEARAW

Every couple of months or so, I have what I call a DEARAW (Drop Everything And Relax At Winnie's).  I am trying to provide a time and space for MS staff at Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ) to gather together in a different setting and for a purely social purpose.  Yesterday, Friday, January 23rd, was a staff work day; a day to prepare report cards for the semester.  I thought it may be a good opportunity for teachers to spend some relaxing time after the day at my apartment.  There was also a Senior Talent Show in the evening, so this time could provide a nice reprieve between working on report cards and attending the talent show. 
On the previous occasions, my theme tended to be anything with nuts, since CAJ's campus is nut free.  I made peanut butter cookies, had peanut M&M's, regular peanuts or almonds in a bowl, and other snack type things.  
This time however, I thought I would try something different.  Many of the staff are not familiar with some of my 1950's Dutch cultural heritage.  (My parents immigrated to Canada in 1952.)  This time I thought I would make oiliebollen, which is like a Dutch cake donut. 
Here's how they are made:  

Yeast and warm milk.

First you warm up some milk and add yeast and let it do its chemical reaction thing. 

Flour, salt, apples and raisin mixture.

Next mix together, flour, salt, raisins and cut up apples.  I knew there were some of the staff that do not like the fruit, so I made a separate batch that did not have apples and raisins. 

Eggs and milk mixture.

In another bowl, mix together eggs and milk and add the eggs and milk mixture to the flour mixture.  After that you add the milk and yeast mixture.  The batch I made was very large, so it took some arm power to mix it all well.  Once it is well mixed, you let it sit for an hour. 

First ones out of the deep fryer.

While the dough is rising, you do need to heat up the oil.  This is the part where my apartment gained its new oil fragrance, which remains the next few days.  I do not have a deep fryer and was able to borrow one from a friend.  Thanks, Rie! 
I was also able to borrow an ice cream scoop (Thanks, Martha!) and used that to scoop up the dough and deep fry them.  Just before you eat them, you sprinkle on icing sugar. 

There were some left over...

As people came through the door, I would deep fry whatever their preference was, with or without raisins and apples.  By the end of the evening, I still had a quite a bit of dough left.  You cannot store the dough, so I continued to deep fry more oiliebollen until the dough was gone.  I let them get cold and put them in ziplock bags to store in the freezer. 
Over all, I believe it was a success.  Those who tried them, said they were delicious.  I was so glad to be able to share a bit of my heritage with the CAJ staff.  I am very grateful for all the work they do for our students.  I am blessed to see how God uses these staff members to make an impact on CAJ's students.  I work in a great place!

My Sabbath

One thing I mentioned to the Middle School teachers this week, is to remember to have a sabbath this weekend.  It can become difficult sometimes in our busy lives.  I know as I'm writing this, there are a number of things I could/should be doing, but I am trying to rest from my labours.  This is what I did today.
This morning, I attended the 8:30 am service at Tokyo Union Church.  I was scheduled to be the lector reader.  The passage I had to read was 1 Samuel 3: 1 - 10 about God calling Samuel.  The New Testament reading was from John 1: 43 - 51, about Nathaniel's calling.  The sermon focused on our calling to invite others to, "Come and see." 
At the end of the service, we had an evacuation drill.  Probably a good thing to do when living in a place where earthquakes are quite possible.  I didn't take any pictures.
Once I reached home, I bicycled over to the VanderHaak's to take Hana for a walk.  I haven't walked with Hana for a couple of weeks, so it was about time I did that again.  I took some pictures as we walked down by the river.

I was surprised to see some families having a bar-b-que down by the river. 

 Here is the entrance to the park where Hana and I usually walk. There were a few people walking. 

 I saw some chickens who were seeking out food in the garden. 

This couple were busy doing exercises.  The man in the light blue jacket was actually doing what sumo wrestlers do before they begin their match.  He certainly didn't look the same size as the typical sumo wrestler.  The lady in the cream coloured jacket was stepping up and down on the curb. 

There's a nice little pond.

Can you see the ducks?  They were close. 

Our path from the park.

Right along the river. 

There is my walking partner, Hana and her shadow.

Hana and my shadow.

Japan tends to be quite conscientious about erosion.  Many of the hillsides and rivers have reinforcements so that there is minimal erosion.  See the various places where there are reinforcements placed so that they control the erosion.  

 Two ducks swimming on the river.

The sun was out today, it was a nice day. 

She's looking quite happy. 

Surprisingly she is ahead, much of the time she's stopped to sniff something.  

There is the photography club.

Most days that I walk along the river, there are people with cameras and long lenses taking pictures of wild life at the river.  

If you look closely, you can see the rope, that is how they define the parking spaces in the gravel parking lot.  Pretty clever, eh? 

Looking down river from the bridge that we cross to do our U-turn.

Want some firewood?  Ok, not sure it's up for grabs.

Here is a family that were flying a kite. 

Our route.

I have this app on my iPhone that tracks my walking/running routes.  I can listen to music, which I was listening to Kayte Grace's new album, but when you stop, you hear, "pausing workout," which happened quite regularly, since Hana wanted to stop to sniff.  We were moving at a fairly slow pace, 14.53 minutes per kilometer. 
By the time we arrived back, Brian and Bette invited me for lunch, which I couldn't refuse, since it was chicken fajitas.  It was delicious!
This upcoming Friday, I've invited the Middle School teachers over to my place.  I thought it may be fun for us to make oiliebollen (dutch donuts).  Since it is the first time I'm making them here in Japan, I thought I'd do a trial run this afternoon.

The dough with raisins and apples.

Deep frying them. 

Finished product.

 I am finishing the evening off by writing this blog post as I'm watching the movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.  I plan to head to bed in the next hour or so. 
It has been a good day, starting with worship this morning, being in God's creation, spending time with friends and being able to do some things I normally don't do during the week.  I thank God for weekends and Sabbath days.