Welcome back to my blog after almost two weeks with no new posts. Sorry about the delay. The last five days have been pretty hectic to say the least, but I'm back and ready to share with you the latest happenings. So let's begin!
Starting on February 6th, we had a 9 day break from classes due to the entrance exams of potential incoming students to Nanzan University. I was very much looking forward to this break because of the severe homework dump that we had received the previous couple of days. I thought I was prepared for the potential pitfall of having extended time off and, thus, extended time to think. However, the very first day of the break I was hit full force with the feelings of loneliness and wanting to just be at home. I once again felt that the time I have remaining here was too long for me to be able to withstand. I spent some time praying and I chatted with Jamie for a little bit which seemed to help. This day felt like the longest day ever, but the great thing is that the rest of the break was much better than this! Let's move on to the next day.
February 7, 2013
Today Joey, Jay-kun, Nick and I decided to go to Sakae and Osu again to walk around and do a little shopping. Joey, Jay and I met up with Nick at the Sake subway station and then began the hunt for where we wanted to eat. One thing that I have failed to mention about Japan up to this point is that there are restaurants EVERYWHERE, and Sakae was no exception. We walked around for 15 minutes or so comparing prices and seeing if there was any particular food that caught our fancy. This was a bit arduous for me because I was perfectly content to eat at the McDonald's that was there. There is something really satisfying about being able to eat at a McDonald's and not feel terrible afterward. Anyway, we decided to eat at this pasta restaurant that was relatively inexpensive. I ordered the pasta carbonara and I can safely say that it was one of the best pasta dishes that I have ever had in my life. The sauce was rich and creamy; the seasoning simple and perfect. Unlike the American version of the carbonara that has small bacon pieces, this pasta had medium-sized pieces of cut up ham. It was so good and I think I may be becoming a little bit of a foodie. After lunch, we went in the Pokemon Center and the Shonen Jump store before we made our way to Book Off. I believe I have mentioned Book Off in a previous post but, for the sake of possible new readers, I will explain what it is again. Book Off is a chain of stores that sell used items such as video games, manga, clothes, movies, music, etc. at very cheap prices. On this day, I purchased 8 volumes of different series that I like for a grand total of about $16. If these volumes were brand new they would have probably cost about $50. Needless to say, this was an excellent investment in something that will help improve my reading skills and vocabulary. We then went to a bookstore that had new books so that Joey could pick up a book to begin studying for the JLPT N3. I decided to pick a vocabulary book for the N2 even though I have yet to find out if I passed the test or not. Either way, I will be taking the N2 at some point, whether it is this year or next. After that, we began the last leg of our journey for the day by heading to Osu. Not much happened here, as we were pretty wiped out, with the exception of Jay-kun, who was in his element at the anime goods stores. All in all, this was a fun day that helped to break the monotony and remove the sting of the previous day.
For the next two days I stayed at the dorm and spent time relaxing and resting my tired legs. The difference, however, was that these two days went by really fast, so that was a bonus! On Sunday, I went to church, and I want to share how that was with you all right now.
February 10, 2013
Today was a special day at church; it was the big Valentine's Day service. The place was packed to bursting with a lot of new faces, many of them Japanese. This made me very excited and set the tone for the entire day. We began worshiping the Lord and I could feel the presence of God among us. It was an incredible feeling, one that almost brought me to tears because of the power of it all. I am finding that I am a worshiper. After worship, the church brought up one of the church leaders, Jacob, and his wife, Terumi, to ask them some questions about relationships and marriage. This was a very good time for me, still being newly married and learning the ropes. The biggest takeaway that I had from that interview was that the value of communication cannot be overstated or stressed enough. This really spoke to me because there are times in my marriage and everyone else's marriages when communication is a struggle. What this couple was saying went hand in hand with what Jamie and I are learning together in the book Love & Respect. The message was excellent as well speaking on the topic of focusing on giving love rather than receiving love. This is something that is becoming very foreign in the world today. Many times we are focused on what we can get for ourselves out of a relationship rather than focusing on what we can put into a relationship ourselves. This is a message that the whole world needs to hear. After the service was over, Nick and I decided to join one of the LifeGroups that meets in the sanctuary after the service to discuss our thoughts about the message. This was an excellent discussion. Jacob was the leader of the group we were in and I just tried to eat up as much wisdom from him as I could, but; I did feel that I was able to contribute well to the conversation also. God helped me to make some connections with some of the things that I had learned before so I was able to share with the other guys in the group. For example, I brought up Ephesians 5:33 where husbands are commanded to love their wives and wives are commanded to respect their husbands. God may very well have commanded husbands to do this because it is not natural for men to agape love, and therefore it can be very difficult. It takes sacrifice and demands love in all circumstances, without conditions. We all agreed that it is truly the little things that we can do for our wives that will demonstrate to them that we love them as Christ loves the church. This was indeed a very powerful Sunday and Jesus has really taught me a lot already. I'm very glad that He led Nick and I to this church.
The next two days I didn't go anywhere at all. I stayed at the dorm and got some things done that would help me to stay ahead when classes resumed on Friday. Unlike last Wednesday, however; these two days went by pretty quickly and before I knew it, it was Wednesday. On Tuesday, Nick and I decided that we wanted to go somewhere on Wednesday just to get out and about at least one more time before we had to go back to class. Next, I will tell you what we decided to do.
February 13, 2013
Nick and I met up at 1:30 in front of the main gate at Nanzan. We decided the previous day that we would meet up and go to Aeon for lunch, followed by a trip to the Port of Nagoya to visit the aquarium. Like all normal Americans who are deciding what they want to eat for lunch in a foreign country, we had McDonald's. After that, we walked around Aeon for a little bit, stopping to look at the volumes of manga and other books. From Aeon we took the subway all the way to the port, which happened to be the last stop possible for the subway line that we took. We left the station and headed in the direction of our destination and the view that I saw was breathtaking. I had never seen the ocean at any point in my life until today. I looked out over the restless waves and saw a number of ships as well as a bridge that connected two different areas of the port. Being that we were right next to the ocean, it was quite cold and windy, which I was not a very big fan of. From there we made our way to the aquarium ticket window and paid our admission. We were also given a schedule of events, which told us that there was going to be a dolphin show in 5 minutes. I absolutely had to see that because I had always figured that one could only see dolphins perform in warmer places like Hawaii and Florida. Only in Japan would you have a dolphin show in the middle of winter. Anyway, we went to the show and I was overcome with awe for the creativity and infinite wisdom of God in creating these magnificent creatures. They were beautiful animals that were very athletic and playful. The tricks they performed were nothing short of amazing, especially because they were things that people could never do. That was a very fun time indeed. After this we began our actual tour of the aquarium. They had a diverse array of wildlife from different climates and regions of the world. I always get very excited at the opportunity to visit animals because I have been interested in animals since I was a little kid. There were sea turtles, seals, belugas, tropical fish, penguins and eels, to name some examples of what I saw. One of the coolest things that I saw at this aquarium was hologram displays. There were different displays scattered across the building that used holograms to graphically illustrate the information they were desiring to convey. This technology is not widely used in the US yet, although the Creation Museum has an excellent hologram display of the ape Lucy. There was one huge drawback to this wonderful experience, which I anticipated and expected. This place was absolutely dripping with evolutionary doctrine and bad science. Like I said, I expected this but it still saddened me to see that so many people are being indoctrinated by the lie of evolutionary "religion." I began thinking about how much I have always loved science and the desire to get back into biology came upon me so that I could join in spreading the truth that science upholds the Word of God. I do not know if this could be a sign of things to come or not but we will see. Regardless of the evolutionary propaganda, I had a really great time at the aquarium.
The very next day was Valentine's Day here in Japan and because of that, my dorm planned a group outing to this all you can eat place called Sweet's Paradise. This place was phenomenal and, of course, I will now tell you why.
February 14, 2013
Sweet's Paradise is an all you can eat restaurant, but, it is not just any all you can eat restaurant. This place is famous for its all you can eat sweets! They had cake, cookies, cheesecake, pie, jello, ice cream and much more. Since it was Valentine's Day there were even more delicious sweets that were themed for the day. However, sweets are not the only thing that they had on offer. The other food that they are known for here is pasta. When you get your plate and go down the line you come across an area with 6-8 containers of different kinds of pasta, and this was good pasta. They also had little sandwiches, curry, rice, soup and other foods. I was in hog heaven, so to speak. I started with one plate of pasta and then went for the dessert, which I also had a full plate of. I only had one plate of dessert, though because I reach my sugar limit very quickly. Altogether, I had 6 or 7 plates, with all but 1 of them being pasta. I just couldn't get enough of that pasta. When everyone was done eating we went over to each other and compared our belly size, which we dubbed "food baby." It was a bundle of laughs and I definitely didn't eat another meal the rest of the day. I didn't actually feel hungry again at all until about 8:30am the next morning. Now that's what I call more bang for your buck, or for your yen in this case. I hope to visit this place at least one more time before this trip is over.
This delicious day marked the end of my 9 day break and the next day addresses the difficult return part of this blog post's title. We're almost to the end, so let's continue!
February 15, 2013
I woke up today more tired than I think I had been since the first few days of being here. My head hurt and all I wanted to do was just stay in bed all day. To add insult to tiredness, I had to give a short speech in one of my classes that morning, which we had begun preparing for before the break. I felt that I was pretty ready for it and I had it well memorized. Of course when I stood up in front of the class my brain stalled a little bit and I had a few short pauses while I tried to dig the words out of the crevices in my memory. I finished and felt a little disappointed in myself for allowing the nervousness to get to me. I was hoping that my grade wouldn't be too bad. If you know me, you know that I think this way as my own biggest critic. I am very happy to say that I received a 29/30 as my grade for the speech. After my morning class I had a little bit of a layover until my tutoring session which was at 1:30. I had lunch and chatted with some friends before I went over to see who I would be tutoring that day. I got to the room and received a very humbling and terrifying shock. There was another friend of mine who was there and I thought I would be working with her. Then another lady walks into the room wearing a yellow lanyard with a name tag on it. This is significant because people who wear yellow lanyards here are staff of the Center for International Education. Through this I came to realize that I was not asked to be there to tutor, I was asked to be there to be tutored. This was like a slap in the face to me and kind of made me upset. I have never needed a tutor for Japanese and I don't need one now either. I only got Cs on the first tests for each of my language courses because I went through the test too fast, causing me to make silly mistakes and because I wasn't prepared for the tough grading system that they have. Now I know exactly how I have to prepare for exams here because I have had a class that was exactly like this at Oakland. I felt like I had been deceived because when my Sensee asked me if I would be interested in being a TA, I thought that was exactly what I would be doing. She told me that my kanji and vocabulary were good so I had no reason to think that I misunderstood her. My pride was hurt and my confidence was a little shaken. I just decided to grin and bear it through the rest of the session. I have decided that I will not be going back because I honestly do not feel that I need it. I'm not at all intending to sound boastful so I hope that it doesn't come across that way. Like I said, I have seen this story before and I know how it will end if I do what I need to do and take care of business as before. I ultimately let it go and have determined to work as hard as I can to get where I need to be. However, this was a really rough way to come back to school. Who knows, maybe there is something God is trying to teach me something through this as well.
Well I have now reached the end of my short novel and I hope it has been interesting for you to read. I just want to say thank you to all of you once again for sharing with me in this tremendous journey. Until next time, God bless!
Monday, February 18, 2013
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Farewells, Birthdays, Christ and More Culture!
Welcome back to another semi-exciting edition of my blog! There has been a lot of action going on the last 5 days or so and I would love to share it with all of you. I shall not keep you waiting any longer. Here we go!
January 31, 2013
Today was a nice short day for me academically. I had my two Japanese classes and then my three day weekend began. Earlier in the week it had been circulated in NKK (this is the name of the dorm that I'm living in, if any of you had forgotten) that we were going to have a potluck farewell party for the 8 Japanese students that will be graduating from Nanzan in March. This would be our opportunity to love on them and possibly get to know them better, for those of us who didn't know most of them very well because we were new to the university. All of the dorm students wrote out messages to all of the graduating students on little note cards that were compiled together and given as gifts at the party. This was kind of hard for me to do because I did not know most of them very well, so I mostly wrote the same thing on everyone's card except for those I knew a little better. I was somewhat relieved to discover that I was not the only one who had had this problem. My roommates and I decided to make a vegetable dish for the potluck, since it was easy to make and we had another dinner party the previous night. When we entered the community room for the party there was so many different kinds of food. The selection included grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti, crepes, fruit filled jello and much more. This was indeed a spread worth indulging in. However, there was one dish that was the most memorable of the evening. Kosuke and his roommates made this teriyaki pasta dish that was in 3 different bowls. What he failed to tell most people was that he had put some of his famous Sudden Death Sauce into one of the 3 bowls. As I was looking around the room, there were people with tears streaming down their faces, sweating profusely, inflamed lips, and one person even had some of the sauce get into her sinuses. It was kind of funny and sad all at the same time because this sauce really can make someone suffer. After all the food theatrics were over, we all gathered around the projector screen for a movie that the non-graduating students had made for the graduating students. It was a collection of pictures and video clips from their time at Nanzan and NKK. It was very heart-warming and hilarious to look upon all of these wonderful memories, even though I wasn't a part of most of them. After the movie, all of the graduating students gave a short speech about their time at Nanzan and what their future plans are, followed by receiving their gifts from all of the NKK students. It was a very touching party and one that I will remember for a long time. After the party, almost all of the dorm went to this bar called Torinosuke to celebrate, to which I politely declined. I have to say that this farewell party brought me to the reality that when I come home from Japan I will be an Oakland University alumni and I will be saying farewell to many people I care about as well. It was a very sobering, humbling thought that I must prepare to face head on as time ticks closer to my return to Michigan.
Now it's time to move on to another party that I partook in the very next day. This one was full of many laughs and great memories. Onward!
February 1, 2013
Today was J-kun's 21st birthday and he wanted to celebrate it by getting a group together, going to eat one of Nagoya's famous dishes called Miso Katsudon, going bowling, and then finally go to karaoke. This day was set up to be one of epic proportions and, in some ways it was and in other ways, it wasn't. Let me explain. We all met up at the front gate to Nanzan University and then proceeded to walk to an area of Nagoya called Kanayama to find one of the many famous Miso Katsudon restaurants. We were walking around for a while and then realized that we didn't know where we were going as well as we thought we did, so we ended up asking a random passerby for directions. Much to our chagrin, we were informed that the restaurant that we were looking for was closed for some reason. So, we decided to go to another restaurant instead, which turned out to be quite delicious. I had Katsudon again, which I would say was arguably even better than the one that I had the first time at a different restaurant. After lunch we decided that we would go bowling first since the bowling alley was right across the street. So we cross the street, enter the building, head to the top floor where the actual bowling alley is located, and eventually find out that it too was closed for construction purposes. Talk about unfortunate circumstances, right? At this point, our only remaining option that didn't require us to travel to a more distant location to bowl, was to just scratch bowling and go straight to karaoke. When we got to the front desk at the karaoke place we almost met with another unfortunate incident. We were told that it would be AT LEAST an hour before we could get a room to sing in. At this sad turn of events we deliberated and had decided that we would leave and go find something else to do. Right as were were about to walk out the door, the front desk called us back over and said that a room would be available for us in 10 minutes. Finally, something went according to plan! When we got in the room we had an absolute blast singing. Initially, I wasn't planning on singing because I am very self-conscious about my voice and didn't want to embarrass myself. However, you will be happy to know that I sang two songs, each with another person. I sang "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire with J-kun and "Taking Over Me" by Evanescence with Britney. I was going to sing "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, but we ran out of time so I was unable to. I was okay with that because now I will have time to practice it so it actually sounds good when I sing it next time. After karaoke we went to Mr. Donut and ate, you guessed it, donuts. Upon completion of our delectable donuts we went back to our respective residences. Later that evening, we had another little surprise dorm birthday party for J-kun. I could tell that he had a great day and I was happy that I was able to be a part of it with him. This is how you truly have fun at a party without going crazy.
Okay, enough with the parties because now it's time to turn our attention towards more spiritual matters. As I mentioned before, I had tried out a church and found that I didn't really like it all the much so I wanted to search for another one. That search continued and ended this past Sunday. Let us explore in more detail.
February 3, 2013
Today Nick and I decided to visit another church to see if we would like it better than the one we had attended the previous week. The name of the church is GraceCity Church and it is located within the Chihaya Community Center in the Shinsakae district of Nagoya. When I walked in the door I felt very welcome and felt the presence of God. It had a very strong international flavor to it as people from many different countries attend this church. The service itself was contemporary just like I am accustomed to back at home. The best part of the service, in my opinion, was the worship. All the songs that we sang I knew and we alternated singing verses of the song in English and Japanese. I cannot truly explain it but there is something so amazing about worshiping God in more than one language. I think it may be that I was able to connect with Jesus in a different way than what I am accustomed to. Even as we were praying I found that I was switching back and forth between English and Japanese without even really trying. It was amazing and awesome in so many ways. One other unique thing about this church's service is that it is conducted in both English and Japanese. The pastor would preach small chunks of his sermon and then a Japanese lady was spontaneously interpreting his sermon into Japanese. I listened intently to the message in both languages. The sermon's message centered around the concept of God's grace, using the story of the prodigal son as the centerpiece. It was nothing that I hadn't heard before but it brought forth a great reminder that I had been wrestling with recently. This reminder was the fact that God is never mad at me even when I do stupid things because the wrath He had because of my sin was poured out on Jesus when He died on the cross. It was a reminder to me to just accept God's love and grace regardless of the fact that I don't deserve it. It sounds simple but this is a powerful truth that has changed the lives of thousands of people. This was a message that I needed to hear on that particular day. Like I said, the church was very good and it will definitely be the church that I will be attending for the duration of my time here. I can only give glory to God for answering my prayer to provide a church body that I could be a part of while I'm away from my home church.
The last thing I would like to touch on is a couple really interesting aspects of Japanese culture that I learned just yesterday. Here in Japan, water conservation is something that is very important. To help in those efforts there are two different systems in place. On many modern Japanese toilets there is an apparatus that looks like the faucet of a sink on the top of the toilet tank. When you flush the toilet the excess water that would normally be wasted comes out of this faucet on top of the toilet tank. Apparently, you can use this water like that of a sink to wash your hands. When I heard that my mind was absolutely blown. I thought, "What a creative way to try and eliminate the wasting of resources." The toilets in my dorm room have these faucets, but I can tell for sure that I will keep my hand washing to the real sinks. This conservation of water also manifests in another way. When you take a bath, not a shower, in Japan that water can be reused later for doing your laundry. Is your mind blown yet? The reason that this is possible is because taking a bath in Japan is different that taking a bath in other countries. Before you actually enter the bath you wash and rinse yourself very thoroughly in a separate area. By doing this you don't have to be concerned that you would be washing your clothes with dirty water. Again, a very creative/innovative way to conserve water. The other really interesting thing that I learned about was this button that is in many women's restrooms. When you press the button it makes a sound that is like that of running water. The purpose of this button is to prevent embarrassing experiences for women in the restroom by drowning out the other less desirable sounds. I think this could be something that has practical use in America as well.
There is one last thing that I would like to point out about the city of Nagoya itself, since I haven't really talked about it much. Nagoya is often compared to Seattle for one main reason, and having been to Seattle I understand why. For those of you that don't know, modern-day Seattle was built on top of the old Seattle that had burned to the ground. Rather than tearing down old Seattle and building anew they decided to just build over top of it and, as a result, they have very angled streets. Nagoya has exactly the same kind of angled streets that Seattle has, although I have yet to discover why that is. With that said, walking around over here can be very tiring, but the plus side is that I will have calves of steel when I get back home. I just wanted to give you all a little more idea of what the city is like.
Well this is all that I have for you for this post. There will be more coming soon though, as I will be starting the first of two 9 day breaks from class tomorrow. There are many day trips that will probably happen and with them, many great stories to tell. Until then, stay tuned!
January 31, 2013
Today was a nice short day for me academically. I had my two Japanese classes and then my three day weekend began. Earlier in the week it had been circulated in NKK (this is the name of the dorm that I'm living in, if any of you had forgotten) that we were going to have a potluck farewell party for the 8 Japanese students that will be graduating from Nanzan in March. This would be our opportunity to love on them and possibly get to know them better, for those of us who didn't know most of them very well because we were new to the university. All of the dorm students wrote out messages to all of the graduating students on little note cards that were compiled together and given as gifts at the party. This was kind of hard for me to do because I did not know most of them very well, so I mostly wrote the same thing on everyone's card except for those I knew a little better. I was somewhat relieved to discover that I was not the only one who had had this problem. My roommates and I decided to make a vegetable dish for the potluck, since it was easy to make and we had another dinner party the previous night. When we entered the community room for the party there was so many different kinds of food. The selection included grilled cheese sandwiches, spaghetti, crepes, fruit filled jello and much more. This was indeed a spread worth indulging in. However, there was one dish that was the most memorable of the evening. Kosuke and his roommates made this teriyaki pasta dish that was in 3 different bowls. What he failed to tell most people was that he had put some of his famous Sudden Death Sauce into one of the 3 bowls. As I was looking around the room, there were people with tears streaming down their faces, sweating profusely, inflamed lips, and one person even had some of the sauce get into her sinuses. It was kind of funny and sad all at the same time because this sauce really can make someone suffer. After all the food theatrics were over, we all gathered around the projector screen for a movie that the non-graduating students had made for the graduating students. It was a collection of pictures and video clips from their time at Nanzan and NKK. It was very heart-warming and hilarious to look upon all of these wonderful memories, even though I wasn't a part of most of them. After the movie, all of the graduating students gave a short speech about their time at Nanzan and what their future plans are, followed by receiving their gifts from all of the NKK students. It was a very touching party and one that I will remember for a long time. After the party, almost all of the dorm went to this bar called Torinosuke to celebrate, to which I politely declined. I have to say that this farewell party brought me to the reality that when I come home from Japan I will be an Oakland University alumni and I will be saying farewell to many people I care about as well. It was a very sobering, humbling thought that I must prepare to face head on as time ticks closer to my return to Michigan.
Now it's time to move on to another party that I partook in the very next day. This one was full of many laughs and great memories. Onward!
February 1, 2013
Today was J-kun's 21st birthday and he wanted to celebrate it by getting a group together, going to eat one of Nagoya's famous dishes called Miso Katsudon, going bowling, and then finally go to karaoke. This day was set up to be one of epic proportions and, in some ways it was and in other ways, it wasn't. Let me explain. We all met up at the front gate to Nanzan University and then proceeded to walk to an area of Nagoya called Kanayama to find one of the many famous Miso Katsudon restaurants. We were walking around for a while and then realized that we didn't know where we were going as well as we thought we did, so we ended up asking a random passerby for directions. Much to our chagrin, we were informed that the restaurant that we were looking for was closed for some reason. So, we decided to go to another restaurant instead, which turned out to be quite delicious. I had Katsudon again, which I would say was arguably even better than the one that I had the first time at a different restaurant. After lunch we decided that we would go bowling first since the bowling alley was right across the street. So we cross the street, enter the building, head to the top floor where the actual bowling alley is located, and eventually find out that it too was closed for construction purposes. Talk about unfortunate circumstances, right? At this point, our only remaining option that didn't require us to travel to a more distant location to bowl, was to just scratch bowling and go straight to karaoke. When we got to the front desk at the karaoke place we almost met with another unfortunate incident. We were told that it would be AT LEAST an hour before we could get a room to sing in. At this sad turn of events we deliberated and had decided that we would leave and go find something else to do. Right as were were about to walk out the door, the front desk called us back over and said that a room would be available for us in 10 minutes. Finally, something went according to plan! When we got in the room we had an absolute blast singing. Initially, I wasn't planning on singing because I am very self-conscious about my voice and didn't want to embarrass myself. However, you will be happy to know that I sang two songs, each with another person. I sang "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire with J-kun and "Taking Over Me" by Evanescence with Britney. I was going to sing "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, but we ran out of time so I was unable to. I was okay with that because now I will have time to practice it so it actually sounds good when I sing it next time. After karaoke we went to Mr. Donut and ate, you guessed it, donuts. Upon completion of our delectable donuts we went back to our respective residences. Later that evening, we had another little surprise dorm birthday party for J-kun. I could tell that he had a great day and I was happy that I was able to be a part of it with him. This is how you truly have fun at a party without going crazy.
Okay, enough with the parties because now it's time to turn our attention towards more spiritual matters. As I mentioned before, I had tried out a church and found that I didn't really like it all the much so I wanted to search for another one. That search continued and ended this past Sunday. Let us explore in more detail.
February 3, 2013
Today Nick and I decided to visit another church to see if we would like it better than the one we had attended the previous week. The name of the church is GraceCity Church and it is located within the Chihaya Community Center in the Shinsakae district of Nagoya. When I walked in the door I felt very welcome and felt the presence of God. It had a very strong international flavor to it as people from many different countries attend this church. The service itself was contemporary just like I am accustomed to back at home. The best part of the service, in my opinion, was the worship. All the songs that we sang I knew and we alternated singing verses of the song in English and Japanese. I cannot truly explain it but there is something so amazing about worshiping God in more than one language. I think it may be that I was able to connect with Jesus in a different way than what I am accustomed to. Even as we were praying I found that I was switching back and forth between English and Japanese without even really trying. It was amazing and awesome in so many ways. One other unique thing about this church's service is that it is conducted in both English and Japanese. The pastor would preach small chunks of his sermon and then a Japanese lady was spontaneously interpreting his sermon into Japanese. I listened intently to the message in both languages. The sermon's message centered around the concept of God's grace, using the story of the prodigal son as the centerpiece. It was nothing that I hadn't heard before but it brought forth a great reminder that I had been wrestling with recently. This reminder was the fact that God is never mad at me even when I do stupid things because the wrath He had because of my sin was poured out on Jesus when He died on the cross. It was a reminder to me to just accept God's love and grace regardless of the fact that I don't deserve it. It sounds simple but this is a powerful truth that has changed the lives of thousands of people. This was a message that I needed to hear on that particular day. Like I said, the church was very good and it will definitely be the church that I will be attending for the duration of my time here. I can only give glory to God for answering my prayer to provide a church body that I could be a part of while I'm away from my home church.
The last thing I would like to touch on is a couple really interesting aspects of Japanese culture that I learned just yesterday. Here in Japan, water conservation is something that is very important. To help in those efforts there are two different systems in place. On many modern Japanese toilets there is an apparatus that looks like the faucet of a sink on the top of the toilet tank. When you flush the toilet the excess water that would normally be wasted comes out of this faucet on top of the toilet tank. Apparently, you can use this water like that of a sink to wash your hands. When I heard that my mind was absolutely blown. I thought, "What a creative way to try and eliminate the wasting of resources." The toilets in my dorm room have these faucets, but I can tell for sure that I will keep my hand washing to the real sinks. This conservation of water also manifests in another way. When you take a bath, not a shower, in Japan that water can be reused later for doing your laundry. Is your mind blown yet? The reason that this is possible is because taking a bath in Japan is different that taking a bath in other countries. Before you actually enter the bath you wash and rinse yourself very thoroughly in a separate area. By doing this you don't have to be concerned that you would be washing your clothes with dirty water. Again, a very creative/innovative way to conserve water. The other really interesting thing that I learned about was this button that is in many women's restrooms. When you press the button it makes a sound that is like that of running water. The purpose of this button is to prevent embarrassing experiences for women in the restroom by drowning out the other less desirable sounds. I think this could be something that has practical use in America as well.
There is one last thing that I would like to point out about the city of Nagoya itself, since I haven't really talked about it much. Nagoya is often compared to Seattle for one main reason, and having been to Seattle I understand why. For those of you that don't know, modern-day Seattle was built on top of the old Seattle that had burned to the ground. Rather than tearing down old Seattle and building anew they decided to just build over top of it and, as a result, they have very angled streets. Nagoya has exactly the same kind of angled streets that Seattle has, although I have yet to discover why that is. With that said, walking around over here can be very tiring, but the plus side is that I will have calves of steel when I get back home. I just wanted to give you all a little more idea of what the city is like.
Well this is all that I have for you for this post. There will be more coming soon though, as I will be starting the first of two 9 day breaks from class tomorrow. There are many day trips that will probably happen and with them, many great stories to tell. Until then, stay tuned!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Sakae, Church, and New Class Challenges
Hey everyone! It's been a few days but I'm back today with a lot of things that I would like to share with you. This past weekend was very interesting and there have been many new challenges at the beginning of this week. Let us commence!
January 26, 2013
Today was the day that a bunch of my friends and I decided that we wanted to go to another one of Nagoya's large shopping districts, Sakae. This area was of particular interest to us because it has a lot of stores that are very endearing to nerds such as myself. For example, Sakae has a Pokémon Center store outlet, which was the store that I most wanted to go to. If you know me even a little bit, you would know that I have been a big fan of Pokémon since I was in 4th grade. It was one of the few bright spots that I can remember well in a childhood that wasn't horrible by any means, but wasn't the best either. It is a part of me that helps me relate positively to the past, however; it doesn't prevent me from being the responsible adult and follower of Christ that I need to be. Anyway, there were other stores that were of interest to me as well such as the Jump store, which carries products from various animation and comic series that I enjoy. There was also a Studio Ghibli merchandise store, which, for those of you that know about Hayao Miyazaki and his movies, would be of great interest. There were also various clothing stores, both Western and Japanese, as well as restaurants from different cultures. We decided to eat at the McDonald's that was their for convenience and price sake. I would like to point out something that this McDonald's and many locations do as a common practice. When you place your order you are given an hour glass timer while you wait. Their goal is that the customer needs to have their food in 60 seconds or less and if they are unable to do that, the customer receives a coupon for a free Big Mac or another qualifying burger. I think this is something that American fast food restaurants should consider, although quality issues should be focused on first. I'm happy to say that my order took over 60 seconds before it was ready, so I received one of those coupons.
Now I forgot to mention that this mega shopping center is located in the subway station we arrived in. With that being said, this subway station had about 10-12 points of entry/exit, so it would have been very easy to get lost. When we got to the main area it was a very breathtaking sight. Above us there was a huge water fountain that was made of glass so we could see the water rippling from below. We later went up to the roof where the fountain was and took some pictures. It really was beautiful to see, albeit absolutely freezing. There was also a stage set up where a group of teenage pop singers were performing for a multitude of screaming fans, while children and their parents were having fun ice skating in the rink right next to the stage, surrounded by various sculptures. Needless to say, there was a lot to take in visually. I think that I will definitely go back again to explore more of the mall than just the small part we were in.
The first store that we went into was the Pokémon Center store and boy was that an experience. I have never seen so much and so many varieties of Pokémon paraphernalia in my entire life. I felt like I was back in 4th grade again when I was first introduced to Pokémon, and I remembered all of the feelings of excitement that I had. As silly as this sounds, it brought out the kid in me again and I felt many accompanying emotions with it. However, I will say that as I was walking around there was one point where I felt a little embarrassed of myself for liking this stuff because the target audience really is for people who are younger than I am, although the series has recently been moving towards slightly older audiences. Then I realized that it is okay to like this kind of thing, provided that it doesn't interfere with real life or become an idol. As I said earlier, this has been a huge part of my life for almost 15 years and it is also a huge part of nerdy, quirky personality. At any rate, it was a great time and I'm hoping to be able to go to a larger store if I'm able to visit Tokyo before I come home.
We visited a few more stores within the mall area and then decided to go seek the real prize that we came for. In Japan, there is this chain of stores called Book Off. Book Off sells used products for dirt cheap prices so, in other words, it's a college student's gold mine. They sell clothes, video games, books, etc. that are in great condition even though they are used, because Japanese people tend to take better care of their things than many Americans do. I purchased two video games, both of which cost around $20 used in the US, for about $5 and $9.50 respectively; a great deal if I've ever seen one. I also bought two volumes of some manga that I have never read before that I believe will be excellent reading practice for me. The only issue that I had with this place was something that I have talked about in a previous post. When I was in one aisle looking at the $1.50 manga I turned around and was blasted in the face with a full aisle of explicit, adult material. It was even worse than the previous experience I had in Japan with this because not only was their animated explicit material, but also real life inappropriate material. This is not helpful for any man that is trying to protect his eyes and mind from this kind of thing so it was a bit of struggle for me. I just cannot quite understand why that kind of thing is right out in the open where children could find it and look at it. I think that Japan should treat this as America does and either put it a tucked away section so everyone knows that it's bad or eliminate it from stores that it shouldn't be in and put it in stores that are associated with that kind of thing. I would prefer if all of that kind of material was eliminated in every country. My overwhelming point, I love my God, I love my wife, and I do not want to see women in a way that I'm not meant to see them. Alright, I'll get off of my soapbox now. Anyway, this was a fun experience as well and I would definitely like to go back and visit again to see what other games or cool mange that I can find.
As you can see, this was a very eventful Saturday, but also a very fun one. Let's now take a look at what happened the next day.
January 27, 2013
For the past two weeks Nick and I had been discussing the fact that we needed to find a church to attend while we are here, in order to help us continue to grow in the faith and find a solid Christian community in a very spiritually dark country. I can tell you that I have been feeling a lot of heaviness on my spirit since I've been here and I definitely needed some good community. With that said, Nick and I decided to try out the Nagoya International Christian Assembly. We had looked on their website and found that their doctrine was sound and that they were pretty easy to find. So, I got up early on Sunday morning and took the subway to Gokiso and walked the rest of the way to the church. The first person I met was the pastor's wife Carol and she was very kind. She brought me inside and introduced me to various people and also asked about my home church, LiveLIVE Church for those of you who didn't know. ;-) This church was an international church so I met people from various countries such as the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria, the US, and of course Japan. Everyone was very nice, like I said, and the community was great. I even had a nice conversation with the senior pastor Gary about my church and also the fact that their church had been around in Japan for 20 years. This was encouraging to hear, knowing how little success Christianity has had in Japan. Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot that I enjoyed about the service after that point. It felt a lot like a big family meeting rather than a church service. For the record, a church should be like a family gathering in a sense. It was a blended service, meaning it was traditional and contemporary at the same time. I had a difficult time with this because I have never really been to a blended service and I really do not care for traditional services. The worship was pretty good in the sense that people were really worship God with all of their heart, but I had a tough time being able to do that because the songs were traditional hymns with a more contemporary twist that I didn't know at all and it didn't come across so well. The actual message had a very solid point that we need to pursue a deeper relationship with Jesus and that attending church is vitally important. However, due to time constraints the sermon wasn't as deep as it could've been and I found myself wanting more "meat" when it was over. I found myself not really knowing how I felt as I made my way back to the dorm. I decided that I would do a search and see if there were any other churches in the area that might be better for me. I found one called GraceCity Church that Nick and I are going to this coming Sunday. I will have a report for you all on that as well. Now please don't misunderstand me, I didn't hate the other church at all. They are committed to Christ and I know that no church is perfect, but this church just isn't for me. I pray that they will continue to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively until He returns.
Last on the agenda for this post is some challenges that have surfaced in regards to school that have arisen just in the last few days. Prepare yourselves!
Last week we had our first tests in our Japanese Conversation and Japanese Reading and Writing classes, which would serve as our final language level placement barometer. I have not been in any danger of moving down a level at all throughout this process but I came to find out that it was still going to have an effect on me. Ide Sensee told us to check the class bulletin board before class on Monday and then come to class. I found out later that this meant the teachers were going to move some students around into classes of the same level with different teachers. I was not happy about that idea because I liked Ide Sensee and was used to her style of teaching. Come Monday morning, however, I went to the bulletin board to see that I had been moved to a different teacher and that I was one of the last ones to be moved. Initially, when I saw this I was very upset. I do not react well to change in certain situations, especially ones where I do not have a say in the matter. But, I realized that my reaction was wrong, so I stopped and prayed for God to help me to have grace and patience regardless of how I felt. Of course, God was right and I had the best day of class that I have had all semester so far. I now have Yasui Sensee for Communication and Hasuike Sensee for Reading and Writing. You know the truth that God takes any situation that is either bad or seems bad and turns it for your good and His glory? That is exactly what happened with this teacher switch. I like the two new teachers I have now better than the ones I originally had. All I can say is, God is so good all the time!
This next larger challenge happened just this morning. Yesterday, I had been asked to become a TA (Teaching Assistant) for students who are struggling a little bit, because of my high level of performance up to that point. This was very unexpected and a huge blessing to me, as it will further give me valuable teaching experience, however; I felt extremely unqualified after today. I received my two graded tests from last week and saw that I had scored a 78% and 71% respectively. All of a sudden my world started crashing down on me and I felt my confidence shatter. I NEVER get Cs on Japanese tests, it just doesn't happen. I felt like I went back in time to when I had Yukiko Sensee, where if you had even one character wrong the whole sentence was wrong. That is how they graded these tests. If there was one thing wrong I lost 2 or 3 points on some questions. I felt totally incompetent and didn't feel like I would be able to pass the semester, but then, God got a hold of me again. He brought into my remembrance that class that I had with Yukiko Sensee where I worked harder than I ever hard to earn the 3.8 that I received. He made me realize that I would have to work as hard as I did then to get the grade that I wanted, but that I could do it. I was filled with a new resolve and determination to study harder and do the best that I could possibly do. I cannot expect things to come easy all of the time and I need to work hard because that is what God wants me to do all the time. To work hard and glorify Him in all that I do. This grading system will be a challenge but it is not one that I cannot overcome with Jesus' help.
As you can see, there has been a lot going on in the last 4 days that has stirred my thoughts. From this point on I will be mentioning God more and more because He is beginning to change me in a profound and powerful way. I look forward to what the rest of this trip will bring and I cannot wait to share it all with you! Until next time, God bless everyone!
January 26, 2013
Today was the day that a bunch of my friends and I decided that we wanted to go to another one of Nagoya's large shopping districts, Sakae. This area was of particular interest to us because it has a lot of stores that are very endearing to nerds such as myself. For example, Sakae has a Pokémon Center store outlet, which was the store that I most wanted to go to. If you know me even a little bit, you would know that I have been a big fan of Pokémon since I was in 4th grade. It was one of the few bright spots that I can remember well in a childhood that wasn't horrible by any means, but wasn't the best either. It is a part of me that helps me relate positively to the past, however; it doesn't prevent me from being the responsible adult and follower of Christ that I need to be. Anyway, there were other stores that were of interest to me as well such as the Jump store, which carries products from various animation and comic series that I enjoy. There was also a Studio Ghibli merchandise store, which, for those of you that know about Hayao Miyazaki and his movies, would be of great interest. There were also various clothing stores, both Western and Japanese, as well as restaurants from different cultures. We decided to eat at the McDonald's that was their for convenience and price sake. I would like to point out something that this McDonald's and many locations do as a common practice. When you place your order you are given an hour glass timer while you wait. Their goal is that the customer needs to have their food in 60 seconds or less and if they are unable to do that, the customer receives a coupon for a free Big Mac or another qualifying burger. I think this is something that American fast food restaurants should consider, although quality issues should be focused on first. I'm happy to say that my order took over 60 seconds before it was ready, so I received one of those coupons.
Now I forgot to mention that this mega shopping center is located in the subway station we arrived in. With that being said, this subway station had about 10-12 points of entry/exit, so it would have been very easy to get lost. When we got to the main area it was a very breathtaking sight. Above us there was a huge water fountain that was made of glass so we could see the water rippling from below. We later went up to the roof where the fountain was and took some pictures. It really was beautiful to see, albeit absolutely freezing. There was also a stage set up where a group of teenage pop singers were performing for a multitude of screaming fans, while children and their parents were having fun ice skating in the rink right next to the stage, surrounded by various sculptures. Needless to say, there was a lot to take in visually. I think that I will definitely go back again to explore more of the mall than just the small part we were in.
The first store that we went into was the Pokémon Center store and boy was that an experience. I have never seen so much and so many varieties of Pokémon paraphernalia in my entire life. I felt like I was back in 4th grade again when I was first introduced to Pokémon, and I remembered all of the feelings of excitement that I had. As silly as this sounds, it brought out the kid in me again and I felt many accompanying emotions with it. However, I will say that as I was walking around there was one point where I felt a little embarrassed of myself for liking this stuff because the target audience really is for people who are younger than I am, although the series has recently been moving towards slightly older audiences. Then I realized that it is okay to like this kind of thing, provided that it doesn't interfere with real life or become an idol. As I said earlier, this has been a huge part of my life for almost 15 years and it is also a huge part of nerdy, quirky personality. At any rate, it was a great time and I'm hoping to be able to go to a larger store if I'm able to visit Tokyo before I come home.
We visited a few more stores within the mall area and then decided to go seek the real prize that we came for. In Japan, there is this chain of stores called Book Off. Book Off sells used products for dirt cheap prices so, in other words, it's a college student's gold mine. They sell clothes, video games, books, etc. that are in great condition even though they are used, because Japanese people tend to take better care of their things than many Americans do. I purchased two video games, both of which cost around $20 used in the US, for about $5 and $9.50 respectively; a great deal if I've ever seen one. I also bought two volumes of some manga that I have never read before that I believe will be excellent reading practice for me. The only issue that I had with this place was something that I have talked about in a previous post. When I was in one aisle looking at the $1.50 manga I turned around and was blasted in the face with a full aisle of explicit, adult material. It was even worse than the previous experience I had in Japan with this because not only was their animated explicit material, but also real life inappropriate material. This is not helpful for any man that is trying to protect his eyes and mind from this kind of thing so it was a bit of struggle for me. I just cannot quite understand why that kind of thing is right out in the open where children could find it and look at it. I think that Japan should treat this as America does and either put it a tucked away section so everyone knows that it's bad or eliminate it from stores that it shouldn't be in and put it in stores that are associated with that kind of thing. I would prefer if all of that kind of material was eliminated in every country. My overwhelming point, I love my God, I love my wife, and I do not want to see women in a way that I'm not meant to see them. Alright, I'll get off of my soapbox now. Anyway, this was a fun experience as well and I would definitely like to go back and visit again to see what other games or cool mange that I can find.
As you can see, this was a very eventful Saturday, but also a very fun one. Let's now take a look at what happened the next day.
January 27, 2013
For the past two weeks Nick and I had been discussing the fact that we needed to find a church to attend while we are here, in order to help us continue to grow in the faith and find a solid Christian community in a very spiritually dark country. I can tell you that I have been feeling a lot of heaviness on my spirit since I've been here and I definitely needed some good community. With that said, Nick and I decided to try out the Nagoya International Christian Assembly. We had looked on their website and found that their doctrine was sound and that they were pretty easy to find. So, I got up early on Sunday morning and took the subway to Gokiso and walked the rest of the way to the church. The first person I met was the pastor's wife Carol and she was very kind. She brought me inside and introduced me to various people and also asked about my home church, LiveLIVE Church for those of you who didn't know. ;-) This church was an international church so I met people from various countries such as the Philippines, Ghana, Nigeria, the US, and of course Japan. Everyone was very nice, like I said, and the community was great. I even had a nice conversation with the senior pastor Gary about my church and also the fact that their church had been around in Japan for 20 years. This was encouraging to hear, knowing how little success Christianity has had in Japan. Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot that I enjoyed about the service after that point. It felt a lot like a big family meeting rather than a church service. For the record, a church should be like a family gathering in a sense. It was a blended service, meaning it was traditional and contemporary at the same time. I had a difficult time with this because I have never really been to a blended service and I really do not care for traditional services. The worship was pretty good in the sense that people were really worship God with all of their heart, but I had a tough time being able to do that because the songs were traditional hymns with a more contemporary twist that I didn't know at all and it didn't come across so well. The actual message had a very solid point that we need to pursue a deeper relationship with Jesus and that attending church is vitally important. However, due to time constraints the sermon wasn't as deep as it could've been and I found myself wanting more "meat" when it was over. I found myself not really knowing how I felt as I made my way back to the dorm. I decided that I would do a search and see if there were any other churches in the area that might be better for me. I found one called GraceCity Church that Nick and I are going to this coming Sunday. I will have a report for you all on that as well. Now please don't misunderstand me, I didn't hate the other church at all. They are committed to Christ and I know that no church is perfect, but this church just isn't for me. I pray that they will continue to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively until He returns.
Last on the agenda for this post is some challenges that have surfaced in regards to school that have arisen just in the last few days. Prepare yourselves!
Last week we had our first tests in our Japanese Conversation and Japanese Reading and Writing classes, which would serve as our final language level placement barometer. I have not been in any danger of moving down a level at all throughout this process but I came to find out that it was still going to have an effect on me. Ide Sensee told us to check the class bulletin board before class on Monday and then come to class. I found out later that this meant the teachers were going to move some students around into classes of the same level with different teachers. I was not happy about that idea because I liked Ide Sensee and was used to her style of teaching. Come Monday morning, however, I went to the bulletin board to see that I had been moved to a different teacher and that I was one of the last ones to be moved. Initially, when I saw this I was very upset. I do not react well to change in certain situations, especially ones where I do not have a say in the matter. But, I realized that my reaction was wrong, so I stopped and prayed for God to help me to have grace and patience regardless of how I felt. Of course, God was right and I had the best day of class that I have had all semester so far. I now have Yasui Sensee for Communication and Hasuike Sensee for Reading and Writing. You know the truth that God takes any situation that is either bad or seems bad and turns it for your good and His glory? That is exactly what happened with this teacher switch. I like the two new teachers I have now better than the ones I originally had. All I can say is, God is so good all the time!
This next larger challenge happened just this morning. Yesterday, I had been asked to become a TA (Teaching Assistant) for students who are struggling a little bit, because of my high level of performance up to that point. This was very unexpected and a huge blessing to me, as it will further give me valuable teaching experience, however; I felt extremely unqualified after today. I received my two graded tests from last week and saw that I had scored a 78% and 71% respectively. All of a sudden my world started crashing down on me and I felt my confidence shatter. I NEVER get Cs on Japanese tests, it just doesn't happen. I felt like I went back in time to when I had Yukiko Sensee, where if you had even one character wrong the whole sentence was wrong. That is how they graded these tests. If there was one thing wrong I lost 2 or 3 points on some questions. I felt totally incompetent and didn't feel like I would be able to pass the semester, but then, God got a hold of me again. He brought into my remembrance that class that I had with Yukiko Sensee where I worked harder than I ever hard to earn the 3.8 that I received. He made me realize that I would have to work as hard as I did then to get the grade that I wanted, but that I could do it. I was filled with a new resolve and determination to study harder and do the best that I could possibly do. I cannot expect things to come easy all of the time and I need to work hard because that is what God wants me to do all the time. To work hard and glorify Him in all that I do. This grading system will be a challenge but it is not one that I cannot overcome with Jesus' help.
As you can see, there has been a lot going on in the last 4 days that has stirred my thoughts. From this point on I will be mentioning God more and more because He is beginning to change me in a profound and powerful way. I look forward to what the rest of this trip will bring and I cannot wait to share it all with you! Until next time, God bless everyone!
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Classes, Fun Times, and New Experiences
Welcome back everyone! It's been a few days but I'm back at it again. I would like to relay to all of you my assessment of my classes now that I have had all of them at least once. I think it will be an interesting and somewhat easy semester. Without further ado, Let's take a look!
Japanese Communication/Japanese Reading and Writing
I decided to lump these together, since these two courses would be combined into one at OU. The communication course primarily deals with grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking. I'm at an intermediate level in my ability so we are using an intermediate level textbook. My teacher for the communication class is Ide (ih-day) Sensee, whom I really like so far. She is very nice and patient with us when our brains are thinking faster than we can speak, which I often experience. The reading and writing course deals with reading and writing, of course, as well as kanji. I have found this class the more challenging of the two so far mostly because sometimes I have a difficult time picking out the answer to a reading content question. A great example of that was on Monday when my mind went blank when I was asked a question about the text we were reading. My teacher in this class is Fujimoto Sensee. I like her as well because she does a very good job at creating topics to get us to practice our speaking skills as well. My overall assessment of these two classes is that they may not be terribly difficult from a content standpoint, but, they will very much help me improve in other areas of my language study such as speaking. One challenge that has been very prevalent, especially this week, is how I deal with making mistakes and getting corrected. I've made a bunch of minor mistakes this week and have been corrected, but I have had difficulty dealing with that because I'm not really used to it. It has been very humbling for me and I think that is what God is trying to teach me through this. It just popped in my mind now that, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." I have a long way to go to fulfill my dream and I need to walk in humbleness on way towards it. It's getting easier to take correction but I still need some work.
Shodo (Calligraphy)
I think that I enjoy this class the most so far. We are basically learning how to write kanji using ink and brushes. It is a beautiful art form and I'm glad that I took the opportunity to take this course. We start by setting up our area with a felt pad to write on, a paperweight, a rag for spills, and an inkstone. We started by putting water in our inkstone, called suzuri, and then used our inkstick, called sumi, to make ink. The ink is made by taking the sumi and, using the water in the inkstone, sliding the sumi back and forth against the bottom of the inkstone. After a while, you will get sufficiently dark ink. Now, you are able to start writing. The brush is held straight up and down and movements are made with the elbow lifted, only moving your arm, not your body. This art is very relaxing and I think that's awesome because I was having a pretty rough day on Monday before I get to this class. Once I got in this class, however; I was able to relax and just take my time to make as beautiful looking kanji as I possibly could. One other thing I love about this class is there is no rush and we are encouraged to take as much time as we need. Our only assignments are to turn in our best work that we made during that class period and submit it. Very simple and stress free. This class may be my favorite class of the semester, I think.
Survey of Traditional Japanese Literature
This class looks at classical Japanese literature from the early periods of Japanese history and analyzes/critiques them. I chose to take this class because I'm very interested in Japanese literature, particularly in the early aristocratic and feudal eras. I think me taking this class is somewhat cheating because I have already read a lot of the material that we will cover in this class in other classes at OU. But I chose to take it anyway because I felt that we would dig even deeper into these stories and pull meaning from them. The professor for this class is the only American professor that I have and his name is Sharif Mebed. He is funny and has a very quirky personality. I think we will have a very lively and interesting class. For this class I will have to write a midterm and final paper and do a presentation on the final paper. Pretty basic so I think this will be a very straightforward class.
Japanese Culture and Art
This course analyzes the modernization of Japan and the effect that the West has had on Japan. We will cover a variety of topics including Tezuka Osamu and the creation of manga, video game creation, Kurosawa, Tsuburaya, and Miyazaki's work in the area of film, etc. The first day of class I was really excited because of all of the interesting topics that we would be covering over the course of the semester, but, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. The lecture was very informative but very dry, which made it kind of hard to listen to. I think it will get better once we get into more interesting topics but the class could also stay the same and be the longest 2 hours and 15 minutes of my week. We have to do little homework assignments every week and write a final paper. My feeling is that this class will be straightforward as well and it will probably not be too big of a challenge.
Now, let's move to some of the fun things that have happened over the last three days that I would really love to share!
January 20, 2013
Today, I finally was able to go pick up my cell phone from a store called SoftBank. I got a prepaid cell phone so, as a result, it was a flip phone but I'm here to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. These flip phones appear very simplistic but I truly feel like they put our old American flip phones to shame. On my phone you can watch TV or movies, transfer your contact information or other people's contact information via infrared, it came preloaded with a full English and Japanese dictionary, and it just has a bunch of cool little features. I would like to point out that Japanese cell phones don't really use SMS, which is text messaging. They use MMS, which is basically the same thing as email. It works pretty much the same as regular texting except I am unable to text people in America. All in all, I like the phone a lot and it was kind of neat to witness differences in technology between Japan and America.
Later on, J-kun and I went with some others to Aeon to do a little shopping and have dinner. I'm very happy that I have been able to make new friends as I have gotten more comfortable with my surroundings. It's kind of funny because I'm one of the oldest people that is studying abroad here at 22 years old. I'm not that old but it somewhat points out the unusual nature of someone who is as far along in their degree as I am to come and study abroad. Anyway, let me get off this bunny trail and get back to the point. :-) J-kun, Jonathan, and I decided that we wanted to have dinner so we went to the food court area. I had decided the last time I was at Aeon that I wanted to eat at the Japanese McDonald's next time to see if there were any differences. I followed through on my vow and I just have to say that it was quite different. The potatoes in Japan are a little sweeter than American ones so the fries were a little sweeter too. With that added sweetness, fries that are already the best in the business were made even better! The sweetness of the potatoes and the salt was a very good balancing combination. However, I was even more surprised by the burger that I ate. I got a quarter pounder with cheese and it actually tasted like it was real beef. I know that sounds funny but the beef tasted exactly like a burger hand-made with ground beef tastes like. On top of that, the burger had the same coloration as a real burger when it is being cooked. It had a nice pink center and didn't have all that sodium that American ones do. McDonald's of America, you could learn something from McDonald's of Japan.
January 22, 2013
This week and next week Japanese university students are taking their final exams and are, therefore, spending a lot of time studying. With that in mind, my roommates and I decided that we would make pancakes and sausage for the 14 Japanese students that are living in our dorm. We went to the supermarket and picked up all of our supplies and then got cooking. This was a lot of fun and it was a great way to serve the Japanese students that have been working very hard in their studies and to help us feel comfortable. You could see how grateful they were as we gave them their pancakes and sausages. It was very fulfilling for me even though it went a little later than I thought it would. I'm just reminded of how Jesus had the heart of a servant and lived that out during His time here on Earth. I want to have that kind of heart as He did and I will work towards embracing those opportunities more often than I do now. It was a great night with good friends and good food, a perfect combination.
January 23, 2013
Today I just want to highlight something I did by myself. As I'm getting more confident with using my Japanese to speak with native speakers, I don't as much feel the need to have others go with me when I need to get something done to help me out. Today, I went to the post office to mail my friend Brandon his package that he had mailed here to me. It was a little scary to interact with the postal workers for fear of not knowing what I wanted to say, but, I am pleased to say that it went very well. It really was no different than when I went to the post office at home. You just have to fill out a label, pick out your shipping method, and pay the shipping fee. Even though the process was easy I felt very accomplished for being able to communicate effectively enough to get the job done. I look forward to trying more new things like this to increase confidence in my ability.
The last thing I want to touch on is some cultural things that I have observed. In America, most people just throw everything in the trash and the waste management people come, pick up the trash, and take it to a land fill. Not so in Japan at all. All residents in Japan are to separate their garbage into different categories and, depending on the day, different categories of waste are picked up. The two main categories are burnable garbage like paper products and other organic wasted, and nonburnable garbage which consists of plastics. There is also categories for metal wastes like spray cans and other nonburnable items such as things made of rubber. This is a very strict system and it is not appreciated if it is not followed with the same level of strictness. I think the reason for this system is because of the fact that Japan doesn't have a whole of usable land so having multiple landfills would take away even more useable land space. Intriguing to think about but a huge pain in the butt at the same time.
The last thing I want to discuss that I have noticed is the fashion sense of Japanese students, in particular college students. I would say that many things that Japanese young adults, particularly men, wear is somewhat eccentric. There are a lot of unusual combinations that would probably be scoffed at in America. I saw a guy today that was wearing neon yellow platform shoes with stonewashed jeans and a plaid shirt. I find this very interesting even though I would not dress in that fashion myself. The women I would say are conservative and not conservative at the same time. While their upper body is well-covered, most of the college girls I have seen wear really short skirts with black tights. This has made little sense to me as it is quite cold here right now, and thus, a time when one should be covering up, not wearing less. I also notice that the young women wear shirts that I am more accustomed to seeing older women wear, meaning the style is a little more old-fashioned. I don't think that this is bad thing but it is a unique combination of old school and new school clothing. I definitely get a strong sense of more individuality in clothing style in Japan.
Well this was a long one so thanks for bearing with me! This weekend is looking to be very promising but I will keep the reason why under wraps until then. I'll catch you all this weekend with one or possibly two new posts!
Japanese Communication/Japanese Reading and Writing
I decided to lump these together, since these two courses would be combined into one at OU. The communication course primarily deals with grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking. I'm at an intermediate level in my ability so we are using an intermediate level textbook. My teacher for the communication class is Ide (ih-day) Sensee, whom I really like so far. She is very nice and patient with us when our brains are thinking faster than we can speak, which I often experience. The reading and writing course deals with reading and writing, of course, as well as kanji. I have found this class the more challenging of the two so far mostly because sometimes I have a difficult time picking out the answer to a reading content question. A great example of that was on Monday when my mind went blank when I was asked a question about the text we were reading. My teacher in this class is Fujimoto Sensee. I like her as well because she does a very good job at creating topics to get us to practice our speaking skills as well. My overall assessment of these two classes is that they may not be terribly difficult from a content standpoint, but, they will very much help me improve in other areas of my language study such as speaking. One challenge that has been very prevalent, especially this week, is how I deal with making mistakes and getting corrected. I've made a bunch of minor mistakes this week and have been corrected, but I have had difficulty dealing with that because I'm not really used to it. It has been very humbling for me and I think that is what God is trying to teach me through this. It just popped in my mind now that, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." I have a long way to go to fulfill my dream and I need to walk in humbleness on way towards it. It's getting easier to take correction but I still need some work.
Shodo (Calligraphy)
I think that I enjoy this class the most so far. We are basically learning how to write kanji using ink and brushes. It is a beautiful art form and I'm glad that I took the opportunity to take this course. We start by setting up our area with a felt pad to write on, a paperweight, a rag for spills, and an inkstone. We started by putting water in our inkstone, called suzuri, and then used our inkstick, called sumi, to make ink. The ink is made by taking the sumi and, using the water in the inkstone, sliding the sumi back and forth against the bottom of the inkstone. After a while, you will get sufficiently dark ink. Now, you are able to start writing. The brush is held straight up and down and movements are made with the elbow lifted, only moving your arm, not your body. This art is very relaxing and I think that's awesome because I was having a pretty rough day on Monday before I get to this class. Once I got in this class, however; I was able to relax and just take my time to make as beautiful looking kanji as I possibly could. One other thing I love about this class is there is no rush and we are encouraged to take as much time as we need. Our only assignments are to turn in our best work that we made during that class period and submit it. Very simple and stress free. This class may be my favorite class of the semester, I think.
Survey of Traditional Japanese Literature
This class looks at classical Japanese literature from the early periods of Japanese history and analyzes/critiques them. I chose to take this class because I'm very interested in Japanese literature, particularly in the early aristocratic and feudal eras. I think me taking this class is somewhat cheating because I have already read a lot of the material that we will cover in this class in other classes at OU. But I chose to take it anyway because I felt that we would dig even deeper into these stories and pull meaning from them. The professor for this class is the only American professor that I have and his name is Sharif Mebed. He is funny and has a very quirky personality. I think we will have a very lively and interesting class. For this class I will have to write a midterm and final paper and do a presentation on the final paper. Pretty basic so I think this will be a very straightforward class.
Japanese Culture and Art
This course analyzes the modernization of Japan and the effect that the West has had on Japan. We will cover a variety of topics including Tezuka Osamu and the creation of manga, video game creation, Kurosawa, Tsuburaya, and Miyazaki's work in the area of film, etc. The first day of class I was really excited because of all of the interesting topics that we would be covering over the course of the semester, but, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. The lecture was very informative but very dry, which made it kind of hard to listen to. I think it will get better once we get into more interesting topics but the class could also stay the same and be the longest 2 hours and 15 minutes of my week. We have to do little homework assignments every week and write a final paper. My feeling is that this class will be straightforward as well and it will probably not be too big of a challenge.
Now, let's move to some of the fun things that have happened over the last three days that I would really love to share!
January 20, 2013
Today, I finally was able to go pick up my cell phone from a store called SoftBank. I got a prepaid cell phone so, as a result, it was a flip phone but I'm here to tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. These flip phones appear very simplistic but I truly feel like they put our old American flip phones to shame. On my phone you can watch TV or movies, transfer your contact information or other people's contact information via infrared, it came preloaded with a full English and Japanese dictionary, and it just has a bunch of cool little features. I would like to point out that Japanese cell phones don't really use SMS, which is text messaging. They use MMS, which is basically the same thing as email. It works pretty much the same as regular texting except I am unable to text people in America. All in all, I like the phone a lot and it was kind of neat to witness differences in technology between Japan and America.
Later on, J-kun and I went with some others to Aeon to do a little shopping and have dinner. I'm very happy that I have been able to make new friends as I have gotten more comfortable with my surroundings. It's kind of funny because I'm one of the oldest people that is studying abroad here at 22 years old. I'm not that old but it somewhat points out the unusual nature of someone who is as far along in their degree as I am to come and study abroad. Anyway, let me get off this bunny trail and get back to the point. :-) J-kun, Jonathan, and I decided that we wanted to have dinner so we went to the food court area. I had decided the last time I was at Aeon that I wanted to eat at the Japanese McDonald's next time to see if there were any differences. I followed through on my vow and I just have to say that it was quite different. The potatoes in Japan are a little sweeter than American ones so the fries were a little sweeter too. With that added sweetness, fries that are already the best in the business were made even better! The sweetness of the potatoes and the salt was a very good balancing combination. However, I was even more surprised by the burger that I ate. I got a quarter pounder with cheese and it actually tasted like it was real beef. I know that sounds funny but the beef tasted exactly like a burger hand-made with ground beef tastes like. On top of that, the burger had the same coloration as a real burger when it is being cooked. It had a nice pink center and didn't have all that sodium that American ones do. McDonald's of America, you could learn something from McDonald's of Japan.
January 22, 2013
This week and next week Japanese university students are taking their final exams and are, therefore, spending a lot of time studying. With that in mind, my roommates and I decided that we would make pancakes and sausage for the 14 Japanese students that are living in our dorm. We went to the supermarket and picked up all of our supplies and then got cooking. This was a lot of fun and it was a great way to serve the Japanese students that have been working very hard in their studies and to help us feel comfortable. You could see how grateful they were as we gave them their pancakes and sausages. It was very fulfilling for me even though it went a little later than I thought it would. I'm just reminded of how Jesus had the heart of a servant and lived that out during His time here on Earth. I want to have that kind of heart as He did and I will work towards embracing those opportunities more often than I do now. It was a great night with good friends and good food, a perfect combination.
January 23, 2013
Today I just want to highlight something I did by myself. As I'm getting more confident with using my Japanese to speak with native speakers, I don't as much feel the need to have others go with me when I need to get something done to help me out. Today, I went to the post office to mail my friend Brandon his package that he had mailed here to me. It was a little scary to interact with the postal workers for fear of not knowing what I wanted to say, but, I am pleased to say that it went very well. It really was no different than when I went to the post office at home. You just have to fill out a label, pick out your shipping method, and pay the shipping fee. Even though the process was easy I felt very accomplished for being able to communicate effectively enough to get the job done. I look forward to trying more new things like this to increase confidence in my ability.
The last thing I want to touch on is some cultural things that I have observed. In America, most people just throw everything in the trash and the waste management people come, pick up the trash, and take it to a land fill. Not so in Japan at all. All residents in Japan are to separate their garbage into different categories and, depending on the day, different categories of waste are picked up. The two main categories are burnable garbage like paper products and other organic wasted, and nonburnable garbage which consists of plastics. There is also categories for metal wastes like spray cans and other nonburnable items such as things made of rubber. This is a very strict system and it is not appreciated if it is not followed with the same level of strictness. I think the reason for this system is because of the fact that Japan doesn't have a whole of usable land so having multiple landfills would take away even more useable land space. Intriguing to think about but a huge pain in the butt at the same time.
The last thing I want to discuss that I have noticed is the fashion sense of Japanese students, in particular college students. I would say that many things that Japanese young adults, particularly men, wear is somewhat eccentric. There are a lot of unusual combinations that would probably be scoffed at in America. I saw a guy today that was wearing neon yellow platform shoes with stonewashed jeans and a plaid shirt. I find this very interesting even though I would not dress in that fashion myself. The women I would say are conservative and not conservative at the same time. While their upper body is well-covered, most of the college girls I have seen wear really short skirts with black tights. This has made little sense to me as it is quite cold here right now, and thus, a time when one should be covering up, not wearing less. I also notice that the young women wear shirts that I am more accustomed to seeing older women wear, meaning the style is a little more old-fashioned. I don't think that this is bad thing but it is a unique combination of old school and new school clothing. I definitely get a strong sense of more individuality in clothing style in Japan.
Well this was a long one so thanks for bearing with me! This weekend is looking to be very promising but I will keep the reason why under wraps until then. I'll catch you all this weekend with one or possibly two new posts!
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Of Blow Darts and Castles
Welcome back to another exciting installment of my blog. The last day and a half have been pretty interesting and I would like to share that with you today. This journey is just beginning to take shape now as the semester has now truly begun. Without further ado, let's dive right in!
January 15, 2013
The daytime hours were pretty low-key as it was our last day of orientations before classes start. Things got interesting, however, in the evening. The previous night my dorm room decided to make Nabe which is a type of soup and invite others over to join us for dinner. Initially, I was a little uneasy about having a bunch of people over because the evening is usually my mental dump/process time and having company can be stressful, but, I was able to overcome that and be okay with the idea. My roommates and I met at our room and headed over to the supermarket "Valor" to purchase ingredients. We came back and began the preparations, and people began to arrive shortly thereafter. The dinner was a good bonding experience for all of us, but especially for me because most of the people that came I had not yet met. Now at this point things got really interesting. J-kun, being from Louisiana, really enjoys spicy food. That being said, one of the guys who came over for dinner, Kosuke, also really likes spicy food and he brought with him this hot sauce appropriately named "Death Sauce." On the bottle it says that the recommended amount is 2 microdrops, which was impossible to measure, but J-kun decided to put a considerable amount in his soup. He mixed it up and was fine initially but then he got to the bottom of the soup bowl. All of the sauce ingredients had collected at the bottom of the bowl and he was now consuming them. The effects were immediate. His face turned bright red, he broke out into a sweat, tears streamed from his eyes, and he tried consuming as much bread as possible. This appeared to work but then he got hit with 2 or 3 more afterburns. This was quite hilarious but if you thought this was the highlight of the night you would be mistaken.
In our living room area we noticed this long wooden staff-like object propped against the wall in a corner. Since inquiring minds wanted to know, we decided to investigate in the hopes of figuring out what it was. It looked like a staff of African make with tufts of bristle like hair that went around the shaft. Upon closer inspection, we figured out that it could come apart and we were extremely pleased to discover that it was a blow dart gun with multiple darts in it. Being college students, we absolutely had to play with it, so we went into the hallway of our dorm room and set up a couple of shoe boxes and some cans and had some target practice. It was so much fun and I was one of the few who was able to hit the shoebox. Suffice it to say, this was a surprisingly exciting end to an evening that I expected to be normal.
Alright, now it's time to move forward into the next day which was even more exciting than the previous night was. Seem impossible? Just wait and see. Let's continue.
January 16, 2013
When I woke up this morning I felt very down and depressed, as if I already knew somehow that it was going to be a terrible day. I was fighting back tears but why tears were even present, I knew not. I talked to Jamie via Skype as I do every morning and she gave me the great advice to verbally declare that the Lord is with me, that it would be a great day because I am His, and that Satan cannot steal the joy that I have in Him. I declared that and I prayed and from that point on, my day was very good.
Today was the first day of classes so, admittedly, I had some butterflies in my stomach. Although, I'm sure some of that was due to the fact that our language level placement was still in process. I got an introduction to both of my classes and then we had to take another placement test in each class. There was an A test and a B test. Everyone was required to take the A test because it was essentially a review of the material from the previous level. The B test was for people that wanted to attempt to get into the next highest level. I only took the A test because I was already in the level that I wanted to be in. However, when I got that first test it was as if I had never taken any Japanese before. The test was so confusing and I thought it didn't go all that well. The A test in my second class went much better but I was still quite concerned that I might get dropped down to 400-level. Note: As of today, I'm happy to say that I maintained my 500-level status and there doesn't appear to be any danger of me riding the line in between the two levels. My feeling about this semester is that I will do very well as long as I continue to work very hard and do the best that I can. To me, this semester is no different than a semester at Oakland would be. My philosophy is this: 100% effort all the time, start strong, finish stronger.
The highlight of today was our visit to Nagoya Castle for our first CJS field trip. We were broken up into small groups and Japanese students from the university acted as our tour guides. My group's guide was named Aoi and she was the best guide ever! I learned a lot from her, much of which I will share here with you. This castle was constructed in the feudal Japan era, which, unfortunately, I cannot quite remember the year. It was absolutely majestic to behold. The main castle had a tiled roof that curled upward at the edges and corners, with two golden fish statues on the very top that made the castle appear like it had horns. We entered through the main gate and went inside the castle, going to the very top which housed the observation deck. Looking out, you could see the Nagoya city skyline along with the mountains in the distance. The view was breathtaking and I felt a great sense of awe towards God for His immense creativity in the nature that he created there. We descended from the observation deck and visited each floor, each having their own exhibits and artifacts. The floor that I found the most amazing was the second floor, which housed the exhibits on katanas. It was fascinating to see all of the different blades and sword guards that were used during that time. It was here that I learned the most interesting fact that I had heard all day. Japanese people drive on the left side of the road but the driver's seat is on the right side. Why is this? Aoi told me that it is because of the samurai. When samurai would battle they would always run to the left of their adversary and wield their sword with their right hand. The right hand was used because it could quickly reach across the body, pull the sword from its sheath and deliver the most powerful blow by slicing backward. It has been proven that the most powerful move while fighting is to thrust your elbow backward. Therefore, a driver of a car is like the powerful, sword-wielding right hand and driving on the left side of the road is like going into battle against your adversary. Very interesting! This was pretty much the end of the tour so we made our way out of the castle, onto the subway and back to the dorms. What a great day this turned out to be!
As you could probably tell, this was a wonderful day in Japan for me. I also learned that when the cherry blossoms bloom in April they will be all over the castle grounds. Even better still is that on the castle grounds there are also green cherry blossoms that bloom in the spring! This is the only place in Japan where you can see green cherry blossoms. With that said, I will definitely be going back in April to see the cherry blossoms and take a lot of pictures. Thanks again for sharing in my Japanese journey with me! I will have another post up real soon but until then, I'll catch you all later.
January 15, 2013
The daytime hours were pretty low-key as it was our last day of orientations before classes start. Things got interesting, however, in the evening. The previous night my dorm room decided to make Nabe which is a type of soup and invite others over to join us for dinner. Initially, I was a little uneasy about having a bunch of people over because the evening is usually my mental dump/process time and having company can be stressful, but, I was able to overcome that and be okay with the idea. My roommates and I met at our room and headed over to the supermarket "Valor" to purchase ingredients. We came back and began the preparations, and people began to arrive shortly thereafter. The dinner was a good bonding experience for all of us, but especially for me because most of the people that came I had not yet met. Now at this point things got really interesting. J-kun, being from Louisiana, really enjoys spicy food. That being said, one of the guys who came over for dinner, Kosuke, also really likes spicy food and he brought with him this hot sauce appropriately named "Death Sauce." On the bottle it says that the recommended amount is 2 microdrops, which was impossible to measure, but J-kun decided to put a considerable amount in his soup. He mixed it up and was fine initially but then he got to the bottom of the soup bowl. All of the sauce ingredients had collected at the bottom of the bowl and he was now consuming them. The effects were immediate. His face turned bright red, he broke out into a sweat, tears streamed from his eyes, and he tried consuming as much bread as possible. This appeared to work but then he got hit with 2 or 3 more afterburns. This was quite hilarious but if you thought this was the highlight of the night you would be mistaken.
In our living room area we noticed this long wooden staff-like object propped against the wall in a corner. Since inquiring minds wanted to know, we decided to investigate in the hopes of figuring out what it was. It looked like a staff of African make with tufts of bristle like hair that went around the shaft. Upon closer inspection, we figured out that it could come apart and we were extremely pleased to discover that it was a blow dart gun with multiple darts in it. Being college students, we absolutely had to play with it, so we went into the hallway of our dorm room and set up a couple of shoe boxes and some cans and had some target practice. It was so much fun and I was one of the few who was able to hit the shoebox. Suffice it to say, this was a surprisingly exciting end to an evening that I expected to be normal.
Alright, now it's time to move forward into the next day which was even more exciting than the previous night was. Seem impossible? Just wait and see. Let's continue.
January 16, 2013
When I woke up this morning I felt very down and depressed, as if I already knew somehow that it was going to be a terrible day. I was fighting back tears but why tears were even present, I knew not. I talked to Jamie via Skype as I do every morning and she gave me the great advice to verbally declare that the Lord is with me, that it would be a great day because I am His, and that Satan cannot steal the joy that I have in Him. I declared that and I prayed and from that point on, my day was very good.
Today was the first day of classes so, admittedly, I had some butterflies in my stomach. Although, I'm sure some of that was due to the fact that our language level placement was still in process. I got an introduction to both of my classes and then we had to take another placement test in each class. There was an A test and a B test. Everyone was required to take the A test because it was essentially a review of the material from the previous level. The B test was for people that wanted to attempt to get into the next highest level. I only took the A test because I was already in the level that I wanted to be in. However, when I got that first test it was as if I had never taken any Japanese before. The test was so confusing and I thought it didn't go all that well. The A test in my second class went much better but I was still quite concerned that I might get dropped down to 400-level. Note: As of today, I'm happy to say that I maintained my 500-level status and there doesn't appear to be any danger of me riding the line in between the two levels. My feeling about this semester is that I will do very well as long as I continue to work very hard and do the best that I can. To me, this semester is no different than a semester at Oakland would be. My philosophy is this: 100% effort all the time, start strong, finish stronger.
The highlight of today was our visit to Nagoya Castle for our first CJS field trip. We were broken up into small groups and Japanese students from the university acted as our tour guides. My group's guide was named Aoi and she was the best guide ever! I learned a lot from her, much of which I will share here with you. This castle was constructed in the feudal Japan era, which, unfortunately, I cannot quite remember the year. It was absolutely majestic to behold. The main castle had a tiled roof that curled upward at the edges and corners, with two golden fish statues on the very top that made the castle appear like it had horns. We entered through the main gate and went inside the castle, going to the very top which housed the observation deck. Looking out, you could see the Nagoya city skyline along with the mountains in the distance. The view was breathtaking and I felt a great sense of awe towards God for His immense creativity in the nature that he created there. We descended from the observation deck and visited each floor, each having their own exhibits and artifacts. The floor that I found the most amazing was the second floor, which housed the exhibits on katanas. It was fascinating to see all of the different blades and sword guards that were used during that time. It was here that I learned the most interesting fact that I had heard all day. Japanese people drive on the left side of the road but the driver's seat is on the right side. Why is this? Aoi told me that it is because of the samurai. When samurai would battle they would always run to the left of their adversary and wield their sword with their right hand. The right hand was used because it could quickly reach across the body, pull the sword from its sheath and deliver the most powerful blow by slicing backward. It has been proven that the most powerful move while fighting is to thrust your elbow backward. Therefore, a driver of a car is like the powerful, sword-wielding right hand and driving on the left side of the road is like going into battle against your adversary. Very interesting! This was pretty much the end of the tour so we made our way out of the castle, onto the subway and back to the dorms. What a great day this turned out to be!
As you could probably tell, this was a wonderful day in Japan for me. I also learned that when the cherry blossoms bloom in April they will be all over the castle grounds. Even better still is that on the castle grounds there are also green cherry blossoms that bloom in the spring! This is the only place in Japan where you can see green cherry blossoms. With that said, I will definitely be going back in April to see the cherry blossoms and take a lot of pictures. Thanks again for sharing in my Japanese journey with me! I will have another post up real soon but until then, I'll catch you all later.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Mega Market Wandering Plus Some Cultural Perspective
Welcome back all! At this point I will continue to describe the beginnings of my travels throughout the city. This day was very exciting and action-packed, so fasten your seat belts and away we go!
January 13, 2013
This day began much the same as the previous days before it. I woke up, got dressed and chatted with my wife on Skype. After that, I went with my roommate J-kun to the front gate of Nanzan University to wait for other international students and our Japanese student guides. There is a group of Japanese students at Nanzan called NaSA, Nanzan Study Abroad, that employ the buddy system to help international students make the transition to life in Japan smoothly. Today our guide Kanako took us to the Showa-ku ward office to register our addresses and apply for the Japanese National Health Insurance. In order to get to the ward office, however, we had to take the subway. This was my first time being on a subway anywhere in the world so it was a little confusing at first. You have to look at a map of the stops and decide which stop you want to get off at and pay accordingly. Sometimes when you are en route to a destination you have to transfer from one subway line to the next. This was immensely intimidating at first but I got the hang of it in the end. At the ward office, the process for what we had to do was interesting as the application form was completely in Japanese and completely confusing. Soon enough, though, we worked our way through the application and completed the process. Afterward, we stopped and had lunch at a nice little restaurant. At this point, I would like to point out the difference between ordering food in Japan and in America. In Japan, restaurants having vending machine-like machines that have buttons with the names of the meals that you can order on them. You insert your money and then press the button of the meal you would like and then you receive a ticket. This ticket is your order and as such you give it to whoever is serving you. One other thing that I would also like to mention is that tipping is not something that is done in Japan. Japanese people believe that the pay that they receive from their employment is their greatest reward for serving guests well. Therefore, in their eyes, tipping is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that this is hard for me to not do because I work at a restaurant back home and tips are very important. I had a dish called katsudon at this restaurant. Katsudon is a fried slice of pork on top of a bed of cheesy egg and rice. It was very delicious as the egg was sweet and perfectly countered the savoriness of the pork. I will definitely be having that again.
After lunch, we went to try and get cell phones. I say try for a couple of reasons. First, the plans were so hard to decipher that even Kanako and our other guide Hiroki had a hard time trying to translate for us what it meant. The second reason was because the store we went to, called SoftBank, didn't have anymore of the prepaid phones in stock so we had to order them. This was certainly a major challenge but certainly a parallel to America because US cell phone plans can be just as frustrating to try and decipher.
After phones were ordered, the group decided to go to this mega-shopping district called Osu. We took a little longer subway ride and then arrived at the biggest shopping center that I have ever seen. At the entrance to the center, we were given a map, which after looking at it we knew that it would take several days or even a week to navigate through this labyrinth of shops. J-kun and I decided to just walk around and go in a shop if it caught our interest. J-kun really likes anime so we went into many stores that had an affiliation with Japanese animation, particularly those that feature female characters, as they are extremely popular in Japan. There were a lot of stores that I found interesting as well, such as this store that had four or five floors that were full of video games, models, books and all sorts of things. As the day wore on, however, I began to be overstimulated by all of the sights, sounds, and smells. My inner introvert started screaming at me to take myself home and lock myself in my quiet room so that I could process everything. Thankfully, I didn't let this internal struggle overwhelm my emotional self-control and I still managed to enjoy myself a lot. After a long day of walking, we returned to the dorm and spent the rest of the evening relaxing. This was quite the enjoyable day.
I want to dedicate the last section of this blog entry to some cultural observations that I have been having. I would like to first mention the influence of entertainment media in Japan such as manga, anime, and video games. In the United States, if you are an adult and you participate in any of these things you are considered immature and childish. It is the exact opposite in Japan. I noticed that almost all of the people that were looking at these things ranged from young adults to men possibly in their 30s or 40s. This society doesn't bind its people into giving up things that they enjoy because it is seen as childish. I agree with this idea, provided that it doesn't interfere with the more important things in one's life. There was another common theme that I noticed while at Osu and, quite frankly, I was quite bothered by it. There was a lot of animated nudity in the stores and whole sections of product were devoted to this very thing. I knew this coming in but was flabbergasted by the sheer amount of it all. I know that the exaggerated bodily features of these cartoon women are not real but I still felt very wrong for seeing any of it. All I could think of was how I would not want my kids in the future to see anything like this and it would be very unacceptable in the US. This just kind of called into question for me what kind of morality a people group hopes to have when they do not have God and His Word at the foundation. I am just happy that this is not the kind of media entertainment that I enjoy.
Lastly, I want to discuss something that I really admire about Japanese society, and that is their thoroughness. We have had to do tons of paperwork before and after arrival and we will have more to do before we come home. While this can be somewhat annoying, as a detail-oriented person, I am impressed by it. Everything is done so as to ensure that all bases are covered, the good and the potential bad. This attention to detail is also evidenced in their emergency preparedness. Today we went through what to do in the event of a fire, earthquake, tsunami, burglary, traffic accident, interpersonal altercation and more. Everything was precise and detailed right down to the last step. While this was tedious for us students, as most of our own home countries do not hold to this level of preparation, this showed me the great lengths that are gone to in order to preserve a well-functioning society. The Japanese are a very resilient people and that is strongly evidenced by their level of preparation for a vast array of situations. As you may be able to tell, I'm learning a lot already!
With that I will conclude this blog post, but stay tuned because tomorrow I will describe our recent nabe party as well as my first day of classes and our field trip to Nagoya Castle. Thanks for continuing to stick with me on this incredible journey!
January 13, 2013
This day began much the same as the previous days before it. I woke up, got dressed and chatted with my wife on Skype. After that, I went with my roommate J-kun to the front gate of Nanzan University to wait for other international students and our Japanese student guides. There is a group of Japanese students at Nanzan called NaSA, Nanzan Study Abroad, that employ the buddy system to help international students make the transition to life in Japan smoothly. Today our guide Kanako took us to the Showa-ku ward office to register our addresses and apply for the Japanese National Health Insurance. In order to get to the ward office, however, we had to take the subway. This was my first time being on a subway anywhere in the world so it was a little confusing at first. You have to look at a map of the stops and decide which stop you want to get off at and pay accordingly. Sometimes when you are en route to a destination you have to transfer from one subway line to the next. This was immensely intimidating at first but I got the hang of it in the end. At the ward office, the process for what we had to do was interesting as the application form was completely in Japanese and completely confusing. Soon enough, though, we worked our way through the application and completed the process. Afterward, we stopped and had lunch at a nice little restaurant. At this point, I would like to point out the difference between ordering food in Japan and in America. In Japan, restaurants having vending machine-like machines that have buttons with the names of the meals that you can order on them. You insert your money and then press the button of the meal you would like and then you receive a ticket. This ticket is your order and as such you give it to whoever is serving you. One other thing that I would also like to mention is that tipping is not something that is done in Japan. Japanese people believe that the pay that they receive from their employment is their greatest reward for serving guests well. Therefore, in their eyes, tipping is unnecessary. Suffice it to say that this is hard for me to not do because I work at a restaurant back home and tips are very important. I had a dish called katsudon at this restaurant. Katsudon is a fried slice of pork on top of a bed of cheesy egg and rice. It was very delicious as the egg was sweet and perfectly countered the savoriness of the pork. I will definitely be having that again.
After lunch, we went to try and get cell phones. I say try for a couple of reasons. First, the plans were so hard to decipher that even Kanako and our other guide Hiroki had a hard time trying to translate for us what it meant. The second reason was because the store we went to, called SoftBank, didn't have anymore of the prepaid phones in stock so we had to order them. This was certainly a major challenge but certainly a parallel to America because US cell phone plans can be just as frustrating to try and decipher.
After phones were ordered, the group decided to go to this mega-shopping district called Osu. We took a little longer subway ride and then arrived at the biggest shopping center that I have ever seen. At the entrance to the center, we were given a map, which after looking at it we knew that it would take several days or even a week to navigate through this labyrinth of shops. J-kun and I decided to just walk around and go in a shop if it caught our interest. J-kun really likes anime so we went into many stores that had an affiliation with Japanese animation, particularly those that feature female characters, as they are extremely popular in Japan. There were a lot of stores that I found interesting as well, such as this store that had four or five floors that were full of video games, models, books and all sorts of things. As the day wore on, however, I began to be overstimulated by all of the sights, sounds, and smells. My inner introvert started screaming at me to take myself home and lock myself in my quiet room so that I could process everything. Thankfully, I didn't let this internal struggle overwhelm my emotional self-control and I still managed to enjoy myself a lot. After a long day of walking, we returned to the dorm and spent the rest of the evening relaxing. This was quite the enjoyable day.
I want to dedicate the last section of this blog entry to some cultural observations that I have been having. I would like to first mention the influence of entertainment media in Japan such as manga, anime, and video games. In the United States, if you are an adult and you participate in any of these things you are considered immature and childish. It is the exact opposite in Japan. I noticed that almost all of the people that were looking at these things ranged from young adults to men possibly in their 30s or 40s. This society doesn't bind its people into giving up things that they enjoy because it is seen as childish. I agree with this idea, provided that it doesn't interfere with the more important things in one's life. There was another common theme that I noticed while at Osu and, quite frankly, I was quite bothered by it. There was a lot of animated nudity in the stores and whole sections of product were devoted to this very thing. I knew this coming in but was flabbergasted by the sheer amount of it all. I know that the exaggerated bodily features of these cartoon women are not real but I still felt very wrong for seeing any of it. All I could think of was how I would not want my kids in the future to see anything like this and it would be very unacceptable in the US. This just kind of called into question for me what kind of morality a people group hopes to have when they do not have God and His Word at the foundation. I am just happy that this is not the kind of media entertainment that I enjoy.
Lastly, I want to discuss something that I really admire about Japanese society, and that is their thoroughness. We have had to do tons of paperwork before and after arrival and we will have more to do before we come home. While this can be somewhat annoying, as a detail-oriented person, I am impressed by it. Everything is done so as to ensure that all bases are covered, the good and the potential bad. This attention to detail is also evidenced in their emergency preparedness. Today we went through what to do in the event of a fire, earthquake, tsunami, burglary, traffic accident, interpersonal altercation and more. Everything was precise and detailed right down to the last step. While this was tedious for us students, as most of our own home countries do not hold to this level of preparation, this showed me the great lengths that are gone to in order to preserve a well-functioning society. The Japanese are a very resilient people and that is strongly evidenced by their level of preparation for a vast array of situations. As you may be able to tell, I'm learning a lot already!
With that I will conclude this blog post, but stay tuned because tomorrow I will describe our recent nabe party as well as my first day of classes and our field trip to Nagoya Castle. Thanks for continuing to stick with me on this incredible journey!
Monday, January 14, 2013
Walking the Streets of Nagoya
Welcome back to my blog everyone! The last two days I have started to come out of my shell a little bit more to the point where I started walking around the city a bit to explore my new surroundings. It was a very enjoyable time and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all today. So, let's dive in!
January 12, 2013
Today started off good and bad all at the same time. I was on Skype with Jamie all morning, which was absolutely awesome because I love my wife to death, but during the video call I had reached some really low points emotionally. All during the conversation my mood resembled several camel humps with all its peaks and valleys. I kept allowing myself to dwell on the fact that I was alone for 4 months and getting through that time seemed impossible. I felt like I wouldn't succeed, that I shouldn't be here, and that I just wanted to go home. It was at that moment, like those of a few days before, that I felt like being away from Jamie was much more than I could hope to overcome. But Jamie told me to pray to the Lord first and accept His peace, and then to go do something like take a walk so I would not continue to dwell on what I could not change about the situation. I took her advice and did both of those things. Don't worry everyone, things get better from here. :-)
I decided to walk to the local supermarket called "Valor" because I needed to pick up a few things, plus I already knew where that was. Walking around aimlessly without knowing where I was going would have increased my anxiety and stress. Japanese supermarkets are very much like those in the United States but there are a few differences. For example, for snack foods like potato chips and such, the portions are significantly smaller than in the US. If there is one thing that I can take away from Japanese grocery stores, it is that portion size is much smaller and more controlled. One other thing that is different is that while grocery bags in America are free, you have to buy bags along with your groceries if you want them. While it's a nominal for each bag, 5 yen, it is still different from what I am used to. Another thing that I have found interesting is that certain foods considered "common" to us are a little bit harder to find in Japan. For example, I have yet to see any cheese, people tell me it's there but hard to find, and peanut butter is rather uncommon as well. I would consider these staple foods, so this will continue to be a test of my ingenuity to come up with different things to eat. This is not a bad thing at all just different.
I was intending to stay in the rest of the day but my roommate J-kun came to my room and asked if I would like to walk around with him and find a place to have dinner. I agreed and off we went. He had already been walking around the city for about 5 hours that day so this second long trek was a test of stamina by my estimation. We walked up and down a few streets looking to see if we could find any place that we would like to have dinner, which we didn't find. J-kun then suggested that we go to this mega department store called Aeon. The place had myriad stores and a food court, so off we went.
At the risk of redundancy, this department store was absolutely massive! There were stores for everything that you might need or have interest in plus a great selection of excellent eateries. I decided that I wanted to get a dish called karekatsu, fried pork curry, because I had eaten katsu dishes before and they were very good. This dish, I would argue, was even better. It was composed of non-spicy curry, rice, and a fried slice of breaded pork. It was more than I could eat but the flavors were simple yet very refined. It was very good to the palate, that's for sure. J-kun and I also split a dish called takoyaki, which is baked octopus. They were basically these little pancake balls with octopus in them. These were also very delicious, however, initially, the texture of the octopus was a little awkward to get past. After dinner, we walked around to explore some of the stores a little bit and then began the 20 minute or so trek back to the dorm. All in all, this was a very successful evening.
Now before I end this section of the blog, I would like to tell a little anecdote of mine since I have been here, so here goes. It didn't occur to me before I came that I should pack a towel; I had just assumed that they would have some here in the dorm for us. Suffice it to say, I was wrong in my assumption. The first day I took a shower I managed to get a hold of a towel but I knew that I needed to get one. My roommate Ryota took me to 3 different places to try and find one and, at last, we had struck gold at the last store we went to. The store was called hyaku en or 100 yen, which is the equivalent of an American dollar store. We found the bath towels but, the problem was that they were not even close to long enough and were very thin. If I dried my hair with one that was it, it would be too soaked to use for the rest of my body. So, I bought two of those towels. Needless to say, I was still not happy with the towels I had. Hoping to have better luck, one of the stores J-kun and I went to after dinner at Aeon was a home goods kind of store. We looked around a little and found some towels that were thicker than the previous ones I had purchased and a little longer. I picked up a couple of those towels and am happy to say that they work well. I wanted to tell this story because of all the things that one has to adjust to when living in another country for an extended period of time, the thing that has given me the most trouble so far is finding a towel of an adequate size and thickness. Guess I'm just spoiled from having my awesome bath sheets at home.
I will continue the next day of my journey around Nagoya in my next blog post that should be up tomorrow. Stay tuned and I hope you're enjoying sharing the journey with me!
January 12, 2013
Today started off good and bad all at the same time. I was on Skype with Jamie all morning, which was absolutely awesome because I love my wife to death, but during the video call I had reached some really low points emotionally. All during the conversation my mood resembled several camel humps with all its peaks and valleys. I kept allowing myself to dwell on the fact that I was alone for 4 months and getting through that time seemed impossible. I felt like I wouldn't succeed, that I shouldn't be here, and that I just wanted to go home. It was at that moment, like those of a few days before, that I felt like being away from Jamie was much more than I could hope to overcome. But Jamie told me to pray to the Lord first and accept His peace, and then to go do something like take a walk so I would not continue to dwell on what I could not change about the situation. I took her advice and did both of those things. Don't worry everyone, things get better from here. :-)
I decided to walk to the local supermarket called "Valor" because I needed to pick up a few things, plus I already knew where that was. Walking around aimlessly without knowing where I was going would have increased my anxiety and stress. Japanese supermarkets are very much like those in the United States but there are a few differences. For example, for snack foods like potato chips and such, the portions are significantly smaller than in the US. If there is one thing that I can take away from Japanese grocery stores, it is that portion size is much smaller and more controlled. One other thing that is different is that while grocery bags in America are free, you have to buy bags along with your groceries if you want them. While it's a nominal for each bag, 5 yen, it is still different from what I am used to. Another thing that I have found interesting is that certain foods considered "common" to us are a little bit harder to find in Japan. For example, I have yet to see any cheese, people tell me it's there but hard to find, and peanut butter is rather uncommon as well. I would consider these staple foods, so this will continue to be a test of my ingenuity to come up with different things to eat. This is not a bad thing at all just different.
I was intending to stay in the rest of the day but my roommate J-kun came to my room and asked if I would like to walk around with him and find a place to have dinner. I agreed and off we went. He had already been walking around the city for about 5 hours that day so this second long trek was a test of stamina by my estimation. We walked up and down a few streets looking to see if we could find any place that we would like to have dinner, which we didn't find. J-kun then suggested that we go to this mega department store called Aeon. The place had myriad stores and a food court, so off we went.
At the risk of redundancy, this department store was absolutely massive! There were stores for everything that you might need or have interest in plus a great selection of excellent eateries. I decided that I wanted to get a dish called karekatsu, fried pork curry, because I had eaten katsu dishes before and they were very good. This dish, I would argue, was even better. It was composed of non-spicy curry, rice, and a fried slice of breaded pork. It was more than I could eat but the flavors were simple yet very refined. It was very good to the palate, that's for sure. J-kun and I also split a dish called takoyaki, which is baked octopus. They were basically these little pancake balls with octopus in them. These were also very delicious, however, initially, the texture of the octopus was a little awkward to get past. After dinner, we walked around to explore some of the stores a little bit and then began the 20 minute or so trek back to the dorm. All in all, this was a very successful evening.
Now before I end this section of the blog, I would like to tell a little anecdote of mine since I have been here, so here goes. It didn't occur to me before I came that I should pack a towel; I had just assumed that they would have some here in the dorm for us. Suffice it to say, I was wrong in my assumption. The first day I took a shower I managed to get a hold of a towel but I knew that I needed to get one. My roommate Ryota took me to 3 different places to try and find one and, at last, we had struck gold at the last store we went to. The store was called hyaku en or 100 yen, which is the equivalent of an American dollar store. We found the bath towels but, the problem was that they were not even close to long enough and were very thin. If I dried my hair with one that was it, it would be too soaked to use for the rest of my body. So, I bought two of those towels. Needless to say, I was still not happy with the towels I had. Hoping to have better luck, one of the stores J-kun and I went to after dinner at Aeon was a home goods kind of store. We looked around a little and found some towels that were thicker than the previous ones I had purchased and a little longer. I picked up a couple of those towels and am happy to say that they work well. I wanted to tell this story because of all the things that one has to adjust to when living in another country for an extended period of time, the thing that has given me the most trouble so far is finding a towel of an adequate size and thickness. Guess I'm just spoiled from having my awesome bath sheets at home.
I will continue the next day of my journey around Nagoya in my next blog post that should be up tomorrow. Stay tuned and I hope you're enjoying sharing the journey with me!
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