Category Archives: Photos

Anna Kathleen Orme

Posted on by
Reply
Anna Kathleen Orme

Anna Kathleen

On Tuesday the 18th of October, at 11:52am (JST) Anna Kathleen Orme entered the world!  Her Japanese name is オルム 杏和（あんな）

If you are interested in our experience of giving birth here in Japan (from my point of view…) read on, if you aren’t bothered, you can skip ahead to the end!)

On Monday we went for a check up, the first beyond Anna’s due date, and after leaving and coming home Emily seemed to be struggling with things a bit more than normal (normal for an over-due pregnant mother that is!) and at around midnight she began to have contractions.  As Emily is a first time mother we understood that it would take time for Anna to appear even once labour had begun.  The hospital we’ve been going to also try to keep things as stress free as possible, and so their advice was to call them up once the contractions were serious enough and see what they think rather than panicking and getting ready to go to early.  So we went to bed. At around 4am they were strong enough to wake Emily and we timed them to around 7 or 8 minute intervals.  By 6am they were stronger still and around 5-6 mins between, so we called the clinic and headed in at 7am.

The hospital we went to uses sophrology to prepare and coach the mother through birthing and the key point is to try and keep everything as relaxing as possible.  Part of this was being given a CD of relaxing music to exercise to (and to fall asleep to) that they then played in the room Emily gave birth in.  I think the general idea is to be as relaxed as possible so that the natural processes involved can take place etc…
This also means that the birthing process that they use is pretty natural, there are no drugs involved (except oxygen and a hydration drip), Emily wasn’t moved from the bed she rested in to a special room or table for the birth, everything was actually a pretty homely experience (except the immense pain, blood and all that jazz!)  I guess it was somewhere between a home-birth and having all the necessary equipment in a controlled environment

So Anna came along at 11:52am and weighed in at 3834g (8lb 7oz-ish), 50cms long and with a full head of hair already!

After the birth Emily and Anna stayed in the hospital for 5 days to keep an eye on them. This is fairly normal here in Japan and a great chance for us to ask all the questions we have and learn from the midwives and nurses there.  Also a good chance for Emily to rest and recuperate after giving birth.  On Saturday afternoon they arrived home safe and sound!

Zamami Island

Posted on by
Reply
Zamami Island Album

Photos from Zamami Island

On Thursday we went to Zamami Island, a small island in a group lying just west of Okinawa’s main island. The ferry trip across was beautiful, clear blue seas, little sun-kissed islands here and there and even flying fish skimming over the surface to get away from the on coming tourists.

We stayed in a little family run place with our own (air conditioned!) room etc and 15 minutes walk from Furumizami beach, a beautiful coral beach with a small reef no more than a 10 metres offshore.  We spent a few hours there after we arrived just swimming around, and then went back for most of Friday doing some snorkelling around the reef and relaxing in the shade.

When we checked in we were greeted with news that a typhoon was heading for Okinawa and it might miss, but it was due to arrive on Saturday the 16th and should be far enough passed for our ferry to leave on the 20th (so we could catch flights home on the 21st).  But as time passed the strength f the typhoon was rising and its path changing and in the end we opted to leave on Saturday and spend the remainder of our time in Okinawa on the main island.

Naha etc photo album

Photos from Naha etc.

So we are back in Naha and any more pics from here will be added to the Naha album we started the last time we were here!  We will be here until the typhoon passes and expect it could be quite an experience only having experienced them on Honshu, the main Japanese island. Eventually we will head home on Thursday 21st to Hokkaido and normal life will resume!

Okinawa!

Posted on by
Reply

Emily and I are on holiday in Okinawa!  We flew here on Monday via Tokyo and were picked up by Emily’s sister at the airport.  We have spent 3 nights in Naha, the main city, and had a chance to do a bit of sight seeing and spend some time with Seika (the sister in question) who is living and studying here.

Okinawa - Naha pics

Okinawa - Naha pictures

Tomorrow we get on a ferry and go to a small island (Zamami Island) for almost a week to relax and enjoy the quiet!Here are some pictures from our trip so far, who knows if there will be any from Zamami, or what the internet situation will be where we are staying!

Continue reading →

Wedding Pictures – at last!

Posted on by
1

Finally we have got our wedding pictures online for you to see!

Check out orumu.org/wedding for the whole slideshow deal!

The wedding and tea party were great, we had a great time in Northern Ireland with a celebration at my home church (photos snitched from Jonny & First Antrim!) and a sneaky honeymoon at the always beautiful north coast!  Some pictures have found their way online of that too.

Thanks to everyone who could celebrate with us, and to those who sent greetings but couldn’t be there.  And to those who didn’t do anything but were thinking about us!  We are settling into life in Oasa, but it’s pretty busy, so I don’t know how often I can update, not that I was updating that often!  But keep an eye on twitter and facebook for shorter bites!
The picasa albums are here:

1. 結婚式 – Wedding 2. レセプション – Reception
3. ジョンの母教会 – First Antrim Celebration 4. 北アイルランドの新婚旅行 – Honeymoon in Northern Ireland

Sapporo…

Posted on by
Reply

Last Wednesday I was privileged enough to be invite to climb to the 38th floor of JR Tower by my friend JP (The dancing one, not the snowboarding one!) JR Tower is one of the tallest buildings in the city, if not the tallest…

From the top floor you can see pretty much all the city, from the mountains in the west to the fields to the east… So what better place to have a go at making some panorama pictures?! I was quite lazy though and didn’t maintain position well enough to take good pictures for stitching really, but here are four rough panoramas of Sapporo from the top of the JR Tower! The pictures are pretty large, so once you’ve clicked through to the album, you can click to zoom in for a closer look…

Sapporo panorama from JR Tower

If you live in the city see if you can spot your area (For the Higashi-ku folk, you can see the Tsudo-mu community dome in the north picture…

Then on Saturday I went with Emily to Shinrinkouen in Nopporo, Ebetsu, or Nopporo Forest Park and climbed to the measly 8th floor of the Hokkaido Centenary Memorial Tower to find out of use elevators. But the view from the 8th floor was still quite nice, particularly as there isn’t anything to get in the way… And of course the tower looking like the tower of Barad-dûr of Mordor in Lord of the Rings was a bonus!
So I took a more simple series of pictures and made another panorama! The glass was pretty dirty (lots of insects on it, ladybirds and stinkbugs) but here is the result!

From Shinrinkoen

Winter sports!

Posted on by
Reply

As you know, living in northern Japan has the perk of being able to go skiing and snowboarding without having to fly somewhere, so I won’t go on about it again!

On Saturday a bunch of students from the OMF language centre hit the slopes at Teine with all our gear and our resident snowboarding instructor!  JP and Nora came to Japan from Germany with OMF and JP shared his testimony at a Olympic themed night for students last week telling us how he came to faith after breaking his back and missing out becoming a professional snowboarder.

It was a great day and thanks to JP for teaching us what we really should be doing!

Snowboarding 2010

Surf envy…

Posted on by
Reply

On Saturday a bunch of us went to a beach near the Ferry Terminal Emiri and I went to Ibaraki from.  We were celebrating Stephanie’s birthday (A JLCer with Pioneers Mission from Canada).

The beach wasn’t the cleanest of beaches, quite a few of Japan’s beaches or coastal areas that haven’t been turned into cliffs have the misfortune of being dumping grounds for the Pacific’s garbage…  That combined with prolific fly-tipping in Japan and more relaxed views on garbage dumping in other east asian countries brings a lot of garbage to Japan’s coastlines…  This beach wasn’t so bad though, most of the drift was wood and natural stuff, but the odd piles of plastic bottles, a tv here and a sofa there, probbaly dumped and washed up in a storm.  This particular beach also had the privilege of being next to a ferry terminal and a port that is home to an oil processing plant!  But, all things considered, the water was pretty clean, and pretty nice temperature for swimming!

JP, a surfing and snowboarding missionary, was along with us, the waves were pretty small, but there were a lot of surfers out in the water.  I had a serious bit of surfing envy!  The beach was fun, and I did a bit of swimming and even brought the volleyball to the sea to have some fun, but the sea isn’t nearly as much fun when you aren’t catching waves…
So I’ve been searching for surf kayaks on yahoo auctions…  I need a kayak, a paddle, a car, wetsuit and all the gear….  I don’t think it’s going to happen!!

Here are some pics from our day at the beach!  It was still fun, and I got a bit of sun too!!

Saturday at the beach

Summer Holidays – Week 2 – Aomori

Posted on by
Reply

Over the past weeks I have had a lot of things I wanted to blog about, I thought there and then, “This would make a good blog post!” however, I usually forget to blog about them.  Which is probably for the best as often things that I think will make a good blog post turn dull and boring when I get my typing fingers on to them!

The big news of the past few weeks however is that in the second half of my holidays, for which Emiri and I went up to Aomori on our way back to Sapporo, we got engaged!  After three years of getting to know each other and ultimately seeking God’s guidance, it was finally the right time.  I had hoped to propose to Emiri on her birthday, but as it landed on a Sunday and we were back in Aomori, Emiri had been really looking forward to going to the various church services she had been part of for years, and helping out at as she spent her last months in Itayanagi helping out at the church there.  So my plans were postponed til Monday, maybe we could go to the seaside and find a nice quiet spot on a beach…  maybe we could have if the heavens hadn’t opened and poured all day!  We ended up going to see a (mediocre) movie, but having a very nice dinner at a shabu-shabu restaurant in Hirosaki.
In Japan the traditions before getting engaged are a bit different to the UK, so when I went to talk to Emiri’s father about the whole thing the week before in Ibaraki, he was extremely helpful and understanding.  At the end of the day I think our approach ended up somewhere lost between the UK and Japan, but regardless of cultural affects we were both aiming to arrive at a place where we were both clear as to what was happening and had expressed any thoughts and asked any questions.  The four of us (Emiri’s parents, Emiri and I) ended up sitting down and having a good talk about the future and how things would pan out etc.  From my current understanding , in Japan usually the guy proposes and then together the pair seek approval from parents (on both sides…This is all a bit complicated and would take a bit to explain here, so I won’t bother…)
Anyways, upshot of all that is we are engaged!

So here are some photos of our time in Aomori, and I will post some on Flickr for all the folk behind the great firewall who can’t see the picasa ones!

Summer ’09 in Aomori

Summer holidays! Week one – Ibaraki

Posted on by
2

Here are some pics from the first week of my holidays with Emiri, we went to Ibaraki and stayed with her parents there.  It was a good week and below is a link to some photos with lots of captions!

I just realised that although Emiri’s littlest (although final year in highschool) sister, Seika, was there too, but she was studying everyday (in summer holidays!) from early morning to late at night so she could do well in university entrance exams!  So there aren’t many pics of her, but I am not sure it will necessarily be a summer she wants to remember!!

Anyways, here are some pics:

Summer ’09 in Ibaraki