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Enjoy!

I’m still in the process so things aren’t totally finished, but I think it looks way more awesome than this blog. Also posting things is easier there, although the iweb format doesn’t allow for easy usage metrics like wordpress does.

For anyone who wanted to read my statement of purpose for the JET program…… bad news guys…… I think I lost it in my recent reformat of my harddrive. I was so sure I backed everything up beforehand!!!! : / oh well.

I’ve applied to the JET program, and just the day before yesterday I received an email that my application has been accepted, and I have an interview mid-february!

I’m hoping that things are going to be more noteworthy these days, so I think I will start blogging again!

For any of you who found my blog while looking for information about the JET program, I will make another post later that has a copy of my “Statement of Purpose” and maybe a little bit of talk about what the application process has been like so far.

If anyone has anything they would like to see me touch on in future posts, comment or email me!

Thanks guys,

yoroshiku ne!

I. Aoyama Daigaku 青山大学

II. Nagoya 名古屋

III. Matsuri　祭り

ok, I guess it wasn’t as complicated as I thought.

Well, to hit it off I’m going to go with Aoyama. About one week ago I went to Aoyama University with my youth group from church doing a week of ministry there culminating in a big concert at the end of the week. The day that the pictures are from we went into the courtyard and sang worship music and handed out flyers for our youthgroup, then went inside and gave them snacks and conversed.

Aoyama~ a big and famous university.

The library

I have started to just use my camera phone, because the pictures are always the perfect size for posting on a blog.

woops. anyways, we kept singing ‘One Way’ by hillsong. over and over. my church friends will appreciate the significance of that.

one way! jesus!

We also did a balloon game as an illustration. They hold the balloons over the peoples heads, and when we put a lighter under them they pop. Except the balloon that has water in it, the scariest one, doesn’t pop. It illustrates that with the living water of Jesus in our lives, we can overcome difficult situations and not explode under pressure.

We did it again later (^_-)

Anyways, after that (it was on wednesday) I was busy till saturday morning, when I took an early ride on the bullet train and got to Nagoya around 11 am. Who was there to greet me but

MIHO!!!  …at this moment we are in the subway, going to the Nagoya dome where the pride of Nagoya, the Nagoya Dragons (baseball) reside. And also a HUGE mall where we wanted to go shopping!

Look mom, they put the cats that we gave them up in their staircase! They also put the incense by the front door, but it wasn’t as interesting of a picture.

Dekaketekuruyo! (lit. ‘We are going to go out from the house and come back after a little while, guys!’)

The next day, we met up with my friends Inori and Izuna and we drove all the way to the beach! (about an hour) We went to a really really REALLY authentic seafood place. Like we passed our food swimming in little crates on our way in. Literally. I couldn’t BELIEVE how good raw fish tasted… I never believed it could taste better raw than cooked… but it did.

Left: Inori, Right: Izuna

LOL… big enough? I wonder how that happened… lol I even scaled it to 70%……..

I can’t describe how good it tasted… and the soy sauce was sooooo good. Even the rice tasted delicious, I don’t know how! It was the kindof rice that you have to eat in like 5 minutes or it gets ruined – all hard and cold.

Yes, there actually WAS a magical glow just like this in real life. and it WAS caused by the food. As for the fried stuff on the plate, the closest thing is a giant shrimp (ebi) and the second one is… PUFFER FISH!!! (fubu). The puffer fish had so much flavor… it was great!

Izuna is so pretty! but at that moment, all i could think about was that giant shrimp…. O.o

A great day! After eating, we went to the Japanese equivalent of the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Except this was kindof a rice cracker snack factory. But still near the beach with loads of free samples and a place where you can see them making it!

Okashi Okashi Okashi Okashi!!!! (snack.)

On the way out i grabbed a picture of the Umi (ocean)

Actual size of my cell phone’s camera’s pictures lol NANDE?!?!

We went to a bar/restaurant that night, just Miho and Izuna and me. They had really great tasting nachos there, the first mexican food i have tasted in Japan… I ALMOST felt like I was failing taylor in our Taco Bell not eat until we see each other pact, but I decided since it wasn’t taco bell and it looked SO GOOD I would have some.

The NEXT day, Miho had work. No prob, I just hung out with her family the whole day! It was so much fun lol, me and Miho’s mom and dad went to her cousin’s house where I had the barbeque last time and picked up Miho’s Aunt, Cousin, and young neice and nephew. From there we went to a Daigakusai, which is a university festival, like the one in my previous post with Akie. This one was a bit bigger than the one at Takushoku though.

They were all really nice, and I didn’t have any problems talking with them… I think I have underestimated how much easier it is for me to understand the Nagoya accent than the Tokyo accent. When I got home to my host family after this weekend, it was like I suddenly couldn’t understand anything again, and I had to get my ears back in shape; lol. I think that it is a combination of Nagoya speakers (and Miho’s family) just talking more slowly and relaxed than my host family, and also the fact that Nagoya was the first place I went in Japan and she and her family the first people I really talked with in Japanese at all, so perhaps it is easier for me because of that. Anyways, it was a nice day because I got to talk about alot of stuff with them and they were all so impressed at my improvement since September! Quite encouraging.

This is Raikun, Miho’s nephew and that is his mommy, Ayaka, Miho’s cousin! We ate crepes, perhaps Rai ate more enthusiastically than the rest…

Miho’s neice and nephew doing the Ponyo dance… They do it EVERY time i see them. Multiple times. Lol! But they are really good at it haha.

That evening, I went with Miho and her parents AND her grandma (she may be old old, but still genki! (healthy)) We went to kind of a famous restaurant in Nagoya where there is this well known server lady who has attitude! She only talks in Nagoyaben, the kindof Nagoya dialect and she shouts at people and slaps you on the head and tells funny stories. Every time she came in she had the whole room laughing, but I could barely understand what she was saying cause it was so fast and in the Nagoya dialect… still lots of fun!

Miho’s mom and her brother on the left, who is a police officer! I asked him about the U-Turn laws in Japan cause I was curious — turns out it is the same as California. You can always make a U-Turn at standard intersections unless it is specifically marked that you can’t.

After dinner that night, they took me to Nagoya station where I bid them farewell, and boarded the OVERNIGHT BUS to TOKYO. It left at 10:50pm and arrived in Tokyo at 6:40am… The seats were designed for a Japanese person, so needless to say I was too big and didn’t get any sleep… But I took a long nap when I get home. Even though a bullet train ticket is 100 dollars, and the overnight bus is 35 dollars, i will NEVER take that bus again. NEVER. Just fyi.

After I had been home for a couple days (I brought home some rice cakes from the rice cake snack factory for my host family) my host mom and Yuka took me to a nearby festival after dinner. It was cool!

These things were a kind of decoration that you buy once a year. A shop has all sizes, from tiny to HUGE. My mom told me that your first year, you buy the smallest size, for perhaps 5 dollars. Each year after that, you have to go up one size. The last year, and the biggest size, (which was like as big as me) costs like 1000 dollars or up, i wasn’t quite sure. Also Yuka bought some buttered potatoes which they accidentally gave to her still cold, and she went back to ask for them to warm them up but we realized the guy working there was a Yakuza! (Japanese mobster) And we were kindof scared, but Yuka wanted her potatoes WARM gosh darnit! So, we got warm potatoes.

Some shrines I saw while at the festival.

There were these musicians playing while a man dressed as some kindof lion type god did a really weird dance with a small ball of yarn. I thought I would snap a quick photo.

PHEW! Well, that pretty much concludes all the important stuff I wanted to cover! I didn’t say EVERYTHING, so if you guys have any questions or anything, just leave a comment and I will be sure to answer.

Actually it wasn’t that bad.

So basically, the weather has been really unpredictable lately, so since it is cold then hot then cold I caught a cold. In Japanese ‘Kaze’ which literally means ‘wind.’ So I caught a wind. So I was really sick with a fever and everything, but waking up from a good nights sleep and getting ready to settle down for my day off. THAT was when I received the call from Temple University. ‘Your host mom just called us, and we have decided for your safety that you need to move out of your house and into an apartment in Takadanobaba for a week or so. Sorry.’ So after I get off the phone, I go out to the living room to see what the heck is going on. My host brother who supposedly doesn’t live at home had slept on the couch the night before aparently, and my mom was pulling money out of her wallet. She handed me 200 dollars, and apologized that I had to go live somewhere else for a while. She said I could leave whatever I wanted and that I would probably be able to come back in less than a week. With that, Daniel packed a suitcase and lugged his fever-ridden corpse Northwards, to the land of Takadanobaba where he found himself a nice little room. I somehow found the energy to go to the supermarket and buy lots and lots of eggs and bacon and bread and fruit and 2 gallons of Pocari Sweat (Japanese gatorade) and 1.5 gallons of milk, then I layed down on my new bed and didn’t leave the room for a week.

At least, that was what I WANTED to do, but I had to go to school twice, so I left the room twice. Here are pictures.

A change of scenery, that is for sure.

Before me, apparently an american girl lived in the apartment. According to my hearsay she went down to a sketchy side of town late at night by herself, and something unpleasant happened so she promptly returned to the states. She was blonde – I know this because she didn’t clean the room at all so I consistently got them on my clothes. Also, she was kind enough to leave photos of herself and her friends in the drawer. And she left a Temple University Mug which I took. And pots and pans, and 10 rolls of toilet paper, and laundry detergent, and about $2 in american change. Also, she left me a pack of about 40 or so tampons. Thanks! Whatever your name is.

Last thursday, I moved back into the house with my homestay family. I guess everything worked out! They seemed happy to have me back. Last saturday I took a trip to Takushoku Daigaku, Akie’s University. (Also by way of clarification, Akie’s name is NOT pronounced like Achey ‘achey-breaky heart,’ for instance. It is pronounced Ack-ee-eh. Just fyi.) There was a university festival, which means lots of different types of foods and live music all day. However, unfortunately for us as we were riding the train there, I guess someone jumped in front the train as it was coming in and died. So the train was stuck at this random station. That meant we had to walk for an hour to another station to take another train.

We ended up taking a taxi, it wasn’t nearly as fun as this pic makes it look.

Once we got there, I met her boyfriend. We didn’t talk much.

I went to hear some ‘Jazz.’ It was really more pop-fusion.

In order to take this picture, they made me buy some. ‘Buta.’ Pig. I almost barfed eating it. It tasted fine, but looking at the face while chewing was hard.

While I was there, Akie surprised me by inviting Yuko, another Japanese girl that I met in Seattle this last August. There are pictures, but they are all on Akie’s camera, I will post them later.

So, update- I finally found a church, and as of today have gone to three meetings. I’m settling in, and have met alot alot alot of new friends. Friday night I went to Yoyogi park with Tyler, Saki, Motoko, Momoko, Arnaud, and Chris. It is a really big park, and it was very dark. But we talked very loudly so it wasn’t very scary lol, just fun!

On saturday I went with a bunch of my church friends to Yokohama Trienale, a modern art festival in, you guessed it, Yokohama. Present were me, David (from Hong Kong), Yuka (my host sister), Takako, Sen, Yasu, Sam, and yes Jon, I finally met an Akira, who was also there. Although not the type of Akira you would expect. This Akira plays electric guitar on the worship team. And when I asked him what kind of music he loves, he said ‘Jazz.’ And when I asked him what his favorite band was, he said ‘Radiohead.’ Like, I’m serious. I’m not joking. I asked him some of the most important character defining questions that there are, and he answered all of them the same that I would have. It was ridiculous. So apparently me and him and this other guy are going to go to a studio in Shinjuku and record some jams. Or something. Anyhow, on to the pictures.

This is TBC (Tokyo Baptist Church)~ that is a guest band, not the normal band. Which is why so many of them are white.

This is David from Hong Kong when we went to ‘Monsoon’ for dinner after church one day.

This is just a random pic of Ben that I took while we were video chatting across the pacific. I thought it would be the best for everyone if I included it.

We had lunch before going to art festival. Takako is cut off on the left, Akira is center, David from hongkong on the right.

here is one of the buildings that had art inside

This was one of the exhibits. Two microphones that swayed slowly up and down while a voice from inside sang an address to the Kazakhstan government in randomly generated tones. I'm serious.

This was another exhibit, this one is kinda difficult to explain… There was basically a hallway, a REALLY REALLY long, narrow hallway. And there were signs on the left wall, right wall, left wall, right wall, alternating like that so you had to go back and forth like a skier. Each sign had some kind of postmodern poetry on it. Basically the poem is complete free style, and it comments on your inner thoughts as you walk through the hall. It speaks about your fears that the hallway might go on forever, your cramped feeling as the hallway is narrow. Then there is a crude picture of people having sex and there is a purple cup on a small outcropping and a sticky note on the ceiling that says ‘joy’ on it. And the poem considers your feeling as these are so random and you HAVE to look at them since there isn’t anything else in the hallway. then the same picture and cup and note come back like four more times, and the poem describes how they become like familiar friends to you when there is nothing else in the hall but that. This picture above was the one sign that hung in the middle of the hall, the text gives you two options, right or left. the poem suggests that you shouldn’t think about your decision, just according to your gut reaction choose right or left. both sides are the same. Then afterwords, the poem describes your worry that you may have picked the wrong direction even though both are the same. Then towards the end of the hallway, the poem begins reminiscing about things you miss, such as trees and stars and grass. The poem suggests that you may make a vow to yourself to eat less and workout more, tell important things to the people you love, and finally you exit the hallway. It was pretty trippy, i have to say. Especially because english is printed on the BACK of the signs so to view it in english you have to wait another hour and they let guests go through from the opposite side of the hall. That means the WHOLE poem was backwards for me, and i had to remember each sign and then reverse them when I got to the exit. Lol.

This is Yasu. All day he would only talk about two things: hot springs, and billiards.

I asked him “Yasu, onsen to biriaado ha sekai ni ichiban ii koto?” (Are hot springs and billiards the best things in this world?) To which he said “definitely.”

Lol, it turns out Oktoberfest was going on on the same day and in the same place. So we saw a guy passed out in front of the art building. lol.

Everyone brought their camera’s that day (except me noone told me… ) So David was getting all artsy…

SO many people have this EXACT dog here... nande?!?!

I don’t know why she was so mad at me……………….. lol gomennasai!!! *bows* m(._. )m

We went on this really awesome pier type thing, inside was this huge box that people go in and sit for about an hour. It was supposed to be some type of art, I don’t know what the crap it was, so we decided to skip that exhibit. The next exhibit wasn’t much better though, just loads of boards strewn around a white room with sloppy paint on the walls saying things like “LOVE IS OVER”

We decided to go to the famous Yokohama China Town, the biggest one in Japan. It was big, and there was a man and a cart.

And a gate.

and a dog

Akira and Takako trying to be artists with their cameras lol, you can see me and even a little of Yuka in the background.

Finally, densha de kaette, minna ga choutsukareta… (We went home by train, everyone was tired)

Sam is on the left, he is half Japanese half Scottish. lol. Then Sen, then Akira, then Takako. I was sitting on the other side with Yuka, David, and Yasu.

nechatta ne…

Yuka seemed really happy to have gone with us, and my Japanese friends and I even had a chance to talk to her about God some which was really cool. It was a good experience to get a little closer to Yuka, we have been kinda distant at the house lately, partly because I don’t feel like I can relate to her kind of glittery lifestyle. So this was good for that aspect.

Also, something happened with my Japanese this last week… I think I am way way better than the week before for some reason. Suddenly I am more comfortable expressing myself. This morning I met a young Japanese woman named Nori on the steps of the church, who couldn’t speak any english. Still, for some reason my Japanese impressed her and she told me her whole testimony in Japanese, which I think I actually understood! It felt really good to finally begin having success in Japanese after a while of feeling like I was the worst ever.

Anyways, after we took the train back to Shibuya, we went out to eat Yakiniku, which is delish. Some people had to go home, so it was just me and yuka and takako and david and yasu. Then afterwards Yasu SOMEHOW convinced us all to go play Billiards with him… lol…

David wanted his leg to be on the table like that; he felt it seemed more ‘pro.’ whatever that means, i never use the word ‘pro’ in the SPU vernacular so i wouldn’t know…

FYI all the BIG pictures are taken from my cellphone and the small ones from davids REALLY expensive Nikon. Don’t ask me why. I don’t control the internet. Al Gore does.

~~Ok update, I actually DID fix the picture size. I guess I DO control the internet after all.

(Yes I posted the moral first.)

This evening Akie and I went to see the movie “Wanted.” Basically, this movie reached hard for that edge, but still fell just as hard. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 73%, justifying the rating because it is oriented towards a summer audience, wanting nothing more than brainless plots and brains spattered on the walls. I would say that you can’t justify that because the movie ALSO tries to include too many messages. It pushes its themes too hard. What you have got here is a champion of anti-establishment, anti-utilitarianism (or is it pro-utilitarianism?), anti-religion, rebellion against humdrum normality. When the main character breaks the invisible wall of the screen, looks at the audience right after shooting someone’s brains out, and asks the loquacious question, “What the f*** have YOU done today?” You know the director is trying way to hard to broadcast his themes. If he thought this was going to skate through the public unconscious, delivering subliminal messages to minds only expecting a mindless shoot’emup, well, he was exactly right. This movie somehow manages to screw with your sense of ethics, then reverse it, then have you not knowing what the frick you think, and wants you to love the excitement of your own confusion. This movie tries to juggle one too many plates, and drops them all.

On another note, last night Dad took me out to Ramen for dinner, and i had the 450 gram meal. That means not only do you have a bowl of ramen, but a pound more noodles on the side. I was full afterwords. And I have no plans for the weekend. Perhaps being EXTREMELY lazy is in order. Or perhaps, being REALLY motivated and going out and finding something to do.

I am living in Japan right now, doing my best to do what it takes to learn about where I am, still sometimes a fire can burn bright enough to catch my attention from across the pacific. Therefore, in the interest of a diverse reader demographic and my own interests, I have decided to include this post on the current economic crisis in the good ol’ United States.

If you haven’t heard, this is the situation. The last two weeks have seen the government takeover America’s two biggest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its biggest insurance company, American International Group Inc. We stood by while the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was forced to declare bankruptcy and another investment giant, Merrill Lynch, was forced to sell itself to Bank of America. On Sunday evening Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the country’s last two major independent investment banks, were allowed by the fed to change their status to bank holding companies, which will allow the two institutions to open commercial banking subsidiaries, greatly bolstering the resources of both companies.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the only way to put a stop to all this ridiculousness is to have congress pass a law giving the Treasury broad powers to buy as much as $700 billion in troubled assets, primarily dealing with mortgage-backed securities that have lost tons of value due mostly to slipping home values.

I’m pretty sure we all want the same thing here: the American economy to be miraculously rescued from it’s bowel loosening financial slump. Speaking of bowel loosening, we can boil this situation down to one big quetion. If the American economy is a giant toilet bowl, how big is the current financial hole? Judging from how fast so much money and house prices are getting flushed these days, it seems pretty large. Paulson and Bernanke are hoping that this $700 billion is going to be a big enough monetary turd to clog that hole, so some of the water can finally spill out of the bowl of rich senior executives and back onto the waiting floor of desperate homeowners. However, according to many congress members, it isn’t just the turd size we have to worry about. It’s also the consistency. The proposal “does not include the necessary safeguards,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She called for “independent oversight, protections for homeowners and constraints on excessive executive compensation.” Members have also voiced that the plan is to big to happen so fast, it needs more time in order to be put into practice at maximum efficiency. Maybe this political poo is just the right size, but a little too slippery to resist the flushing waters of shaky planning and hasty implementation.

This isn’t the first time the government has taken a metaphorical squat recently either. Sen. Richard Shelby states that failures with Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, and attempts to save Bear Stearns last spring show the limited effectiveness of such an approach.

It is hard to make an accurate assessment of size and consistency in such a large and complex market, but some senators have other reasons why they disagree with the preposterously large proposition. Said a Senator about the substantial strategy: “why [are we] rushing to bailout companies whose leaders got rich gambling with other people’s money…” (Sen. Sherrod Brown)

Concerning Sherrod Brown’s comment, I may or may not have my disagreements with buying $700 billion dollars of irresponsibly made loans, but I definitely feel like maybe we could have a little bit better argument then that. (Those executives are BAD    BAD      BOYS!) I could care less about how ‘those guys may have had their hands in the taxpayers cookie jars before so now we should MAKE THEM FEEL THE PAIN!’ I just care about whether when I need to go get my own homeowners loan someday, I won’t be turned out cold from my local bank. Sen. Jim Bunning is a *little* more convincing:

“It will not help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages. It will not bring a halt to the slide in home prices. This massive bailout is not a solution. It’s financial socialism and it’s un-American.”

Perhaps that is something we really need to think about. According to the essential founder of our wondrous free market economy, Adam Smith himself said in his book ‘Wealth of Nations’ that we must create a economy by survival of the fittest rules. The ‘invisible hand’ guides some institutions to failure, others to success, leading to the happiest, healthiest market attainable. Government takeover of private firms (FNMA for instance) and this proposal are definitely not things you are going to see endorsed in that text.

Still, in my own humble opinion, we have to take a consequentialist view on this issue. I think it is pretty evident that the MOUNTAIN of poorly loaned funds resulting the freeze of the credit market are not leading us to the wonderland of a flourishing market. Also, for those of you who wanted to move to Canada during the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac incident, keep in mind that FNMA was originally chartered and created by the US government… It isn’t exactly foreign territory we are talking about here.

Normally, I would feel like the President (who by the way is a staunch advocate of the bailout) would be in a position to see the biggest portion of the picture, and also the most concerned with making people like me really happy. But these days, last term, right before he is out of that one place for good, I think history has shown that maybe they don’t have to worry so much about making us love them during the last stretch.

And the last, arguably most pressing question: even assuming all this works, what is the government going to use to wipe afterwords???

I know you were all wondering

In case you haven’t figured it out, I am in support of decisive action. I am merely concerned about the nature of that action, because even though things are bad right now, it could easily get a great deal worse when you throw in the monkey wrench of a poorly spent 700 billion dollars. Please, give me some comments to work with here~ what do you think?