Yes, my life in Japan continues. Highlights include:

Figuring out that not only does my cell phone know the weather, i can detailed weather reports, complete with those nifty rain-radar (raindar?) things, and the hour-by-hour forcast. I'm reminded of the simpsons episode in which they vacation in japan- they are discussing where to eat supper and homer comes out of the bathroom and says "the toilet recommended a place called americatown". not only does my toilet not recommend anything, it lacks the ability to provide me with even the most basic, inalienable right of sitting on a pre-warmed seat. clearly the management has dropped the ball.

I now live in a home. my home, to be precise. it may not be that big, or that warm, of have much food in the fridge, but it's home. quite exciting, actually. i have a fridge, a toaster, a microwave/oven, a washing machine, a bed, a couch, and a stereo that were given to me. in fact, the only appliancy type thing i had to buy was a stove, and that was only about $40 used, instead of the $100 they are new. but, hey, it makes fire, and fire makes coffee, so what do i care? it does feel a little strange to have all these things where i once owned pretty much only what i could carry on my back. if i were to leave the country next week, i would have to spend hundreds of dollars to throw away all my furniture, i'd have to give away my car and motorcycle, and computers...the more i think about it, the more things i realize i have. it's a little burdensome, actually. in some ways i envy brent, who is currently living the minimalist life, but i guess i'm content knowing that i lived that way, and i have the capacity to do so again, if i so wish. it is somewhat comforting to be in charge of my own destiny, as much as any Christian is, i suppose...

I went snowboarding about a week ago, and, i must say, i was awesome. i mean IT was awesome... this was my second experience trying to board instead of skiing, which i have done far more times. my first shot at boarding was some years ago, and it was pretty much the worst experience of my life. i went with my siblings doug and ro, and they were gracious enough, although i eventually told them to pursure their own pleasures rather than follow my excruciatingly slow progress. we were somewhere around mt. hood, and it hadn't snowed in probably about a week. the sun had done it's insidious work, and there was probably close to an inch of solid ice over the snow. the overall result was that the entire mountain was about as soft as a parking lot. there was no "carving", in fact, there was no turning or control of any sort. i was not about to let rock-solid "snow" and complete lack of experience stop me from trying some of the most daunting courses the mountian had to offer, however. as the day wore on, my world became more and more consumed with burning pain. i'm fairly certain that during my worst fall, on what was to be my last run, and which took place over the span of about a hundred meters, i dislocated my hip, relocating it at some point before my body came to a stop. there is no way to prove this, of course, but there was definately a grinding pop from where i assume my hip-joint to be. i paid for my overzealousness for the next three weeks, limping about like i had been trampled by a bull. a bull elephant, that is...

But, i digress. this experience was much much better. the snow was not exactly fresh, and falling at high speeds definately caused pain, but it was still fairly good, and during lunch it started to snow big ol' fat flakes, and by the end of the day there wasa good coupla inches of the really soft stuff. i fell only a few times, and only one or two of those were spectacular. the cost of the day, with freeway tolls, gas, boot rentals, lift ticket, and lunch, came to about $55, which i would consider to be resonable even for american standards. i may even go again before the season is up. the board that i was using now belongs to me, and i can't help but feel that it is now somehow my responsibility to go snowboarding with it.

In other news, this weekend will see the culmination of a few months of increasingly panicked work- the JAM retreat. There are 24 or 25 MS kids signed up, which is pretty much excatly how many i predicted there would be (someone, quick, pat me on the back!), however, there are only 4 leaders, not including myself, to lead them- 2 guys and 2 gals. last year i had 6 leaders going, and we had 18 kids come, and even at that ratio things would get crazy pretty easily. that said, however, last years JAm retreat was one of the best experiences i ever had- matched only y stress camp. looking back at my career as a youth pastor, those 2 events are the ones that hold the most meaning and joy for me. needless to say, i am excited. nervous too, of course- so much can and probably will go wrong; it did last year- but i really love these kids, and i can't wait to spend 3 days with them.

And, to answer your unspoken question, me and nelle are doing great. she really is a fantastic person, and we are remarkably similar in rediculous ways. this valentines day was only the second i've ever had as a dating man, and i admit, i was at a loss as to what to do. then i started thinking about it, and came to the conclusion that culture has no right to tell me how and when to like the one that i like. so, i boycotted valentines day. i'll display my affection to my girlifriend when and how i like, thank you. i confessed these thoughts to nelle the day before, and discovered that we were of one opinion on the matter. it was quite fun to answer "nothing" when people asked with a glint in their eye what i did for valentines day, or what i recieved from my "special someone" (to quote parents as a whole). spite, my friend!

No pic with this post; my desktop is acting up- i'm actually staring at the blue screen of death right now- and all my photos are on there. not to mention all my youth ministry stuff, including stuff for the JAM retreat...crap.

Update on the apartment:

So you know that key i got? the one that was clearly not gold, even though it cost more than cocaine? the one right down there?

wrong one.

That's right- not only did i get a non-gold key for almost $3,000, it was worthless to me. if you look really closely at the little sticker on the key, you can see that it has the letter "B", the letter "I" and a 3-digit number. that number is supposed to be a 103, but the helpful little man downtown, in his enthusiasm, grabbed the wrong key for me. actually, i definitely could have made my money back on the key, since it was for the apartment directly above mine. a little late-night tiptoe, a little trip to the pawn shop, and i'd have all that money back! stupid integrity...

So i had my dad call their office for me, and they confirmed that they had given me the wrong key, but there was a key in the mailbox, which i now had the code to, and i was free to use that one in the interim. later that night, probably about nine, nelle and i went over to "break in" and have a look around- my first real look inside that particular apartment. we had been there for no more than 5 mintues when the doorbell rang. i was a little apprehensive, thinking perhaps that it was a member of the neighborhood watch informing us that they had called the police, but it was in fact a representative from the realtors office, and he had come by to get the wrong key from me, and to chitchat about the apartment a little. now, exactly how he knew that i was there, or what he was doing around there at 9:something pm, i am not certain. it did give credence to my long-standing suspicion that i live in a giant dome, everyone watches me on TV, and every interaction i have with people is scripted. seriously- how did he know i was there? how did he know that i would be there? creeeeeeepy.

in other news- my newest hottest hairstyle:

yes, i had just recently woken up, and no, i wasn't hungover.

The single most expensive thing i have bought in my life. I paid almost $3,000 for this one ounce piece of metal, which would have made sense if it were made of something called rhodium, or if it was made of solid cocaine and was in bermuda, both of which sell for about $3000/ounce. if i had wanted to, i could have taken the same amount of money (¥307,050, in case you're curious) and bought a key made of solid gold four times bigger than the one that i have, which is made from some lame, non-gold material. i move in to my new apartment on the first of the month. i'm sure once i'm there for a while i'll become much less cynical about the whole thing.

As i was considering the content of this blog, i was struck by the contrast between what i write here and what my littlest brother brent writes here, in his blog. i focus more on history of events, somehow self-deluded into thinking that i have throngs of adoring fans that want to know what fills the hours of my days. brent writes more about...i dunno. funny things, i guess. he somehow has the ability to take a seemingly innocuous event and turn it into pure comedy. the thing is, i just don't have the patience for that, as you, as a member of the throng, starving for a scrap of my life thrown from the table of my last month, can doubtless believe rather easily. i seem to have little patience even for a sterile, soul-less accounting of my days. but, like it or not, here it goes!

I flew back to the americas on or around the 15th of december. i flew standby, which is infinitely cheaper (and by infinitely i mean about 60%), and also infinitely more stressful. even the book i was pretending to read could not fully capture my attention as i watched the holders-of-tickets file past, and i silently willed them to be stricken with the pox, or the plague, or simply a "burning in the bosom" that this was not the flight for them. it didn't seem to work, as i was left in the boarding area with the other seat-jackals, willing to walk over a path of broken and bleeding bodies, capitalizing on the misfortune of others, doing whatever it would take to get that seat. and i did, albeit in cattle. but, a seat is a seat, and i promptly fell quite soundly asleep in it for the vast majority of the flight. the fact that i was in an exit row and had about 12 feet of legroom was an added bonus.

Hanging out in USA (ooh-sah) was...well, it was good to see old friends. this was the hardest i ever tried to hang out with people i knew from back in the day (sorry it didn't work out, xeryl). and, by and large, it was a positive experience. i'll admit, it got a little exhausting when i'd hang out with friend #1 at a coffee shop from 1-6, then meet friend #2 for supper at a bar and stay there till midnight. i felt a little like people expected me to be a comedian or something, entertaining them with my late-night radio-show voice, sharing my "taaaaales from the orient". hanging out with the fam was great, of course, except that many of them (doug and candice and cami...) weren't around for nearly long enough. but, i guess i'll take what i can get at this point. i got to see my niece, who is now 66% older than she was last time i hung out with her. i even got to see my finance-in-law for like...15 minutes. we were in the presence of each other for longer than that, but she was pretty much glued to the computer screen obsessing over what to register for at various places. i'm sorta surprised more girls don't get married just for the stuff. i mean, who has the strength to turn away from stainless steel icecream dishes, salad bowl sets, and veggie platters just cuz they aren't in "love"? i know i was inspired...

And then i came home. probably one of the biggest things i realized during my brief hiatus was how much i really love my life here. life's really frustrating when i'm up to my goatee in it, when every week has new frustrations, and i never feel like i'm getting any better at it, when i'm reminded by the kids that life is all about them, and whatever i was doing can stop because now the center of the universe has arrived, and deserves my attention (cynical? perhaps.) but when i leave, when i'm back in the parents' house, being told when i can or can't go meet friends because i have to use the family car, and other people need it for something they had planned last week, when i go to bed realizing that i have accomplished nothing today, i realize just how good i really have it here. when i got back, i was itching to get back to my life, my job, my office, my relationships. don't take it personally, family. i loved being with you. i loved eating meals and praying and talking and laughing. i loved putting up the Christmas lights, i loved the food (i especially loved that), i loved beating you up, i loved hiking with you, i even loved fighting with you, even though i was always right. but i definitely felt a lack of purpose, a lack of meaning to my life. i encourage all of you who don't have it to get on the ball and find it. personally, i think it's all about putting yourself in a position of Christian leadership, a position where you are building deep, personal relationships with people to whom you can teach and model Jesus. which is probably why i like being in youth ministry.

In other news, a little over a week ago i started dating a very awesome girl. she's been here teaching since before i came, and, to be honest, i've sorta had a thing for her for a while. and now that it's worked out, i feel like the most fortunate of men. it's fun when kids don't know that it's all official and they try and tease me about her- when i freely admit my feelings for her, their eyes get all big and they freak out and get all excited. then i break it to them gently that i actually don't need their help setting us up, seeing as how we're already dating, and they deflate slightly. i love that i get to mess with kids' brains as part of my job!

as post-scripts to my blogs, i'm hoping to get into the habit of posting humorous, interesting, awesome, or otherwise noteworth pictures. here's a fun one:

Discourage'd!

(sigh)

just got back from the house giver place. here's how it breaks down:

¥ 17,709 Pro-rated rent for the end of december (which i don't even want to do)
¥ 61,000 Realator's fee
¥ 15,000 Lock-changing cost
¥ 24,000 Land upkeep for 2 years
¥122,000 Deposit (which *could* be returned if the apartment were in
good enough shape, but they never, ever are)
¥ 20,000 Two years required fire insurance
¥ 61,000 First month's rent
------------------------------
TOTAL: ¥320,709.

at about ¥120 to the $$, that comes out to a reasonable $2,651.36 to move into a 3-room place that is 46 square yards in area. this country sucks sometimes.

note- this post was originally written in mid-november, but was inadvertently saved as a draft rather than published. so this entry is calling out to you from the past, like some ghost or something. i'll give this a few days to sink in, then give you good-for-nothings one more handout before i head to america for the Christmas.


Conundrum'd!!


Here's something that's been weighing heavily on my mind:

The "contract" at the house i'm living at right now is expiring in the middle of december, which sucks, mostly because that means that i'm gonna be living out of my frame pack before i even go home for Christmas. but that means i need another place to live. enter the conundrum. i'll make this a make-your-own-adventure.

Page 1
You are a daring youth pastor in the exotic land of Japan. You've agreed to sign on for 2 years, and at the year and a half mark, you've mysteriously run out of places to live. On your way to the realtors office, you get kidnapped by the stereotypical evil mastermind and, after being tied to a chair and attacked by ravenous sloths, you are cast into a pool of pirrahnas. Evil ones. Quickly taking stock of your desperate situation, you see there is a poorly disguised ladder on the side of the pool with the words "In order to escape, you must extend your "contract" as youth pastor for at least another year". Not willing to admit that you have no other choice, you do a quick resolve check and decide that you are resolvey enough to take out the pirrannah's with your bare hands, and you can do it without extending your contract. If you use the ladder and extend your contract, go to page 3. If you take on the flesh-eating fish with your bare resolveful hands, and don't extend your contract at church, go to page 18.

Page 3.
You climb out of the pool using the ladder, thus cementing your decision to pastor youth for at least one additional year. You continue on your way to the realtor, hoping that he will make all of your living problems go away. On your way, you get a phone call from an old friend. "Dude, I've got this friend who has a cousin who just got arrested for attempted regicide. He'll be in jail for like 6 months, and he needs someone to look after his 14-ft python "Snookums". Can you chill at his place for 6 months? Rent will be really cheap, but it's like really far from where you "work." You realize that if you decide to live with Snookums, at the end of the 6 months you will be forced to begin the search for a residence anew. Then again, there is a possibility that a much-coveted apartment will open up in 6 months, but at the price of bout $800, is a little more than you want to spend. But people have been known to turn back from huge chests full of money, fame, and as many as 3 beautiful women for the chance to live in this place, and you would pretty much be a guaranteed shoe-in, if only you can find somewhere to live for the next 6 months. If you decide to bunk with Snookums, go to page 6. If you continue undaunted to the realtor, flip to page 14.5.

Page 6.
You move in with the python, which takes some getting used to. After a few months fighting over who should make the coffee in the morning, you find it a peaceful co-existence. You commute 30 minutes each way every day to and from the office, first by car, then by motorcycle, then eventually by bicycle. The sheer mind-numbingness of it all leads you to sleep at least 2 nights a week in your office on a cot you set up, which makes you wonder why you bother with a house and rent at all. You never really bother moving in to the place, since you'll just be moving out in 6 months anyways. Once again, you find that you are "homeless"- that is, you have no place that you call home. At the end of the 6 months, you try and move into the apartment, in spite of the fact that it costs more than half of your monthly salary. You use all your money just paying rent and bills, and forget about that "eating" thing. You starve to death. THE END.

Page 14.5.
You spend countless hours in countless real estatey places, drinking double your own weight in green tea, and repeating your criteria ad infinitum, hoping that one day, one of them will actually bring you an apartment that matches with what you asked for. Eventually one does, you visit it and are impressed. Dually. Well, at least duly. Rent is about ¥60,000/month, which in your evil dollars comes to about $550. Oh, and there's the one month's rent in "key money", one month's rent in "thank you money" (which seems a lot like a bribe to me...) and the obligatory one month's rent that gets sent into the nearest black hole. Hooray! You have your own place! Unfortunately, you've spent over $2,000 to get it and have no money left for food.You die a horrible painful death. THE END.

Page 18.
You choose not to extend your contract, thus ending your career as a youth pastor. Not knowing what else to do with your life, and no longer in possession of a working visa for Japan, you go back to America and get a job working for the nearest starbucks.With no greater purpose for your life, you get sucked into watching "Lost" on TV, only to eventually discover that the title of the show actually refers to what happens to your soul when you watch it.You become a shell of a man, and eventually implode from lack of purpose and an intestinal disorder that has never been officially been connected with satanbucks coffee. THE END.

Curse you macintosh for deleting my post....

I'm writing this from the CAJ computer lab, which is populated with a plethora of the quintessential eMac. One of which just ate a well-thought-out, deep, meaningful post; my greatest one ever, no doubt. you'll just have to take me at my word. My now-lost post went a little something like this:

Let's see. my last entry was stress camp, almost a month ago now. what have i been doing since then? it doesn't seem like much on a grand scale had transpired, at least nothing worth really informing my vast, cyberspace audience of. i'll just give you a brief run-down of this past month, and we'll call it good.

I preached! without shoes again, no less! and it was quite different than my last sermon. the last one (almost exactly a year ago, actually), was manuscripted out in detail, and followed to the letter. we have translators who change everything we say into japanese over an FM transmitter, and they tell us that they need a manuscript, so they get one. with sermon #1, i had printed out 3 or 4 copies, i had performed it to imaginary audiences in my house, i had gone over what would be appropriate non-verbal communication for my various stories and points. and it was ok. people even still remember what i taught on, which is weird. looking back, i can see that i was trying to make a perfect sermon, where every single element that could be controlled was. and i think it became more like a book than a person-to-person communication. sermon #2 was much more free, much more stream-of-consciousness, as they say. i did manuscript it out, but i got an earfull from the translator after church for only loosely basing my sermon on the manuscript he had. he was a good sport about it all. the thing is, when i control every single element, i leave nothing to the power of the Holy Spirit. i think that if i can do everything perfect, i will touch people's hearts and make a difference in their lives. the truth is, i don't really want to be in control, because i can only have a finite influence on a specific type of person. when God gets involved, things are different. when i admit that i am not that great of a public speaker, and pray that God will use me anyways, i feel like i'm doing the right thing. to twist a phrase from martin luther "let ryan stop ruling the world". the sermon itself was on james 2:14-19, the old faith vs. works conundrum. rather than give the predictable call to ministry, i focused on the nature of and relationship between faith, salvation, works, and grace. i did video it, but i haven't had the guts to watch it yet. soon.

what else happened...

Well, the other day i walked outside in the afternoon and experienced an uniquely japanese sign that fall is coming- the smell of burning leaves. i know that japan's not the only country that burns leaves in the fall, but it's the only country that i've lived in that does it. i grew up with that smell, but before last autumn i hadn't smelled it for about 8 years. it's a very sentimental smell, and it's one that i love. i recommend everyone burn leaves in their backyard. except i think it's illegal where most of you are. just burn one in your sink or something. trust me, it's a good smell.

Life in general has been good. my house is not my home, and i'm not really planning on it ever being so, considering i'm moving out in about 6 weeks. ah, the transient life. as far as the ministry goes, i'm feeling much better about it than i did last year. i think it's the difference between unconscious incompetence and conscious incompetence. last year i had no idea what i was doing, so i had no way of knowing if i was doing it well, or if i was making huge, horrible mistakes that would scar the kids for life. it was kind of a paralyzing place to be, actually. this year i have the benefit of hindsight, and a little bit of experience, so i can at least know what areas i'm doing poorly in, and, conversely, what things i'm doing that i can feel ok with, areas that i can look at as victories, as accomplishments. it's kind of a new thing for me, being good at what i do.

And, in closing, i now regularly weigh less than my previous target weight of 80kg, which is about 175lbs. the only problem is, i've been continuing to lose more weight. in fact, just the other day, i weighed in at less than 170lbs. which would explain why it seems like this fall is so cold already- i'm just minus one layer of fat. if anyone sees it, apologize for me and tell it to come home. i don't like being cold...

**STRESS CAMP DAY #4**

The final day was upon us. as i said, we went to bed at about 6:30. so, add 8 hours for sleeping and you have us getting up at about 3:30 in the AM. the kids had no idea about this, of course. all they knew was that it would still be dark when i woke them up. i figured we had about 6 hours of hiking ahead of us, plus an hour for silly stuff- snacks, breakfast, broken limbs-which would get us to the station at 10:30, and seeing as how we were supposed to be in between 9 and 11, i figure that was about perfect.

The only problem was that at what turned out to be 2:15 in the bloomin' morning, some animal started screeching so close to the hut that i could have sworn it was inside it. you could have set your clock by this animal- it would screech like every 60 seconds, which, once it wakes you up, is just enough time to hope that maybe it finally left this time, then it would screech again. loud. i sleep kinda light in the woods, so i'll wake up just before i'm being mauled by a bear instead of as i'm being mauled, so i thought that i was the only one awake, but the kids started whispering to eachother, so i figured i'd get us moving in a few minutes. then one of the guys sat up real quick and said really loudly "alright everyone, ryan's outside blowing his whislte to get us up, so let's get going!". there was a short silence, and i was like "dude, i'm over here. that's not me..." i think he was a little overzealous to get home. since there was now no doubt that everyone was awake, i decided that we may as well get going, even though it was an hour earlier than i had planned. turns out that it took longer than i thought it would (i know, i really need to get better at knowing how long it will take us to go distances. the 6 hours that i guessed was already including a bunch of extra time, though- i thought it would only take us like 4. live and learn...), so i think God woke us up early so we'd have time.

There's really not much to say about hiking the last bit, other than it was still raining and quite cold. i had been pretty skimpy on the snacks, but since it was the last day, i gave out a bunch of them. we didn't eat breakfast until after the sun was up, so it was probably about 6. probably the hardest part of any hike for me is the very end; it's not that i don't like hiking, or enjoy being in the woods, but if we're going to be done, i just want to be done. it's something i should probably work on, cuz i get really impatient and keep looking for civilization. when i could finally see roofs through the trees i expected the kids to go nuts. after all, i was in the back, so they could probably see more than i could. they were so intent on hiking, though, that nobody even noticed. finally i called to the to stop and look up. then they went nuts.

We got to the train station at about 8:30, and sat around in shock until our train came 25 minutes later. We went 3 stops to the station the camp is at, and had one last hike to get home. it's only about a 10 minute walk, but the little pedestrian-trail we're on has this one last bit that is incredibly steep. it's really slippery and has like 5 switchbacks, and is pretty much the absolute last thing you want to do after 4 days of hiking. but the end is in sight, so nobody complains.

When the groups finally make it home, we have to spend about an hour cleaning up our gear- wiping down the rain sheets and the ground sheets, giving back the sleeping bags and backpacks and first aid kids and all that. crossing the line into camp was wierd for me. for 4 days i had been responsible for these kids' health and well-being: spiritually, phyisically, mentally, and emotionally. they had relied on me to teach them how to build a fire, how to put up the rain fly's, how to read the maps. but once we made it home and they saw their classmates, it was like i didn't even exist anymore. it's not like i'm a socialite and i get my sense of worth from their attention, it was just a really sudden shift from being somebody to being nobody. i totally understand; they wanted to share stories and stuff. it was just kinda funny that it happened so drastically and completely. of course, it got better after a while, and now when i come on campus and i see my former teammates, we have this understanding, this shared experience that can never really be fully understood by anyone else, even you guys, who have faithfully slogged through these entries. so it was totally worth it.

Coming back was totally like culture shock. people would ask me how it was and i just told them to ask me in a few days. i walked home in a daze (my car battery had mysteriously been emptied of it's power while i was away), and went to bed at 6:30pm. i woke up 12 hours later, and went to mister donuts. and life slowly resumed its' pace.

**edit**
I thought it might be fun to make a collage of our maps, so here they are. the days are marked in red or blue, depending on the day. i wish i could get it bigger, but i can't. so just squint really hard.

**STRESS CAMP DAY #3**

I woke the campers with what became my standard wake-up call: “STRESS CAMPERS!! RISE AND SHINE FOR ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY!!” It was not a beautiful day at all; day 3 dawned much the same as day 2 had ended- gloomy and rainy. All the kids were wet, although some (boys, mostly) were more vocal about it than others. Various kids had not taken my advice to heart, and had left their boots or packs or clothes poorly guarded against the rain, much to their chagrin. It's all about delayed gratification, man.

Thanks to the fact that we ate the cursed pancakes the day before, our breakfast for the morning required no fire, just some water to make the powdered milk into liquid milk (gas milk??). In addition to being wet, everyone was cold, so once everything got packed up, we just started hiking. The trail seemed strangely familiar from the night before, and it wasn't long until we reached the point where, the night before, we had chosen to turn back. It was really only a slight uphill, and from the other side, if you looked down maybe 20 yards, we could see the white stripe of the guardrail. The road really had been right there.

If we had made it, it was my plan to sleep there, using the guardrail to tie up one side of the ground sheets, and putting rocks on the far side or something. It seemed like a good enough idea at the time, but it may not have been in reality. It all depends on whether or not I was dreaming. See, I would have bet a thousand dollars on the fact that during the night, some girl got up, wandered down the hill with a light for a ways, turned the light off for a bit, then turned it back on and came back up. Pretty much your typical “nature call”, as we called them. The reason I remembered it was cuz it freaked me out- the girl was making a lot of noise in the bushes, and it woke me up pretty well. Come morning, I ask around to see who it was, mostly to comment on their dedication to going to the bathroom in the middle of the night- there is no WAY I would get out of my warm downy sleeping bag in the middle of the night to pee. I don't care if I have to go the dreaded “number 3” (diarrhea), it can wait. But nobody would fess up. Apparently, there had either been an animal rummaging around in the vicinity of our camp, masquerading as a girl with a flashlight, which is unlikely, or I had hallucinated the whole thing, which is much more likely.

This all comes back to the finding of the road. During that very same night, I thought I had heard the sound of a car or 2 going by- further fueling the idea that we had been within spitting distance of the road. The problem with that is, people drive like Jehu up there, which is normally ok, since they are on tiny, windy, semi-paved roads, but could have been a bad thing if we were sleeping where they would normally be driving. All this to say, if we had been sleeping on the road, we might have ended up being 10 speed bumps for some drunken bluecollar, driving home in the wee hours of the morning. But, that is all contingent on my being lucid, which is doubtful.

Once we hit the road, we hiked at light speed. The map and reality did not exactly agree, which became more and more common as the day wore on. On the map, the trail crossed the road, and continued on the other side. In reality, the trail hit the road and stopped in a disconcerting fashion. I made my best guess, using my horrible sense of direction and my dubious cartography skills (see “the disaster of the summer death hike”) that we could walk on the road for a while, and if our trail didn't appear, we could at least bushwhack up to the ridge that it should be on. A trail did, in fact, appear, but in a strange place. It was marked with these little brightly-colored plastic stakes that are used as a method of demarcation between prefectures, which was the only part that made any sense to me. We stopped for breakfast under a high-tension power tower, in a fog so thick we could barely see 30 feet in any direction, which is frustrating when you don't know exactly where you are and are trying to get your bearings from the landscape. The weird thing was, the only place on the map where the trail crossed the power lines was way further than I thought we were. But, unless there had been new power lines built recently (unlikely), there was no other place we could be.

The main frustration on this part of the hike was going up. Well, going down too. Pretty much, everyone was sick of hiking, but especially sick of going up. The slow gals had become the really slow gals, then they became the ridiculously slow gals. We didn't really have the luxury of waiting for 20 minutes at the top of every semi-challenging hill; we did have a deadline to make, and we would not make it if we kept up the pace we were at. The guys were really good about volunteering to take the girls stuff every time we took a break, and the girls very humbly allowed them to bear their burdens.

Crisis! One of the girls, the slow girls, no less, had a weak ankle that she had been protecting for the whole trip. In a moment of confusion, however, she twisted the other one really bad, and so was basically only capable of shuffling, barely even able to take her feet off the ground. So, one of the guys took her pack. It was really hard for her (she cried a little, sad that she was the “weakest”) but it turned out to be good for everyone.

The ever-elusive hut was again set as our goal. As we hiked further and further, I realized that I had really displayed my lack of wisdom and experience by thinking we could make the hut by the night before. Not only were we going up and down every hillside in the world, but there were a few parts that were ridiculously steep, and one part that was steeper and more slick than the rock climbing we had done the first day- only this time there were no chains. I was in the back, and I got to these cliffs and was like “wait- the kids went down HERE?! Is that even possible?!” There was no way we could have made it down in the dark. We would have had to stop somewhere. I was still leading at this point, and there were a few times when I really had no idea where I was going. The group would stop, and I would mosey up to the front to see what the holdup was. Invariably, there would be a fork in the trail. Examining the map, I would see that our trail should have been going due south. A quick compass check would reveal that one path was going south-east, and one was going south-west. WHAT?! So, I made educated guesses based on the condition of the trails. Scary stuff. But, as I’ve often discovered, Jesus often spare me and, more importantly, the kids, from making decisions that really have really bad consequences. We never got lost.

Well, not really lost. There was this one time....

According to the map, we were going to take our trail until it connected to another trail, and upon meeting it, we would head back in the general direction we had just come from, but on a different trail. The kids really “wanted” a bushwhacking experience, so we decided that instead of doubling back, we would just cut across. We were supposed to bushwhack for about half a kilometer before we found a trail, but in reality, we went about 50 meters and found a trail. A nice one, too. Where the crap were we? Could this be our trail? I decided that I would scout it out, and give the team a chance to have a breather. If we continued in the same direction we had been going before we started bushwhacking (south, for those that are interested), our trail just ended up connecting to our original trail. Going the other direction, however, it wandered in and out of valleys and ridges, never really varying elevation much. After a bit, I thought I saw some corrugated metal through the trees, and as I drew close, my heart sank, and I looked despair full in the face. There was a shelter, all right. It was about 6 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet tall, basically a sheet of metal stuck in the ground on one side and held up by 2 thick sticks on the other. If this was the “shelter”, there would be a mass mutiny. The kids would probably have melted into the ground and refused to take another step. The world would end. I just stood there in utter disbelief for probably a full 60 seconds. I looked around a little, and realized that if this were the hut, there should have been a peak just past it. I hiked beyond it, using every last ounce of willpower I had to believe that we were headed for a different shelter, but still secretly dreading the worst. To my relief, the peak never made its appearance, giving credence to the hope that I was in the wrong spot. As I jetted back to the group, I decided that we should go back to our original, pre-bushwhack trail, and just get to the hut the conventional way. I didn’t say a word about the faux hut; 98% of me believed that there was something better coming, but 2% kept wondering if that’s where the actual trail would take us too. So, I went back to the slowly freezing team, never said a word about the hovel I found, and led them on to the actual hut, which was less than 30 minutes from where we were.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of the hut itself. Years before, it may have been structurally sound, but through the years, had fallen into disrepair. Different parts of it leaned at different crazy angles, and there were a few places in the roof where the corrugated metal had rusted through, which let the rain in. More importantly, in my eyes, at least, it was only a short distance from a stream, which meant that we could refill our water supply for the first time since the morning of the second day. We were at the point that I knew exactly how many liters we had and was rationing it out to the kids. While 2 guys were hiking down to the stream with all the water bottles, some of the kids were building a fire, some other kids were making lunch, and some guys were putting up rain fly’s so the rain would run off, I got out the maps to see if we could stay in the hut that night. By my best guess, we had only gone about 4.5 kilometers that day, a far cry from the 12 we did the day before. There were about 7km left, and we were supposed to get “home” between 9 and 11, which means we’d have to start hiking at 3-ish, which means we’d have to get up at about 2. I shared this with the kids, and asked them what the wanted to do. If they chose to spend the night, we would be getting up REAL early, and hiking for a lot of hours before the sun even came up. If we chose to press on, we’d have less hiking to do, and we could get more sleep. And, of course, we spent the night in the hut. I’ll admit, even I didn’t care how far we had to hike the next day- all I wanted was to sleep inside.

The cooks did an excellent job, the fire people did an excellent job, everything was really done great. We had tons of food, including this ham stroganoff stuff that was seriously the best thing I have ever tasted. I would make it at home for a regular meal like every week, it was so good. Because it was the last night, we could pretty much eat everything except one snack and the breakfast. Anything we didn’t eat we would just be carrying, so, even though it was really hard, we all ate as much as we possible could. So delicious….Then, as it was getting dark, we got set up for the night. I had the kids repack their bags as much as possible, so we could get a quick start the next day. There was exactly enough room in the hut for all 10 of us to lay out- there were a few roof-drips that had to be fixed before everyone was happy. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as we all got into sopping sleeping bags, then we all slowly drifted off. Everyone was wet, cold, and exhausted, but also full, content, and sleepy. It felt like midnight by the time everyone was asleep, but I snuck a peek at my watch just before I faded off myself:

6:45pm.

And so, the last night of stress camp found the team sheltered from the incessant rain, but still quite far from their goal. Will their leader accurately gauge how long it will take to hike home the next morning, or will they find themselves lost, and hours late home? Does the blasted rain ever stop? Find out….

**STRESS CAMP DAY #2**

As the night wore on, i became more acutely aware that it was raining, mostly due to the fact that there was a large sheet of plastic mere inches from my face that reverberated soundly with every raindrop. i had my watch alarm set to just after sunrise (actually, i had it set to about 5:45am, which was, conincidentally, just after sunrise). the kids got up pretty happily, and with only minimal grumpiness , got to work on packing up their stuff. i set about making pancakes.

Pancakes, for all you non-hiker/camper types out there, are a really bad idea. at least, says me. i like to get up, hike for a few hours, have some granola, and keep hiking. pancakes require, among other things, a fire; also vast amounts of patience, which was in short supply. last year i personally carried the pancake mix, as well as the 2 frying pans for the pancakes, all over the world, so this year, i decided we were going to make those pancakes as soon as possible, and that meant morning 1. it wasn't too difficult for me to get a fire going, even though it was raining, seeing as how i managed to wrap a bunch of the unused wood from the night before in a garbage bag. planning! so, we ate pancakes.

It was fairly cold and windy for the next bunch of hours, and we pretty much just hiked. we did find what was to be the only wildlife on our trip, and one of the girls tried to eat it, much to our amusement. as lunchtime drew near, the trail we were on got worse and worse, to the point where "they" had laid down almost a kilometer of sandbags to keep the trail from getting so washed out it was completely unusable. it was my plan to have lunch on the top of this trail, but some of the girls in the back were having a really hard time (feeling like they were going to throw up, shaking uncontrollably), so we chilled for lunch mid-way. as we were eating the sun came out for what was to be it's only appearance all of stress camp (and actually, it hasn't been sunny yet since then either). we stripped down to our shorts and t shirts, and enjoyed the brief respite from the fog, but after about an hour, the sun went away, and we had to take a pit-stop for everyone to get their raingear on again.

So far, so good. it's about 4:30pm, we've been hiking for a good solid 8 or 9 hours, and we've averaged about a kilometer an hour. the thing is, i know that there's a hut ahead of us a ways, and it'd be awfully nice to get there and be able to stay out of the rain, which, at this point, has returned with a vengeance. i consult a little with my assistant leader, and she doesn't think we should go for it. i think we should. we agree that we should tell the kids what's going on, and let them decide for themselves. the facts i gave them were that there was a hut that we could make it to, but we would really have to work hard, and it was still a long, long ways off. they (somewhat predictably) chose to push on as long as it would take to reach the hut. the fateful decision had been made.

Usually the leaders allow the kids to lead the group, while keeping track on their own set of maps where the group is, but i decided that i would lead the group at this point, just so we wouldn't get lost in the dead of night. i tried to set a fairly high pace, hoping that the incentive of the hut would speed up some of the slower members. it really didn't work, even for a little bit. night fell like a brick, which it does in the mountains, and we soon found ourselves in a world that existed only within the confines of our flashlight beams. with the dark and the fog, it makes it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction. the danger of that, of course, is that i would miss a signpost and walk us down the wrong side of the mountain, but Jesus was looking after things and, thankfully, that never happened.

A few hours after dark we had our first (and only) really bad fall. we were coming down the side of the mountain on a hard-packed-clay trail, which in rain turns into a really dirty slip-'n-slide, and he tripped or slipped or something, and tumbled head-over-heels down the hillside. he probably only did about 4 or 5 somersaults over a distance of maybe 5 or 6 meters. i was in the back when it happened, and all i really saw was his flashlight doing crazy things, then one of the girls screamed. he wasn't moving. i booked it over to him, honestly not thinking he had been paralyzed or anything, but not sure if he was conscious or not. turns out he was just stunned. he hit his head pretty hard on something (maybe his own pack), but he was ok. he actually stopped on the very edge of a very sharp drop-off place. it wasn't a cliff or anything, but everything got a lot steeper about 2 feet beyond where he was. proof that God looks after us.

"The Fall" happened before we were even at the half-way point for the hut, and at that point i mad the executive decision that we were not going to make it to the hut that night. Corey's fall could have happened to any one of the kids- they were getting too exhausted to hike smart. the next big landmark on the map was a dirt road, and i figured if we hadn't found a good spot by then, we'd sleep there. turns out neither of those things happened. the trail just kept going, and it was kind of a crappy trail- tons of little bushy bamboo everywhere, and we were always either going up or going down. and where was that stupid road anyways!? we hiked for what seemed like an eternity, and it was getting to the point where kids were leaning up against trees for support and falling asleep standing up, or stepping over a log on the trail, then sitting on it and falling asleep. i called a break, and took one guy with me to scout ahead to see where the road was. in the meantime, the group circled up, shared some ritz crackers, and fell asleep on eachother's shoulders.

Me and yuta, the fellow scouter, hiked at a pretty good clip for the next 15 or 20 minutes without finding that blasted road. eventually i had to set a limit to how far we would go, so i said that if the trail went up one more time, we would call it quits and sleep on the trail. it was a hard call to make- part of me was convinced that it was right next to us, but we couldn't see it due to the dark and the rain. but, the trail started going up again, so we turned back. on the way back to the team i kept my eyes open for a good spot for sleeping, but never really found one. there just wasn't a section of trail that was flat long enough to sleep 10 people.

My solution was to have the kids pair up (guy/guy and gal/gal, of course) and share a rainfly, using the other one to cover their packs and stuff. we didn't have supper, and the kids didn't even ask for it. as soon as they had their stuff out and their fly's up, they crawled in and passed out. they didn't know it, but it was all of 8:30 in the PM. it was a little awkward for me, since i had to share with the assistant leader, who is a married woman of 42, and whose son was in my group last year. i have a mummy bag, which means it is exactly big enough for sleeping, not for other things like changing out of my nasty hiking clothes and into nice dry sleeping clothes. we sat next to eachother, facing opposite directions, and both said "don't look, ok?" it was a matter of survival! but it was still weird to be sitting partially naked next to someone's mom, talking about how far we had to hike the next day. we fought in our sleep all night- there wasn't actually enough room under the fly for us both to stay dry simultaneously, so one would wake up getting rained on and roll back to the center, displacing the other person out into the rain, who would wake up and roll back to the center, displacing...you get the idea. all night.


The sun set, and the rain fell, thus ending the second day. All told, they had travelled roughly 12 kilometers in about 13 hours of hiking. But what would the next day bring? And why hadn't they found the road yet? Were they lost, or just stupid? Stay tuned...

**STRESS CAMP DAY #1**

Life had been a little hectic, and my pre-stress-camp prep had not gone well. in fact, i didn't even start packing until past midnight, and it was pushing 2 when i finished. it's a little different than just packing to visit the fam for 2 weeks; by the time i decided to quit i looked like a dog who is about to lay down somewhere- standing in one spot turning in circles. the fateful day dawned, and i headed to CAJ to meet my group. the support staff has all the food, maps, and random stuff (whistle, compass, knife, rope, etc.) and we had to go through a checklist with every kid to make sure they had everything. the kids were trying to cover the fact that they were nervous, wondering if they knew what they had gotten themselves in to, and i wondered if they could see through my facade as well as i could see through theirs.

I was the leader. i was to provide...basically everything that i imagine a father would have to provide. i was in charge of giving them the information they would need to survive. i had to recognize their percieved limits and safely push them past what they believed themselves capable of. i had to be trustworthy- they had to trust me; to obey me without always understanding why. i had to direct their thinking certain ways at critical points so they would learn the most they could from this experience, rather than just completing it. i had to model every kind of positive behavior that i would want them to have. i had to encourage, push, mold, and direct them. i had to be aware of their wants and their needs, and to be able to correctly discern where that line was. and, of course, all these things come from loving them with the love of Christ, love that believes that they are worth it. it all hit me when i walked on campus and heard one of the kids replying to a friend, "i got ryan as my leader": i was not ready for this.

All that to say, i think all of us were wondering what we had gotten ourselves in to.





a shot of the team looking all fresh and showered (except me. i didn't shower at all for the preceding week so i would feel more at one with the mountains)
Back: Laura, Marian, Mrs. Polischuck (assistant leader), me, Yuta
Front: Yuri, Michelle, Corey, Tim, and Eric.











Moving on: all the groups pretty much take the same trains out from the city, and once we get out far enough, one group gets off at each station. we narrowly avoided disaster on the way there- i told the team to get on a train, and just before it left, i noticed like 3 other groups still out on the platform, waiting for the next train. a quick double-check later and i was holding the door open with my foot and yelling at the kids to get off. i think the kids were worried about foreshadowing at that point.






After hiking a few hours and a delicious lunch of ham and cheese on corn rolls, we came to the entire reason i had made this route in the first place. it just seemed like it'd be fun to go up a rock face, you know? it wasn't too steep or anything, but it was a challenge, and had a great view from the top.






















At this point, after hiking with this team for only a matter of hours, i was very excited about spending the next few days with them. in the climbing picture above you can see one of the guys (yuta soda) has just put on one of the girls' packs. he had gotten to the top already, and he dropped his pack there and went back down to help the slowest people up. this kind of thing became more commonplace as the hours wore into days, instead of becoming more rare as i would have expected. at lunch i had talked to them about the difference between a group (anyone can be in a group) and a team, which supports eachother, and cares about the other members. they were such great kids, i think they would have served eachother anyways.

We made camp fairly early that night, about 45 minutes before the sun went down. it was just enough light to make camp, show them how to tie up their rain fly's in case it rained during the night (which it did), and get a fire going. we had some strange/delicious miso-pork soup stuff, and baked apples with cinnamon&sugar for dessert. the apples are a surprise dessert thing, so the leader has to carry them. those things weigh a TON, and there was no way i was carrying them for one more minute than i had to. besides, i wasn't sure if we'd get a fire going again on another night :D . we spent some time around the fire talking and singing a little, but once it started to rain in earnest i sent them to their bags, where they promptly konked out. it was probably...8pm at that point, but since i had the only watch, i let them think it was midnight.








the sun set, and thusly the first day of stress camp came to a downy, smoky close. spirits were high, which is usually an ominous omen of misery to come...

Alive'd!

more to come after I recuperate

STRESS CAMP!

it's everyone's favorite time of year again!! OH BOY!! by this time tomorrow i plan on being totally passed out in my sleeping bag somewhere in the woods. i totally sleep so well out there. i have a group of 8 kids, 1 or 2 of which i know fairly well, and the rest i at least know the names and faces. it helps that i sub a lot of classes on campus so i get to know them that way. one big thing that will be different this year is that i am the leader. and by leader i mean the weight of responsibility sits squarely, and almost exclusively, on my shoulders. i do have an assistant leader, but i'm actually almost as worried about her as i am the kids. i went out last year with her son shaun. he was a real trooper, and she's a great lady, but she's never done anything more than tailgate-camping, and stress camp is not camping. when i made it to my meeting with the head-of-stress-camp guy, i asked him what my route would be, at least in generalities. he told me that it was entirely up to me, but he'd like me to run it by him first. so, i figured out a route that we should be able to do. for those of you who have hiked much in the "backcountry" of japan, we'll be starting at shomaru station; it's a hike that i've done with my family many times that involves hiking up a mountainside that's steep enough that they've (whoever "they" is) installed these burly chains to help you get up. it's either a really easy rock climb or a really steep hike. but that's what we're starting with. the good Lord alone knows what will come after.


and, in the contined spirit of me posting cool picutres, here's one from JAM today. this is one of my leaders, a really cool guy named josiah pettit. he's a superhero.

the tension:

I've started this entry so many times, but something ALWAYS happens. you know the drill- someone climbs into my window and mentions that they might want to be baptized, a gaggle of pre-elementary kids storm the room looking for something better to do than play in the rain (and what else could i have done? i mean really), or i'll realize that i need to write personal emails to some people about some stuff, or a herd of 10th graders will suddenly break my door down and insist i teach them my "crazy hacking skillz", but settle for a deathmatch in some of the greatest 8-but fighing nintendo ever came up with. and i realize that there are some real people out there who really want me to fill in the blank in their mind where my state of being is supposed to go, so i figured it was about time. (this has nothing to do with the most recent comment on my last blog entry. when you get a blog of your own i'll start accepting complaints). (and i'm not spiteful).

A big part of my current rambliness is cuz i had JAM tonight. man, it was AWESOME! i was looking forward to it a lot. and it was really good. it was cool to be able to sit down with my leaders and just give them the rundown of how things would work and why. last year i had no idea at all- i was just like "well, some kids will come, and i guess we'll do some stuff...." this year it was more like "we are being Jesus to these kids. we must have patience, we must listen, we must affirm, for we must love them. and it's really hard sometimes". because now i know all these things, becuase i learned them all the hard way. then the kids showed up, and they immediately latched on to me and the other leaders, and it was just so cool- i've got a few goofy leaders, a few sportsy leaders, and a few chill-and-talk leaders, so whatever the kind of kid was that came in, they could fit in with someone. out of 10 leaders last year, 3 graduated, but only 1 has come back to lead again. i'm ok now, but for a while it was really hard not to take it personally. tonight me and her got a little sentimental, thinking about last year, and the off-the-wall times we had, and the inside jokes and stuff. i like looking back on that, but being there in that was really hard. those 10 leaders were pretty much the bane of my existence sometimes, for a variety of reasons, none of which i'll get into here. but it was hard. this year, i've changed the leadership program a little to make it less cumbersome for those in it, but i'm kinda really happy that only one person came back- and she's the one that i think understood the ministry, or at least the way that i do ministry, the best. all the other leaders are brand-new, and have no expectations about how much they can get away with or how much they have to listen (or not listen) to me. etc. i'm excited.

And Stress camp starts in 7 days from tomorrow! OH MAN! i just can't wait. i don't really think that i'll love the woods that much, seeing as how where i went over the summer was actual nature, not having been harvested and replanted and all, but i can't wait to be out for 4 days with 11th-grade kids. and because it's rained A LOT the last 2 big hikes i did, i went and got myself a northface gore-tex shell. lots and lots of gore-tex. and i just cleaned and waterproofed my boots yesterday. i was gonna go for a run tonight, but i'm almost passing out just typing this, so i think i'll just sleep tonight.

starting now

I flew back in economy, which just reinforces my determination to adopt a child and force him to be an airline pilot. i have no intention of flying back there and paying much for it. you just don't get your money's worth. i did make a friend, which was exciting. he's my age, talkative, and a little eccentric. we got along quite well. he was also flying standby, so we swapped stories. and now, if i ever take a wrong turn and end up a thousand kilometers south of here, i have a place to stay!

It's also exciting that i have a place to stay right now, though. i came back to japan not really knowing much about my living situation, other than that i had no intentions of dying, so appropriate arrangements had to be made. after a brief stint of living on my office floor, i am now living closer to campus than i ever have before- about a 10 minute walk- with a rather capricious band director. i used to think that we were the 2 most different people that have ever existed; that if you took a picture of my DNA, turned it inside out, and made a person, you would have him. unsurprisingly, i suppose, as i've spent more time with him i'm finding ways that we are more similar than i originally thought. still quite dissimilar, but not polar opposites. It's not "home" yet, but it's getting there.

Speaking of home, i realized on the train home from the airport that japan definately gives me the feeling that belonging somewhere gives you more than america does. the train doors would open and the air conditioning would be assulted by the humidity, and the sound of the semi's (cicada's) rhythmically invading my inner ear, all made me feel that i was where i belonged. i don't know if that has to do with being in the place that i have a life (i.e. transportation, work, friends, etc.), or if it strikes a deeper part of me that has more to do with my childhood. i don't really care either way, actually. all i know is that it's good to be back.



as a post-script, here's one of my favorite pictures i took while on my brief hiatus

ok, so i'm in america, and i know that i claimed that i was going to be in portland yesterday, but there was a change of plans (mostly andrew kooy's doing) so i will be in portland the night of monday, for at least a few days. if you want to hang out with me, leave me a comment or email me or something, since i have no phone, and i probably don't have your number anyways. and now, i leave for george, WA. should be a blast.

I will post this entry on the SOLE PROVISION that my mother is not to be informed in any way, shape or form as to it's content.

Towards the end of the school year, i was lamenting to one of my middle-school friends that i missed having a motorcycle. the weather was warming up, and it just seemed a crime not to have one. he mentioned, in passing, that his dad has one that he's trying to sell, as they're going to the states for like 8 months. one thing led to another, and pretty soon i was over at his house chatting it up with his dad. the bike is quite old, only 4 years younger than i, and it hadn't started since Christmas. something went wrong, and it was too cold anyways, so he just wrote it off. he originally wanted almost $200 for it, but since it wasn't running, and there was no real way to tell how much i would have to put into it to make it run, he gave it to me, and said "if you get it running, we'll work something out in january when i get back." and he had it delivered to my door.

As with my last bike, it sat there for a while, staring accusingly at me whenever i let one of my idiot cats out, until finally i could stand it no more. i got ahold of some tools, and did a little "exploratory surgery". initial results were positive- it was much easier to work on than my last bike. i had been informed that the carberator was more than likely the culprit, so i removed the offensive item, and tore it down to it's constituent elements, cleansed it vigorously, and replaced it. and all seemed to be in working order. the bike started up almost instantly, which is unheard of in my experience. i got it insured, and drove it back and forth between work and home. and all was right with the world. here's a shot of all being right with the world:

1984 Yamaha SRX 250

So, after riding without any mishap for about 2 weeks, i decide it's safe to go on a little trip with the thing. fireworks are in season over here, so i thought i'd head over to my old stomping grounds and have a look. it's about a 30 minute trip, and about 20 minutes into it i realize i'm hopelessly lost. then about 21 minutes into it, my bike dies. funny how history repeats itself- the bike dying felt strangely familiar. like it happened once with another bike i once owned. except replace "once" with "repeatedly". this time the problem seems to be with the electrical system, with which i have no experience. so, i managed to get home via japan's amazingly complex public transit system, but i was left with a problem- what to do with my bike? i left it in a semi-seedy area of town (at least, i was so informed by a friendly local senior citizen), and the next day was sunday, which means i had to do church. who did i know with a truck? or maybe a van? then i thought about it, and realized that since this bike is much differently shaped than my last one, it just might fit into my very own car. i decided to go with it, and after much driving, prodigious volumes of sweat, and perhaps a little cursing, here's what i had:


You gotta admit, that's pretty darn cool. now all i need is for someone to be driving my car when i bust out the back of it knight rider style. but for that, i might have to work on my muscles. also my german.

At any rate, fixed it up right proper, and took the trip anyways, fireworks or no. i think deathtrap will always be my first love, and if i am ever actually in the market to buy a bike with money, i would have to have some really good reasons to not buy a motorcross bike. this one's growing on me, but the kawasaki will always be my first bike, and as it has passed into legend, it is slowly getting better over time as my mind distorts the memory.

Despite what seems prodigious efforts to keep me from doing so, i did, in fact, survive. barely. you may recall that i went hiking in the "wilderness" of japan back in october. if not, i'll make you a little link here and even leave it underlined for you so you can go back and brush up a little on your "ryan's life in japan: a history". i do this for your own good- there will be a test on this material. consider yourself warned. unlike the hike back in october, i was the sole "adult" on the trip, oragnizing the trip, or planning the trip in any way shape or form. and, as i believe i said in my last post, this has been something of a challenge for me. but, if i must say, i did rather well. there was only 1 or 2 little things that i brought that i did not need, and there were precious few things that i didn't bring that i did need. and those were more like "things that if i had needed would have been really bad, so it's really lucky that i didn't need them." i'll get on to more of that in a bit.

So here it is, the short summary i know you've all been dying for. we were out there for 5 days- from sunday until thursday. i will go through them in an orderly fashion, and will try and keep this short and thus somewhat more managable, and i may even include pictures to keep those fleeting attention spans of yours from wandering off.

Sunday:
Did the church thing. and, seeing as though i'm the only pastor in the country (still! it's been like 2 weeks now! and the place hasn't imploded or anything!), the church thing was a little stressfull- there were the usual slew of things that needed to be taken care of, but only me to take care of them. further proof that the world needs more me's running around. left as soon after church as i could, but still managed to miss the train that i'd been hoping to catch, what with all the well-wishers, doom-sayers, map-lookers, conversation-havers, and i-hiked-once-ers who mobbed me. the guys were excited, but also somewhat nervous, realizing that the 45lb pack they were sitting next to on the trains would be sitting on their back all week. there was really nothing that special about sunday- we hiked for roughly 3 hours, and set up camp just as it was getting dark, which was pretty darn good timing on my part. the weather was hot and muggy like you wouldn't believe, but it was cooler than it had been in tokyo. i taught the guys how to tie up their fly sheets, how to gather wood for a fire, where not to wash out your cooking stuff so as not to atract bears, etc. it rained on and off during the night, but when i woke up from being bitten by an ant on the face, i could see the moon, so i figured we'd be ok. here's us the first morning enjoying instant oatmeal:




Monday:
This day was difficult. the morning started off well with the boys complaining about being up so early (in spite of the fact that i banned all chronometric devices, they guessed correctly that it was about 5 in the AM. but really, we went to bed at like 9, so they have nothing to whine about). packed up, had devo's and hit the trail. we started out from the train station at about 650 meters, and the peak we were trying to hit by the end of monday was like 2017 meters, so, as you could probably correctly guess, the going was mostly uphill. we lunched at a pleasant little hut, which came with complementary water, which was nice cuz we were running out in spite of the fact that we were carrying 6 liters EACH. the farther we hiked the cooler the trail got. most (actually, probably all) of the hiking i've done in japan is in areas that have been harvested for their lumber and replanted with cedar, which, after a few years, they harvest again. now cedar is a soft-wood evergreen, and actually not native to this region at all. as we kept hiking, the woods slowly changed from man-made to a real, actual, japanese forest, with huge deciduous trees, underbrush, and some cool moss. it actually really felt like i was hiking in a forest in the northwest US somewhere. like a lot. it was cool. then the rain started.

It did not start suddenly, but rather slowly, lulling us into a pacifistic "maybe it will stop" mindset, but it gradually got worse and worse. by the time it was raining hard enough that it necessitated rain gear, we were all already soaked to the bone. so we just kept hiking. the rain got progressively worse, and the higher up we got, the more fog we ran into. i didn't know it at the time, due to lack of electricity, computer, internet, and other evils, but a typhoon was on it's way. i saw it on the news on saturday, but at that point it was supposed to hit really south and fizzle out. not so. Here is a nifty link that you'll need to watch a few times to really appreciate. watch the date in the corner- we left on sunday the 24th, which means that we could not have left at a more perfect time to rendezvous with the demon typhoon from hell.

I do have a very cool mental picture of hiking through an area with 1 meter high bamboo, these skinny 5 meter high trees, scattered about, and interspersed were these HUGE deciuous trees that were probably about 4 or 5 feet thick. the fog was to the point that we had very limited visibility, so we couldn't see the tops of the big trees. i've always seen images of china that look like that and wanted to visit them. turns out they were here this whole time. they ended pretty quick, though, and were replaced by these evil rocky saddle things. we would fight our way up for about an hour, get to a flat place to catch our breath, hike around the corner, and the path went up into the clouds AGAIN. we repeated this a lot. we did see a monkey cross our path ahead in the fog, though, which was a first. i'll forever have a mental picture of chris standing a little ways ahead of me on a knife-edged saddle, in the pouring rain, the wind trying to blow us off, and these clouds absolutely whipping by. in my brain i was trying to figure out how we were going to make camp on the rocks with the wind going at 30 mph. by the grace of God there was another hiking shelter at the peak we were trying to reach that day. it was no shack either- some blankets, insulated windows, etc. there was no fire pit, but at least it was out of the rain. here's us that night:


Tuesday:
As is evident from the little sattelite imagery now available at your fingertips, the rain did not stop on tuesday. in fact, there was even some lightning during the night, which made me a little nervous, seeing as though we were in a building on the top of the highest peak for quite a few kilometers around. Not even 10 minutes down our trail chris, who was leading at the time, saw a deer bolt across our path. all told, we had 4 deer sightings that day, but we think one of them was the same deer twice. tuesday was somewhat monotonous- more going up in the rain, lots of mountain streams. actually, i almost had a very serious accident. years ago they had skinny log bridges on parts of the trail, and they had been replaced with high-quality bridges with actual concrete foundation and all that. we walked across many, many of these, which were very nice and safe, except that i slipped on one. they have little 1x1's nailed down in case you should slip forward or backwards, but i slipped sideways. only about a foot, mind you, but what with no hand rails and a 10 foot drop and a really steep mountainside, it was enough to just about stop my heart.

Our trail for the day took us right by another shelter on my map, but it didn't look like it would be free, so i was planning on stopping there for lunch, then pressing on and making camp in the woods somewhere. the day before, we had hiked until all of 3:30pm, which means we lunched at what was probably 10am, so tuesday i pushed the guys a little more, telling them we would stop at the hut for lunch. we hiked long, hard, and soggy, taking as few breaks as possible due to the rain, and bone-chilling wind (and one of the guys didn't bring rain gear, or even hiking pants. i guess when he saw "rain gear" on the list i sent him he interpreted that as "stuff i could wear in the event it sprinkles". he was very cold). at any rate, we get to the hut, look around, and realize that it's been recently abandoned, most likely due to the typhoon. there was someone's actual house connected to the hut, with a TV antenna and all that. the menu on the wall had prices for supper and beer and whatnot. the shelter itself was not locked, so we entered to lunch. the guys wondered very verbally about the chances of us spending the night, and implored me to dig out my chronometer, which i grudgingly did. imagine my surprise when i discovered that it was not lunch time, but supper! it was 5:30pm. most likely we had overslept the morning due to the fact that we slept indoors, because i knew we hadn't been hiking for more than half a day. now i was faced with an ethical dilemma, however: the sign on the wall also clearly stated that it was ¥4,000 (about $40) a person a night, which is a LOT of money. there was a box on the wall for the money, however there was nobody up there to know that WE were up there. the compromise i came to is that we would sleep on the ground in the entryway, and only pay half price, since we weren't acutally using their stuff, just their ground. and also their wood- the wood stove was in the entryway, and we fired that thing up and got supper cooking without wasting any time at all. in about 20 minutes we who had been actually shaking with cold, unable to feel our extremities, had stripped down buck naked and were running around in the rain to cool off. sometimes it's great to be a guy. actually, all the time.

Wednesday:
The morning came with the fire being out and me being chilly. as i lay there in my bag, i realized that i could hear the nearby stream, and wondered why i hadn't noticed last night. as the fog slowly cleared from my brain the answer replaced it- because of the intense rain and wind the night before on the tin roof, we sometimes had to yell just to hear eachother. i reached out of my bag and saw the most beautiful thing i've seen since the exact same thing happened last october- the sky. not overcast, not gray clouds, but blue sky. granted it was patchy, but it had enormous potential for growth, and it did not dissapoint. not only was it exciting, but for me it was actually a relief. the guys didn't know it, but on tuesday we had the choice to take a shortcut and go straight home rather than continue on the hike as planned. i made the executive decision to stay on the original course, and all day tuesday i had beat myself up for it- mostly because i had doomed us all to a night of freezing coldness, especially chris, who had a sub-standard sleeping bag for those conditions. on tuesday morning, though, poring over the maps and thinking about this, i thought of waking up on wednesday morning to not-rain, and the sense of accomplishment from knowing that we hadn't turned back when we could have, but pushed on. in a way, i was pretty much counting on it being sunny on wednesday morning. and it was! i ran out and looked at the view, which was the first time in 3 days that i had been able to. i could see about 7 mountain ranges from me to the horizon. very cool.

We hiked for about 2 hours, then got to the peak we were trying to reach and had lunch, and fixed evan's pack, which was trying to kill itself and take evan with it. after hiking for another good 2 hours, we get to another peak, and it was confusing, cuz this one had the same name as the one we stopped at for lunch...in all reality, the second one was where we were trying to get to for lunch, and i misinterpreted the maps. so, the guys weren't happy with me for lying to them and having gone half as far as i thought we had. i wasn't happy with me either. from this peak the trail quickly degrades to a washed-out, mini-bamboo-covered trail of death. we proceeded on this for a while until we came to a river, where the path disapeared....

There had been a few times that i thought maybe we'd lost the trail, but this time we really did. there was a big clearing around where the trail met the river coming in, but there was no path going out. the trail had been marked by some useful woodsmen with red tape- it was taped around trees, branches, etc. and we couldn't find any. i found a river on the map, assumed (incorrecly, as it turns out) that it was the one we were at, and deduced that since the river runs to the dam, and our trail led to the dam, we could just follow the river until we found the dam. makes sense! so, we bushwhacked down a hillside of DEATH, with rotten falling trees, big rocks, random roots just begging to break your ankles, etc. it was difficult, and the guys weren't enjoying themselves. actually, at one point, evan got stuck under a huge dead tree. i thought it was pretty funny, but he failed to see the humor of the moment. he had slipped coming down, and had been sliding on his butt, and the tree had fallen over at an angle, so there was just barely enough space for evan to get wedged in. he was totally helpless! classic.

So we get down to the bottom, and there's no trail waiting for us. panic! i scour the map for somewhere else we could be, and i'm not pleased with what i come up with. i decide to scout a bit, going next to the river. the river bank quickly became a river cliff, so i was forced to wade across- wet boots are not happy boots. sure enough, we are at the wrong river- there's another river that joins from this HUGE magnificent waterfall-probably like 7 or 8 stories tall. if we hadn't been so screwed i would have enjoyed it more probably. the river we are on DID go to the dam, but it went over a few waterfalls of it's own. the only solution- hike back up to the ridge that we came from. keep in mind that hiking DOWN this thing took 90 minutes. none of us wanted to guess how long it would take to go back up. but, up we went.

At least, about half-way up. then we took a right. according to the map, the trail we were supposed to be on up on the ridge would be losing altitude, so we decided that we would hike level along the side of the ridge in hopes of meeting the trail. bushwhacking is bushwhacking, or so we thought. this was the hardest thing i have probably ever done in my life. evan had been falling farther and farther behind, and what with the daylight fading, me and chris split up about a third of his pack. i got most of it (i'm not trying to be a martyr, i swear). i was leading the bushwhack, and we would hit these patches of short bamboo that were...well, i'm i don't want to insult God's creation, but lets just say that i'm pretty sure this bamboo was post-fall bamboo. it was about 5 feet tall, and grew so thicky you couldn't see more than like 5 feet. maybe. it would wrap itself around your arms, legs, waist, neck, feet, face...it was like being dragged backwards by a thousand miniature demons. there were equal parts living and dead stuff, so sometimes you would grab a handful of it to keep from falling, and it would all just snap, and you'd go tumbling down. or you'd stumble forward, and it would hit you on the cheek and slide up and try and poke your eyes out. i'm not kidding. it was impossible. and i was leading the pack, breaking the stuff up.

The bamboo came in patches, almost like fields. at first they were rare, but as we kept going, they became more and more frequent. finally i told the guys that we were losing too much time and we were going to have to go up and find a way around this stuff, or we'd be trying to do it in the dark, which none of us even wanted to think about. so, i lead the way up a landslide, and after about 10 meters, get to a deer trail and rest. chis is the next up, and as we're standing there, i notice something behind him on a tree.

red tape.

I wasn't sure if i was halucinating it, so i asked chis if he saw it too. good news for me-he did. could this be our trail?! i looked ahead while we were waiting for chris, and sure enough, there was more up ahead. i almost kissed it. we would have been deliriously happy if we had any spare energy at all, but we were all like "ok. we're on the trail. let's go." after about 20 minutes we had to bust out the flashlights, which goes to show how close it had been. we made camp at this antenna thing that was the most random thing ever, and we had some good conversation about God looking out for us, and how when we feel we are at our lowest point, God's still there, and we should never lose hope. i even cut a peice of red tape and brought it back as a testament of God's goodness to us.

Here's us the last morning:



Thursday:
Sunrise on thursday was unbelievable. the morning before we had been way down in a valley, so it was quite light before we saw the sun at all, coming up over the ridge. thursday morning there was nothing to our east- just foothills and a city. i was getting breakfast going, but for some reason my stove woulnd't light for the oatmeal. i opened it up and realized that i should have paid more attention to the fuel for the thing. i just assumed we'd be fine, but it was totally out. which means that if we hadn't used that wood stove on tuesday for 2 meals, we would have run out of fuel 2 meals before- so there would have been no hot food for wednesday morning or night, or thursday morning. which would have been bad, cuz you really need hot water to make dehydrated pasta. just one more way that God was protecting us from my lack of experience. we had granola bars instead, and broke camp. we hiked down for so long i actually revelled in little stretches that we went uphill. we saw 3 deer running away from us in the woods. we finally make it down to the dam, which we could have made it to the night before if the trail hadn't disappeared and we hadn't gotten lost. we decide that we're just gonna walk on roads to the station, as we're all worried about evans' pack breaking more. i figured we'd make better time on the roads, and we did, but it was still really, really far. and all our boots were still wet from the night before, so as we walked on the blistering blacktop, our feet were stewing inside our boots. the guys really wanted to try and hitchhike, but i didn't- i wanted to walk to the goal, to finish, to do the whole thing under my own power. after a while, i figured that we were all suffering for the sake of my pride, so i gave the guys permission to try, and after only like 10 minutes we got picked up! we never got the guy's name, but we nicknamed him jesus (that's spanish), because he saved us. he cranked the AC, and was somewhat talkative, but we were all so wasted we just zoned out. he offered to take us not to the station that we were aiming for, but actually about 30 minutes beyond that to a bigger city that we were headed for anyways (chichibu). he helped us unload, and was gone. after we claimed a table in the promanade, i went and bought ice-cold milk. never tasted so good!

IN CONCLUSION...
I figure we went about 50 kilometers total, which is...about 30 miles, by my estimation. day 2 we went like 16k, day 4 we went about 14k, and the other days we went...not as far. i will most likely never do this again-for a few reasons. 1. it was just too hard. i'm no spring chicken, but i had been training for this for about 2 months, and it was really hard. the 2 guys i was with hadn't trained at all. 2. it was just too punishing. i had all my gear, and i know that it's medium to high quality. chris had bad gear, and evan's bag broke, and 5 days was too long to be out there with bad or broken gear. i will probably do something like a 3 day hike again though, now that i know the area. it was a defining time for me, and it's something the guys will never forget: "the summer my youth pastor tried to kill me", or something.