Hey Hey

So right now I am listening to some nice ear listening music and I`d like to share!

Joshua Radin
The Dovekins
Starlight Ramblers
Emma Louise
Sarah Blasco
Joint Chiefs of Staff

We`re all telling stories now!

Who Knew

On a more happy note the hospitality of the Japanese people always is impressive. Just the other day I was at a grocery store and couldn`t read anything and so I was looking for dried fruit. I went up to the nearest person and just said excuse me he dropped everything and I was able to say something close to probably the english equivelent of `fruit...here..possibly..around and boooom bam zoom we were off. Everything that had to do with fruit he showed me.... regualar fruit... fruit drinks.... fruit soap.... even fruit squishy stuffed animals who knewwww! finally after much searching we arrived at the much anticipated dry fruit and I purchased with rapid speed. The check out lines are speedy as well and they actually count out the amounts to you. For example 2 oranges 200 yen.... one carton of eggs.... 300 yen. I`ve never seen such fast service!
So the other day I had a problem..... I could not go... The diet of Japan is quite healthy, but there is no wheat bread and I guess I had been eating a lot of eggs, rice, and curry and not much fruit. So there I was with a predicament. 3 minitues later I found myself playing a game of pictionary combined with sirades saying the english equivelent of .... stomach... hurts.... leave... fruit is healthy....and water..... hard.... and acting out the motions as so. Everybody in the Teachers office had their dictionary`s out as I sat in a squatted position going schowww with my voice and pointing down with my hands. They understood something was wrong and so I was permitted to leave. 10 min later I was there at the grocery store and now you know why I bought dried fruit and cranberry juice with such speed. The cranberry juice was quite easy to find. For the rest of the day my message to the world would read ``john`s current status.... really excited to shit! ohh man and I was and so I did lots of jumping jacks and lots of situps and went to a drug store and purchased medicine for the cause and in the end their was success! I hope to never have that problem again. Everybody eat your fruit daily in Japan!
Cleaning the bathroom used to be a task in my hobbit home. the ceiling is not the problem it is of ample height. It is actually the door frame and the low sink, which sometimes causes the most distress. bending over farther then usual is a task especially when cleaning and having to repeatedly wash the sponge out and resume, but now I have just discovered the prime de la resittaance! There is actually a drain under my sink as well as my bathtub so I can literally scrub everything down and then stand back with my shower hose and hose everything down! toilet, sink, bathtub and just wait a little for it all to dry... yokatttaa neeeee (that`s better) you want the Japanese too okay here you go よかった！

I`m telling you now

So would you like to know what my life is like right now? Okay I will tell you. Right now I am sitting at my desk in an office. Most of the conversation around me I don`t understand. I am slowly picking it up. Yes I do feel like a dog. My ears perk up every time I hear the word food or something about the weather. My brain switches on and my mind forms an answer and I respond and ponder its presence. Sometimes it`s as though I`m in a dream. I`ll be driving down the road thinking regular thoughts and then I`ll glance at a Japanese sign and my reality goes into cartoon mode. I`m like that character that stops and holds up a sign that says ``what`` on it and looks at the viewer like a deer in headlights. Yes this does happen often and still does. Man if I asked you to pinch me just to make sure what I was living was real I would have one sore pinching sore spot! So what do you want to know? Do you want to know what I eat on a daily basis? Okay I`ll tell you. The other night, now having the driving ability I sped away to the nearby grocery store. Now in the U.S I still do get quite lost in supermarkets especially if I`m hungry. ``ohh that looks good, but wait that looks even better!.... what was that over there....I`m gonna go check that out. Yeah this happens to me in the U.S. Grocery shopping is an adventure everytime. In Japan however, a whole new level is added. Now I go around and ask ``hmmm is that fish or beef....and that looks like noodles, but are they? First I have to figure out what I`m going to eat, what I want to eat and then I have to figure out if I can actually cook it and then I have to decipher the Japanese language. The whole experience is mind dazzling! You should try it sometime. It would probably be pretty funny if someone followed me around a Japanese grocery store. Sometimes I just look in the bakery and pick out some item that smells really good and I have dinner right then and there in the grocery store. I think to myself ``you know what if I`m going to get out of this grocery store at all I have to eat something`` and so I do. Ohh mann I have to go to class. I`ll finish this!

For Now

I think Daily about what I really want to say. What I really want to show the world. Is that simple drive to show purpose, or to simply make footsteps and let the wind wash away the prints in the sand?  Nature, now that is something that I demise will bring future lands to future people. I look at my reflection now staring back at my self. I tilt my head, it tilts its head. It is self-observation. It occurs to me now and more then before that I will never see my self portrait, never gleam at it’s occurrence, never watch its rainbow of colors. It is quite striking to fit those ties to together in that order and make a sentence. All over the world people do the same thing. They stare at their reflections and monitor their well-being. It’s common stance to do so and a right that we have. Yet appearance lacks in the shadows what it does in the door. We all find our own fit and roll with it. Yet we never see our true selves, never gleam at our real photo, only maximize or quantify our simplistic character.  I would truly like to write a story, something that has a fitting beginning and ending, with some purposeful plot in the middle. I would like to do so because it would use time in a seemingly purposeful way and also because I am an observer. As I do now typing this to you. I do look at my reflection and am also aware of a street light across the street. In our lives we have a lot of space to fill up especially when were young.  If we have lots of space then we notice this amount of space and it swallows us in a tactile timetable where only moments exact locations run the miles of certainty in their exposure. If we don’t have enough time well then many instruments play together in random fashion and we are filled with noise, which is only remedied by coffee. It’s not that direction is a mere perception of contemplating the exactness of ourselves, it’s really that we see eternity in view of a nearby land and revel at its momentary relaxation. I'll write a story soon. I really want to. Especially because I'm in Japan and it would be fitting. Here are some pictures though for your amusement. I make rice, or harvest rice, Tokyo and it's feeling, friends, The whole tomato.

Wheeewyyy!

I guess the problem is that we think too much as humans. Problems usually grow larger if you dwell too much on them. For instance lets take Japanese culture. You open the door and the first thing you see is rushing cars, pink lights, and then countryside. At first it`s very cute. The men get up every morning and do their routine stretch. The children sing the toothbrush song, but then you realize it is a militaristic system and that throws you. You have to look through the Cotton candy and cute wrapping paper. You come to the realization that everything follows a strict plan. People are not put into class by their abilities, but rather their pre-existing position in life. This throws you as well. Shouldn`t the effort driven people reap the benefits and society not be based on a preset hierarchy.? Then you dwell a little more on the problem. Ok so were talking about economic status. Ok well lets look around the world. Lets take a macroeconomic anthropologic approach to this whole problem. One of the main questions that economists ask is why is there a widening gap between the rich and the poor and more so why is it so hard for the poor class to improve their situation? Then we do some research, or really just common sense observation and we come up with the easy explanation. The wealthier class is given more opportunity then the poor class from the get go. Lets take me for example. I grew up in a bubble. I will admit it is a bubble. The town is Aspen, Colorado and it is nestled in the Mountains, yet is known by the world as a secret get away. Ohh wait though we can`t take me for an example because just a generation ago my family line was quite poor. Down town Chicago in the USA. I imagine dirty living conditions and a dangerous neighborhood of crime and violence. My dad grew up in this place and just a generation ago before that my grandparents were in camps during the 2nd world war being transported like a bunch of cattle around the U.S. Ok so over a short time period Japan is like the rest of the world. We are all predetermined to be at a certain economic status. It took me 3 generations and now here I am with much opportunity ahead of me. My sister has this too. She is currently studying in University and solves rubix cubes in her spare time, while discussing world topics over tea with other possible future astronauts. She is in a great situation as well. She also had great opportunities offered to her. If you look at her, like me though 2 generations ago, we were in the dumps, struggling to survive in a foreign world called America. In Japan everybody is a robot. It is so ironic because I was just at a speech contest yesterday and some of the most high evaluated speeches were speeches where the kids literally spoke like robots! There is a preset time for everything. You can even say it in a robot voice if you would like. It would work in Japan “At 23 YOU WILL BE MARRIED, IF YOU ARE NOT MARRIED YOU WILL BE SINGLE” “IF YOU ARE A MAN YOU WORK, IF YOU ARE A WOMEN YOU WORK WHEN YOU ARE 20 AND 21 SO THAT YOU CAN FIND A HUSBAND. YOU THEN QUIT WORK” YOUR JOB IS NOW TO HAVE BABIES AND CLEAN” YOU DON`T GET TO HAVE A JOB” Ok here is another part of daily life… “LETS PLAY SOCCER…. “STRETCH EXACTLY 4 TIMES WITH YOUR LEGS, and then “4 TIMES WITH YOUR ARMS” and now we will “RECITE A SPEECH WHICH SAYS THAT SOCCER IS THE GREATEST SPORT IN THE WORLD” ok so lets go farther and go driving “ YOU GOT INTO A CAR CRASH IT IS BOTH OF YOUR FAULTS ALWAYS, EVEN THOUGH YOU BUMPED INTO ME IT IS MY FAULT TOO” Do you kind of get the gist of what I`m saying. I`m actually kind of confusing myself right now by writing this down. I just know that I run into situations on a daily basis here and I really have to make sure I`m actually really seeing what I`m seeing. I guess Japan could be summarized by saying that it is one huge psychology project. Can you see how much I am thinking right now. Just look at all those thoughts I poured above me. Are you confused yet? I bet you are. I am. Just in general thinking to much is a bad thing. For example just start up your mind engines and start thinking “What are we?” Stop thinking right away your mind computer will surely crash or leave you feeling utterly confused. See thinking too much is a task! Yet here I think again it is the reason that makes us unique from all other species. It is a gift and not a gift sometimes I`ll tell you wha! Some of the best minds in the world have come up with the resolution that we can rid our selves of thought by only thinking in the present. The future has not happened and we don`t know what will happen. The past already did happen and we can`t change it…duhhhhh. Yet There we are saying I wish…I wish….. which interestingly applies to both the past and the future. “I wish that didn`t happen” “I wish I had love in my life” seeee it works for both diretions. Ohhhhh man we are thinking a lot… Lookk at where these thoughts took us we started from a simple discussion about thinking and look now whewwwwy. Now we`ve created two many instruments all playing together. We have the flute, the Violin, the Cello, The Piano, The Guitar, 6 men singing, One trumpet. They are all playing music at the same time. Does your mind feel busy? My mind sure does! Lets push the stop button now!!!! Ahhhhhhhh that is better ! Do you feel better. I sure do. Would you like some orange juice? Lets go get sooome of that tasty concentrate! いきましょう

What if

What do you feel. What is the rock beneath your feet. Where is your approach to the rolling hills that roll out to a sea and breeze. The candid response is always known with care. Care is the thing that cares and causes appreciation. It`s the coffee cup that steams up, leaves a smoke trail, blows when you breathe and fills the room with personality. The Bus drives humming as your head rests against its wall. The thoughts pour out and in and crashing candid responses carefully cling to the realm of existence, to the realm of purpose. The road music continues in your head and subconscious desire is replaced with the crashing of bottled emotion flowing over threads whispering unconscious exposure. Maybe its just that I drank Jasmine Tea. It has a bitter taste, yet leaves the mouth with honey afterward sweet like spring leaves blooming after a brief rainstorm, fresh like the the sunshine that hits a foggy mountainside. It really put me into a mood, a peaceful mood where words flowed like they do. Dancing in circles a few nights past to the sound of pin ball machine music ripped and combined together into perfect beat, mixed with cotton candy and spread on the floor with jelly beans. I guess that`s what I danced to the other night. And before that there was the brief scene of a hidden oasis folded back from a mysterious lake and a bus that drove though continuous fog higher into sky land. I just remember walking along an ancient paths where old relics where placed on either side in ordered, yet random fashion and then the river flowed and people sat in hot water. It was the land of the Japanese fairy land where the leaves turned a bright green and made way for hot water that steamed the forest and gave it a moments rest. Now it is Monday and here I am in the bustle of school life again. Little Japanese children run up to me and bounce around me and say "touchee" reapeatedly which is what they translate is the American version of the "High 5" and they tell me to put my hand really high so they can jump up and try to hit it. Then they jitter out a whole bunch of Japanese and I understand one word and I reply and they laugh and clap their hands and bounce around some more and ask for high five`s once more. I can just kind of say "awwwwwwww" for it`s really cute and how can you not smile with your eyes, mouth and heart and feel like a whole bunch of flowers.

class

おひおごずますみにさん

Good morning everyone,
I love showing up to the school in the morning and the first thing I hear as I enter the office is the choir practicing down the hall. Their voices echo off the walls and flow into the sea breeze. I`ve been explaining about my life in Japan, but I have not depicted in intricate detail what happens during a lesson or a typical day at school. Well, all days are quite different. I can tell you that my day at elementary school quite contrasts a day at Naraha Chugaku. Both are exciting. The morning usually starts at about a little after 6am. I rise stumble across my bedroom floor and scoop out rice with a paddle and put it into a bowl, which I recieve from the refrigerator. I have started to put my dishes in the fridge as to keep them nice and cool. It puts a refreshing tint on the morning`s activities. Rice in bowl I make my way to the table and find some other cool food items to partake in my bowl with rice party. Vegetables, rice toppings, sometimes fruit sits along side and then I eat. Soon I mount my bicycle with a basket, guitar in one hand and pedal of to Minami sho... south elementary. The cool wind blows in my face and the ocean sings nearby. I thank the Japanese Gods that the ride is downhill on the way there. I greet the school bow about 15 times saying ohiyou gozimus to all the teachers and then sit at a desk. Then the clock ticks. The teachers leave.. the teachers come back. They give me coffee. I take the coffee and drink the coffee. Oops now I have to go to class. I will countine at another time soon my friends soon