this is apart of a series of posts for today... so enjoy them all please. or choose which ones you want to read for now, come back and then read some more. your patronage (not patronizing) is appreciated.

at the conference i went to the other week the keynote speaker was talking about the different phases of entering into a culture and what's to be expected. he told us about when he, a japanese, moved to chicago to teach...

STAGE 1: awe. you're absolutely amazed by everything in the country and its amazingly beautiful and the people are so friendly.
STAGE 2: enter culture crash. now you're not so fantasized by the country. rather, you're frustrated by every little part of the culture you've just been inserted in. you tend to bitch and moan a lot about policies, ways of doing things, mindsets, and how backwards things are. you start getting bitter because you think the culture and all of the people in it are stupid. some people never leave this stage.
STAGE 3: you finally, after a long time of being upset at the way things are done, accept differences and begin to adapt. you realize the weaknesses of both the native and foreign culture. sort of like the Great Cultural Compromise. kind of uber-hopeful if you ask me, but i hear what he's gettin at.
STAGE 4: this wasn't said by the guy in his keynote, but developed by my friend here who's been here for 3 years. Stage 4 is when you've passed stage 3 and you can without the extra emotion say that most of the gripes in stage 2 were indeed correct and things are indeed backwards.

if i had to say i'd say i'm somewhere in stage 2. but at a healthy level i think. i'm not hating japan by any means, i love it here. i manage to keep pretty checked and level-headed. i think my biggest gripe is the japanese work ethic. they stay late at work everyday, held captive by your christmas bonus (worth 10-20% of you salary), and you have to look busy. most people here will stay until 8pm or so, often later, then sometimes hit the bars afterwards. and then they complain the kids are deliquints... maybe because they haven't seen their dad in a month, and when they do, he's usually sloshed. i'm just throwing something out there... enough stage 2. my new plan of attack is to kidnap people from work in the evenings. say things like, "you need to teach me how to cook (wink wink). let's go teach me about japanese culture (wink wink). i don't know how to cook rice, you need to show me (wink wink). i don't know how to use chopsticks (wink wink)!!" things of that nature. so far mission slightly accomplished.

natsukasii
but i'm good. i just got to quit complaining. don't we all. well. this ends my posting spree i think. i'm tapped out and my futon and weird japanese TV are calling me. soo adios muchachos and have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING without me. but, i have some foreigner thanksgiving gatherings planned. that's a plus. home away from home.. the irony is i didn't eat turkey for thanksgiving for the past 7 years because i was vegetarian. but i'm still missing Mike Rice's Vegetarian Thanksgiving... ah, the taste of Tofurky. to be 17 again. cuddling up to a fo'ty of rootbeer. well folks. take care and keep in touch... it makes the world seem less big. thank God for internet... because i don't write anyone. poor grandma, probably pretty worried about me. ok. take care.

as some may know, my friend rachel's mother was rushed to the hospital and she is being called "one for the books". i haven't heard from rachel since the weekend. i'm still hoping that everything is stable and/or getting better. so if you could, pray for rachel's mom, rachel, and rachel's brother timothy that they would be okay and comforted in the pain... thanks.

this is apart of a series of posts for today... so enjoy them all please. or choose which ones you want to read for now, come back and then read some more. your patronage is appreciated.

this week i told one of my co-workers, who doesn't speak much english, that "I'm gonna hold you to it!" then the sudden realization hit me that this doesn't translate. i'm sure it was heard as "i'm going to hold you, it." or something that involves a lot of hugging as opposed to promisekeeping. whoops.

one day i was walking around the students as they did their homework and one kid wrote "MY SCIST IS 4 YEARS OLD." i laughed outloud at the kid i think. not really. but i think he meant to write about his sister, but instead phonetically matched "cyst". sort of funny.

i finally got one of my kids to commit to memory this dialogue:
ME: What's up?
HER: What's up?
ah! you don't know how refreshing this is. even though its an A-B response to her, its better than the played out response here in Japan, which is nationally:
ME: How are you?
X-san: I'm fine thank you, and you?
its always the latter. makes you kind of want to vomit. but i'll change Japan one kid at a time.

so i bought a copy of the weakerthans new album from the itunes music store and i must confess, i absolutely love it. at first i was like, "oh this is another one of their albums, a little sub-par..." but i've had it hit my ears nearly every day and it just grows on me. John K. Samson's lyrics make my chest hurt they're so good. they're amazingly poetic. unrivaled by my ears.

on the weakerthans site they have a link to a in house concert for CBC Radio of just Samson and his guitar. its freaking great (and by the way, the cbc radio site is pretty great as well). i think i love a guitar and some poetry a lot more than i love the hoopla of a whole band. more honest to me. less to hide behind.

other musics i've been enjoying... the david crowder band's illuminate, it makes me dance almost everytime. i'm also right now in like 3 different bands. but none of them are panning out right now i think. still me, my guitar, my melodian, and my twenty five dollar studio... maybe i'll cut some tracks. first i'll have to write some songs. i have some songs, but most of them require a rachel to sing beside me, or they have no methodology and just what i feel like playing and saying... thus impossible to record... my goal, get stuff out before i leave japan.

goodday, its been awhile i think, i hate my infrequency... but its life. what can you do. i'm in the mood to post little posts that will come together in a larget topic, that way you can read at leisure and not feel pressured to get through a whole post.

money laundering
in all fairness i feel i need to add to the statement i made about japanese and money. i was talking it over with a friend who, though agreeing with me, also had this to say, "Not only do they just ask you for money way after the fact, they also just give you money for something like business expenditures way after the fact." i just wanted to say that it happens both ways. i painted a pretty diabolical picture of japan. japan has achieved both the yin and yang of extortion.