what do you see?

I've just added some new (external) links under my nav links, to churches and christian organisations I've been connected to/interested in. Have a look.

It's still warm, I don't know what's going on.
But colder at night. I know because I sat on a bench in Odori park yesterday evening waiting to meet Christine, and had to get hot can cofee to survive, after taking pictures for a couple of women who wanted to pose with the TV tower behind, eating sweetcorn in an exaggerated fashion. This is extremely common.
This week is pretty full for me, lesson-wise, and another couple of demos still to come too. I'm very pleased with progress. All in all, we're having a really good time here now!

Mmmm natto and rice! I'm getting used to the cloying sticky stringiness of the stuff, and can now eat it before noon, although not quite for breakfast yet...if you don't know what natto is, take a look here and here - search Google for it too, it will be fun...Although it's not eaten as a health food here, I suppose it might catch on as that in other places.
I realised I'd totally forgotten to mention Grace Church, just a couple of minutes away from us, where we started going on Sundays recently - they've accommodated us amazingly, considering their service is only in Japanese, giving us a bilingual bible and even some of the song words in English. And two of the English speaking members sit next to us and translate most of the sermon! We felt guilty at first, putting them out for us, but have been assured of their willingness, they are very friendly! It will be good for our Japanese too. Dad will be preaching there during October, which will be great, for them, him and us!

Japanese Autumn sweets are here! 

Well there's not been much of excitement to report compared to the typhoon experience, although it was nowhere near as bad as the USA hurricanes recently. Work's building up steadily, and things are all sorted out for the Grand Visit of the Parents next month...
I met some people today in a restaurant on the 3rd floor observation floor of the Sapporo TV tower, actually a pretty good view from there. We'd been skeptical before and not even bothered to see what it was like, or find out that it was free to go up there. I apologise!

tree on power lines 

big tree down near Kitara 

sign in the river 

bikes devastated 

When I said remnants before I was very wrong. It was just the beginning.
Sorry about the bitty posts, they were from the mobile while I was out in the storm. I took the subway home around 11:15 this morning, but couldn't walk back home from the station, it was just too dangerous, so much debris flying about, trees falling down, and winds that almost knocked me over, especially howling down narrow streets! So I made for the underground shopping malls near Susukino and walked up to Sapporo station again. Christine managed to get there too eventually, running the gauntlet of the streets for a few blocks. Fortunately there were lots of officals about helping people, but she had to keep ducking into buildings for shelter. People were very comradely apparently. We stuck it out at the station, having lunch and shopping (hard life eh) and then it suddenly calmed down around 3pm, so we went home!

We took a lot of pictures in the park, so many trees were down there, it was crazy. The typhoon apparently had the strongest winds ever recorded in Sapporo! And we were out in it :-(
I'll post some pictures tomorrow I hope. There are some here but mine are better ;-)
Anyway, our internet connection and TV was off until about 11pm, not been on for long. Bed now, more tomorrow...

We are OK. But this is BIG. Stuck at Sapporo station now...

Now posting from mobile...This is crazy. Almost got blown over. I just saw a tree come down, just missed someone. Now OK in subway.

The remnants of typhoon 18 are right over us at the moment, pretty strong remnants too. The building is shaking, I'm not looking forward to seeing what it feels like in an earthquake!

I went to a free preview screening of "I, Robot" tonight, which was interesting. It was at a screen in a local TV company building, I expected something small but there were hundreds of people there. Sorry I'm too tired to say more now actually, bye!

Saw a fire yesterday, somewhere in the Susukino area when we were walking back from town. Suddenly lots of fire engines started appearing, converging on a certain point, so of course we followed and found people staring, and smoke pouring out of the 2nd floor of a big building, about a 500 yen bar. Then we could see massive flames inside. They quickly got it under control in the usual way (...water) but then they started raising those massive ladders, one was incredibly high, I think just to get an aerial view to see if the fire had spread at all.

Anyway, it's Friday again! I've got a fairly busy afternoon and evening, so I'll need to do a lot of lesson planning and things this morning.

More music stuff, Rie fu is pretty good. I saw her video yesterday on MTV. A little bland, but some good song-writing touches. She sings the same in Japanese and English, if you know what I mean, and her history is pretty interesting too.

While I'm on the topic of J-music, there's a new song by Gagle (japanese only link!) called Rap Wonder DX which has captured my imagination, in the realm of slightly silly J-rap, there's a sample here again only Japanese on this page though.

This is the new web-site of Utada Hikaru, who seems to have suddenly relaunched herself as just Utada. Anyway, I'm not particulary into her music but I didn't think it was too bad either until today I heard what could possibly be the silliest lyrics ever written, on her new video "Easy Breezy":

You're easy breezy and I'm Japanesey

*ahem*

Finished! I'm now the pround owner of shiny new Sapporo license plates. It took another 3 hours today - first I was rejected again and had to go back to the ward office because the original proof of address they gave me was no good (they hadn't put my previous address on it). Then back to the nameless centre, to various windows, taking tickets, waiting for numbers to appear on dot matrix boards etc. etc. and finally I was given a screwdriver to remove the old plates with. Then, once they were handed in, a walk across the road to a different building for more forms, and finally with the car to a third building to collect the new plates and borrow another screwdriver to fit them with. A final check under the bonnet by an official and I was done.