Egg Drop and day 1 of Thrift Shop

Today was the first day of Thrift Shop at Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ).  This day is usually a Friday, with a half day of school.  We follow a half day schedule, which means each of the classes are about 25 minutes, so we have the full slate of classes over the course of a half day. 
Sometimes these half days will allow for other activities such as Science project day or field day.  Today it was Egg Drop day.  Each of our Middle School students had to design a container that would be able to hold a raw egg.  The idea is to have their container with the egg, drop from CAJ's third floor balcony and hopefully the egg would not break.  Any eggs that survived, would be cooked up and they can eat it.  Here are some pictures of the egg drop. 

Grade 12 Science students helping out.

Third Floor balcony

Audience watching on the bleachers

Blue tarp to catch any messes.

See the black box?  That's one of the containers.

Phew the egg survived!

Can you see the egg drop container?

Recording the results.

Egg didn't survive this time.

Taken from the second floor.

This Thrift Shop the MS Band decided to prepare a Flash Mob.  Beginning at 12:15 pm, the first student began playing and others would continue to come and join.  It was fun to watch this happening.  There were a few cameras ready to video tape this, but I was up on the third floor balcony and video taped it.

It was a very busy day with lots of activity.  Saturday morning, I will be going to Thrift Shop to help out when the public is able to come and shop.  It'll be a busy four plus hours, but it will also be fun. 

A few pictures...

Camera isn't quite as good on the close ups.  It's starting to break out of the bud.

So, yesterday I decided to go and take Hana for a walk.  She's usually up for a walk.  I took my camera along to take any pictures of things as I went along.  Spring is starting to show up in various stages. 

Lots of buds still closed

See the egret? 

A little closer.

Blossoms!  There were still some buds on this tree.

Planted in a garden.

The sun was out, and as you can tell from the following pictures, there weren't too many blossoms out on these trees yet, but lots of buds in various stages. 

 There were a number of groups at the river, some families and some children just playing in the water.  There were a couple of fishermen too. 

He was busy reeling in a fish! 

Some were jumping into the water and some were just sitting on the edge.

There is a small festival by the river each year at about this time.  They were busy setting up their booths. 

After walking Hana, I went to Rogers.  It can carry some interesting items.  I found one item that made me think of WCA's History night cabin in the grade 5 classroom.  I was always looking for something that would resemble a fireplace.  Here I found something that could work!  Only part that doesn't work so well, is the whole distillery thing on top, but I think it could be removed.  :) 

That is a picture of a distillery, but I liked the way they made the flames look real. 

This week has been spring break.  Each morning, or so it seems, there is some group of young students that pass by my apartment.  I believe this is a yochien (kindergarten) group of students.  They are required to wear the same coloured caps.  They sometimes use a cart where students can stand as go on a field trip! 

They all had yellow caps.

There was a group of students walking, all holding hands before this cart, but I missed getting a picture of them.  It's quite cute to watch. 
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday.  I am privileged to be the lector reader for the 8:30 am service.  The passage I'll be reading is Psalm 118: 1 - 2, 19 - 29.  We are moving into the Passion Week, the week we remember Christ moving to his death on the cross, burial and Christ victory over death when he rose from the grave!

Today's adventure

Spring is definitely here!  This is a fairly close up picture of blossoms.  I was able to occasionally get a whiff of blossoms occasionally. 
This morning I decided I wanted to bicycle to Costco in Iruma.  It is about a 17 km ride one way.  I have bicycled there before, but it has been a year or so.  I decided to rely on my iPhone's map's directions, which was probably my first mistake.  I was remembering the way and came to a spot where I knew I usually turned right, but the directions was telling me to go straight.  I didn't stick to my gut and went straight.  It wasn't nearly as good of a ride.  There wasn't much bicycling space on the road.  I do believe I have been on parts of that road before since I recognized parts.   
As I was moving along, I was coming to the end of the directions, but wasn't seeing Costco anywhere!  The other thing that was happening is my battery on my iPhone died.  That left me using only my instinct.  I did get to a place I recognized and was able to make it to Costco.  I wasn't terribly far off, maybe a couple of kilometers.
One of the main reasons for going to Costco was to purchase a couple of items and to change my membership from the US to Japan.  Membership in Japan is a bit cheaper and actually since I use my card here, I thought I'd switch it to Japan.  Fortunately they usually have people who speak English and I got some help filling out the forms and getting my picture taken.

There it is!

Here's my official card.  I am now a certified Gold Star Member of Costco Japan. 
After paying for my items and packing them in my bags, I brought them to my bicycle and discovered that I had a flat tire.  It would be a 17 km walk back home.  I put my bags in my baskets and decided to start walking, thinking I would probably run into bicycle shop at some point. Remember my iPhone had died, so I was not able to search for a bicycle shop.  One of the things I learned living here, is that there usually is a bicycle shop by a train station.  I ended up walking to the Sayamagaoka station.  I was walking around quite a bit and truth be told, I kind of thought, "I'll just start walking home."  Wouldn't you believe it, as I made that decision in my head, I came to a bicycle shop.  The older man even spoke some English. 

My bicycle in the forefront, it looks pretty full in the store.

It took about 20 minutes.  He found a leak in my tube, put a patch on it, I gave him 1000 yen and was off to bicycle home. 
All tolled, I was gone for almost six hours, had walked/bicycled a total of about 35 kilometers and have a new membership at Costco!  I am very grateful that it was a beautiful, sunshiny day.  I'm also glad I am home.  Ready to put my feet up and watch a movie. 

Second Harvest Japan

Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ) received an email from an intern working at Second Harvest Japan a couple of weeks ago.  Second Harvest Japan is an organization that "aims to create a safety food net in Japan."  They are involved in four different programs.  They have a Harvest Kitchen where they make meals for and hand out to homeless folks in Ueno park.  They have a Food Bank where people can come to pick up food.  They also have a Harvest Pantry where they store food and distribute to families who are in need.  The fourth program is promote advocacy and development of food usage in Japan.  Second Harvest Japan states that there are about 17.8 million tons of food a year wasted in Japan.  You can find more information on their website:  Second Harvest Japan.
They asked if CAJ would be interested in having a food drive to support their efforts.  The Middle School Student Council, a High School Chat group, and the grade two class have decided to work together to collect food.  We thought it would be a neat idea to tie this in with Lent. 

Food drive area for High School and Middle School.

The Middle School began collecting food last week.  The High and Elementary school began collecting food this week. 

The Middle School Student Council decided to make a thermometer to monitor how much food we have been collecting, by weight.  

The students took most of the food on the table and weighed it.  Based on what the students have weighed thus far, we have collected 113.6 kg!  Whatever food left on the table pictured above, has not been weighed yet. 

CAJ's mission is, "equipping students to serve Japan and the world for Christ."  This is one way we are trying to equip students to serve Japan and the world for Christ.  

Saturday activities

What do you usually do on Saturdays?  I try to sleep in some.  By the time I get to Saturday, I'm kind of tired and would like to "get caught up."  I know, the theories about keeping the same sleep routines, but I do like to sleep in, especially if I've had a couple of nights where there wasn't as much sleep as I may have needed.  It is one of the reasons why I am so grateful for weekends. 
I also use Saturdays to do things I may not have time to do during the week.  One thing I do is laundry.  I am fortunate to have a decent dryer, but I usually only use it for the towel/underwear load.  The rest of the laundry gets to dry naturally, meaning they hang to dry.

I have a bar out on the deck where I hang my shirts to dry.

Inside, I have this handy hanging contraption I use to dry my pants and such.

The sweaters usually have a space on my love seat, under my towels to dry. 

Cleaning the apartment is one of the things I tend to do on Saturdays.  I do my dishes and vacuum, some dusting.  It feels good when things are in order and clean.  
Today I also went on a bicycle ride.  The weather was nice and sunny, about 11ᵒC.  I rode with Ruth and we went on a route we have gone before. 

Here's the map of our route.

There is a planned Starbucks stop on our route, before we head back.  It's a great place to stop and enjoy a cup of coffee.

This Starbucks has a nice place to sit outside.

One of the things I enjoy about Japan, is the vegetable stands.  You can find these stands in many places usually not too far from fields that grow the vegetables.  The vegetables are seasonal, so if you're looking for cauliflower, you may not find it.  Today I bought these vegetables.  I hope to use the spinach for making dinner this evening. 

Big radishes!

Spinach

For the rest of my Saturday, I intend to work on some homework for my class and probably watch a movie.  It was uneventful, but I'm happy with what I did today.
So on a total side note, this past Tuesday evening I went to Harajuku to church to attend a Bible study.  On the way, I walk past a Softbank store and there in the window I saw one of these robots that were featured on CBC's The National.  These robots were used with sick children in a Toronto hospital.  I thought it was amazing that within days of watching that show, I saw this robot! 

I hope you are able to enjoy your Saturday and that you have an even better Sunday! 

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.