few questions

School has started back and I have decided to get TEFL Certification in the next month so I can stack my deck a little before I apply for JET in September. has anyone out there done this? is it easy? It sounds to me like a hoop that you have to jump through to get better odds of acceptance. I really hope that I am not just trowing away my cash and I get some insight from it. Oh ya, for those of you who live or have lived in Japan, how long did it take to get use to speaking Japanese or at leaste comfortable with normal every day tasks such as getting food, and how much Japanese training did you have before you went?

life and experiences

as some of you know, I am an atheist. I believe that when we die all consciousness ceases and that is that. This is one of the main driving forces in my life. People have posed the question "what is the meaning of life?" of course their is no solid anser to that but to me it turns more into a goal than a meaning. so here it is... I was born to procreate eventualy, to learn as much as I can, and to experiance as much as possible.

I have always learned new things in an obsessive manner, my family can atest to that. I will focus in on one or two things untill I think I have learned enough of it and then I drop it. This was more prominate in my life untill around the time that I moved off to college. at that point my goals shifted to atempt to experiance as much as I can. I still love to learn but I look at what I can gain from experiances as a powerful teacher.

I have been contemplating exactly what is drawing me to attempt to move to Japan and I have concluded that the two main reasons are to learn and experiance. It is such a good chance to do those two things that I would be a fool not to try.

Unfortunately Experiances, learning and Japan have become a sore subject in my releationship. Ill explain in the next post...

home to Tokyo

so my friend Teaki or Takeru is moving back home to Tokyo on Monday. I am going to hang out with him for the last time tonight. I have known teak for about 6 years now he is a very charismatic person who has this crazy ability to make most people want to help him. but he let some paper work laps and all those that wanted to help him could not so he has to go back home for an extended stay for the first time in many years. I must say that I will miss him a lot but hopefully he will get his paper work fixed and will come back in the next year. On the bright side, if it takes him longer then I can go see him if I don't get into the JET program!

As of late

So the semester is over and now I am worrying about how to retain all of the information that I have learned over the last 4 months untill I get to my next class in the fall. I think that I will use lists that I am making from Iknow.jp.co along with videos from a web sight that my sensei told me about that her husband was the host of http://www.gpb.org/irasshai. These videos are really funny in that I cant believe how bad this is funny and they were filmed in the late 80s to early 90s so that just adds to the atmosphere. but there are a nice number of these videos so I will give them a shot in the interest of not loosing what I have learned. more over I will communicate with Ashley as much as I can that does seem to help us both in our studies.

I would like to send out a huge congratulations to Sean from the blog flyingsound. He was accepted into the JET program and is awaiting assignment. The more people I see achieve their goal in getting into JET and the more people I meet that have been in it. The more I feel that it is an achievable goal. All I have to do now is wait for application time and get to it. It is kind of scary, this single goal has become the main focal point of my life as of late. Most things that I have done as of the last 6 or so months has been with the thought "This can or could help me get into the JET program or could help me if I get into the JET program." I hope that it is not all for naught.

Bad day

So today was a pretty bad day. I was in a car accident. My truck is possibly totaled. It is amazing how much damage can occur at 25 mph. No one was hurt. More over I just had the clutch replaced on it and that cost me $775.00 so lets hope that it is not completely gone. Other things that made this a fun day were. . . I went to the doctor and was poked, prodded, given a shot, had my blood stolen for god knows what dastardly uses. The vending machine at school took my money. sigh... Oh well! on the plus side my sister let me borrow her scion TC until my truck is fixed or until I find another vehicle assuming it is totaled. ooh and I went back to the house that I was house sitting and had a nice long nap! man I needed that.
Oh yeah and my sensei told the class about her travel agent that she booked a flight through from here to Tokyo and it was only $700.00 round trip．I was so excited about this that I blurted out in class 本とですか！！どこ!？!?At which point every one turned and looked at me.　It seemed that most of them had no idea how much these tickets are through travel sites but Cook sensei helped out by playing a game that had the normal price through continental airlines and then the price of first class just for fun. prices $2100.00 and $11,000.00 these shell shocking prices made me look like I wasn't crazy and the best part was that my excitement was rewarded when she hooked me up with the travel agents name :)
So I guess that the day wasn't a total bust after all.

Dream

Last night I had an odd dream. I get rejected from the JET program. So I decide to take the money that I have been saving and go to Japan any ways. I buy my ticket, which costs a measly 50 bucks (I am budgeting for a $2000.oo ticket), hop on the plane, and fly over there. The flight only takes a hour in the dream. Once the plane lands, I decide to walk around Japan. In my through the city that I landed in, I some how manage to get to an old country road that is totally abandoned. After walking a little while I come upon two individuals who talk to me in Japanese, Which I some how understand clearly. Next a third person walks up to us and tells me that I need to speak to him in English because my Japanese is terrible. While speaking to him I learn that he is my real life friend Toby. At this point he shows me around the city and explains what he has been doing for the past year in Japan and talks about how he has fallen in love with the culture and has decided to never come back. After that I decide that it is time for me to come back to the USA and I tell him that I will come see him on the weekends because it is so cheap and easy to get there. When I arrive at the airport I run in to my professor, Cook Sensei. She asks me if I enjoyed visiting, to which I respond, "that I love this place. It just makes me sad that I cannot stay." At which point Ashley wakes me up by turning on the lights to find some cloths that she needed. When I woke up I was filled with disappointment. I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about that.

Thinking in Japanese

It is really surprising how much you can say with only a few words in your repertoire. I have been attempting to make sentences with the words that I currently know and in doing so I not only found out what words I need to learn next but I get a great boost of confidance that I may be able to comunicate enough to eat or communicate on the most basic levels if I make it to Japan.

Anime

The Japanese will make an anime about anything. Case in point Yakitate!! Japan (fresh baked Japan) which is about making bread. Yes 69 episodes of bread baking battles. By the way, this is actually a fairly funny anime even with the ridiculous subject matter. But I digress, as the Japanese mesh together new ideas to make original anime they some times hit on a really odd but neat concept that is not embarrassing to tell your friends that you spent 2 hours watching it. Which leads me to my next selection.

A friend of mine told me about this series that he enjoyed Toshokan Sensō (Library wars) and it is really neat. Basic plot, in the future the government begins destroying books (I know what you are thinking this plot has been done a million times and it has but some incarnations are better than others) and librarians take it upon themselves to fight back by basically becoming elite military forces complete with fatigues and fully automatic weapons. This concept hits home because my mother was a librarian and my ex-girlfriend was one as well. I can see my mother supporting the idea but I can see my ex picking up a gun and saying that no government bastard is going to take the Kage Baker series from me! any ways it is a good series that I would recommend watching.

Most cultures have a food that we find difficult to fathom eating: haggis, Tripe, fish eyes, etc. I wonder what Americans eat that the Japanese find odd or unpalatable?

Hulu Halarious!

american cooking

I have been racking my brain to decide what American food is and I have decided that America doesn't have any cuisine of its own. Most of Americas food is derived from bastardizations of other countries food. On one had this is great, we have some really delicious food that makes us a culinary adventure anytime that you want to try something new. On the other hand it is really difficult to pin down a recipe that I would take to Japan to describe American cuisine. Sure I live in the south and I could technically make grits, collard greens, cornbread, black eyed peas and other stereotypes but I don't think that is a good representation of who we really are. Please put in your vote on what American cuisine really is and Ill keep working on it. I leave you with a recipe that I designed and that I currently am eating.
noodles in butter sauce:
1 large package of egg noodles (I prefer the spiral kind)
24 oz chicken stock
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of green olives
1 can artichoke hearts
1 can cream of mushroom soup
12 oz mushrooms of your preference
mix together butter and chicken stock boil until it has reduced by half volume. next add olives, artichoke hearts, cream of mushroom soup, and mushrooms. simmer for 5 minutes. combine with very well drained prepared noodles then serve.
I have found that pork goes very well with this so feel free to add diced ham, bacon, or prosciutto.
I can not stop thinking about curry soup I think I am going to attempt a rendition of that tonight. Ill be sure to post the results.

places to live

When applying for the JET program, every one gets to name a place that they would like to be sent to. Not that it is a guarantee that you would be put there but it is still nice to be able to have a say in it. I have done a little research into interesting cities and have found a ton of them. In the next few posts I would like to introduce them starting with my first choice Sapporo. I like living in a city with the population density of Birmingham, it seems to be a nice balance. Birmingham and its metro area contain about 1,100,000 people and the city is about 150 sq miles. Sapporo on the other hand has about 1,800,000 people and is about 3X’s the size of Birmingham. Though it is larger than Birmingham its population density is still probably higher in reality because the cities size includes mountains that are not often inhabited by large numbers of people. Also, I like the cold and the average annual temperature in Sapporo is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. More over Sapporo gets 190 inches of snow a year. I have only experienced “real” snow (more than a 2 or 3 inches) 3 times in my life that I can remember. I have been told that it doesn’t take long to get tired of snow but I am willing to give it a shot. Speaking of snow Sapporo has an annual snow festival every year which includes ice sculptures! Sounds like a blast to me.
Good food is a huge necessity for me and Sapporo is known for Curry soup and miso ramen both sound super tasty to me. It also doesn’t hurt that they have a famous brewery there that makes Sapporo beer and that they have an annual festival that includes beer gardens and food during the summer. All and all this place sounds ideal for me. Next post Ill get off the north island and talk about a place that is a little warmer.

New furnature

I have a show coming up in a little more than a month and I have made nothing for it so far.... So I guess I need to get cracking on it. I need to make about six pieces two of which need to be lounge chairs because they sell really well. I have been thinking a whole lot about Japan, its culture and its language so I think it would be fun to draw from that to make a few of the pieces. For some reason I am attracted to the idea of making furnature from the shapes of Hiragana I assume because that is all that I have been studying for the last week. So what is the most comfortable Hiragana symbol to you all? please leave a comment with your opinion! Dont worry if the symbol has parts that are not connected it will be part of the fun to design to get around those problems! For those of you who do not know what it looks like see the image below.

Getting ready for karaoke

So I have spent every minute while in my car today singing Misfits songs and the top of my lungs. All I can say is that this has been one of the best days in a while and I owe it all to my horrible singing. There is nothing quite like going horse singing about murder and monsters. As I was doing this I was thinking about the fact that Karaoke is a super popular way of spending time in Japan and while I listened to myself I started to think that I really need to get better at singing if I am going to represent my country well. More over my friend Yosukei told me that I should attempt to learn Japanese songs to assist me in getting use to pronunciation in a fun way. So I think I will. That is one more thing to add to my new years resolutions