I Think I'm Turning Japanese

Out here, kids go to school from 7 until 4, and then often go to a “juku” cram school to study for school entrance exams. Today, I asked one of my schools about possibly leaving a few minutes early once or twice a month so that I could go to a special cram school for Japanese study. The juku classes fall on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I only teach at that school about four or five times a month. I figured that since I’m always studying Japanese at school between 3 and 4 PM, it’d be nice if I could use some of the down time to study with an actual teacher. Besides, it’s not like they even know I’m there between 3 and 4--I never, ever teach after 3.

So, I mentioned to the principal that some other ALTs in town have gotten permission to leave school a little early for juku classes, hoping that he’d see the light and let me go. I was afraid to ask, since this school has always been extremely strict about me being there, even if nobody talks to me or I have no classes scheduled. The principal told me that he couldn’t answer me right then, but that he’d get back to me. A few minutes ago, he pulled me into his office with another teacher to bear the bad news that, unfortunately, it would be too much of an inconvenience to let me go a little bit early once a month.

I said that I understood and that I didn’t want to inconvenience the school in any way. I apologized for making them take the time to figure things out and thanked them for their kind understanding. I acted like a good Japanese employee should act and walked away, defeated.

In the end, I’m not upset that they aren’t letting me go. It’s their right to make me stay as long as my contract requires. A part of me wants to be upset and rant about how pointless something is or about how much I’ve been wronged, but I really don’t have the energy. Sometimes it’s easier to just accept defeat. How very Japanese of me.

That said, the American in me still wants to speak out against the drawn-out process. It would have been much easier for everyone if they just said no from the beginning, rather than making it seem like such an ordeal. While I understand well the whole “duty to your employer” angle, I still wish we could have skipped the formalities and just talked to each other without all the social distance and subservient bowing. Perhaps I’m not turning Japanese after all.

Happy New Y..end of January!

A month without blog updates? Perish the thought!

But seriously--I can't believe I haven't blogged in 2010. It's time to change that, even if it's a lackluster effort.

I don't feel so bad about not updating my blog. It's not that I've grown apathetic--I've just become so obsessed with studying Japanese that all my non-teaching time at work (between 2 and 4 hours per day) is devoted to grammar and kanji study.

First, let me announced that we've decided to stay for a third year. Since Mia's going to need a heart procedure in the next year or so, we wanted to make sure that we were covered by insurance. It's hard to believe that we've re-contracted, especially considering how a couple months ago there was an almost zero-percent chance we'd stay. Stef has had some experiences out here that have made life a bit easier on her. That's not to say that it's easy to be away from family, but it's definitely more palatable. I'll let her tell everybody about those experiences in her blog. I'm extremely excited to stay, and have redoubled my efforts with the language in hopes of really solidifying my skills.

Stef was speaking with a lady who said that she doubted if I'd be able to achieve fluency in Japanese in 3 years. She hasn't really heard me speak, so I can't blame her for saying that. And truthfully, while I would say that I already do "speak Japanese", I haven't yet achieved what I would call fluency. But I see no reason why I won't be totally fluent after another 18 months in Japan. I'll surely have passed level 2 of the JLPT, if not level 1.

Many people consider themselves fluent in Japanese if they can hold natural conversations. But they may not be able to carry on a functional conversation in polite Japanese. I can already speak polite Japanese and am well on my way to speaking decent slang. Also, I want to be able to read 2000+ kanji without straining. Many conversationally fluent people are lost if they have to read something written in kanji. I'm more than halfway to my goal of 2000 kanji, and find my reading comprehension improving exponentially.

My dreams are flooded with Japanese. I wake up in the middle of each night and have grammar coursing through my brain. I repeat the phrases and grammar over and over in hopes that I'll remember to write them down or study them in depth the next day. I usually remember.

I recently visited a website that talks about turning every aspect of your life into some Japanese experience. People who frequent this site and buy into the theory spend hours each day watching anime and reading Japanese comics. I don't have time for this, especially since I have a family to tend to. Furthermore, I really don't care about anime or comics. Instead, I spend hours a day at school trying to have conversations with my coworkers, eavesdropping on all their conversations with others.

I try to read every symbol I see, and I'm constantly engaging my brain, asking myself how I'd say something in Japanese. Stef will often catch me muttering, only to realize that I'm speaking to myself in Japanese. On my bike rides to and from work, I drill difficult grammar structures and words that are hard to say. It's scary enough that a gigantic foreigner is riding around on a girl's bike with a basket. The fact that I'm talking in circles to myself makes me that much more frightening.

I've also been teaching the young men at church. The lessons are stressful to prepare, but extremely rewarding. I find myself consulting my dictionary less and less as I read through the teacher's manual. Compared to when I first started teaching, my Japanese is leaps and bounds ahead.

Dad's coming out to visit us for a few weeks. I'm very excited. We're thinking of visiting Osaka and Kyoto, along with some places that are closer to Imabari. He's coming in the beginning of March and staying until the beginning of April. I'm excited to have him come.

Then, in May, Mom and Rory are coming to stay with us for a couple weeks. We don't have many plans yet, other than fishing out by Uoshima with Azuma-san. We still need to see if that's a possibility. If not, I'm sure we could find some way to set up a fishing trip.

As a side note, I'm thinking of changing the name of my blog, and buying a domain name to go along with it. The reasoning behind this is that everybody already knows that Axel is better than Skate, and so nobody will ever go to a site that apparently doesn't contain any new information. I'll keep you posted.

Christmas in Japan

It's Christmas Eve here in Japan, and I'm sitting at school, having taught all my classes for the day. If I didn't specifically request to have tomorrow off, I'd be working on Christmas as well. Christmas in Japan is much different than Christmas in America, and I'll tell you how.

All right. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a traditional American Christmas--a time when couples go out on a romantic date, then stay the night at a fancy hotel. To maintain the true spirit of Christmas, department stores and shopping malls play traditional Christmas songs like Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You and Last Christmas by Wham!

For Christmas dinner, perhaps you've ordered the traditional plate of fried chicken, possibly weeks in advance, from a place like Kentucky Fried Chicken. As the breadwinner of the family, you stop by the store on the way home from work and pick up the Christmas cake, which everybody in the country is eating. Perhaps you even have a Christmas Party lined up, where people will all make Christmas cakes and you'll judge them on taste and design. On the table, along with the cakes and fried chicken, is a plate of sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off.

The kids have all left their stockings on their pillow in their bedroom so that Santa, who comes all the way from his home in Finland, will be able to access them easily. Santa will give you your one and only present, and if you're lucky, it'll be something other than a scarf. But you don't really care, since you're going to be getting loads of presents for New Year's Day. Isn't Christmas in America great?

The past two weeks, I've been giving three or four short presentations a day about Christmas in America. I've been just as surprised as the kids have to discover the differences between the traditional American Christmas and the way the Japanese celebrate it, which is obviously what I've described above.

Not even touching on obvious omissions like the Nativity, it really is a different holiday here--much more like Valentine's Day. Everybody knows that Christmas is a western holiday, so all the students and teachers are shocked to hear that their Christmas traditions haven't actually come from America (granted, some of the "traditions" I readily mock may actually be tradition in Europe, but I don't really know--and it's a lot easier to just point and laugh).

Kids here are blown away when I tell them how many presents we traditionally get in America. They're even more shocked when I tell them that we don't exchange presents on New Years. "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehh?" is the universal response. Christmas in America is very similar to New Year's Day in Japan.

Perhaps my favorite part of Christmas festivities this year happened on my island school, Sekizen Junior High. My teacher wanted to sing a popular traditional Christmas song from America, so she chose Wham!'s Last Christmas. Not Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, or Silent Night. George Michael (the singer/songwriter). From England. Singing about how heartbroken he is on Christmas this year, because he gave his heart to someone who he knew so well that she (or he, I guess) didn't even recognize him only a year later.

I think Christmas would be a bit more depressing here if it actually reminded me of what I was missing at home. Sure, I'm sad that I don't get to spend Christmas with our families (though we did get to see Stef's parents just a couple weeks ago, and we opened up presents with them). But I've got Stef, the girls, and the sweet voice of George Michael to soothe my soul.

Kelsey Didn't Want to Go to Han-pock Fabrics

When I was a kid—maybe 3 or 4 years old—I went missing. My mom had been getting ready to go to the fabric store—Hancock Fabrics—and I didn't want to go. So I disappeared. She looked everywhere in the house, and when she couldn't find me, called the police. Right before the police showed up, she had the feeling that she should look under her bed. There wasn't much space there—definitely less than a foot of clearance—but there I was, fast asleep. When I woke up, I explained why I had crawled under the bed in the first place—I didn't want to go to "Han-pock Fabrics".

A few months ago, the news networks got swept up into the Balloon Boy fiasco, where a kid supposedly crawled into a weather balloon before it was "mistakenly released" into the sky to the horror of many. I remember thinking that he was probably fine, since the whole "he might have climbed into the balloon by accident" angle seemed a lot less plausible than the "he's probably hiding somewhere" one. As a parent, however, the possibility that this child was in danger resonated with me, as it probably did with many parents around the world. It's probably why we felt cheated when the whole thing turned out to be a hoax, and he was found hiding in his attic, likely at the behest of his fame-seeking scumbag parents.

Yesterday, Kelsey went missing at church while I was in class. The lady who was in charge of nursery had taken her eye off Kelsey for a moment, and that was all the time Kelsey needed to slip out the back door and start wandering the neighborhood. When I came out of my class, I saw a lady go out the back door, calling Kelsey's name. I hurried to catch up and find out what had happened, when I saw that a few other people had gone after her. They had just found her laying defiantly on a wooden pallet outside a business two buildings behind the church building when I showed up. I picked her up and carried her back to church. As we walked back, she said that she wanted to go to the playground. My heart was pumping at the brief thought that Kelsey had been lost, but the nursery teacher apologized for not watching her closely, and all was well. Or so I thought.

The guy who normally picks us up for church, Aki-san, didn't show up that day, so we had to come by taxi (after first leaving on bikes and realizing it was too cold for the girls). When church was out, nobody offered us a ride, so I started asking people how I should describe the church building, in order to correctly guide the taxi company to us. In the past, every time I'd described the location of the church building to taxi drivers, they'd get a bit confused (since nobody knows where the Mormon church is). I'd always had to tell them which streets to take and where to turn, so I anticipated a bit of difficulty when I called the taxi company.

I went outside to phone the taxi, away from the noise of the church halls. I explained that the church building was right by the Toyota dealership (the only one in town by a specific name), but the guy on the phone made no attempt to understand what I was saying. This is common in Japan. If you don't speak with a perfect accent, many people make no attempt to figure out what you are trying to tell them. Given that there's often an extremely specific way to ask certain questions, if you don't ask for things in the prescribed way, you often won't get anywhere—even if you pronounce everything correctly. They just give up and wait for you to come back with perfect Japanese, or at least written (in Japanese) instructions of what you want. Stef found this out the hard way when she went to pick her parents up at the train station by herself (luckily, I had given her parents a copy of the address in Japanese in case they needed it).

So, I explained that the church was the very next building, next to the car dealership, but the guy on the line got hung up on the fact that he didn't know which side of the building I was talking about. I got so frustrated with his inability to overlook such an unimportant detail (I mean, really? They can't just figure it out when they get to the car dealership?) that I told him that I no longer needed a taxi and hung up the phone. At this point, I was extremely frazzled. I just wanted to go home.

I walked back into the church to ask someone to either give us a ride or call the taxi company for me, when Stef came rushing towards me, asking me where Kelsey had gone. She was watching Mia, and thought that I was watching Kelsey. I checked in all the rooms at the church, but couldn't find her. I, along with ten other people, rushed outside and started looking in different directions throughout the neighborhood, calling out Kelsey's name. I was overwhelmed with the thought of losing Kelsey, so my calls for her got frantic. Walking with me was a mentally disabled man from church who meant well but kept parroting everything I said in his Japanese-English accent, causing my stress level to go through the roof.

At this point, I began to fear the worst. I continued to shout Kelsey's name as I wandered through the streets, checking the 5 foot-deep drainage canals that surrounded the roads in hopes that I wouldn't find her. Even though Japan is a safe place, there's no place on Earth where every single person can be trusted. The thought of someone taking her terrified me. All I could do is pray that she was all right.

I made my way back to the chapel to see if anybody had seen her, and one of the ladies waved and gave me a thumbs-up sign. Kelsey had gone into the sacrament room hid herself inside the pulpit. I couldn't be upset at her—she's just a kid, and she didn't understand the consequences of hiding. Nevertheless, it took me a good hour or so to get my emotions under control, and I was quite short with everybody as they asked if I was able to call the taxi. I vented my frustration about the taxi debacle and walked away from everybody, not really wanting any human contact. I won't even try to justify my behavior at that point. I know I was wrong.

I'm glad Kelsey was all right. I've resolved to pay closer attention to her at church and in public. We often let her wander around some stores as long as she's within sight, since she's so active and it's basically impossible to match her energy. Kelsey's a good girl; she gets a bit difficult when she's tired or hungry, but who doesn't? She's a sweet girl that likes to play, help, love, and be loved. She's also not even three years old, so we can't expect her to behave like an adult. She just wants to go outside—to go on walks with Mommy or Daddy. It doesn't matter where—the park, the cats around the corner, Han-pock fabrics—she just wants to get out. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Samaria is not a place in Japan

Today, as I made my early bike commute to work, I crossed a busy road illegally about 150 feet before the street where I was planning to turn. I looked ahead at the crosswalk to check the traffic light, and I saw and old lady with a knit cap standing with her bike, waiting to cross the street. I waited for an opening, and then crossed illegally. As I approached the intersection, the light changed and the lady mounted her bike to cross. I shook my head, since I could have crossed legally without waiting. I looked away from her and watched the road ahead of me, when I heard a horrible crashing sound. I whipped my head over to look, and saw the lady falling to the asphalt, having been hit by a black Prius that was making a right turn (like a left, since they drive on the opposite side here).

I ditched my bike and ran into the middle of the street where she was laying. The knit cap had been knocked off of her, due to the force of the accident, as had been her right shoe. I picked her up and carried her off the street, setting her down as gently as I could on the sidewalk. The driver of the car that hit her left his car in the middle of the street, straddling the two lanes, and ran over to check on her.

She was conscious but a bit loopy, repeating that she was on her way to a hospital just a block up the street. The man was really shaken up, apologizing profusely and mentioning over and over that he hadn’t seen her in the crosswalk. All she could say in response was, “I had a green light to cross, right?” They both had a green, but turn arrows are rare, so drivers have to yield to pedestrians. My heart reaches out to the man almost as much as the lady.

I asked the man to call 119 (yeah, they do everything backwards here), but his phone was dead, so he couldn’t. He asked if I could do it for him, and then took off on foot to the nearby hospital, in hopes that they had some kind of emergency services. I asked another lady (who had just come over to help) to make the call, since I’m not the best at giving directions in Japan. I was a bit surprised that it took someone else so long to come over to help. It’s a pretty busy intersection, and cars were crossing in all directions—yet nobody stopped their car to help. I guess they figured that I had things under control. It’s so strange that people could witness something so shocking, and then just go about their day as if nothing happened.

While the other lady made the emergency phone call, I pulled the bike and some of the victim’s strewn belongings off the road, and then checked on her. She was complaining about pain in her head and clutching her right leg, which was likely broken. A few minutes later, an employee from the hospital approached us and mentioned that they didn’t have emergency services at their hospital. By that time, we had already contacted an ambulance, which was on its way.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics got out and put the lady on a stretcher, then asked me some questions about the accident. As they were getting the stretcher ready to load onto the ambulance, the Prius driver returned from the hospital and apologized again to the lady. The paramedics instructed us to stay there and wait for the police to come.

As the ambulance pulled away, the Prius driver frantically asked me if I had heard anything about her condition from the paramedics. I told him that her head and leg hurt, but that she was probably going to be okay.

The police showed up and asked me for a statement, after wondering aloud if it was okay to speak Japanese to me. I’m normally very comfortable with my Japanese, but this was new territory for me. I didn’t know all the terms used in an accident, so I spoke in very plain language. I don’t have a lot of experience with accidents, but I could at least explain what I saw.

I realized that by moving the patient and the bike, I messed with evidence. But I didn’t care, since it was more important to me to maintain safety. The bike bell was a good twenty feet away from where the accident occurred. Having not touched that, I pointed it out to the police, who drew a circle around it in chalk. They asked more questions about the traffic signals, my point of view, and where the lady, the bike, and the car all came to a stop. I did my best to describe what I had seen. They took down my contact information and let me know that I’ll probably receive a call later.

After that, I called my school to tell them that I’d be late to work (I was already about 45 minutes late by this point). While riding my bike, I jumped at almost every car that passed close to me. I keep thinking about all the little decisions I make during the day, and how much one little thing can change everything. Honestly, if I hadn’t crossed the road illegally, I could have been in the crosswalk with the lady. It could have been me—or both of us—in that crash.

The lady likely has at least a broken leg and a concussion. I’m sure she’ll survive, but as a 63 year-old woman, she’ll probably never fully recover from her injuries. I just hope that she’s okay, and that the driver will be able to forgive himself.

Things that New Mac Owners Should Have and or Know

Ryan and Erin just got a MacBook, so I've decided to give them a little guide on things I recommend.

There is a really handy search bar in the top-right corner of the screen. Just click on the magnifying glass and a little text box will open up and wait for your input. From this search bar, you can launch programs, search e-mails that you've downloaded in the Mail application, look up words in the dictionary

For example, if you want to launch Skype, just type "Skype" (or even just "Sk") into the box and hit enter.

If you want to look up a word, like "ridiculous", just type it in the box. You'll see a Definition option, which you can choose by hitting enter or selecting with your mouse.

Once that dictionary's up, you'll see a definition of the word, along with derivatives and the etymology of the word, if available. If you look at the top of the window, you'll see other options, including Thesaurus, Apple, and Wikipedia. The Wikipedia option allows you to load that word's Wikipedia page right in the same window, provided you're connected to the internet.

The Apple option is helpful if you need to look up Apple computer terms and features that you might be unfamiliar with, like "alias":

alias
On Macintosh computers, a small file with no content of its own that points to a document, folder, application, or device, usually in a different location. When you double-click the alias, the source item opens or starts up.

Yeah, so "shortcuts" are called "aliases" on Macs. So if you're wondering how to create a shortcut for something, look for the Make alias option when you right-click.

Your computer might have only one mouse button. How can you right-click? There are two ways with the new Macbooks. One is to hold the control key and click, and the other is to place two fingers on the trackpad and click the button. There are all sorts of cool tricks that you can do with the trackpad.

There are tons of cool free Podcasts that you can watch via iTunes. This link is to a bunch of cool video tips about all the features of your Mac. I recommend watching them all sometime.

Never pay a cent for Microsoft Word, especially since Neo Office (or any other OpenOffice-type program) does the same thing for free. One thing you might want to do after you install NeoOffice is change the saving preferences. From the NeoOffice menu (shortcut: command+comma) choose Preferences, and then click on the arrow next to Load/Save. Click on General and look at the bottom of the window, where it says Default file format. The first drop-down menu contains the different type of files, with Text document being the equivalent of a Microsoft Word file, Spreadsheet an Excel file, and so on. If you want to save in Microsoft Word format (for better compatibility with computers that aren't using NeoOffice), choose Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP from the Always save as menu. You can do the same for the other document types if you want to save in the standard Microsoft Office formats.

iPhoto interfaces with Facebook, so you can tag and upload pictures directly from the iPhoto application.

VLC is the best media player you'll ever find, and it's totally free. You can use it to play DVDs, as well as just about any kind of video file you could find online.

On Macs, when you install a program, you run a "Disk Image", which is kind of like a virtual CD. The easiest way to install most programs is to just drag the program icon from the Disk Image window to your Applications folder. Once the program's installed, you can eject the Disk Image by single clicking on it and then pressing command+E, or alternately clicking on the eject button in the finder window (the window you use to browse files on the desktop).

If you ever want to take snapshots with your built-in webcam, just load PhotoBooth.

Other cool programs and features that come with it that you should learn how to use: Spaces, the Dashboard (hit F12), iCal.

Grandpa Seegmiller

When I was a young teen, I went "hunting" with Grandpa Seegmiller, my mom's father, up at Big Rock Candy Mountain in Utah. I didn't have a hunting license, so I stayed back while he actually went out to hunt. We camped by a stream, shooting handguns and .22 caliber rifles at targets on trees. We built a fire inside a washing machine basin, which was great for keeping the fire contained but still putting out a ton of heat. It was an idea that he or one of his friends had, and he talked about mass-producing them. Grandpa sang about the Lemonade Springs and Big Rock Candy Mountain. I'll never forget Grandpa's rendition of Burl Ives' song, and I'll never forget that trip.

Monday was my monthly office day, meaning that I went in to the city office building and only had to stay for three hours. Usually, all the ALTs employed by the Imabari City Board of Education sit together in a closet small room, studying or chatting from 9 AM until noon. Sometimes the BOE guys need to use the room for a meeting, and so we have to go to the top floor (13th) of the main city office building. I generally prefer going there, since it's a lot less claustrophobic. This Monday was one of those days.

I occasionally bring my laptop with me to work to study, which is usually effective, since there is no internet connection at either of the two work spots. This week, Paul informed me that if you sit in a certain area of the 13th floor, there's an unsecured wireless network. I gave it a shot, and he was right. The connection wasn't strong enough to watch the World Series, but it was just fine for normal browsing.

Right before it was time to go home, I decided to check out Emily's blog, since I hadn't really read it for quite some time. When it loaded, I was shocked to see a post about how my Grandpa was in the hospital and might not make it through the day. I frantically checked the timestamp to see when she had posted. It was from earlier that day. The clock struck twelve and it was time to go home.

I didn't even know that my grandpa was sick. I was a bit upset that nobody had called to tell me. I pedaled my bicycle home and went to call Mom, only to find that the power source to our Vonage phone had somehow been unplugged. They couldn't have called me if they wanted to. I plugged the phone in, only to realize that the battery on the cordless receiver had died due to being unplugged. Luckily, we had an old corded phone lying around that I plugged in and used to call Mom.

Our conversation was brief. She said she had flown to see Grandpa at the hospital in Las Vegas, and that he was pretty lucid, and would like to hear from me. She mentioned that his aneurysms (which I didn't even know about) were bleeding and that he didn't have much longer, but that he was singing songs and telling stories to help ease the minds of all the visitors.

I got the number and called Grandpa. His step-son Jonathan answered the phone, telling me that the nurses had just given him some medication and that he would be asleep for another hour or so. I tried to distract myself by paying bills and doing the grocery shopping with Stef, but I was too anxious about getting to talk to Grandpa that I couldn't put it out of my mind.

When we got back home, I called Grandpa, and Jonathan again answered. He said that Grandpa was there and wanted to talk to me. Grandpa picked up the phone, and I asked him how he was feeling. He said, "I feel like I'm about to check out of this world," and the line went dead. I frantically redialed, hoping that those weren't his last words. After getting his voice mail a few times, I finally got back in touch with him. He told me that the Vonage line had acted up and started screaming like an alien at him, so he hung up the phone.

He asked me how my family was doing, and after giving him a quick summary of our happenings, I asked him a question that I knew would get him to talk. "I know you've been to Hong Kong and China, but did you say that you also came to Japan?"

He told me all about the time that he came to Japan, and how wonderful the experience was. He said that the bigwig CEO of the company he was doing business with, who drove a big American Cadillac--can you imagine that in the narrow streets out here?--took him out to dinner at a hibachi-style grill with another colleague. He ordered steak for everyone, and the cook came out with a huge slab of meat.

Unsure how he was going to eat so much meat, he breathed a sigh of relief when the cook cut the slab into three pieces. After a delicious and entertaining--"You know how those places are, throwing the knives around and everything," said Grandpa--meal, he glanced down at the bill, which was being picked up by the CEO. $100 a steak.

The CEO then asked if it was all right if they stayed in a Japanese-style inn instead of a typical "Americanized" hotel. Always seeking adventure, Grandpa gave the thumbs-up. When he got to the hotel, the hotel attendant showed him his bed--how it was "all rolled up in the closet", and how it just went straight on the floor.

His business partner later invited him to take a bath. It was a big communal hot tub with showers surrounding it. You had to sit on a little stool and wash off really well before dipping into the water that was so hot, you weren't sure if your skin would melt off or not.

After the bath, the CEO suggested he get a massage. Grandpa had traveled around Asia before, and knew that "massage basically meant a trip to the nearest whorehouse." He politely declined the offer, prompting his associate to explain that massages in Japan weren't like Hong Kong massages. They were real massages. "A 55 or 60 year-old woman then came out and proceeded to beat the crap out of me," explained Grandpa. "But, I'll tell you what. My back didn't hurt at all afterward."

The next morning, when the CEO asked what he wanted for breakfast, he requested "whatever people normally eat in Japan." He was treated to a "feast" of rice and these super-salty little fish that looked like bullheads that he used to catch as a kid.

It didn't matter to me that many of the things he told me were normal parts of Japanese life that I've experienced countless times--it was just great to hear Grandpa talk so fondly of his experiences. He was always a master storyteller. At one point during the story, he asked if he'd already told me this before. He hadn't, but even if he had, I would've wanted to listen anyway.

The talk got a bit more serious as he mentioned that he felt so fortunate to know how and when he was going to die. It gave him the opportunity to say goodbye to all the people he loved. He gushed about how much everybody meant to him, and how blessed he felt to talk to all his kids, including everyone from my family. He got a kick out of talking to Matt, who he said he didn't often get a chance to talk to.

He told me that he loved me and was proud of me for the choices I've made--for going on a mission, marrying a great woman, and learning all the languages. He said he'd always remember me saying that it was a family tradition for him to cook bacon and pancakes when he stayed at our house.

He was proud of my family and the adventures I've had, and again encouraged me to write a book. He himself was writing a book about all his different careers and experiences. For those who don't know, he was heavily involved in the invention and production of compact discs, and was involved in many different cutting edge business ventures.

He didn't think he'd last more than a day. If he did hang on, he said, he'd get a computer in the hospital room and type as much as he could, since he had only written up to 1960 or so, and that's when things started to get good.

He again said that he loved me and that it was great to get to talk to me again. When we said goodbye, we both knew that it would be the last time.

Monday night, after I had fallen asleep, I awoke to the sound of our phone ringing. Stef was more alert than I was and went and answered. When she came back, she said that Grandpa had passed away and that Mom wanted to talk. When uncle West went to visit him, he perked up a bit, after which he went into a violent sounding sleep from which he never woke. Mom and I talked for a few minutes, laughing about some of the stories that Grandpa told me.

I could tell that getting to talk to Grandpa before he left was helping my mom and her siblings cope. I know it did for me. When my dad's parents died, it all came so suddenly, and I never had a chance to say goodbye. I felt extremely blessed that the day he went happened to be my half day. I'm grateful that I stumbled upon Emily's blog post which clued me in to his condition. I feel so blessed to have gotten the chance to say goodbye to Grandpa Seegmiller.

He got to go out mostly on his own terms. Apparently he had known about his aneurysms for a while. He was on his way back from a hunting trip in Idaho with Clark when things started to get bad. His wife didn't want him to go on the trip at all because she was afraid that it would kill him. He responded that he didn't want to die at home. He got to go horseback riding one last time and watch Clark bring back a buck. It was the perfect way to go.

Grandpa was a trailblazing cowboy in a time of mechanized industry. His body is set to be buried at the same cemetery where my father's parents are enterred. His body may soon lie there, but his spirit is now blazing trails in that Big Rock Candy Mountain in the sky. I love you and miss you, Grandpa.