Gentsuki Gentsuki Gentsuki!

I bought a Honda Super Cub! I am so pumped and it is so cool! Look it up on the web by clicking here. Mine is like the green one in the first picture if you scroll down except for it's dark blue. It only had 3100 km on it when I bought it, but I've already put 120 km on it in 3 days. I drove it up to Yamanashi (another prefecture) on Saturday in the middle of a wind storm without glasses on and debris was hitting me in the face so hard that it actually ended up tearing a piece of my contact off. I noticed it this morning when I was putting them in. But I didn't care because I had wheels and finally, finally I'm able to go where I want to at the speed I want to and have a ton of fun. Tonight I rode up to the Fujikawa Rakuza (Fujikawa rest area) Starbucks to study and drink coffee. The people who work there (mostly girls in their 20s) are super nice, and everyone knows me now because I've been coming a couple times a week for a month now and I stick out like a brilliant white light at midnight. It is so awesome to have wheels.

Tonight I hopped on my super cub to show my new ride to Sarah before heading up to Starbucks. So, if you didn't read it on wiki, I'll just go ahead and tell you that this vehicle of mine gets 340 miles to the gallon. No, you didn't read that wrong. Rub your eyes and look at it again. Having been given a quarter tank (1 litre) with my purchase of the vehicle and it's invincible mileage, I figured I wouldn't have to bother thinking about filling up for quite sometime. However, I was soon reminded that while 340 miles to the gallon is a lot, it's not infinity mpg.

I was cruising down the street on my way to the shin-kambara neighborhood when my bike started sounding funny. It kept making sputtering noises and losing speed even when I held the throttle in the same place. I was like, "what's going on, I'm not moving my hand," and I thought that something was wrong with my bike. Then I was thinking, "this feels a lot like when the riding lawn mower is running out of gas....oh wait." Then my bike died. I was trying to make it to the gas station, and came up about 80 meters short, so it was only a brief jog to get it over to the full service station. Unfortunately fate chose that brief time period to send Julianna (the cute Brazilian girl who takes Japanese lessons at the community center with me) biking past my sorry butt pushing my gentsuki up the road. She asked if I was ok and I said yes, of course, the gas station was just right there. Oh if she could only have seen me 200 meters earlier when I still had the fumes of a soaring Achilles...invincible in all but my heel, and I think you know where my gentsuki's heel is.

I'm reminded of the Mitch Hedberg stitch - "I don't know anything about fixing cars. Except when the needle is pointing to 'E.' Then I get all cocky: 'Don't anyone move, I got this one. Let me just reach into my toolbox, aka "wallet."'"

Well I made it to Sarah's and she came out of the cold night to bask in it's warm glory. I then continued on my way to the Starbucks to study a bit and drink some coffee. I ended up talking with a couple of the girls working there, Tomomi and Miyuki, for about 20 min. so I didn't get in as much studying as I would have liked, but then again conversation is a great place to practice my Japanese and it's super nice to be friendly and meet people.

Ok - my computer battery is starting to run out and I told myself I wouldn't plug it in so that I would have motivation to write this quickly and get to bed (boo to the coffee keeping me going at this unnatural pace) so I'm going to give some quick updates on other things going on in my life that I'm sure I can expand on in a few future posts.

I've been seeing Yuriko (my travel agent) almost weekly now since I've been back in Japan. She called me the second week of January to ask if I'd teach her English, so we've been getting together for quite informal "lessons" or "dates" as I also like to refer to them as. Yuriko is quite cool and I've enjoyed each week more and more. It's nice to have a Japanese friend who has a strong command of the English language because then I can be myself.

I think I'm starting to catch a tiny glimpse of the horizon of the continent of initial understanding of Japanese. Like I'm Columbus and India is fluency and I know I'll never get there, but if I can somehow accidentally make it as far as the Caribbean, maybe I'll settle for that much. From there it might be possible to dig a Panama Canal and arrive (centuries later) at my destination, but for now I'm shooting for the New World. Heck, I'll be happy if I can just make it across this ocean of learning without becoming fish food. Scurvy might be ok.

An update on my heart: I got the results back in English and it looks like it's simply an arrhythmia or an irregular heartbeat which approximately 0.75% of the population has, so there's not too much to worry about. There's no treatment necessary, I just have to go in once a year to get it tested.

School is...school. I love the kids and I have a great situation, but I don't know if teaching is the ultimate career path for me. I don't understand curriculum planning or how long things are going to take. I like being in the classroom and up in front of the students and I love helping them, but I often don't know where to begin with my planning.

My involvement with the Navigators here continues. I just met last week 3 new long-termers: The O'Donnells. (sp?) Brian is 30 and his wife Jaymi is 24 and their son Jones is 10 months and already running around all over the place.

...wait, I'm 24. Where's my family? I can't hardly believe that I'm old enough to have peers getting married and having children. It's quite surreal.

Anyway, they both seem really nice and cool people. Both had been here before on short term missions work and Brian can speak a little bit a Japanese already so that makes things a little easier. I can only imagine though trying to get a young family settled here and for the long haul at that. And I mean long haul. They're basically committed for an indefinite period of time with an initial 2 years of full time language study and then they'll be starting their formal mission work. Crazy. The O'Donnells seem a lot like a typical young Navigator couple. Brian plays guitar and Jaymi sings. They did a song with a slide show as an introduction on Sunday. I think about the dozen or so Navigator couples I know who got married while I was going to UWEC. Crazy.

Elbert and Mandy and Aileen and Ruth were all away on the BEST Club ski trip. Power to them for their harrowing journey and fellowship with the Japanese college students. I hope there were a lot of good conversations during the trip.

I attended the "Behop" (Bible, English, HOuse Party) party on Sunday evening. I've been helping out as a volunteer at this English circle every other Friday night.

And I haven't even begun to talk about Furuya-san and all the help and entertainment he's provided me through my community Japanese lessons and gentsuki buying. (Yeah, a lot more on this later).

Things are looking up since the last couple of posts. Like I hinted at before, I do feel like I'm turning a corner somewhat. I see my language improving a bit and I can actually hear Japanese now. I don't understand the words people are saying necessarily, but I can tell that they're saying words rather than just a bunch of jumbled, Nirvana-esque melody lines.

I made a potato dish with cheese. Not real cheese, and my grocery store didn't have cream of chicken soup so I had to settle for cream corn soup. That, for some strange reason, is quite popular here.

Been playing guitar a bit too. I have the 6th Harry Potter book in my possession but haven't started reading it yet. After the tests start at my school I should have more time.

Okeydoke, I'm going to turn this computer off now, so goodnight.

Cheers,
Luther

Getting together with Camp Omega friends...in Tokyo!

Pictures and stories.

http://uwec.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2122175&l=15c9e&id=59501063

Some crazy stuff happened, you know, the norm

Pictures!

http://uwec.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2121660&l=19ed9&id=59501063

Tearing

I know what’s my problem. I’m tearing between 2 worlds. Two mindsets, two lands, two languages, two physicalities. I'm being stretched, tortured by these polarities. In my apartment I’m home but the outside is strange and scary. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to break this. I want it to snap. I need to exist as 2 separate beings in both places, I cannot stretch myself between the two, the tension is too great. How do I cut the line? And when I cut it, how do I live so that I hang on to both mes? Do I set aside an increment of time? “Ok, for this half hour I’m in Wisconsin. For this half-hour I’m in Minnesota. For the next 36 hours I’m in Kambara.”

I think I just make the most out of every moment, realizing that I do exist in 2 places. There are going to be unique and crazy thoughts because of this. I’m going to find myself in places I never imagined. I should commit my mind to whatever task is before me, in whatever spectrum it may be. Make a decision, and enjoy being in the place where it brings me.

Choose responsibility.

Make a decision.

Do not waste any time wallowing.

Live cleanly.

Absorb your surroundings as you enjoy them candidly, and then know that you are a part of it.

Realize that people surround you everywhere.

A smile reaches across all cultures.

pics

First few weeks back in Japan:

http://uwec.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119757&l=787b6&id=59501063

Aa...bla!

Thought stream, lazer beam, whipped cream, eau claires...

I haven't written in a while and maybe I'm ready to explode, maybe the moment will pass a la "lost in translation." I need to see that movie again now that I live here.

BTW I'm listening to Cracked Rear View right now... first CD I ever bought.

Something caught my eye the other day as I was biking to school- something that I never want to forget nor do I think I ever will. It's playing in my mind now, those few precious seconds of time, vivid and candid. I was passing a group of students on their way from the train station and I looked left and saw a man lifting a crate of freshly caught sakura shrimp. Behind him stretched several yards of black drying tarps with hundreds of square feet of shrimp already laid out for that day's drying. I remember thinking to myself in that moment, "This is how I want to remember Japan." I can't explain it I guess, other than the brilliant way my pictoview was displayed, cutting and fresh to my morning eyes.

I'm caught so physically between home and here. Living in my apartment, existing in this room with my English books, my English thoughts, my English facebook... I said this to Will over break when I was home - I often feel like I'm going to walk out of this apartment and hop in my car and drive over to his place for a visit. Then I realize he's 10,000 kilometers away and I can't do that. Then I walk out of my house and see my rusty bicycle in my parking spot, hear the words I can't understand and feel my small world stretching slowly from my feet.

I signed on for another year. It's official. I turned in my signed contract form to my supervisor this past week. I had already decided my second day in Japan that I would sign on for another year. One year is not enough to spend in another country, and looking at it after 6 months I still feel the same. What have I really learned here in this brief period? I'm not saying I've learned nothing, far from it. But I think I need more time to really flesh out some deeper meaning. Certainly practically I need more time here to learn the language.

I spent 2 1/2 hours this Saturday evening in Starbucks studying Japanese. It felt good to be there, it felt like a corner of America pulled up to these shores and tucked in around my sides. I slept in its aroma and dreamed of home.