The Last Few Months

Hey there. It’s been a long time hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ll try and do better about letting you know what is going on in my life in Japan and first I’ll start with this story, which is just a taste of the many funny little things my students say to me every day:

Setting: Kindergarten playground
Who: Me and a small group of kindergarten students
Language the conversation was in: Japanese
Translation for you: English

Cute kindergarten girl: “Austin sensei! You’re from America, right?”
Me: “Yes.”
Cute kindergarten girl: “But you live in Japan?”
Me: “Yep. I live in Mito.”
Cute kindergarten girl: “Wow, that’s amazing!” (many students think I commute
to Japan every day for school from America and are surprised when I tell
them I live in Japan)
“You came to Japan on a helicopter, right?!?”
Me: (laughing) “No, not a helicopter?”
Cute kindergarten girl: “An airplane?
Me: “That’s right!”
Cute kindergarten girl: “Oh, that’s what my mom said…” (she was so sure she was
right about me coming to Japan on a helicopter and that her mom had no idea
what she was talking about and very disappointed when she found out she
was wrong)

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote, although I can’t remember when or what I wrote about last time. [I was not connected to the internet when I was writing this so I couldn’t check] I’ll try and catch you guys up on some fun/important things that have been happening in my life since July.

My parents were able to come and visit me back in July! They arrived on July 3rd. On the 4th, after I got finished with a long day of teaching my highly impressionable students all the bad words I know in English, we went with a group of American and Japanese friends to a good Japanese friend’s house for a delicious dinner and fireworks, which got rained out…The next day, on the 5th, we had a great 4th of July barbeque/volleyball/surfing party at the beach and then dinner again at another friends house! Mom and dad stayed for 2 weeks with me in my little apartment and we had a great time going to Tokyo, Nikko National Park, the beach, hiking, lots of parks, etc. and we ate lots of good Japanese food. They even came to school with me for 2 days and got to meet some of the cutest students in the world and eat school lunch with me and some of the students and be treated like movie stars for a couple of days. Having them there even re-upped my status back to movie star rather than the strange looking giant with blonde hair, a huge nose, and blue eyes who hangs around the school all week and tries to get kids to speak English with him and miserably fails at speaking Japanese. It was a fun two weeks and after they left my tiny apartment felt huge! I was glad they got to experience a little of where I live and what I do everyday in Japan. Another bonus was I was expecting to have to spend a lot of money while they were here, since Japan is super expensive, but dad paid for just about everything so I actually saved money while they were here! Thanks Dad! FYI, gas in Japan is about $7/gallon. [update: it is down to around $5.80/gallon at the moment and it feels like heaven. Sad huh?]

My sister, Melody, was also able to stop by and visit me on her way home from the Philippines in July! Her trip overlapped with my parents for a couple days and we actually all went to Nikko together. We did a lot of the same things as I did with my parents: Tokyo, the beach, hiking, school, and she even went to the onsen (public nude bathing in a natural hot spring) with some of my friends. It was a lot of fun having her here as well. My students still talk about her sometimes. They think her name is really cool because the word for a musical “melody” is the same word in Japanese.

A week and a half after Melody left to go home I left Japan to head to Thailand again! This time I spent most of my time in a different area than where I was back around New Years. I also went to Cambodia! I got to travel with a great group of friends, Zane and Carla Schwab, Paul and Devan Weger, and Wade Miller. We spent a couple days in Bangkok sightseeing and meeting the friends I made last time I went, then we took busses/tuk-tuks/taxis from Bangkok into Cambodia and all the way to Siem Reap. Once you cross over into Cambodia you can tell you’re not in Thailand anymore. There are people begging everywhere and once you get through the horrible immigration process at the border, where they try to squeeze as much unnecessary money out of you as possible, the road from the there to Siem Reap is a basically one long, muddy, strip of huge potholes and cars/big trucks/bicycles/animals/motorcycles with numerous dead animals hanging from the back driving on whichever side of the road is available and going however fast they desire (and getting stuck if it is really muddy). We stayed in Cambodia for a couple of days and spent one of those days at Angkor and saw Angkor Wat and a bunch of other cool temples, including the one where Tomb Raider was filmed. Angkor is a really cool, huge, old temple complex and you’re allowed to climb all over most of it. It’s so big you can’t visit all of the temples in one day. I think it is definitely worth the hassle of getting there to see it once in your life and if you don’t mind shelling out the extra money you can just fly in and avoid that whole crossing the border process.


After being in Cambodia for a couple of days, we headed back into Thailand and then took a ferry to an Island called Koh Chang (means Elephant Island). We stayed in bungalows right on the beach for about eight days I think. It was a much-needed time of true relaxation and fun. I could really use another week like that right now. We spent most of our time relaxing, sleeping and eating delicious Thai food at an assortment of restaurants on the beach. During those eight days I finished up a book I had been reading for a while and then read through two Harry Potter books as well, all while sitting on the front porch of my bungalow with my shirt of, with the salty smell of the ocean in the air and the sound of the waves crashing onto the shore. We did more than just relax though. We played a lot of cards, rented scooters that were a lot faster than the one I drive here in Japan, took a day trip on a boat to some small islands for some great snorkeling, and did a treetop ropes course in the jungle. Anyways, it was a great vacation!


The last couple months I’ve mainly just been working. But I’ve squeezed in a few fun things as well. One day I went to Disneyland with Janet, Catera and Port and had a grand ‘ole time, I had my school’s sports festival and I’ve also had the opportunity to climb a couple of mountains in the Nikko National Park area. At the end of August Zane, Smitty, Wade and I drove to Nikko together and hiked up Shirane san. It is the highest peak in Nikko and in the northern half of Japan. It was a long, difficult day hike with lots of steep ups and downs and we summited two other smaller peaks along the way. It took about 7 hours total. I am in horrible shape. It was an awesome hike and a really cool area but, sadly, it was very cloudy and we could barely see 15 feet in front of us on top of the mountain.

My other hike was last week. Monday was sports day, a holiday in Japan, so I didn’t have school and this time I went alone because everyone else was busy with something else. I got about 2.5 hours of sleep on Sunday night (Monday morning), woke up at 4am and was on the road by 5am. Because of the holiday traffic it took about three hours to get to the trailhead of the mountain, Nantai san. Nantai san is a volcano and also one of Japan’s sacred mountains. It took me about 2.5 hours to hike up to the top. The hike was basically just straight up the mountain with hardly any switchbacks and a 1200 meter elevation change and because it is a cone shaped volcano it got steeper the closer I got to the top. Once again I was reminded of the pitiful state of my legs. Thankfully this day, unlike the last day I went hiking, the weather was almost perfect. The temperature was a cool upper 40’s/lower 50’s and the sky was clear. It was a little hazy, but I could still see a lot. On the way up I met a group of English speaking Germans and on top I met a man who I think was American who had a Japanese wife. We exchanged favors and took pictures of each other on the peak. On top I could see beautiful mountains all around, including Shirane san which I hiked before, and also Lake Chuzenji down below. It was beautiful! I stayed on top and rested for about 40 minutes and ate some sandwiches, chips and string cheese (a tradition of mine) for lunch while all of the Japanese people on top had brought their portable gas stoves and were cooking cup ‘o noodles. The hike down only took me about 1hr and 45mins and then I headed home in horrible traffic. It took about 4.5 hours to get back to Mito instead of 2 or 2.5.



So that’s a brief overview of what’s been going on in my life the last few months. Right now I’m struggling with the decision of whether to sign on for another year working as an English teacher in Mito or to go home or even on to some other opportunity that might present itself in Japan or another country. I am still really enjoying living in Japan and don’t really want to leave and still want to greatly improve my Japanese language skills, but I have been having days just about every week when I feel like I couldn’t do my job for another year, but then the next day is usually great. I hate big decisions like this. I think what I really need is an American summer vacation. I think I just need some time to recharge, but I don’t really get much of that here. I’m pretty sure that if I decide to go home, after I will have been home for a while I will be wishing that I were still in Japan. I still have things that I want to do here and I definitely feel like God can still use me here. I have to make a decision by mid November so please keep me, and the decision that I’m going to make, in your prayers. Also, more importantly, please keep Katie Blake and her family in your prayers. Katie’s father just had an unexpected heart attack and passed away within the last week. Katie went right home the next day and will be there with her family for a few weeks I believe. Like I said, it was very unexpected. Her mom and dad had just been to Japan for a visit during the summer and he seemed to be doing great. Katie’s sister is also going to be having a baby sometime in the near future and I’m sure that adds to the difficulty of this situation.

Once again, sorry it took me so long to get this post written and posted (I actually started it over a month ago). I will try and keep a more frequently updated blog. I know I say this every time I post, but this time I actually mean it ;)

The Holidays

For those of you wondering, I am alive and well. For those of you who don’t know, I was pretty stinkin’ sick two weeks ago. I arrived back in Japan from Thailand on Friday, January 4^th. After spending a week in Thailand’s “cool season,” 90+ degrees F, Japan’s winter, and my walk from the station back to the church building where I parked my bike, seemed extremely freeeeeezing. I shivered the whole way and wondered how I was going to survive the, even colder, ride home on my bike. Anyways, the next day I went for a run (first one in a long time) and came home tired, cold and feeling funny. This funny feeling lasted the rest of the afternoon/evening and I went to bed around 10pm thinking, “I’ll just skip class at church in the morning to get an extra hour of sleep, wake up feeling better and then go to worship service.” Little did I know I wouldn’t get even a wink of sleep until abour 4:30 or 5am due to the fact that even though my bedroom was 70 degrees I was shivering, every time I laid down my stomach felt really sick, and I had to get up every 15-20 minutes to go to the bathroom or throw up. Most places in Japan, apartments included, do not have central heating. My bedroom was warm, but my kitchen/bathroom was probably around 40 degrees. Let me tell you, the toilet seat in an unheated bathroom during the winter is cold in itself, but tack on a fever and chills and you’re asking for a very unpleasant experience. To keep a long paragraph from getting too much longer, I went to the doctor the next day with my good friend Mark, found out I had a stomach virus and got some medicine. I had to miss 4 days of school two weeks ago and spent a long, boring week in my apartment while everyone else was at work. I made it back to school on Friday and, after eating only broth, soup, crackers, toast, and drinking Aquarius (a sports drink) for a week (thank you to my wonderful friends who brought me movies and things to eat), I finally got to start easing some real food back into my stomach on Saturday and Sunday.

I’m feeling great now and was even able to make a trip to Tokyo with Wade on my holiday last week on Monday. We went up to the top of “Tocho,” the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and the second tallest building in Tokyo. It is one of the only places in Tokyo with a free observatory. This was my first time to get a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, but sadly it was a cloudy day and, although we could see mountains on the other side of the massive concrete jungle, Mt. Fuji was hiding in the clouds. I was a little disappointed so I guess I’ll have to go back up again another day. We also went to China Town in Yokohama and Ogawa-machi. Ogawa-machi is in the middle of Tokyo and has a bunch of sporting goods stores filled mainly with ski equipment at the moment. But most importantly we ate a good ole’ American lunch and dinner at TGIFridays and Subway, my favorite reasons to go to Tokyo. Thank the Lord my stomach was able to handle real food by then.

So, the actual reason I started writing this post was to tell you a little about my trip to Thailand. I guess it’s time to do that now. Thailand was lots of fun. Thankfully, I stayed healthy the whole trip and didn’t get sick until I got back home. I went there with one of my Japanese friends, Minako, and we met up with a bunch of her Thai friends while we were there and traveled with some of them. We spent three full days in Southern Thailand around the Krabi area and 3 full days in Bangkok. On the way to Thailand we had a layover in Taipei, Taiwan and on the way back we had a short layover in Hong Kong and a 12 hour layover in Taipei. Because the 12 hour layover was at night we couldn’t really do anything so we slept in the airport.

Southern Thailand was really beautiful. In our area there were huge rocks and cliffs jutting out of the ground all over the place, land and water. Minako and I met her Thai friend, who we called Kani chan, at the Krabi airport and thanks to some connections we were able to stay for those three days with a Christian family in their home. The father was out of town on business, but we stayed with the mother and their 3^rd grade daughter who was really shy at first, but pretty cool and fun to be around. It was really cool to spend time with them and get to know other Christians in a different part of the world. While we were in that area we rode an elephant, went to a park with lots of monkeys (seeing a wild monkey has been a lifelong dream of mine even though one of them chased me), went to James Bond Island, went sea canoeing, hired a guide and stopped at about 4 different beautiful islands in the Andaman Sea in his little motorboat and saw some others, saw beach monkeys (who had big teeth and chased some unsuspecting girls into the ocean, which was really funny), and went snorkeling.

After Krabi we flew back to Bangkok and spent 3 full days there. I met about a million different people, with names that I couldn’t pronounce, while I was there and on the first night we went to a New Years party with a bunch of the Christians from that area and it seems like I met about 900,000 of the million people while I was at that party. This party basically consisted of a bunch of people eating for about 5 or 6 hours and then some skits and door prizes. Let me tell you, Thai people love to eat. I’m sure I gained a few pounds while I was in Thailand, but then I lost more than that when I got home and at ate near nothing for a week. My teachers kept commenting on how thin my face was when I got back to school, and that’s with my beard. The next few days, we did lots of stuff with a bunch of cool new friends. Of course we went and saw lots of famous places, like the Golden Palace, and went to some markets. I also rode in a few taxis, which were always exciting and amazingly cheap, and also a tuk-tuk. Everything is cheap in Thailand, not only taxis. I could watch a new movie for about $3, compared to the $20 it costs in Japan, buy a 10 piece chicken nuggets meal with fries and drink at McDonalds for $3, and at the mall in the food court I could eat for a dollar or two.

Oh, I guess I should tell you one more story. Let me lead into it with this: mosquitoes in Japan and America don’t usually want to bother with me. I guess I have sour blood or something, but if someone else is in the room with me they will just ignore me and if they do happen to bite me it doesn’t leave a bump or itch. My first 4 or 5 days in Thailand I heard lots of people complaining about the mosquitoes, but I didn’t get a single bite. Then one night at the Ram (short for another word I can’t spell or pronounce) Christian Center, where I stayed in Bangkok, it was pretty hot so I slept with the window open and fans blowing on me. I had done this the previous night and had no problems. (Quick fact: most places in Thailand don’t have air conditioning or hot showers for that matter.) Back to the story, I went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning with over 130 dark ugly mosquito bites on my face, neck, arms, and hands (yes, I counted). These weren’t little welts and they weren’t itchy, but they were just these little, dark, very visible bumps all over me. They didn’t start going away until about 5 or 6 days later. The funny thing is, though, these creative super Thai mosquitoes left a happy face made with bumps on my right hand. I didn’t know how it was possible for 8 mosquito bites to just somehow be in the perfect shape of a happy face. There were two eyes, a nose, and a mouth which was made out of 4 bumps. These were either very intelligent mosquitoes or God was leaving me a reminder on my hand to be happy even though I looked like I had a skin disease. I like to think the mozzies had a stomach ache after they got feasted on me. This is a quick version of my time in Thailand. There were many other things that happened that I can’t think of right now or don’t feel like typing because my fingers are cold and hard to move right now in my freezing cold school.

On to more recent things…my scooter, True Blue, which was a faithful and reliable, albeit slow, mode of transportation was stolen on SaturdayL. This scooter has a lot of tradition here in Mito. It was used by about 4 or 5 different people before I acquired it, more recently including my brother, Travis, and Mark Barneche. I was at Kendon’s apartment in Migawa, a section of Mito, watching a movie and some stupid person took it pretty early in the evening, sometime between 6 and 6:45 pm. Kendon’s landlord called the police and we had a powwow in his apartment with the po-po’s, otherwise known as filing a report. After this I got to ride in a Japanese police car with 3 policemen and try to explain to them in Japanese how to get to my apartment. Then on Tuesday I heard what I thought was some good news. I was told that my scooter was found and that the police had it. Then later on I was told that it was damaged and I couldn’t use it. The key hole was messed up, the seat cushion torn off, and below the key hole part of the scooter was cut, or torn, apart in what looks like was an attempt to hotwire it. There were also some other, less noticeable, problems. Right now I am using my friend Amber’s scooter since she has a car as well. The bad part is my scooter is ruined, but the good part is her scooter is faster than mine was! It kind of brings the exciting new scooter feeling back again.

Update: the scooter man picked up my bike, checked it out and told me it would cost 3 man (approx. $300) to fix it. Considering the fact that I only paid 50 bucks for it, the end has come for True Blue L. This is a very sad time, but she is being disposed of.