Bill's Blog

Moving In

September 7, 2014billkralovec

We have been here for almost a month and finally starting to feel settled in. With the jet lag (14 hour time difference) and large language and cultural differences, Japan is a difficult place to get used to. I really enjoy experiencing new things and thought the process has been fun. Nadia, and to some degree Owen, have a different personality and have been more challenged with the culture shock and language barrier. Oliver and Ocean made an easy transition, much in part due to their younger age.

Japan is extremely organized and has a culture that values order, tidiness, and documentation. This made finding a house, setting up bank accounts, phones, internet, etc. all the more time consuming. One by one, however, we knocked down the list of errands we needed to do and we are at the point now, of almost settling in to a routine. A few advice points for newcomers to the OIS Community that we learned:

1) IKEA has the best prices for furniture and household goods. It is not too difficult to get to the store, as they have a free shuttle from the Namba Station, one of the major hubs of the Osaka Train Network.

2) Nitori is close by and good for futons (Japanese beds) and kitchen ware, although, is more expensive than IKEA.

3) Be careful with the internet from a wireless satellite provider like Wi Max. It depends on your apartment or house. If there are big buildings near by or you are on a lower floor, the connection speed will be slower. If you want a guaranteed connection, go with a cable version, although you will have to wait for 1-3 weeks.

Some Japanese furniture is low to the ground.

4) You need to get an address first, before being able to get a phone, bank account, etc, therefore your energies will be focused on finding a place to live.

5) Shinsei Bank is the best because they have English service and on line English service.

6) The Minoh local government is full of good resources for newcomers and you should visit the MAGFA Community Center early from your arrival if you live near the school. They have free Japanese lessons, cooking classes, a restaurant, and many other events.

7) The Kansai Scene is a great English-language resource for things to to in the Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto metro region.

8) Ask veteran expats and locals at the school lots of questions, from who is the best cell phone provider to where can you buy good cheap vegetables.

9) The Japanese want to be helpful and will try to do their best to assist you, language barriers aside. The percentage of English speakers is low, but we always found someone who speaks enough to get us through our predicament. Someone always comes to the rescue when sorting out trains, shopping, etc. People in Osaka are very empathetic to newcomers.

Nadia and Ocean at the steps to the promised land!

Thank god I brought my tool kit that my Dad and brother Andy, bought me five years ago. It really helped in assembling shelves and tables we bought from Nitori.

A Samuri With a Tender Heart

September 3, 2014September 3, 2014billkralovec

We are finally starting to settle into a rhythm of life here in Japan. This is our first time in Asia and it all has been so overwhelming different. Everything we see or experience I want to find out more about. Where do I start blogging?

We live in the suburb of Minoh which is about a 30-minute drive from downtown Osaka. It is on the edge of the huge metropolitan area that surrounds the flat plains ringing the Bay of Osaka. Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka form a distinct metro region with close to 19 million people. Here in Minoh however, it doesn’t feel like that at all. The suburb has a lot of parks and bike/running trains, and the Hokusetsu Mountains form a backdrop for our views. The forested mountain area is a national park and only a 10-minute bike ride away from our house. (more on that later)

On a visit to the Minoh City offices to register as a resident, I noticed this cartoon mascot figure that looks like a samuri orange in the courtyard of the office complex (below) He is the famous Takinomichi Yuzuru, and is a promotional mascot for Minoh City. A yuzu is a variety of citrus fruit (a cross between a sour mandarin and a lemon-like citrus fruit) that is grown from seed in Minoh. The process takes 15-18 years of careful tending, but the taste of the fruit of the mature tree from seed is much better than by grafting. The village of Todoromi in the north of Minoh is famous for growing yuzu. I really have to get up there to see it myself.

Yuzuru is everywhere in Minoh: on buses, flyers, signs, and on the plaque near the main street in the photo at the top of the blog post. The people of Minoh say he is the samuri with a tender heart and if you pat his eyebrows when you see him, it is supposed to bring you luck! I also notice he has a girlfriend mascot, a pinkish Hello Kitty figure. I need to figure out her name.

Owen Starts Middle School Baseball Career

August 31, 2014September 3, 2014billkralovec

Senri and Osaka International Schools Middle School Boys’ Baseball Team – August 29, 2014

I was a proud Dad to watch Owen play his first baseball game in Japan. He was a bit unsure of himself, being one of the youngest players and not speaking much Japanese, he over came his fears and had a great day of baseball. The two schools form one team and the “A” Team is for the older students and the “B” Team is for the younger students. In the first “B” Team game against the Canadian Academy of Kobe, Owen came into the game in the third inning to relieve his classmate, Jun, as a pitcher. After getting the first batter to strikeout, he then walked, beaned, and walked another batter to load the bases. He then cooly struck out the next guy to get the second out and then fielded a grounder and tagged the runner heading home from third to get out of a jam. He went on to pitch three more hitless innings to earn the win and him and Jun combined for a no-hitter and an 11-0 victory. Owen through 6 strikeouts and also made another good play in the seventh inning to throw out a runner at first.

He got into the second game against the Marist Brothers International School of Kobe, and in his only at bat, doubled with a line shot between the left and center fielder, to drive in two runs and eventually scoring in a 9-2 victory. He also walked with the bases loaded to drive in a third run. In the first game he scored twice.

Owen carried around his glove all weekend and is very enthusiastic to keep playing baseball! It was a rewarding start to his Sabers career.

The Calm Before the Storm

August 9, 2014August 10, 2014billkralovec

Update: The typhoon passed quickly by Japan, crossing the island in few hours. Here is a short video of the peak winds and rain from the lobby of our hotel. There were a few branches down and everything got very soggy, but overall, it was just a bad storm and nothing exceptional. The family slept through most of it, battling jet lag.

We arrived in Osaka a couple of hours ago and are cozy in our hotel. We got in just in time as many flights are being cancelled due to Typhoon Halang which will hit the Japanese mainland in a couple of hours. As you can see from the screen shot above, Osaka is located at the tip of the arrow. Halang, with winds gusting up to 180 km/hour is between a Category 2 and 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. That means there will be heavy rains and winds, and expect some trees and wires to fall. The weather was quite cool with a nice breeze upon our exit from the airport, which is one of the nice things – the heat and humidity of the Japanese summer has dissipated, at least for the weekend.

We are very tired after the 14-hour flight. I’ll try to take some video tomorrow if possible as it is almost 11:00 PM here in Osaka. The Japan Meteorological Agency has an excellent website in English which I will be checking often during my stay here. It also covers earthquakes, weather, and ocean data.

Good night and we’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

Goodbye USA

August 8, 2014billkralovec

We are saying goodbye to summer and our visit to the USA tonight. To celebrate, we went out to eat at General Zapata Restaurant in Bethlehem and walked around the Lehigh campus. It was another gorgeous late summer evening.

I want to thank Jack, Cathy, Julie, Alice, and others for being such gracious hosts. We really enjoyed our time together and hope to continue to see each other.

It was a summer of good food (way too much), friends, family, and exploring the mid-Atlantic region, from the Appalachian Mountains to the New Jersey Shore and many places in between. The classes at Lehigh were extremely stimulating and will really help me next year as I lead a new school. The kids loved spending time with Uncle Jack and Grandma Cathy.

The “star of Bethlehem” shines over the city

Weekend Family Journal

August 5, 2014billkralovec

Ocean and Oliver Show Off Their New Haircuts

We had a quiet weekend in Freeland, Pennsylvania. On Friday morning we packed and headed back to the Appalachians after a week on the Jersey Shore. We stopped to get haircuts at shop in Toms River, New Jersey. The kids look so much older with their their new hairstyles. We then checked out the Franklin Institute, a museum dedicated to science education in Philadelphia. I highly recommend a visit, although you can skip all of the extras, like the IMAX and 3D theatres, and the flight simulators. All three attractions were quite dated and not worth the extra cost. The regular exhibitions and activities were excellent however and the kids could have stayed there all day. It was the perfect thing to do on a rainy day. We didn’t get much time to see the city and I do want to go back and explore a bit of the history of the city, especially see the Liberty Bell, the building where the Second Continental Congress met, and most importantly, recreate the training scene from the movie Rocky. The museum district is quite nice and I recommend Matt & Maria’s Italian Sandwich Shop, where we didn’t have the famous Philly Steak&Cheese sandwich, but we did have some gourmet sandwiches that really hit the spot.

The visit did make me reflect on the life of Ben Franklin. I can see why he is called the “First American”. He was such a tour de force of intellect, creativity, ambition, and service. His accomplishments and wide variety of interests are truly impressive. I got chills seeing one of the original lightning rods he designed and reading some of his original journals about electricity. He was also a great diplomat and politician. We are fortunate to have him as one of the Founding Fathers of our country and his personal characteristics helped forge the ideals of America.

We spent the rest of the weekend resting and spending time with extended family. I did take the kids for a hike in an old strip mine just outside of Freeland, near the “patch town” of Upper Lehigh. We climbed the giant ore pile nicknamed “Big Ben” and contemplated the legacy of the coal industry. The locals use the area for motorcycle and ATV riding and also as an illegal dump to avoid fees at a landfill.

This week we are finishing up with packing, doctor visits, and saying goodbye to family before heading out on Friday.

Island Beach State Park

July 31, 2014billkralovec

There were some good things that came out of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. One of them was the beautiful Island Beach State Park, here on the Jersey Shore. Henry C. Phipps, a childhood friend of Andrew Carnegie and a big shareholder in Carnegie Steel, bought the southern part of the long barrier island with the intent of making it into a resort. With the crash of the stock market, construction halted and with the interruption of World War II, the land was never developed. The State of New Jersey wisely purchased the land from his heirs in 1953, and hence today, it is the only undeveloped, large, piece of land on the entire New Jersey coast.

We spent the afternoon exploring the park. The kids felt bad for me that we didn’t see any birds in the salt marshes, so they pretended they were birds, in part to make me feel better. It is hard to believe that this is how the island looked before the extensive building of vacation homes and urbanization of the northern part of the island. In looking at real estate magazines, the big homes pictured below sell for over 1 million dollars and the smaller rental properties are also quite expensive. Park managers have done a pretty good job of allowing access to the park and preserving the environment.

I wish they would have preserved more of the coast, not only in New Jersey, but everywhere. I understand that everyone wants waterfront property, but I find myself gravitating to coastlines without development, which are few and far between.

A Classic Summer Holiday at the Jersey Shore

July 29, 2014billkralovec

We are taking a few days of rest and relaxation to celebrate the end of my classes at Lehigh. We drove 3 hours yesterday from Freeland and are staying at the “Jersey Shore”. More specifically, in Seaside Park, which is a small town on the Barnegat Peninsula, a narrow barrier peninsula, just off the mainland of north-central New Jersey. We chose Seaside Park because it is just outside the Island Beach State Park, the largest undeveloped coastline in the state.

The peninsula is very crowded, as is most of the coast, due to its proximity to the metro areas of New York and Philadelphia. For generations, Americans have come to summer on the “Jersey Shore” (I would call it the Jersey Beaches instead). It is some pretty expensive real estate, and people are attracted here because of the white sands, blue water, and cool breezes coming off the Atlantic. We had a wonderful afternoon and evening, making sand castles, throwing the football around, and diving in the big waves crashing on the sands. The water is a bit cold however, not Lake Superior cold, but extremely refreshing. The beach was not crowded with plenty of space for everyone. We are staying at the Beach Club Hotel a small, family-run hotel near the beach which is perfect. The peninsula is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, which hit the New York/New Jersey area in October of 2012.

Nadia and I are taking great pleasure in watching the kids play and have fun! That is what raising a family is all about.

Weekend in the Poconos

July 28, 2014billkralovec

We had a nice quiet weekend taking advantage of state parks in the area. On Friday we rode the Delaware & Lehigh Trail from Whitehaven to Glen Summit. Oliver described it as “dreadful” and the 22 miles tested his patience. He loved the ride back as it was all downhill. Biking is one of my favorite things to do with my family and it is very easy on my knees! I want to get into the sport even more this year.

Ocean is shown above at Sand Spring Lake in the Hickory Park State Park. Park officials created a little lake and beach area by damming the creek. It was a pleasant afternoon in the bright sun and cool water. We packed for our trip for Jersey Shore and hung out with family.

Summer Fun in the Lehigh Valley

July 26, 2014billkralovec

It has been nice to have my family with me this summer! Last summer, when I started work on my doctorate, I was here by myself. When the work is done, I certainly look forward to seeing the kids and my wife Nadia.

There is a lot to do here in the Lehigh Valley. The Valley, as the locals call it, consists of three cities, Allentown (75,000), Bethlehem (75,000) and Easton (27,000) and numerous smaller cities and towns. It lies on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania and has a border with New Jersey. With the end of the coal and steel industries, the area has environmentally recovered. There are a lot of businesses and industry still here today, with large hospitals, Penn Power, Mack Trucks, Crayola, Air Products, etc. It also serves as a bedroom community for Philadelphia, which is 97 kilometers south, and New York City, which is 140 kilometers east. Real estate and the cost of living here is much lower for them.

They have the AAA Minor League Baseball affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. The Iron Pigs play in the 10,000-seat Coca Cola Park in Allentown, which is a great night out. They are really set up for families. We got $7 tickets for the outfield grass, and had a nice evening out. The kids could roll around and there was plenty of good food and drink. I think the majority of people were there for all of the extras, and the baseball game was just an excuse to get out. They also have the Philadelphia Flyers minor league hockey team, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, and a building a new arena in Allentown.

Ocean in the center field grass – L.V. Iron Pigs vs. Buffalo Bison

The Lehigh Valley is also culturally rich, with many universities, including mine (Lehigh), art galleries, theaters, etc. I am learning more about Pennsylvania and really like it here. It is very similar to the midwest and reminds me of where I grew up. There is a bit more going on with a higher population, but it is still easy to get out and away from urban areas. It is a great place to be in the summer.