Where's your hair?

I know some of you might be asking this question if you have seen some pictures of me. Well, let me try to explain in short roundabout way.

I told a couple students about my crazy beard designs that I did at college and that if anyone comes up with a great idea let me know. So it turns out Teppei instantly had a great idea. This last Friday for our after BEST was learning how to country line dance. I thought this would be a great time to try out the beard design since everyone was going to dress up. We cut the design into the beard but it ended up not looking quite right so we cut the design off. This left me with half a beard or also called Half beard. I then decided to cut off the opposite side of my hair. So Friday night I had a checkered pattern across my face and head. Maybe sometime soon I will get pictures for you to see.

The next day I then buzzed of the rest of the hair. Then my roommates on Sunday thought I should shave my head. So I did. If I am buzzed, why not go all the way down. The students have been shocked each time they see me as they shout びっくりした (bikkurishita) which means, "I'm surprised!" Then after the astonishment is over they come and rub my head.

I am curious though. I have had many different results about people thinking I look older and younger, better or worse. I am curious to know what you think.

I'm Fluent!?!?

I finished my two months of language school today! It's time to party because I am fluent in Japanese! Wait a minute.... I thought when I finished language school I would be fluent and have no problem with conversations. I wish.

Even though I have learned a lot of Japanese in the last two months, I have also come to realize how hard it is to become fluent in another language, especially a language that does not come from the latin base. The more you learn in a language, the more you realize you don't know. Even though my language school is done, I will still be meeting with a tutor once or twice a week to continue my language learning.

Please continue to pray for me to be faithful in studying Japanese. As my focus is about to shift more into ministry it will become easy to stay stagnant with where I am right now in Japanese. One of my goals in language is coming up this December. Keith and I will be taking the first of four language tests held by the government for proficiency. I am about where I need to be to take the test right now, so the next fews months will probably be spent establishing and reviewing what I know and then continue a little further to make sure I am ready for the first test.

Summer break is coming up starting in August so all of the students are diligently studying right now as over the next two weeks they will be taking their finals. Also the summer friends will be returning to America in two weeks so pray that there final time with students will be good and deep in conversations.

Also, the America trip is coming up from August 31-September 16. We have 9 students going. 4 girls and 5 guys. Please pray for us in the time of preparation for the trip and for the Bible Discussions as we prepare them also.

Typhoon, Earthquake...?

How does it go? First comes the typhoon, then comes the earthquake, then comes fire from heaven? or is it then comes mommy with the baby carriage?

Either way, Japan has had a rough past few days. They had one of the strongest typhoons to hit Japan in a while during this last Friday and Saturday and now a 6.8 earthquake in Niigata. So for those of you wondering, I am fine. Niigata is about 100 miles northwest of Utsunomiya. Even though we are 100 miles away we still felt the earthquake.

I was sitting in my room, since it was a national holiday and no school, when my room started shaking. I didn't think much of it since it wasn't very big or long. I then heard my roommate turn on the television and I was amazed at the size and damage it did.

I think this is the second earthquake that I know I have felt. There have been a couple others that I have felt like I was shaking but it is so weak, it was hard to tell. It is easy to tell when your furniture starts moving around. The first quake I felt when I first arrived was early in the morning. It woke me up and I was lying on bed thinking to myself I feel like I am vibrating. I then put on my glasses and noticed my closet doors flinging back and forth. I thought, "Hmm, this must be an earthquake" and went right back to sleep. Don't count on me to be a fast mover while I am asleep. My sister, Missy, can testify. I was in the hospital overnight one time with her and I was asleep. I guess she started gagging on some water while she was lying in bed. The nurses came in and helped her and she was fine. The next morning she told me about what happened. I vaguely remember waking up and seeing nurses in the room and thought it must be a nightly checkup and went back to sleep. I am the greatest brother anyone could ever have!

In short, earthquake; I'm alive; not hurt.

Picture Update

Hey I finally got some pictures from other people. Here are the new folders.

Updated Kodomo No Mori Camp
Sendai Camp
Freshman Party
Sophomore Party
Random folder
Tokyo Disney

Enjoy

Tokyo Disneyland Fieldtrip?

My school, Saint Marys Japanese School "セントメリー日本語学校", decided they would take a field trip for whoever wanted to go from the students. The price was unbeatable as it only cost 4000 yen which is currently around $35. A normal ticket price is 5800 plus a train ticket round trip would be about 4000. That is looking at $85-90 going on my own compared to $35 going with them.

We had about 90 students go and we traveled on 2 buses down to the Magic Kingdom. I have to say that was probably one of the funnest things I have done since being here. It required no planning and no responsibility. Are your ready for a joke? What do you get when you put together 1 Korean, 1 American, 1 Thai, 1 Japanese, and 2 Taiwanese? A great time at Tokyo Disneyland. (Ok, so it really wasn't a joke but this was my group). We had 5 countries represented in our group.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a movie star? Well I got another dose of it there. Here are 90 students and I know about 15 from my class. I think I was asked to be in about 50 pictures because I was tall and an American. All in a days work for movie stars like myself. I really enjoy times when people see me and ask to take a picture with me. I have no idea who they are. For example, at Nikko, a Father and a son wanted their picture taken, so I took it. The father then asked for a picture of me and his son. It is very weird to think that I am in these peoples photo albums that I will never see. I can hear them now, "Oh, theres that tall gaijin we took a picture with."

We ended up watching 2 of the 3 parades while we were there. Turns out Stitch from Lilo and Stitch is the hot item in Japan right now. I am not sure what America's is but Stitch was everywhere. They even had a theme of "Find Stitch" where they put him on various rides and places and you were suppose to find him. The first parade was about Stitch and Aloha. The second parade reminded me of Buff and Hoag. I saw all of the princesses in the second parade and Mary Poppins. "Ben, Ben, where are you?" She seemed much more comfortable in the parade then she did amongst people. Oh the memories that came back to me.

We did a lot of things I had not done before. We went on Mark Twains steamboat, Jungle cruise, and we even went canoing. I felt like a complete child again remembering so many things from my past. After it all, I am extremely glad I went. I will be collecting pictures from classmates on Monday and Tuesday and will burn them DVD's. This way I know that I will have some pictures to put up for you on the web.

A sick Sophomore Party

Last weekend, we had our Sophomore Party at Omnibus, the name of the girls house. The week before I would like to title, "Whose not Sick." So Keith became sick after the Nikko camp, then I joined him about 2 days after, then James joined me about 2 days after. So here is the Sophomore party with Keith feeling pretty good, myself having my first good day, and James feeling terrible. Turns out about half the students who came were not feeling good either. But despite the ill feeling of half our group we had a great party.

We ate American style Fajitas, which was absolutely amazing. As I type about it, my mouth is starting to drool wishing I could eat some right now. After eating we watched The Mask of Zorro. This fulfilled our evening of a Mexican or Spanish theme for our party.

The party went very well and I was able to see and spend some time with guys that I had not seen in a while, except at sports. This weekend was going to be a variety of different things. Lauren was going to go to a home stay with a student but became sick. We are still thinking about having a guys night, tonight and about 12 students went to Shizuoka BEST for their weekend sports camp. So a variety of things going on this weekend.

The outlook for this week: Japanese test on Monday, Kanji test on Friday, planning for a Tokyo trip, the Juniors party this upcoming weekend, and of course language, language, language.

Nikko and Camping Trip

So this last Saturday and Sunday was a complete blast with the Tokyo BEST club. We started off heading to Nikko on Saturday morning. We went and visited the Toshogu shrine and saw the sleeping cat, the original hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkeys, the tomb of one of the strongest samurai, as well as look at and walk into some of the shrine buildings.

Every time I go and visit a temple or a shrine, it saddens my heart to see the people perform rituals or to throw money into a bin, say a prayer, and then expect the spirits to hear them and answer it. They come before things made by human hands in places made by human hands and pray before their gods. An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold. They seek out skillful craftsmen to setup an idol that will not totter or move or fall over. They use the same piece of wood to make an idol that has to be nailed down and they burn the other half of the wood for warmth and for cooking. It burdens my heart to see them expect something to happen as a result of worshiping something they have made. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!

We then returned back to Utsunomiya and camped out at the Kinugawa river. We had an American style barbecue where we grilled hot dogs and had chips with salsa. We had a fire building contest to see who could build a fire up to the rope the fastest and burn it. We also had some Japanese style s'mores where we roasted marshmallows and used Choco Digestive biscuits as our graham cracker and chocolate. We then did some late night swimming in the river where our group, thanks to Lauren, had a shampooing. She brought some shampoo with her and we cleaned up in the river with some idiotic pictures taken. We had some campfire Karaoke in Japanese and in English.

Some students stayed awake the whole night but I went to sleep about midnight and woke up at 5am as the sun comes up in Japan about 4am and sets around 7pm. We then made some hard boiled eggs and coffee over our campfire at 6am. Then we just relaxed and some people played games, a couple of us tried spear fishing but to no success, and a view funny pranks were pulled. We packed up camp and went for a Utsunomiya gyoza lunch, as almost every city in Japan is famous for something so we took the Tokyo students to a gyoza lunch in downtown Utsu. They then returned home afterwards.

One of my highlights was seeing a believer from Utsu sharing from God's Word with a nonbeliever from Tokyo at the campfire. The Tokyo student is a senior and I know that they have been praying for him to come to know Christ. It is amazing to be able to witness a Japanese believer share from his heart and from God's Word to want to see another student come to know Christ.