Teetering on The Edge

Date

2012-01-09T16:44:00.002+08:00

I just spent 4 hours on skype talking with Marie because she was going on a walk, and I was accompanying her. We (she) walked from the CRASH house to Oizumi-Gakuen station, and I was with her looking at the camera feed, and when we realized that was taking up too much battery, following her progress on google maps. And it was fun.

Who said you had to be physically near each other to have a date?

Deus ex Machina

2011-12-20T17:01:00.003+08:00

Now, I'm not really a student of historical drama or plays, but apparently, in certain ancient Greek plays, the storyline would be giving a really terrible time to the protagonist, and though everyone wants the hero to pull through and save the girl/kill the badguy/defeat the monsters/all of the above, there is just no possible way for him to get out of his predicament.

But, as everyone knows, no one really likes a story where the evil guy is triumphant and the good guy fails to save the day. Unless of course, you *are* the evil guy, but for the most part, people like a good happy ending. An ending where they see the hero get the girl, kill the badguy, defeat the monsters, and rides off into the sunset.

But there is just no physically possible way for the hero to save the day! And this, is where the playwright steps in, and writes in a section where a god appears and magically makes everything right.

"And then, Johnny woke up, and realized that it was all a dream."

The most common form of Deus ex Machina found in the English Compositions of primary school children in Singapore, saving their storyline hero from evil, but alas, not saving the authors from the bane of unoriginality, or from the ire of their English teachers who have to read 70 stories that end this way.

The god-character is usually lowered (or raised, depending on the stage) onto the scene by a crane (or a platform), hence the term 'machina' (Which in case you haven't quite noticed, is where we get our word 'machine' from). And so in the end, the hero rescues the girl, slays the badguy, defeats the monster, and saves the day.

Thinking about that reminded me of this other story where everything was dark and hopeless, and there was no way there could have been a happy ending. The story is the one about humanity.

I mean, the world was pretty much screwed over when Adam and Eve chose not to follow God's commands, but decided to do things on their own. And since sin is hereditary, and they were the only people on earth, it goes on to say that there was no way that humanity would have been able to save themselves.

And so no matter how much we want to be pure, to be holy, we can't, because from the beginning, from when we were first born, sin was in us. We were doomed, and the devil was laughing because by his single act of deception, and the single moment of weakness by Adam and Eve, we were cursed to damnation away from God.

And then, God steps into this world. He sent His Son, to take away the sin, to take the punishment we deserved, and provide redemption for all humanity.

So there you have it. Christmas: The greatest Deus ex Machina ever.

2011-11-30T20:03:00.010+08:00

Whoa almost missed another month there.

Here's a recap of November in pictures!

Marie came!

Marie left :(

I ate some apple pie.

We made Alvin Yap go diving.

We also made him go flying. We also made him go trekking about (actually, he ended up dragging our asses around cos he's a ranger and we're not) and had a campfire and cooked some stuff and ate it, but no pictures sorry.

Alvin got married. Photo credit (copyright?) to TouchStudios and Moving Pictures.

I got older. Alvin also got older, which was coincidentally (or maybe NOT!) one day after his wedding.

That's about it.

Trends

2011-10-28T22:43:00.021+08:00

When I first went to Japan in 2005, I thought, I would never go back to Japan again.

Team members of Japan'05

When I went back again in 2006, I figured I would never go back as a team leader.

I took a picture with Steve Weemes back then because I didn't think I would ever see him again too.

When I went to Japan in 2008 as a team leader for a short-term youth team, I did not think I would ever stay longer than a month.

Team dynamics, as seen (and drawn) by Mavis.

When I signed up for the OLOY program in church and went to Japan in 2009, I did not think I would stay longer than a year.

It seemed like half my church sent me off that time. I felt so embarrassed.

When I went back in 2010 for my second year, I did not think I would want to extend past my second year.

Summer at Kamakura/Shonan with Shinagawa Kai, which seemed both so long ago, and so near at the same time.

And now, I want to go back again. Whether missions or not, I'm not sure. But I know I want to be in Japan. Here are a list of reasons why I want to go back to Japan:

Yokohama bay

Sunset over Tokyo

Tokorozawa station East exit

KHCN team

Tokorozawa HC

Tono city centre

Coco's English Corner

Walking home to Tokorozawa from Kotesashi

Snow in winter

CRASH Japan Logistics team

Kids' Club

Shinagawa Kai

Marie

I think, maybe, just maybe, I'm sensing a trend here. God, you really have a sense of humour, don't You?

Dumb hacker

2011-09-10T22:16:00.005+08:00

So I had not logged onto MSN Messenger in quite a while, and then when I log on today, I get into this conversation with a friend I haven't really spoken to in a while.. To keep the identity secret, I've blanked out the name of the friend:

######## says: (11:02:45 PM)

在嗎

Daniel says: (11:03:00 PM)

yup

Daniel says: (11:03:01 PM)

what's up

######## says: (11:03:12 PM)

在嗎

######## says: (11:03:21 PM)

現在方便幫我個忙嗎

(Writer's note: Here, I started to get a little suspicious. Almost all my friends know my Chinese is not good, and the only ones who speak to me in Chinese are those who's English is almost non-existent.)

Daniel says: (11:03:34 PM)

english pls

Daniel says: (11:03:40 PM)

you know my english is better than my chinese

Daniel says: (11:03:49 PM)

and my japanese is now better than my chinese too

Daniel says: (11:03:50 PM)

haha

Daniel says: (11:03:51 PM)

but sure

######## says: (11:06:24 PM)

Now convenient do me a favor

Daniel says: (11:06:45 PM)

what favour

######## says: (11:08:06 PM)

Help me to buy a few pieces of mycard card is convenient for me

(Writer's note: Now, right about here, it became full-blown suspicion. I mean, this English is pretty broken, even for a Singaporean. And my friend speaks English pretty well. But I decided to play along and see whether he would make a faux pas and prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was not my friend.)

Daniel says: (11:09:27 PM)

what's that?

######## says: (11:10:41 PM)

Taiwan 7 and 11 family ok Lyle rich some sell

######## says: (11:11:02 PM)

With the clerk said to buy mycard card = m CARDS they will understand

Daniel says: (11:11:16 PM)

wait, this is AAAAAA right?

(Writer's note: I asked the name of my friend, but with a slight misspelling, in case it really was my friend who was, I don't know, intoxicated or something)

######## says: (11:11:28 PM)

Would you help me buy some Taiwan friend zhang

Daniel says: (11:13:12 PM)

did you even get the right person?

######## says: (11:13:42 PM)

Is not the only trouble you

######## says: (11:13:55 PM)

Can help I think the way to trouble

Daniel says: (11:13:55 PM)

AAAAAA?

Daniel says: (11:14:23 PM)

this is Daniel. from %%%

######## says: (11:14:35 PM)

He didn't online

######## says: (11:15:15 PM)

Can you help me to think the way

Daniel says: (11:15:39 PM)

wait wait

Daniel says: (11:15:43 PM)

you are AAAAAA right?

######## says: (11:16:13 PM)

嗯嗯

######## says: (11:16:17 PM)

yes

Daniel says: (11:17:28 PM)

get off my friend's account you stupid hacker

######## says: (11:17:49 PM)

哈哈

######## says: (11:17:51 PM)

你吃屎了嗎

Right there, after trying to insult me, he went offline. I say trying because, you know, I was really just toying with the moron, and I wasn't insulted. Well, a bit. If I met him, I would sock him good for that, and then another time for hacking my friend's account.

So yeah. Google translate is a lot better than Babelfish, but seriously, it's not enough if you want to try and pretend to be someone to trick that person's friend.

And yes. I am slightly mortified to admit that right now, my Japanese is indeed, better than my Chinese.

Ichinoseki Epilogue

2011-09-10T20:28:00.003+08:00

Thank you

Ichinoseki Part 3

2011-09-10T19:29:00.008+08:00

Took a little too long to get back to this.

Our final work day at Ichinoseki was a little different. We knew before we got down to the volunteer centre, that Onodera-san was not getting volunteers, as she had requested none on that day. So Nobu said that the first one that comes along that can fit one of our groups, we should just take it. And so we were separated from the CCC team.

We were assigned to do photo-recovery work at a nearby sports hall (I think), and we did not take our car with us this time. One of the volunteer centre staff dudes drove a few of us out in a van, and he took us through the part of Kesennuma that was hit the hardest by the tsunami, and by the fires that broke out after that. We had seen damage of course, but it still kinda cast a pall over the entire car when we were driving through it, and he was telling us his experience.

Yes, that is a container ship that was washed inland.

Photo-recovery work was a lot different from what we had experienced up to that point. We were working indoors, so it was cool. There was no construction work going on, so it was quiet. There were chairs and tables, and all we had to do was to salvage as many photographs as we could from photo albums that had been pulled out of the wreckage, dry them off, and put them in new albums.

Now, if you know what some of those albums are like, each 'page' is made of stiff paper which may be sticky, so you can plonk your photo on it. And then there's a plastic film for each page that goes on top so that it can be protected from spilled drinks and the grubby hands of people. What we had to do was to slowly peel the film off (hopefully without peeling off the picture), and then cut the picture off the 'page'.

And it seems like a relatively cushy job compared to the physical stuff we had been doing, but now I realize that finesse can be as stressful as doing hard manual labour, bending over the tables, controlling your movements so that you don't damage it any worse.

And the albums smell bad, because they were in the sea. The moment we opened it up, we got a powerful whiff of it. And we have to keep our faces near the books so that we can see what we are doing (though we kinda get used to it after about an hour or so).

And this is also where it kinda hits you a bit more, that these pictures may be the visual remnants of someone who may be dead. When we were working before, it was physical stuff, and the owners were still around, and they had friends and family who got swept away, but, you know, you're still kinda distant from those other people.

Now? You're looking at them smiling at you from the pages of a photo album which were meant to be a memoir for them, but instead, is giving you a window into the life of a total stranger who you will probably never meet.

There were photos of vacations, and houses and plants, but the ones that really struck me were those old photos of children, or a child with his mother, because they remind me of the photos my grandmother had when she was young and my dad was a kid. And these are treasures, because those are the only copies. In our digital age, where we can take thousands of photos and have backups and store it on hard drives and print out a billion copies, we forget (or don't know, perhaps) how valuable a photo was.

It was only 4 hours of work, but it was a lot harder than we thought. We got a ride back to the volunteer centre, and then we headed back to base, and that was the end of our volunteer work in Ichinoseki.

We also went out to Rikuzen-Takata to do a short prayer-walk around the tree. This tree had been in a grove of 70,000 that had been a park/breakwater, but now it was the only one that remained. It gave hope and courage to the people I guess, in the '頑張れ (ganbare)' way, to just push through adversity, and they are desperately trying to save it from the seawater that had gotten into the soil. (Side note: On the way down from Tono much later, we drove past the tree again, and it looked a lot worse.)

The pine tree

On Sunday, we went to a church in Kesennuma. They did not have a sermon, but a guy shared his testimony of doing volunteer work (he had been helping out at the volunteer centre as one of the staff). It was somewhat sobering to hear that everyone in the church had lost someone they knew, but the church members were all very kind to us, and welcomed us warmly.

The CCC team left for Ichinoseki station after that, to take the train back down to Tokyo. Our team went to find a ramen shop (someone wanted to eat local ramen), and then we went to the summer festival in the town (Murone town) near the base. We had been invited by this guy who had driven all the way up to the base, so we felt that we should go.

Summer festival at Murone

It was a lot smaller than the ones I had gone to before in Tokyo, even the one in Tokorozawa, but then Murone is a pretty small town, and they were using a rather large place to stage it. It also felt a little too cold for a summer festival, as it had been cloudy and rainy all week long, so the temperature had dropped quite a bit.

We met the guy who invited us, and then we found out why he wanted to invite us; there was a log-cutting competition, and he was supposed to get people. So he signed all four of us up. I ended up squaring off against one of the local guys, and the result wasn't exactly pretty. I am not particularly strong, and I was not used to the small one-handed saw they gave me (it cut on the backstroke, whereas I'm used to a two-handed hacksaw that cuts on the forward stroke). And then I cut myself.

The aftermath. This was after the 'first-aid person' (in apostrophes because the first thing she did was to stuff cotton balls on the wound) and Marie had nursed me back to health. Incidentally, I noticed all the contestants wore work gloves after that.

But it all turned out well. We got to see fireworks that nights, and I got an iMax experience because I was lying down on the road and the sky was my screen.

Monday was our off day too, and after kinda lazing around hanging around the base, some of us took a walk around.

Ichinoseki base is located in a really beautiful area.

Near the end of our travels, Laura, who was trumping around the area with us, started to feel pain in her foot. She had tripped while walking around the base before we left for our hike, and when we got back, her foot was purple. Roberta prodded her a few times (she has some real nursing knowledge), but it seemed to only be a bruise. We found out after we got back to Tokyo that Laura had broken her toes in five places.

And that is about all. We left the base the following morning, saying goodbye to Woody, his wife, and a couple of new staff that had come by the night before, and reached Tokyo around 8.30 or 9. It was a really good trip, got to see (and help out) in some of the work there, and got to know each other better during the trip.

And now, a final word from the 'safety officer', who cut his hand sawing a log:

They always say to wear a breath mask and a helmet; I combined the two and wore a breath mask as a helmet. Remember, 安全第一！

Recap Intermission: Tono Day 5, 6

2011-08-11T17:29:00.006+08:00

We'll now have a break from the Ichinoseki recollection, and have something about what's going on in Tono.

I came up to Tono (in Iwate Prefecture too) almost a week ago, and three days after I had returned to Tokyo from the Ichinoseki trip (just enough time to wash all my underwear). It was hard to leave at first, because unlike Ichinoseki, I had to come up by myself, and I had to leave stuff in Tokyo that I did not really want to leave. But I reached the base fairly uneventfully (though the trains here don't run quite as... often.. as the trains in Tokyo).

I've had to do the dinner cooking and stuff, and so far, it's not been too bad. Fortunately, the first few days, I only had to prep food for about 12 people, though right now, I have to get enough food for close to 30.

And last night (Day 5), was when I started to get a little stressed. Now generally, I don't get too affected by work stress. I tend to just sleep it off. But last night, I decided to make spaghetti, and I foolishly did it without looking at a recipe. I decided to try it with a small batch first, and at around dinner time, it was still kinda bleah (I thought. The others thought it was fine). It didn't help that everyone was coming back late, so Plan B, which involved going out to buy instant sauce, was not gonna be easy to coordinate. After all, everyone was tired and asking them to drive to run errands would have been hard.

But I got encouraged by two people. One of the guys from the American team, Jon, offered to drive me out to the supermarket when I mentioned the need for a driver, even at the expense of a trip to the sento for him, and after a full day of work. While on the way there, I got some more encouragement in the form of a virtual bottle of energy drink from Marie in Tokyo. Stress was still there of course, but it was a lot easier to bear after that.

The following day, base management decided to bring everyone out to eat dinner, which meant I did not have to stay back and think of what to prep for food. So I was able to go out with one of the teams to do some work.

I ended up being part of a group that went back to Rikuzen-Takata. The job that day was to go to pick up rubbish in a spot where the tsunami had kinda gone through. II really couldn't understand much of the briefing, but when people started doing work, it was pretty easy to just take a look and follow.

We were picking up pieces of rubbish from the sandy area.

At first, it seemed a simple enough task. I mean, it was just picking up rubbish right? But as I was picking up some trash, and noticed that there was even more trash that had been buried in the soil, I started to wonder, how meaningful was our work? After all, prior to this in Ichinoseki, we had worked in a way where there were clear results happening, whether it was cutting weeds or talking to people. But as I picked up one piece of garbage, I saw 3 more pieces. And it just did not seem to be getting any less. It was not being done in an organized manner ("just go and pick up rubbish around here" *waves hands in a vague circle*), which meant that groups coming in the next day could, and probably would be working in the same spot, which would not be altogether pointless considering the amount of rubbish still there.

But even as I was thinking that, I knew that I was picking up one piece of rubbish, and that that piece of rubbish would be gone from the site, and even though it was just a bit, it was still that little bit that was gone from the area as they try to make the place livable again. And I guess what I was doing that day was just a 'drop in the ocean' so to speak, but eventually, all the rubbish will be cleared, and the little bit I did to help would have played a part in making that place habitable again.

Ichinoseki Part 2

2011-08-10T08:53:00.005+08:00

On the 2nd day, we went to the place of a lady called Onodera in Kesennuma. She lived in a three-storey house, and the third floor was actually untouched, but the tsunami and reached up to about a foot on the second floor, and had swept away everything in the first floor. This was also when we started to notice a smell. On the first day at the garden, there was no odour, and it smelt pretty much like what one would imagine a garden would smell like. But at the area around Onodera-san's house, there was a bit of a smell. Soon however, we barely noticed that, because we had to wear breathing masks, and it took too much effort to just breathe through it.

The HQ team was assigned to work on the second floor, and our work involved mostly sweeping up the dust and mud that had gotten settled on the floor. It sounds pretty simple, except for three facts:

There were kind of wooden support beams about two centimetres above the floor. Fortunately, the beams were spaced far apart enough to squeeze the dustpan in, but it was hard to clean the area directly under the beams.
The dust was the very fine kind, and there was construction work going on outside.
Some of the mud was caked. Hard. I'll get to that part in a bit.

So what happened was that after one round of sweeping (which was a lot harder than it sounds), we would look back on the swept places, and realize that there was still a lot of dust on the floor. And we would sweep again, and find out again that there was still dust on the floor. And we would be unable to reach the dust under the beams. And we had to breathe through breath masks for safety, which got pretty unbearable after about 5 minutes.

It did get very bearable at about 10:30 though, because that was when Onodera-san made an appearance, carrying a massive amount of drinks and snacks with her for us. Like Sato-san the day before, she was very grateful to us for coming, and her lack of a furnished living room did not detract one bit from her hospitality. We all very happily took a break from our work to get a bit of rest, and to talk with her.

Both Mrs. Onodera and her husband were ok after the tsunami, but their house was damaged, and she now stayed up in Aomori prefecture at an evacuation centre, but came down to Kesennuma 3-4 times a week to check on her house and clean it up. She felt fortunate because her house was salvageable, while most of the other houses nearby were totally wrecked.

We continued cleaning up the place, and by lunch time, one of the rooms on the top floor looked reasonably clear of dust. The kitchen though, was a completely different matter. Although Laura had been working hard scrubbing the floor and sweeping up dust, there was still a lot of work to be done. We did break for lunch though, and that's when we saw the scourge that is flies. Lots and lots of flies. You couldn't hold your sandwich still for a moment, for flies would start landing on them almost immediately. They were everywhere, they got in your food, they got in the car, and worse still, they refused to get out. And flies are notoriously difficult to kill.

After having to contend with flies, we got back to cleaning, and continued sweeping and scrubbing away at the dirt on the floor, till it was time for us to leave. Victor, leader of the CCC team, gave a small tract about Christianity to Onodera-san, and she mentioned that she had gone to a Catholic kindergarten, and actually still remembered some of the hymns and prayers from that time.

HQ-Ichinoseki Team 3, CCC Team B, and Mrs. Onodera (Orange shirt, centre)

Oh, and that day, a reporter from the Nikkei Shimbun, Kishida-san followed us around to get materiel for an article she was writing about foreign volunteers serving in Japan. If you're interested, the link to the article about CRASH by her is here.

The following day, we went back to the Kesennuma Volunteer Centre to get our job assignments. And once again, Nobu-san (the translator for the CCC team) suggested we pray that we would get an assignment that would allow us to stick together as a big group. The day before, we had asked God that we would get a job that would let us go as a big group of 15 people, and we were blessed to meet Onodera-san. On this day, we prayed, and once again, God gave us a job that required 15 people, at the very same location, Onodera-san's house.

Kesennuma Volunteer Centre

It was a great blessing of course; not only were we able to stay as a group, we would also be able to meet Onodera-san again, and we also knew what tools would work better for us. So this time, instead of taking huge shovels and wheelbarrows, we searched for small brushes and screwdrivers to help clean the nooks and crannies, and to help chip away mud.

Onodera-san was quite happy to see us again, as she was used to us, and we knew what we had to do, so we got back to work again. We also had two other volunteers with us, Nakagawa-san from Shiga prefecture, and Okubo-san from Tokyo. Both of them had come up on their own to do some volunteer work, and were joining us for the day.

We had to start sweeping and dusting up all over because the dust had returned, and had pretty much covered up all the area already. Laura and myself continued working in the kitchen chipping away at the caked mud with screwdrivers and crowbars, while Roberta swept outside and Marie cleaned up some cupboards outside. We pretty much remained engrossed in our work, though we did stop for a break at about 1030, and took a longer rest at lunch.

After lunch, I went back up to the kitchen to resume my chipping work. I had been using a screwdriver to scratch away at some mud that had been stuck on the linoleum on the kitchen floor, and had been doing so for more than an hour. That's when Marie came in with a wet cloth, and pretty much cleared more mud away in 5 minutes than I had chipped away in 1-and-a-half hours.

Yup. I felt like one.

But thanks to Marie's bright idea, we did manage to clean up the kitchen, so much so that Onodera-san said it looked "pika-pika" (bright and sparkly, has nothing to do with Pikachu) by the time we were done and had to leave. As she had not requested help from the volunteer centre the next day (our last work day), we agreed to stay in touch even after we had gone back to Tokyo, and she invited us to come and visit when her place was spruced up again and ready to receive guests.

When we got back to the base, we heard a bit more good news, because Woody, the base manager, had cleared his Japanese license test on the first try.

So that's it for the second and third work day. We had an earthquake somewhere one night then, and it wasn't too bad for the base building, but it does rattle a lot, which kinda makes it sound worse than it actually is. I'll continue on in the next post about our last day of work and our off days.

Ichinoseki Part 1

2011-08-06T18:45:00.006+08:00

Just over a week ago, I was traveling up to Ichinoseki base with 6 other members of the HQ staff. The main purpose of this was to be for HQ people to be able to see what the bases were doing, and to help out there for a bit.

Oh, and about two weeks before, I was appointed the group leader. How about that.

So on the 26th of July, 7 of us set out from HQ; Laura, P-chan, Keith and Cece, Ramona, Marie, and myself. I had kinda studied the route beforehand, but it was good that Laura knew the area well, and could get to the Gaikan without any help. We got up to Ichinoseki pretty easy, and took a long but scenic route around the city and out to the base.

We did have to stop a couple of times along the way though, because our GPS went slightly wonky on us, and once, it was because there was a huge crack on the road up to the camp. Some of us got out a couple of times to check about and stuff, and because of all the forest around us and the mist, I half expected a dinosaur to jump us like in Jurassic Park.

Come on, wouldn't you expect to see dinosaurs here too?

We got to the camp at about three, and met the staff members and CCC team when they got back in from volunteer work. We got to go to a nearby sento that night, as the heaters in the camp's bath were off.

The next day we went to Rikuzen-Takata to do work. It was raining pretty heavily when we were getting the assignment at the volunteer centre, and we definitely saw lightning. And driving over to the place, we kinda got a bit lost. But by the time we reached the worksite, the rain had stopped completely, and the sun was out. Victor, the leader of the CCC team, told us much later that he and the others had been praying for the rain to stop.

The day's work was to help to pull weeds and clear up a garden. It was a rather large garden, and it was sprawled across a hillside, so some parts of it were on pretty steep gradients. It was kinda the first time I had to do gardening work, but after a while, I got used to the work. At about 2 in the afternoon, the owner, and 80+year old lady named Sato came to visit us. She was a tough old lady, walking over the hill behind the garden, and carrying a whole bunch of energy drinks and snacks for us.

We found out that she lost her daughter-in-law during the tsunami, and that she was now living in a evacuation centre. She was really grateful to us for coming out to help her, especially since so many of us came from overseas, and this, as well as her hospitality to us, would be a recurring theme during our time there.

At about that time, it started to rain pretty heavily, and Victor was saying that God did answer prayers because He gave us just enough time for us to do our work. One of the CCC vans sent Sato-san back to her place (she had actually wanted to walk back in the rain without an umbrella, but we managed to convince her to take a lift from us), and then we headed back home.

Ok, I realize that to write about the whole trip in one post is gonna be too long, so I'm gonna break it up into several posts, which I will try to do as soon as possible. I guess I should have done it during the trip itself, but everytime I got through the day and cleared out the supply requests, I was too sleepy to think straight, hence the recap now, when I'm already on my next assignment in Tono base. So, hopefully, I don't forget too much of the trip.

Prayer Stuff #17

2011-07-17T06:47:00.003+08:00

Please pray for the Eby family, as their son, Ethan passed away yesterday morning. He was about 18 I think.

The Ebys were instrumental in helping set CRASH up in the days immediately after the quake, and Ethan served faithfully by clearing the rubbish out every morning and helping us get the supplies we needed in the office.

It was upsetting enough for me as I worked with him and know him, can't imagine what the family is going through, so please pray for them, especially for their mother.

Thank you.

NTBI #9

2011-07-15T23:28:00.006+08:00

Number 9: Tap

I moved into the Laus' place on Sunday (10th) afternoon.

On Thursday (14th), I tried to help Louis put a water filter onto the tap.

(Re-enactment)
L: You know how to attach this filter?
Me: Hmm. I think you have to see what type of tap you have and screw on the filter using the correct piece.
L: Ok. Oh, you must take out this other thing from the tap first. *unscrews thing from tap*
Me: Then we must put this part on.
L: Ok. *Tightens water filter onto tap.* *Turns on tap, and water starts coming out from above the ffilter*
Me: Oh, I know I know, you need to add this washer. *Tries removing filter, but it's been screwed on too tight*
L: Can't take out ah?
Me: Yeah.. maybe need pliers.
*Both of us try to unscrew the filter with pliers, but not much success*
*Finally, Louis gets the filter to come off*
Me: Ah ok good. Now we just need to add the washer inside... *adds washer to filter*
L: Ok.
Me: And then screw it on... *attempts to fix it to tap, but it does not screw on easily*
Me: Hmm, not working. Let me try.. *tries again. Still no success*
Me: Ah I think I know why, must really put it in so that the washer is compressed enough so that the screw threads can catch... *pushes the filter harder onto the tap*
Me: A littler harder perhaps... *uses more strength*
*CRASH*
Me: Ack, I dropped the filter. *Looks up* And. Er. Oh.

Oops.

Me: Oh dear.

* * * UPDATE * * *

Louis got the tap fixed, and he didn't have to pay for it! (The landlord paid for it as it was getting old).

It looks brand new...er it *is* brand new!

引っ越し

2011-07-12T22:32:00.005+08:00

I touched down in Tokyo 5 days ago. I started to clear out my house 4 days ago. I finished packing most of my stuff 3 days ago. And 2 days ago, I moved out of my house.

Now, generally speaking, I would say moving isn't exactly a very emotional event. Especially when you move to a place less than 200 metres away. And in the heat of Tokyo, it's a little hard to think when all your mind focuses on is that bottled drink you put in the fridge.

At the same time though, this was the place that I lived in, mostly by myself, for 2 years. It was the place I called home when I first came to Tokyo at the beginning of my initial year, and it remained home to me all the way till the end of last week. It was where I suffered through the heat of 2 summers, and the frigidness of 2 winters. It was where I learnt to cook food by myself (not just cup ramen and ochazuke), and where I could allow all my little foibles (ironing my clothes immediately after washing, not making my bed etc) to just come out.

Naturally, it also doesn't help when you have your special bowl, knife and spoon.

Yes, I had a special bowl. I used this bowl for rice. And noodles. And cereal too. This was actually my 2nd special bowl. I accidentally broke my original special bowl.

Yes, I also had a special knife and spoon. I always used that knife for breakfast (except when I was eating cereal), and I always used that spoon for my other meals. Strangely enough, I never had a special fork.

Staying with the Laus is a nice thing. They are pretty much the epitome of hospitality. It brings back a lot of memories, because this was where I stayed when I first came to Japan in 2005. And my room here is a lot cooler, because it's on the 3rd floor.

However, having to give up a place I called my own, that is not something I found easy.

So here's to my home at Kita-Akitsu Century, for all the memories I had, while I was living there.

Where I spent most of my time hiding.

Directions

2011-06-11T19:56:00.003+08:00

Now that I'm near the end of my 2nd year in Japan, I've been forced to think about what I want to do with my life.

That, personally, is no easy thing for me to do. After all, I did grow up in Singapore, where everything is more-or-less planned out for you, isn't it? Primary school, secondary school, JC or Poly, Army if you're a guy, then Uni.

And even deciding to come to Japan back in 2009, it was very clearly laid out for me, I believe, by God. He provided anything I needed to get up, so it was easy for me to simply 'float' along, to go with the ebbs and flows of life, wherever it guided me.

And then, I find myself where I am at now.

Recently, I spoke to Pastor Ivan (my church's missions pastor) to talk about the near future. I had been thinking about asking for another extension beyond the extra three months that I had already tagged onto my extra year. And it was actually for a good cause. We had a rather large earthquake back in March you see. You might have heard about it, and though it's no longer on the international news, the needs are still as great as before.

So I asked him whether it would be possible to extend longer again. And he told me, that I would not be allowed to, unless I know exactly what I want to do with my life.

And that is the quandary I find myself in.

I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life.

Of course, that is not quite correct. After all, it's not really my life. But my quandary still remains, for I have no idea what God wants to do with my life either.

So I spent a day trying to find out what God's will for me was. Still nothing, as far as I can tell. It's just that I've never been particularly sensitive to hearing His voice. Perhaps I should be, but at the moment, I am not.

And so I am still waiting to see what God's direction for me is going to be. I would think He has been closing a couple of doors (and some of them did hurt), but we'll see how things go on from here.

And just as a final thought, if you have about half an hour of time, please watch this video. I found it particularly enlightening, especially with regard to my priorities and my position in this world. But for you, dear reader, you'll have to come to your own conclusions and convictions.

CRASH

2011-05-22T20:07:00.010+08:00

So having been ~~working~~ helping out at the volunteer organization that is Crash for the past 2-and-a-half months, it would be really remiss not to talk about what I had been up to, especially since I haven't updated this blog in a while. So here goes.

First things first, let's talk about what Crash is. CRASH is actually an acronym that stands for Christian Relief, Assistance, Support and Hope. It was started by a missionary (I think. But he's been in Japan for a long time, and his wife is Japanese) called Jonathan Wilson, who was thinking of how to help Christians coordinate their efforts in order to help people who have been hit by a natural disaster. And they helped out in Haiti and the Sichuan earthquake and a few other things.

So, I originally went down on the Monday immediately after the 'quake. I had watched the livestream of the meeting they had on Sunday, and I thought, 'hmm, people are gonna be wanting to help, and I can't do much, but I *can* buy coffee and donate that!', so I bought some coffee (and other things) at Seiyu (the queues were really long that day), and lugged it over to the Crash office. And I thought, 'hmm, maybe I can help out a bit, because they probably need volunteers, and I can help out this week maybe, and then I'll be done.' And so I asked an OMF missionary there if there was anything I could do to help out just for a bit. And now I'm still there, so obviously, the part where I said, "Just for a bit" didn't really get transferred across.

Initially, I was under this guy called Corey, and we started off with a sort of Registration/Reception hybrid, that slowly morphed to include office management, which was what we were called for about a month or so. It should be noted, of course, that most of the volunteers did not have much experience in the category of "Setting-up-relief-work-company-quickly-and-with-mostly-volunteers-for-staff", so it was really messy. It kinda still is, but we're slowly getting more organized.

So this was the old Reception/Registration/Office Management/Placement/Screening/Registration+Reception in that order I think. Incidentally, all three of these people are no longer working at the CRASH HQ (maternity leave, gone to Aomori, gone on Home Assignment)

So my first job was to call up volunteers to ask them when they could be free to come in and what they could do to help out. And that would explain my astronomical phone bill for the month of March. And then we had to grab all the new people and get them to register. And we sometimes went out to buy stuff for the office, like ink for the printers, paper, pens, post-its, more ink for the printers, scissors, tape, even more ink for the printers, and nametag holders.

I ended up making nametags too. In my personal 'room'.

No it's not a closet! It's a room I tell you! A room! *controls sobs* It's a room!

And then they started to do some restructuring. This was about the time some people who had experience in the category of "Setting-up-company-from-scratch" came in, and they started to reorganize. And that was when I, because I was making nametags, ended up in the Logistics unit.

And now I know why I was posted to do Log work while I was in the army, because now I have some idea as to what working in Logistics will require. (Yes, you may have to move big boxes of heavy stuff around. No, you cannot eat the food that people are donating).

And people do donate food. But these ones are for staff to eat, so we can eat these ones. Thanks Bola!

I have also developed a slight amount of IT ability, because of my proximity to the resident IT expert, who incidentally also goes by the given name of Daniel. While I'm sure some of said ability is due to the IT aura which surrounds him, most of it is the result of the following scenario:

Person A: Hey, I need help with my computer.
Person B: What's up with it?
A: It's this problem.
B: Oh, hmm I don't know. Go and ask Daniel for help *waves vaguely in the direction of the room where both Daniels reside*

And because they don't specify which Daniel to ask, they end up asking the one nearer to the door, which is me.

The worst part of course, is that sometimes, I actually do solve their problems, which makes me look like an expert in things IT, which I am not, but which continues to feed the myth that Daniel-Logistics can do IT.

No, I'm telling you, I just make nametags. I don't really know how to solve your IT problems! You've got the wrong Daniel, I tell you! The wrong one!!

One of the really nice things about working in such a community is that you get to meet friends. Now, in my normal work with OMF and housechurches and stuff, I do get to meet quite a few people, but it was quite...limited, I would say, in that all the people I meet are somehow connected through OMF. Which is not a bad thing, just that it's a very specific group.

Now however, with so many people volunteering at CRASH, I not only meet the OMF friends, but people from other places, whether it's from other agencies, or they are Christians who have time and just want to help serve, or even some who may not be Christian, but have come down to help out in whatever way they can.

Some friends.

But the greater thing is being able to see how God is using some of us to help serve the people in Japan. And I don't really see much because I'm in the back room of the HQ, but we do get reports of how people have been helped through our ministry, and even more than that, that people are able to see God through the work that we do.

So perhaps I'm not getting paid very much (read: none) for this, but it would be hard to deny that it is fulfilling.

Prayer Points:

Pray for the work of CRASH, that though chaos may reign within the office, we will be able to get relief and aid to the people who need it.
Pray for some of the workers who go through a lot of stress. Whether it's the base personnel who work out in the field, or the people at HQ who just can't seem to pull themselves away from work *koffmariekoff*, pray that God will sustain them, and will help them find rest and renewal in Him.
Pray that we will not lose sight of our objectives, which is to be able to help people in need (and not be a smooth running company), but also to tell them of the God who loves them.
For myself, I guess I've also been immersing myself too much into work, and have somewhat neglected my own QT. I hope I can slow down enough to do it regularly.

Ok, that's about it.

17 Days Later

2011-04-04T21:18:00.012+08:00

Prologue:
Almost immediately after the 'quake happened, I wanted to go up to help out in some way. When I heard that Crash (which is where I'm volunteering at now) was going to organize teams to send relief, I wanted to be on one of them. However the teams were meant to assess the situation, and they needed people who were familiar with the region, and were fluent in Japanese, both of which I was not, so I had to wait.

Then they started to send up work teams. And I wanted on. I thought, since I don't have any familial responsibilities, and I'm fairly able-bodied, I can go up and do some stuff. Then OMF told me I couldn't because as a short-term worker, I was to be treated even more 'importantly' than a child of a missionary worker.

So of course I was upset, and chafed under my circumstances, bemoaning my being stuck in Tokyo, and berating the lack of logic (illogicy? illogicity? unlogicity?) that would put me, a grown adult (who learnt how to kill people in the army) on a plane out of the country earlier than a 5-yr-old child, if the situation was to deteriorate.

But after considering some things (and getting a talking to by a few friends), I resigned myself to work hard in the Crash office, and not think too much about going to Tohoku. I guess part of it was because I may not have been ready to go up, or that even if I went, there would not be much I could do. And I will confess that pride in being able to say: "I'm doing something!" would probably have been a pretty big stumbling block for me. So I stopped thinking of ways to sneak up, and focused on the tasks at hand (and hanging out with friends at the office).

And that was when Doug called me, saying he was going up on a short trip for the OMF workers there, and asked if I wanted in.

* * *

The trip was fairly normal I guess. I had to stay the night at Tim's place because Doug wanted to leave from there at 6 in the morning, and I didn't trust myself to wake up and get over in time. We packed what they had bought the day before (thanks to funds from Saitama Intl), and then we headed over to the HQ at Ichikawa to meet up with the Jaes, and pick up more supplies that the Chapel of Adoration at provided.

Not quite overflowing, but it was pretty full of food, hygiene products, and clothes. It's hard to see from here, but we were stuffing vegetables into every nook and cranny we could find.

Moving up to Sendai was uneventful. We stopped a couple of times for rest and for petrol, and we didn't feel any different when we passed closest to the damaged reactors in Fukushima (about 80km away I think), but we opted not to hang around in that area too long anyway.

When we got into Sendai itself, the city looked very normal. There were some rather long lines at the petrol stations, but if not, you would not have thought anything was out of the ordinary...until we started to get nearer to the beach areas, and then we started to see some damage.

Just some of the evidence that this place was wrecked...and it wasn't the worse.

The roads were clear; it was more than two weeks since the earthquake and tsunami, but all the stuff was just piled up to the sides. Cars, trash, rubble, debris, there was just piles and piles of the stuff. Some of the buildings showed the aftereffects of the quake, but most of the damage was done by the tsunami I guess (and also when they just shoved everything out of the way for the relief convoys to get through).

We linked up with one of the OMF missionaries, Rod, who was actually next to the sea when the tsunami came in; his house was on high ground so him, his wife, and a few neighbours were safe, but his car got swept away. He brought us to one of the distribution centres, where we dropped off most of our supplies (it was good to finally be able to sit normally in the car), and then we went to pay a visit to his house. Along the way, he brought us through Shichigahama, which was one of the worst-hit areas.

There used to be houses here. Now it's just flat.

Think this was farmland. It got inundated with seawater, and they'll have to desalinate the fields before anything grows again I reckon.

This scene came out in several newspapers and stuff I think.

There used to be about 2 more meters of land beyond where Tim is standing. It fell off during the quake.

The next day, we helped to transport some stuff around, and then went to help Rod and his wife start doing some work near his place. We cleared a bit of trash, helped set a couple of fences back in place, and picked up some recyclable materiel that washed ashore. I realize now that my 'able-bodiedness' was not quite enough to do some of the heavy lifting there; I had to carry a 12-foot plank, and boy did I suffer carrying it.

We managed to get the fence in the picture to stand again.

While we were there doing repair work, Tim found an envelope with some photographs showing a childrens' play. The photos were dated 1988, and they were probably washed out from one of the houses. I also saw things on the beach that were clearly personal belongings; a shoe, a stuffed animal, a CD.. and you realize that this is not just 'stuff that was washed up', but that these things actually belonged to living people, who were in all likelihood killed during the disaster, and that's when the weight of it all starts to sink in on you.

Looks like some scene out of a disaster movie...except this is no movie set, and people did die here.

In the evening, we helped to move more supplies in one of the warehouses, and while we were doing it, some relief workers from Malaysia came by with a couple of trucks to deliver water. There was quite a bit of water, and my arms kept on feeling like they were about to drop out. It was kinda nice to hear people speaking English with the Malaysian accent, reminded me of Singapore. We went for dinner with another of the OMF missionaries, Jim, and his family. (Another odd facet of our trip there was that quite a few of the restaurants were open for business. The conbinis could be out of food like bentos and onigiri, while the restaurants were able to give you steak. Odd.)

Our third day was pretty much just packing up and going back, though we were able to meet up with the third missionary, Joel, and his family. Somehow, I ended up being the caretaker of his younger child, a boy named Leo (I think), who was about 3 (if I'm not wrong). Doug and Issac also got to experience waiting in line for fuel, as we were skittish about going on to the highway without enough petrol in the tanks, and though it took Doug two hours, and Isaac close to four, we were able to leave Sendai around noon, and head back to Tokyo.

* * *

Overall, it was a rather eye-opening trip. There was lots of physical damage everywhere, and the army was there helping to clear things up, but it seemed so atypical of a disaster zone; everyone was calm, you didn't sense there were any shortages, there was no screaming or crying. Maybe it was because it was two weeks old, but it still seemed too placid, too utterly 'normal' for a place that had such violence visited on it.

I guess it was eye-opening for me in the sense that I now know how little I can do to help. I don't have medical training, I can't do construction, I'm not able to help counsel people, and even if I did, my Japanese is not good enough to do so. Even removing debris, I realize is not as easy as I thought it would be (I didn't think it would be easy, but I didn't imagine it would be quite that hard either).

And while the people were going about as if this was all in a day's work, there's no telling how much damage they have inside them, that they are hiding and that we can't see. So I guess right now, we should pray for the people, that Jesus may be able to send His peace to them. Because in the end, food and clothing will not fill them, and will not be able to heal their hearts. Please pray that in this time of pain and suffering, the people may be able to find the One who loves them so much that He is hurting with them.

Seems so peaceful now...

Restore our fortunes, Lord,
Like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow in tears,
Will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
Carrying seed to sow,
Will return with songs of joy,
Carrying sheaves with them.
- Psalm 126:4-6

Earthquake relief support.

2011-03-12T20:38:00.002+08:00

Listed below is a message and links from CRASH Japan, a non-profit, Christian organization that does relief work for disasters. If you're interested in helping financially, please feel free to donate.

DONATIONS FOR JAPAN
Many of us are wondering how we can best respond to the devastating news of the earthquakes and tsunami that have hurt especially Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate ken. As the computer and television screens pour out images, we can pour out our hearts to the Creator of the Universe to take care of the great nation of Japan.

CRASH Japan, a non-profit established for just a time as this, exists to help victims of disasters. We have experienced people who know the culture and language on the ground ready to assess the situation and then take appropriate action. Please consider how YOU might be able to help right now by giving a donation that will “kick start” our Tokyo based disaster relief initiative.

CRASH Japan is strongly endorsed by JEMA (Japan Evangelical Missionary Association) and comes highly recommended by Dale Little, JEMA President. http://crashjapan.com/

24 HOUR FUNDING GOAL: $100,000 (send a donation using one of the following options)

Donate via Horizon Christian Fellowship web site (tax deductible receipt provided):

https://www.horizonsd.org/donate/index.asp?purpose=japan_earthquake_relief

Donate via PayPal (no tax deductible receipt): http://www.jema.org/joomla15/index.php/component/content/article/57-feature-article/500-japan-tohoku-quake-relief-donations

Donate in Japan via the JEMA postal furikae account:

Account#00130-4-180466 (Please specify "earthquake relief" in the message box.)

Earthquake

2011-03-12T10:02:00.003+08:00

When the earthquake first struck, just before 3, I felt nothing. I was sleeping, you see. It didn't take long for me to wake up, because even through my unconscious state, I knew that the train had stopped some place it shouldn't be stopping at, so I woke up.

That's when I noticed the whole train was swaying left and right (meaning I was rocking forward and backward). It didn't bother me too much, since earthquakes had happened before. But as the shaking continued, and started to get worse, I started to feel just a tinge of concern...which became a lot more than a tinge when I noticed that the lamppost just next to the tracks was also swaying pretty drastically. And the tremors went on for much longer than normal.

The train managed to move into Nerima station after the initial round of tremors ceased, but while we were waiting there to see if it was safe to continue the journey, a second round of shocks hit, rocking the train, shaking the electric cables, and rattling the zinc roofing of the platform. An announcement was repeated over the station's PA system, and even though I'm not particularly good at understanding such announcements, it doesn't take much to realize that they were shutting down the trains because of the possibility of aftershocks.

All this was a bit of an inconvenience for me, but owing to the fact that it was a pretty serious earthquake, I wasn't too upset. So I started walking to Ikebukuro. Then I caught a bit of news in a shop window, and saw the fire at the Chiba plant.

Then, later on, I saw the full news reports, and while Tokyo had gotten tremors, it was nothing compared to what was happening in the north part of Honshu, closer to where the earthquake struck. I saw the pictures that everyone who has seen the news would have seen, of waves of muddy water sweeping over farmland, carrying boats into places boats should never be, houses floating past the roofs of other submerged structures, cars stacked carelessly on top of other cars, and the death toll, 60 when I first saw the news, 300 by the time I got home, over a thousand this morning. And I realized just how terrible this was.

And I want to rail at God sometimes, ask Him why this sort of thing has to happen, but I also know that what I really have to do is to come before Him in prayer, and give it all to Him.

So please pray for those who have been affected. Pray that rescue work can go on unimpeded. Pray that the weather will be good for finding people/dealing with emergencies. Pray for those who have lost family and friends. Pray for the Lord's mercy and healing.

Please.

Prayer Stuff #16

2011-03-07T20:56:00.003+08:00

Today, at OMF prayer, I had a somewhat odd conversation.

Mrs. T: Hello.
Me: Hello.
Mrs. T: Um.. you are...?
Me: Er.. Daniel..
Mrs. T: Oh, Daniel... Wong?
Me: *nods* yeah
Mrs. T: OH! You cut your hair!
Me: Er... yeaahh...

Anyway, on to prayer stuff.

Today, at Urawa English Group, I was talking with Miki about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. And I couldn't help but feel that she is seeking to really learn about God, and that she is almost at a kind of tipping point. Would appreciate prayers for her in that regard (also the other ladies there).
There has been some changes with regard to the future of the Shinjuku HC on Saturday. No concrete ideas yet, but some of the people who have been expected to leave are not really leaving, and there are some people who are suddenly appearing. Stay tuned for more updates.
Paul, the short-termer staying with me, will be leaving for Aomori on the 14th. Pray that he'll have a safe journey up, and that he'll have a good time of ministry and stuff up there.
There's E-moms next Thursday (17th) too. Pray once again, for a good time of discussion and understanding there.
Pray also for Mr. Tsujimoto, from Steve's Hana-Koganei HC. He has been reassigned by his company to the Miami office, and will have to move there with his family in May. While it's not too bad for him, it will be a bit harder on his wife and kids.

Ok that's about it.

NTBI #8

2011-03-03T19:09:00.002+08:00

Number 8: Curry

Now usually, when I make curry here in Japan, it's the Japanese style curry. It's pretty simple to make, and you can't really go wrong with it. Water, ingredients, blocks of curry thingy, and after you boil it for a bit, it's done.

However, my Dutch room-mate, Paul, saw that I had some packets of curry from Singapore. They weren't expired (at least, I think they weren't expired), and so he suggested trying to have some. And I thought I really ought to use them up before they expire (or quickly use them up so that it's not too far past the expiry date).

So I tried to make some curry. Now, the instructions at the back said to fry the paste first, but I must have over-heated the pot, because the stuff started to burn a bit and stick to the bottom, even though I had put in the oil. As it is, my clothes still smell of curry spice.

But the big thing was what the instructions did not say I should add, namely, one-and-a-half cups of water. They just said put in the milk and it'll be ok. But in a moment of impulse, I poured in a cup of water to stop the spices from sizzling and sticking to my pot. It stopped sizzling, of course, and I thought to add some more, just for good measure...

...which of course left my curry looking less like curry and more like soup.

It was still edible of course, and you know what they say, "waste not, want not". So I got dinner, though I am waiting somewhat apprehensively for the stomach ache to hit.

#notthebrightestidea

CNY in Japan, year 2

2011-02-12T10:23:00.010+08:00

This is what you do to celebrate Chinese New Year in Japan when you're alone.

First, you start in early December, when your friend brings you stuff that is meant for eating before Chinese New Year, but you hoard it until CNY.

Thanks Hui and Auntie June!

Next, when CNY comes around, eat some of the hoarded stuff.

No Picture Available, but as you can see above, most of the hoarded stuff has been eaten.

Talk with your pastor about how you celebrate CNY, and listen to his confessions as he tells you of the number of pineapple tarts he's eaten.

Re-enactment:
Pastor S: Did you celebrate CNY?
Me: No, not really. I ate a few things I hoarded though. Did you eat a lot of pineapple tarts?
Pastor S: Yes. I ate a lot.
Me: Oh. I see.
Pastor S: I'm also training for marathon, but at my age, it's hard to burn off the fat.
Me: Nah, I'm pretty sure it's the tarts.

Wait for your parents to post you some stuff.

A present!

Open and examine the contents.

Wow!

Be happy about the stuff you got.

Thanks for the bubble wrap mom! All these years and you still remember how much I like the stuff!

Not that you fool.

Oh. Right. Wow! Thanks for all the stuff mom and dad! And brother and sister too!

The End.

NTBI #7

2011-02-11T22:57:00.003+08:00

Krispy Kreme: May cause gastric if you eat only this for dinner.

Was down at Shinjuku today, and I was thinking maybe I shouldn't eat such a heavy meal for dinner, since I might need to move around a bit.. I know! I should eat Krispy Kreme!

So off I went to Krispy Kreme, and my goodness, were those donuts nice to eat!

Then I hung around there for a bit reading books, then decided to go back home. On the way back to the station, I met a couple of Australian tourists who got lost, so I helped them out.

And then, on the way back to the station, I realized that my light meal had been too light, and I got gastric.

So, Krispy Kreme: Good for snack, not so good for dinner.

#notthebrightestidea

Prayer Stuff #15

2011-02-11T11:08:00.003+08:00

Hi! It snowed this morning! Snow!

Prayer Stuff:

According to an anonymous poster on one of the Japanese forums (I think it was 2channel), he will go to Shinjuku and do random acts of violence at 9 pm tonight (11th Feb). I'm not sure whether it's a hoax or it's real, but we can all pray can't we?
Have a short-term worker staying with me now, his name is Paul, and he's from the Netherlands. He'll be with me for 6 weeks (almost 2 weeks have passed) before heading north to Aomori. Which reminds me that the last time I had short-term workers stay with me was almost a year ago (Tim and Jeremy)
Shinjuku HC: Japanese Alpha has finished, and now we're intending to start a series on cults. We do need wisdom to understand the difference between what is a cult and what is Christianity, not just for preparation, but also after that. So pray for wisdom for us. Chinese Alpha continues as usual.
Also Shinjuku HC's leader Karen has been had by her university. Apparently, they want her to pay ¥50,000 for them to review her Ph.D thesis. This cost was not reflected in her initial contract(?) and needless to say, she doesn't quite have that much money on her. Pray for God to provide a way out, whether it's through the waiving of the fee, the provision of money, or some other divine intervention that I have no idea about.
Some thanksgiving, Taira (Tokorozawa HC, Shinagawa Kai) has been much better recently. After taking 3 months of no-pay leave, he's back at work now. But he says that although he still hates work, he's found a lot more energy and joy while there. In the past, he had to struggle to get just enough energy to get through the day. So praise God for that.
Urawa Bible Study: Miki, one of the ladies there, seems to be getting more and more interested in the Christian faith. She brought a bible with her last week (she says it's so she can check the reading of the kanji, but that's still a good step right?) and she also asked where she could find a CD on hymns. I'm guessing right now it's still just a secular interest in these things, but let's pray something develops from here.
Coco's English Corner is having a New Year's Party on Tuesday. Yes, I know it's really long ago, but we weren't able to find a common time till now.
E-moms on Thursday and Kid's Club on Friday, pray for God's provision there.

Ok that's about it. Really long one this time but well, that's good for you (also cos I keep on forgetting to update. Sorry). Also, it's good for me to remember what God has done and what we need to depend on him to do. Thank you!

Pack

2011-02-07T12:55:00.003+08:00

SuperBowl XLV Champions. 'Nuff said.

Green Egg

2011-01-26T12:51:00.005+08:00

It's a little hard to see, but the egg was actually a pale green-ish in colour. Perhaps I should have taken a photo of a normal egg as a control picture.

You should not eat green eggs and ham,
You should not eat them, not a gram
You should not eat them if you can
You shouldn't touch them with your hands.

You shouldn't stick them on your fork
Or try to boil 'em in a pot.
Green eggs will make you feel unclean,
Green ham is probably Soylent Green

So don't tell me it is nice to eat
Don't tell me it will make me fit
Don't lie to me, Sam-I-Am.
I will not eat green eggs and ham!

But really, if your egg is green, it's probably rotten. So please don't eat it.

Contagion

2011-01-23T07:09:00.002+08:00

It appears that the email account I use to do most of my communicating with has either been hit by a virus or a spambot. And it sends out spam mail to my contact list. So far, hopefully, those of you who have gotten such spam mails from me haven't been too affected by it, other than by having to delete said spam mails.

But it is leaving me in a particularly foul mood.

Stupid spam s***. #alliteration

Prayer Stuff #14

2011-01-22T21:57:00.002+08:00

Yikes I've really missed quite a few weeks of late.

Prayer stuff!:

Thanksgiving that Yixin (Shinjuku HC) has accepted Christ.
Urawa English group will be starting up again on Monday, followed by Coco's English corner on Tuesday morning. The Coco's group actually already met once on the 4th, but we had to take a hiatus again cos Steve was busy.
E-moms on Thursday, followed by Kids' Club on Friday and the E-moms/Kids' Club people's New Year's Party. Kinda late, that, but well, hope everything goes ok.
Shinjuku HC looks like it may be losing it's core members in a hurry by March, so pray for guidance as to what we should do, whether it would be better to continue to try to hold it together, or to find other places for the other members after March.

Ok, that's about it!

NTBI #6

2011-01-22T21:41:00.002+08:00

Certainly didn't take too long for me to do something odd again.

#6: Cutting my hair

Now, quite obviously, my father would be extremely pleased to see this. He was never fond of me having long hair, and the only reason he tolerated it at all when I had a ponytail was 1) he had pretty much given up on convincing me to cut it off, and 2) I was in Japan, so he didn't have to see the ponytail everyday.

While my hair hadn't grown to quite that same length since I cut my hair way back in June before church retreat (yes, Jebra, that's why you didn't know I had a ponytail), it was getting to be at a length that would be frowned upon in most schools in Singapore. Most of the time, my hair doesn't bother me too much, even when playing basketball. But there was one event that made me really desire to have a high slope cut just like when I was in the army: my hair kept blocking my view when I was cleaning my house.

Stop laughing, please. I *do* clean my house every now and then. Whenever the piles of paper start to make me upset, or when the dust balls start becoming sentient, whichever comes first.

So I decided to go cut my hair. However, I did not quite realize how much my hair protected my ears from the cold. I was thinking, 'seriously, how much warmth does my hair give my ears?'

Well, I found out that it actually does provide quite a lot of warmth, because the moment I stepped out of the barber shop, my ears felt like little icicles of cold were doing their best to make my ears get frostbite. And this is in Tokyo, where the temperature tends to hover between 5 and 10 degrees.

So now children, remember that if it's winter, and your hair is long, wait a little longer till when it's warmer to get a haircut.

Amplexor

2011-01-16T22:11:00.002+08:00

Yesterday, at Shinjuku HC, I was blessed to witness a conversion. Nothing major happened, just that she said she prayed the prayer at the end of one of the Alpha Course sessions. In fact, she said it so matter-of-factly that the rest of us weren't quite sure whether she understood what she just said. So Karen asked again to clarify. And she replied in the affirmative.

I guess she thought it was more elaborate than that, because we as we all sat and were thinking 'is this for real?', she asked, 'How do I become Christian?' We all laughed at that and said, 'Well, that was it. There's nothing you have to do, no ceremony you have to perform, no magical manifestations, and you probably won't feel any different.' To which she replied, 'Oh.'

It seems all the more improbable, since most of us only got to really know her recently. She started coming after Sylvia invited her to join us on the Alpha Retreat in the middle of December, and although we watched the Alpha videos together, we didn't do very much 'evangelizing'. At least, I didn't. But God was at work, in ways I could not see. He used the videos, and I think, also the friendships that she had with the rest of the HC members.

And so we welcome Yixin to our family of Christ. And though nothing major might have happened in the world as we see it, we can know that the angels in heaven were rejoicing that a soul was saved (which made her feel a lot happier that there was so much celebration for her).

2010

2010-12-31T21:50:00.002+08:00

In Japan, there is a custom of sending out Nengajo, which are a sort of New Year's card to tell people you know that you are still in existence, and to let them know how you are doing. I won't be following this custom, since it costs too much money (and I'm too lazy), but still, the idea of having an update on what's been up is a good idea, so here are 10 things in 2010 that are 'new' or which I find either important or interesting.

I decided to do a 2nd term with OMF in Japan. I was pretty much contemplating this before the end of last year, but it was only truly finalized when I got back into Japan on the 14th of July (or was it 15th?)
I started taking up two martial arts classes while here in Japan. I started learning how to use a naginata in February and I started Kyudo classes in September. I am still not good at either one.
I have started to teach English classes to two 5-year-old kids. Chisaki and Yuichiro are nice kids whom I rather like, but that doesn't mean I find it easy to teach English to them, with the emphasis on this phrase being on the 'teach' rather than the 'them'.
I went to seminary! For two weeks, for a short course on missions work, and I made quite a few new friends. This makes me legit here in Japan (nah just kidding).
My long unused and dormant Chinese speaking ability has been recalled to service while here in Japan. While it's not surprising to have to use it in the Shinjuku HC (where 2/4 core members speak Chinese with regularity), I have also used it while at Shinagawa Kai and when with several new friends I met at my Japanese language class.
I started playing basketball at CAJ. Obviously, I'm not very good at basketball in general, but at least I have a better idea of how to play within a 5-man team on a full court. And the one thing I *have* become good at is setting screens.
I am now allowed to go to the izakaya and drink a bit under OMF rules. And I have gone there with Shinagawa Kai, whenever they have their Shinagawa Nomikai. As long as you don't get drunk...
I set up a Christmas tree in my house! It's only a foot high, but whatever. Thanks Vernon, for bringing it up haha.
I made chicken rice for the first time in my life. I had a Prima Taste mix to help me, and it was fun making it and seeing people enjoy it. The cleaning up after that... not so fun.
I guess one of the most important things I've started to learn (and am still in the process of learning) is about God's grace. Before this, it's always been a lot of head knowledge, and I've always lived under a sort of shadow of guilt and apprehension about sin (or about God's anger because of my sin), but I think now, I'm starting to understand the basics about God's grace, and how much love He has for us. It's no longer about trying to keep myself pure (an exercise in futility if there ever was one), but in just looking at God, no matter what happens in life.

So that's about it for me this year. Happy New Year everyone!

Prayer Stuff #13

2010-12-30T11:05:00.003+08:00

So Christmas is already past.
And year end's coming really fast.
So while hoping you pray,
I think I can say,
"This prayer stuff will be this year's last!"

Yeah ok, no guarantees though. I need to keep my options open.

Coco's will start again on the 4th of Jan. I'm inviting a friend from my Japanese language class, who isn't interested in religion, but is interested in English. Pray that this will work out.
Chinese Alpha started off seemingly well last week, and will continue into Feb-March of 2011. Pray for continued wisdom for the leaders in the Shinjuku HC (and language ability for me hurhur) in this.
So New Year's is around the corner, let's take some time to reflect on the past year, and thank God for all He's done!

NTBI #5

2010-12-16T22:58:00.003+08:00

With the number of posts I'm churning out, it's almost like I'm trying to meet a monthly quota or something (just kidding, I don't have a monthly quota, just a weekly one).

#5: Archery.

So I finally found enough free time to go down to the archery range to try to practice my archery again. The last time I had picked up a bow was almost 2 months ago, so I thought I had better start up again before I really forget everything.

So I went down, and my instructor from the beginners' course was there as well. And he asked me what bow I wanted to use.

Now see, at the beginners' course, I was using a bow with a pull of 12 kilos. And after the first couple of times, I was able to pull it with relative ease. So I thought I would go for something heavier instead, and asked for one that was 14 kilos.

At the end of the session, I learnt one very important lesson: Generally, it isn't a good idea to ask for a bow with a pull of 14 kilos, when you've only practiced with one that was 12 kilos, and the last time you practiced was a couple months ago.

In the process, I also learnt that while there is relatively little sporting action in archery, it would still be advisable to do some form of warm-ups before shooting.

And when it is winter, it is also advisable to wear long-sleeved shirts.

My arrows.

Prayer stuff #12

2010-12-16T13:52:00.002+08:00

So over the last couple of weeks, I've been a bit busy, and quite a lot lazy, hence the lack of updates. But I've finally been guilt-tripped by myself into writing these again.

Prayer stuff:

Thanksgiving for a good Alpha Retreat over the previous weekend
Kid's club on Friday. We won't be doing much, just watching a video, but pray that it will speak to the kids (and the moms that are there).
I'll be teaching the Christmas story to the two kids I teach English to, this coming Tuesday. Not too sure how much impact it would have on them, but please pray that there will be some fruit eventually.
KHCN Celebration at Mitaka on the 23rd.
Chinese Alpha starts at Shinjuku HC on the 25th. With a Christmas party. Japanese Alpha will also have Christmas party that day.

Yup, think that's about it now.

The Commercialization of Christmas

2010-12-16T12:36:00.002+08:00

With Halloween over and Christmas just 'round the corner in Tokyo, shops have already put up their Christmas decorations. Trees, lights, stockings, the whole works are all over the place, not just in the major department stores, but even in tiny cafes and family-run shops. And the music they pipe through the shops remind you of chestnuts roasting on open fires, going home for Christmas, and winter wonderlands.

And of course there are the sales. Oh, the Christmas sales. Wonderful Christmas sales, that would make even Singaporeans happy (Of course, the word sale in itself makes Singaporeans happy). I bought a pair of jeans for just ¥3,500 the other day, that would ordinarily have cost close to ¥5,000 (it's a valid buy too; my only other pair of jeans has a hole, in a less than flattering spot).

And dear old Mr. Claus is everywhere. His presence can be found on the ubiquitous Coca-cola ads (which I heard is where he gets his red clothing from), to Santa uniforms at the 100yen markets, to even calling for you to join the end-of-year lotto.

And if you're anything like I was in the past, you would be decrying this commercialization of Christmas.

You would be upset that Christmas has lost all its meaning. That what should be a time of remembrance for our Lord coming in human form has lost its significance to a rather overweight old man who has somewhat of an odd fondness for climbing down peoples' chimneys. That as much as we like the idea of Christmas being a season of giving, it still pales in comparison to the real meaning of Christmas, the Christ-Mass.

And so invariably, every year, I would go into a silent rant about how humanity has managed to push the greatest gift of all out, in favor of 50% sales and lots of good food.

But this year, in Japan, I was suddenly struck with a bit of insight. Not through my own personal brilliance, as smart as I may be, but through what Steve said, and most likely, through the way the Holy Spirit has been opening my eyes.

See, Japan, as you might know, is not a Christian country. In fact, unlike some other non-Christian countries I can think of, Christmas isn't even a holiday in Japan. The 23rd is, because that is the birthday of the Heisei emperor, but the 25th this year would be a normal working day, if it wasn't for the fact that it falls on a Saturday (making it a normal working weekend).

And I can't help but feel that if Christmas was like any of the other 'Christian' holidays (Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving), it would remain a special occasion celebrated only by the foreign community living here.

However, as noted earlier, Christmas is a time of sales. Lots of sales. Big sales. And the big winners in all these sales are the department stores. And children of course, but that's a different matter. So, in order to capitalize on this unexpected source of holiday income, the stores have Christmas sales. And they amp it up, making it a happy time of giving (like in the West), and a happy time of romance (somewhat like the West).

So the final result is that Christmas is a fairly big event here in Japan.

And that gives us Christians a chance to tell people the original Christmas story. And you'll be surprised at some the reactions people give. One lady at E-moms was pretty astonished at the story, and this was what she said about it (or something along those lines):

"How come they don't teach this in school? How are our children going to know about this if no one talks about it? They should teach this in school!"

It should be noted that the lady is not a Christian.

And even the idea of Santa. I grew up thinking that Santa was a character who drew peoples' attention away from God. After all, as everyone knows, Santa is an anagram for the evil one, right? So Santa should be banned in church!

And yet, the original Santa was a bishop named Nicholas, who in trying to help a man whose three daughters needed financial aid, also gave birth to the idea of hanging stockings, and also reinforced the whole idea of gift-giving.

So the next time you think, 'oh how terrible it is that people are forgetting all about God, and only focusing on buying stuff', instead of just moaning the commercialization of Christmas, think of how you can Christianize the commercialization!

Ice Cream [Hilarious Haiku update]

2010-11-28T21:31:00.005+08:00

So today on the train while going to Ochanomizu to attend a church service with the short-term team, the conversation somehow ended up being about the X-Men.

Vernon: Wah.. so this Magneto (he pronounced it Mag-NEH-to) quite powerful ahh... what?
Hui: *Laughing* It's pronounced Mag-nee-to.. who's Magnehto? Sounds like some ice cream!
Me: Yeah! Magnehto, the combination of a Magnum and a Cornetto... Magnehto!
Hui: I can almost imagine someone trying to sell it...
Me: Like Ian McKellen! "YOU SHALL NOT PASS....this opportunity to get two ice creams in one!"
Vernon:....

Worship at New Hope Church in Ochanomizu was quite enjoyable, rather different from what we're kinda used to at housechurch.

Also, I made a haiku in the shower:

しかがしか
かえるはかえる
なしはなし

=

There are only deer
The frogs have all returned home
There are no more pears

Props to Shion at Shinagawa Kai for leaving the seed of this in my mind for over a year. And no, it's not supposed to make any sense. hahahaha

[UPDATE!]
My brother put the haiku into his Mac translator, and the random thing it generated was too good to leave aside:

Only only you can apply
You can apply
It is not releasing

Haha wut?

Yeah 26 years old! (Thanks Miyako for the cake!)

Breakfast

2010-11-27T09:30:00.003+08:00

This morning I wanted to make cinnamon toast
But the taste wasn't strong enough, it wasn't even close
Or maybe it's because I had a blocked nose
Cinnamon.

Yesterday I tried to make coffee with spice
But the cinnamon didn't dissolve, it looked just like lice
Oh why are you being so not very nice
Cinnamon?

I really do like a cinnamon taste
But perhaps it's time that we parted ways
I do believe I've found a brand new craze
Nutmeg.

Time

2010-11-25T15:42:00.006+08:00

This morning, I had to wake up extra early to make sure I got out on time to go meet the short-term team from my church in Singapore at the station, and then go with them and Steve to E-moms. Normally, I would have to wake up early whenever we have E-moms, but today I really had to make sure I woke up, because we had a tight schedule, and we really couldn't afford any delays. It doesn't help, of course, that last night, I was at Shinagawa Kai till pretty late.

But anyway, we all got to E-moms on time. Due to the presence of the team, there were enough English speakers to each pair off with one of the Japanese ladies, which allowed for a great deal more English conversation.

Steve decided not to do the usual studies, so instead, we were using these interesting Soularium cards to answer questions. Basically, he would ask a question, and then we would all pick a picture card that best represented our answers.

So along the way, I was talking to one of the ladies called Yoshiko, and the question was "how do you think your spiritual life has been changed?" or something like that. I think my brain hadn't fully woken up since it was really early in the morning.. about 10 am or so, so I can't recall the exact words of the question.

Anyway, the picture I picked out was of this guy standing still on a subway platform while everything around him was a blur of motion. And so I was telling her that the picture represented something that I had really learnt while in Japan.

See, I kinda enjoy photography. Maybe it runs in the family or something (my dad enjoys photography too, and my brother has been doing photography.. even my sister takes like a ton of photos wherever she goes). And so wherever I go, I try to make sure I carry my little Ixus around so that at a moment's notice, I can whip it out and snap a photo of whatever it was that caught my eye.

Images like this tend to catch my eye.

The problem is that when I take the shot, quite often, it can't quite capture the atmosphere of the shot. And then I'll start fiddling around with my camera's settings, hoping to find the right combination of aperture/shutter speed/lighting balance etc that would get me that 'perfect' picture. And I almost never was able to fully recreate the aura of that shot.

And then, I started to get a little obsessive. I would walk around, looking at the things I saw, and rating them on a 'picturability' scale. Simply speaking, I was analyzing the world in terms of how I could upload it to Facebook.

And so my mind would be going something like this: "Hmm, the view from this particular point looks pretty good.. if I could just catch the way the light hits the wall at a certain angle hmm still not too good.. maybe let's twiddle this button... nope nope, still not working out... maybe I should walk back a bit? The angles looked better from earlier on ehm.. feels the same.. actually this reminds me a lot of that other photo I took 5 minutes ago but it's always good to have another one in case.. hmm still not working out think maybe this one is the best so far ah! I'm gonna upload this to Facebook!"

It finally came to a point where I realized that all I was thinking of was pictures I could upload to facebook, and of the pictures that I missed the chance to take. My mind was always either on the future or on the past! So I finally decided, that I needed to put away my camera, and just enjoy whatever it was I could see. And in a way, knowing that I wasn't taking any photos, and knowing that I would not be able to re-live the moment, made the moment that much more wonderful.

So Yoshiko said that's quite a Japanese thing, where something fragile/that disappears quickly is even more beautiful precisely because it was so impermanent. Which is probably why watching sakura and fireworks are two such big events in Japan.

And it's true. If I was always thinking of how to take a picture of a cherry blossom, before I know it, it would have fallen, and I wouldn't have been able to really appreciate it.

And I think it's kinda like in our life as well. So often, we're always thinking of what we're gonna be doing next. We look forward to the next activity. We have packed schedules. We map out our steps to advance in life. It's a great thing if you're able to plan ahead. We are almost always gripped in a fever of the future.

At the same time though, we are often trapped within the prison of our past. We look back at our lives, and think, oh how we could have done better at a disappointing time. Or remember the good old days and long for a return to that golden era, when everything was going well for us. And for a Christian in particular, I always look back, and see the sins that I've done, and think, "Oh what a horrible person I am".

But then, God didn't make us to exist in the future. Jesus said in Matthew 6, "Seek first His kingdom (the kingdom of God) and His righteousness," and in the next verse, tells us, "...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough troubles of its own."

Neither did He make us to live in the past, among our memories. No matter how much we may want to go back and do things differently, or go back and re-live our best moments, it won't happen. It's in the past. And if we are being bogged down by our past sins, we simply need to remember 1 John 1:9, confess our sins and we will be made clean.

We were made to live in the present, to spend our lives in the 'now', making choices that will honour God, and to enjoy the ride as we go along.

And I rather like presents too. hur hur.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quote of the day, from the meeting we had earlier today:

"When they have a baptism service among the tribes in *** country, they have one picture showing 40 people getting baptized. Here in Japan, we have 40 pictures of one person getting baptized." -K. Weemes

Prayer Stuff #11

2010-11-25T15:42:00.000+08:00

So the team came in yesterday and are sort of settled in, and we started doing some stuff this morning at E-moms. Thought it went really well, will explain a little more later on.

Prayer stuff:

Thanksgiving that the team made it in safely. Not without some problems that just sort of happened, but well, they are here and are doing ok so far I guess. Do cover them in prayer, as the problems I mentioned may all be coincidence, or may be spiritual attack. Can't be too certain about that.
Kids' Club tomorrow, led by the team. Pray that it'll be a fun time for all involved, and that the team, with Pastor Vernon, will be able to teach the kids more about the Christmas story.
Alpha on Saturday. This week will be the first time Karen will be trying to do Chinese Alpha (due to the number of Chinese speakers that have joined us).
Urawa on Monday. Once again, pray for a good time of discussion, and that the Holy Spirit may be able to help the ladies understand some of the deeper parts of the Gospel.
WEFC team will be helping out at Coco's.
Also, I have to teach the two kids English on Tuesday.
Safe trip back for WEFC team, think they're leaving on Thursday

Think that's about it for the time being.

NTBI #1, #2, #3, #4

2010-11-21T20:05:00.000+08:00

New sub-section, detailing silly things I have done, in other words, Not The Brightest Ideas. Have lots of backlogging, but I will only start from about a month ago, and will carry on from here. Hopefully, I won't do any of these things again.

#1: Cleaning my scissors with my thumb.

Basically, I had been cutting sticky tape with my scissors, and some of the sticky tape sticky must have gotten onto my scissors' blades. Which made opening and closing the scissors difficult. In a moment of irritation, I put my scissors under running water, and started to furiously rub the blade with my thumb in a futile effort to get rid of the sticky, forgetting that they're called blades for a reason. No blood, but some lacerations.

#2: Adding raw egg to fried rice.

So my dad always told me that if I ever wanted to cook fried rice, I should fry the egg first, take it out, and fry everything else, before adding the egg back in. But it was always so bothersome to have to take out the semi-cooked eggs, and there would always be some egg that was stuck to the pan. So I fried everything, and then added the raw egg.

My fried rice ended up being squishy, and I still ended up with egg stuck to my frying pan.

#3 and #4: The vegetable and the cup ramen.

I was too lazy to cook dinner, so I decided to eat cup ramen. Then I remembered that I had half a bokchoy in my fridge, that I ought to use before it went bad. So I thought, stuff this into this. The two problems:

Too much bokchoy, not enough cup.
Too much bokchoy, not enough heat in the water.

Lingua Serica

2010-11-20T22:30:00.009+08:00

When I was a young student, way back when floppy disks were really floppy, and weekday cartoons where shown on SBC from 6.30-7.00 only, my parents decided to enroll me in a SAP school. The rationale behind this was that since my parents were both pretty fluent in English, and at home we would speak English, I should make sure I don't lose out on my Chinese language. Hence SAP school.

Now, to those who don't know, most students in Singapore have to learn English, and take up a second language, usually their 'mother tongue' (I know there's a whole discussion about how one's mother tongue really is the language that one is most comfortable in, but let's not go into that now shall we?). The SAP school is a school which has both English and the mother tongue as 'First Language'. Since in Singapore, the only schools which are under the SAP program are those with good Mandarin classes, the SAP schools are generally seen as those with a very strong, Chinese-language bend, not just in the classroom, but even among the student population. See below for some notable examples from Singapore.

Chinese High: The epitome of SAP school.

ACS: Not a SAP school. (And if the people I know from there are to be believed, they're pretty proud that they're not a SAP school)

So, as I was saying, I was enrolled into a SAP school at the tender age of 5-and-a-half. The school in question is a fairly good school, some of you may have even attended it, or gone past it, if you were driving around the Clementi area; Nan Hua Primary School (See, even the name has a very Chinese-ed bend to it). I have had several really good teachers, but the best teacher I ever had, and still remember of as the embodiment of teaching, was my form teacher in Grades 5 and 6, Mrs Ng Peng Huat. She's the teacher that by some miracle, dragged my Maths and Science grades out from the Marianas Trench, and made them into something approaching respectable levels.

(Side note: Mrs Ng, not sure if you'll ever see this, but you really were the best teacher I ever had in school. Thanks for investing your time in teaching, and in wasting so much time on me.)

(Side note 2: If you were ever taught by Mrs Ng, you were blessed to have her as a teacher. If you weren't, well, sorry for you.)

But anyway, I'm not here to talk so much about Mrs Ng, I'm here to talk about Chinese, and she was not my Chinese teacher. So I was enrolled, and in my first couple of years there, I had a great Chinese teacher. She was a kind old lady called Mrs Ang, and she would encourage and praise all of us in class. Maybe she knew I was one of those 'jiak-kantang' who was born in an English-speaking home, and was just trying to help me, but whatever. I did fairly well in class then.

Then when I went to Primary 3, things started to go downhill. To begin with, I wasn't very interested in Chinese. I didn't really care much to speak Chinese, even with my grandparents, since they understood enough English to understand what I was saying.

The next problem was the teacher. Now, like any good revisionist historian, I look back at her and think, actually, she was a good teacher. She was able to make her good students better. Unfortunately, I was not one of those good students. I wasn't even an average student, which I think she had some success with. I was a poor student in any class that wasn't taught in my favourite English language, which naturally meant that I suffered in Chinese class. And I guess she didn't really know how to motivate me to study Chinese...

...which basically meant I became even worse at Chinese than ever before. I had no motivation, I didn't like going to class, the teacher didn't help (I think she thought she could shame me into getting better... hmm, nope, didn't work), and it became a vicious cycle spiralling out of control.

Then I went to this school:

St. Andrew's: Not a SAP school either.

And basically that was it for my Chinese education. I didn't improve from the B I got in the PSLE. No amount of extra tuition helped. I was never very good at it, I never scored well in it, and even when I did use it, like in church, my friends would make fun of me:

Me: 你们去那里吃饭啊？
Friend: Haha you sound funny speaking Chinese!
Me: What? What do I sound like?
Friend: You sound.. you sound like an American trying to speak Chinese!

Which is pretty duh, since I *am* an American speaking Chinese, but whatever lah huh.

So now we fast forward to the present, where I am in Japan. Now, it's pretty much expected that you'll have to be able to speak Japanese when one is in Japan. And if there's a second language that you need to learn, it would probably be English.

Now being able to speak English in Japan should not be underrated. It is useful in getting to know people. But one should also be able to speak Japanese. This is to talk to Japanese people. And if you're really good, you can pretend that you're a local just for kicks.

But what I didn't realize would be useful was the ability to speak Chinese. Now, my Chinese, as attested to in my brief history, is no where as good as it should be. But living in Singapore, even if you don't do well in school, you do use Mandarin for a fair bit of conversation. Even if it does sound like you're an American trying to speak Chinese. Plus there is all this Chinese that you take in, and gets lodged in your mind anyway. And when I do speak with my grandmothers, I use Chinese.

So recently, I got to know quite a few Chinese people in my weekly meetings. On Wednesday nights, at Shinagawa, Amechi (one of the members, he's an American) has been bringing lots of his classmates from the Japanese language school down to join in. And they are almost all from China.

Then on Saturday, Karen's been doing Alpha Course at Shinjuku, but the majority of those who come are Chinese (it's 3 out of 4 non-regular members, which is not a lot, but still constitutes a majority).

And on Friday, I got to hang out with a few of my classmates from Japanese class, and surprise surprise, they are also Chinese (though one is from Taiwan).

So in the end, though I really hated going for Chinese class last time, I'm really glad now that I can speak Chinese.

And so thank you, MOE, for forcing me to learn Mandarin.

And thank you God, that I can scrape by using my Chinese.

Prayer Stuff #10

2010-11-18T13:02:00.003+08:00

Yay for double digits! Less yay for forgetting to write last week.

Prayer stuff!:

WEFC team coming up next week. They'll be arriving on Wednesday, if I'm not wrong, and will be here for just over a week. Pray they'll have an effective time here, and that they'll see and experience what God wants them to.
Shinagawa Kai's been growing recently, because Amechi is still bringing more and more of his friends from the Japanese language school. A lot of them are from China, and are looking to come here to study in the universities. Last night, quite a few of them came, and it was good that Huan Huan (from the old youth church at Louis' place) also came down, as she could help interact with the rest.
No Coco's English Hour next week (it's a holiday), but pray with us as we try to come up with a Christmas program for the Coco's Christmas Celebration (yay for alliteration).
E-moms and Kids' club, both with the WEFC team.
Alpha course at Shinjuku HC, still doing ok, but now we need to start up a Chinese Alpha to help some of the people coming to understand better (they are Chinese students studying in college or in language schools).

Ok that's about it.

Exercere

2010-11-13T09:58:00.003+08:00

Was reading Psalm 72 this morning, and some of the verses only seemed to guide along my thoughts on something that I've been thinking about since coming back to Japan.

Now, you may or may not remember I put up a post a few months ago about foreign workers in Singapore, but every now and then, I am reminded about how much they have to struggle to eke out a living working in a foreign country. It certainly doesn't help when the people who employ them or bring them in don't really seem to understand their situation.

And now I would like to make a disclaimer, that I am not an economics major (much to my parents' disappointment, I believe haha). Neither did I specialize in any of the following fields: business management, sociology, social work, political science. I was a history student (and a rather poor one at that), so what I am about to say is a very simple perception of the whole situation in Singapore. If you know better and feel that I have made an error in my assumptions, please feel free to correct me.

So now, back to the issue at hand. Short summary:

Foreign workers (mostly from the Indian sub-continent) have to borrow lots of money in order to come to Singapore, where they have been promised employment.
The middle-men who handle the arrangements are paid a processing fee for the work they do in bringing the workers over.
Employers in Singapore are allowed a quota on the number of workers they are allowed to bring in, based on their manpower estimates for their projects.
Sometimes, the quota exceeds the actual need for workers (not necessarily because of unscrupulous intentions)
Sometimes, the unscrupulous ones will still use up all their quota, in exchange for a cut of the processing fee.
And this leaves some workers here with no work, but with plenty of debt. And because they have no work, they have to leave.

Now, the way I see it, if the government implemented a minimum wage for all foreign workers coming in to Singapore based on the quota projected by the companies, then a few things would happen:

The workers would have a minimum wage rate to fall upon
There would be less over-estimation of quotas, since the companies bringing people in would have to pay the minimum wage, even for people who don't have work to do.
The government would be able to have a better picture of construction needs and how people are employed.
Most importantly, there will be a decrease in the exploitation of workers.

I understand that this can't be a simple blanket rule to cover everything. But I think this would be a good start for some of the downtrodden. Most of them do not have a 'voice' in Singapore, since they are kept mostly to their workplaces or to their living quarters (which aren't as comfortable as you might think they are), and most Singaporeans don't usually associate with them. They don't know anyone, they don't know their rights, they don't know what to do when they are taken advantage of.

And I mean, realistically speaking, if a foreign worker went up against a company CEO, who do you think has more clout? How many people would take the side of the worker? How many would speak up for the worker? How many would even care?

I believe as Singaporeans, we have an obligation to stand up for the neighbours in our midst. In primary school, doing the 好公民 series of moral ed. books, they show how 小明 was a good citizen because he helped his neighbour when the neighbour was in trouble. Aren't these foreign workers our neighbours too? They are building up Singapore around us, even if we choose not to notice them.

Now, people may start moaning about how this post by a 'pseudo-Singaporean' (at least I did my NS) shows his un-patriotism by writing for the needs of the foreign workers, while not caring in the least for the Singaporean poor. But I would like to point out that this post in particular is meant to focus on the foreign workers in Singapore, who you may have or have not seen working to build up the wonderful city we live in today.

Second, in case you have forgotten (history major ftw), most of us are the descendants of foreign workers from overseas. Whether they came from India, China, or even the surrounding Malay archipelago, a lot of these immigrants came as manual labourers. It was by their hard work that Singapore has developed into one of the best economies in the world, and I'm sure that we would be pretty upset if people had been taking advantage of them in the past.

See also, Psalm 72:4:

"He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy;
He will crush the oppressor."

As Christians, we look on ourselves as being the afflicted and needy, but shouldn't we also be wary of becoming the 'oppressor'? Unless you take great pleasure in being crushed, then by all means, please go ahead.

So this is just my two cents worth, a short rant, if you will, on an issue that Singaporeans (especially Christians) should sit up and take notice about.

やりたくない

2010-11-09T22:02:00.004+08:00

Have you ever been in a situation where there's something that you're obliged to go for, but you don't want to? No, please don't try to hide it, everyone has had this sort of thing (*koff* school *koff*) before somewhere in their lives.

See, I had one of those today. Now just in case you don't know, I have to 'teach' English to a couple of 5-year old kids. And I didn't really feel like going to do it today. It's not that I don't like kids. Or even that I don't like these two kids in particular. I actually do rather enjoy spending time with kids, and these two are no exception.

Evidence that I do enjoy being with kids, though these kids aren't the two that I teach English to.

However, teaching them English has not exactly been the easiest of endeavours on my part. See, I'm not using any text or syllabus to teach them, which gives me a great deal of freedom in teaching. Unfortunately (for me), it also means that I have no materiel to simply copy and use to teach them, so I have to come up with lesson plans and ideas to help me teach them.

(Sidenote: To my friends at NIE and who are currently working for MOE, yes, I know my complaints sound superficial to you guys, since you have to do this all the time and have to teach all the time, but please, I'm not trained like you guys, so give me a break and let me rant a little. Thanks.)

And as any of you who remotely knows me will know, advanced planning (both in terms of complexity and foresight) is not my strongest suite. So when I realized that it was time for English lessons a couple of days ago, I still hadn't prepared anything of 'sufficient value' in my own opinion, and I wasn't really looking forward to going to teach the kids today.

Now at about the same time, I started to get a bit of a cold and a bit of a sore throat. And I thought, "Maybe I should just cancel the lesson, since I am sick and I wouldn't want the kids to catch my flu bug," which sounds oh so noble and all, except it wasn't that I wanted to keep them safe, I was really just looking for a cop out excuse. And of course, by this morning, I was almost completely fine.

And so I left home and went over to Kotesashi, thinking that you know, I didn't really have enough stuff to teach them and all that. I did have a sort of lesson plan on what to teach, but I didn't have much confidence in it. And so of course, in such times of extreme distress and desperation (I'm being overly dramatic here, in case it doesn't come through the html script), I said a short prayer to God for today's lesson (I'm not being overly dramatic here. I really did pray, and I really did mean it). Because, as we all know, God will take all our big worries, and all our small worries, and all our worries that we don't even realize we're worrying about.

And you know what, today went really well. Not too sure how much the kids learned, but they seemed to be having fun, and we all ended up drawing pictures on my small 15x10 cm whiteboard.

And I am glad that I went today. I'm glad that I didn't try to find a weak excuse to not go, and fake my way out of it. But most of all, I'm glad that I have a God who is willing to help me with even the little things in my life that I did not prepare though I should have, if only I'm willing to give it to Him.

P.S. I am in no way condoning or promoting procrastination. If you have work to do, you should like go and get it done now.

Prayer Stuff #9

2010-11-03T20:39:00.003+08:00

Here's prayer stuff for next week (and some which are not dependent on time period at all!):

A couple of ladies (Miki and Izumi) at the Urawa English Corner have shown a lot of interest in the spirituality of the Bible English studies. I've probably said this before several times, but well, both of them seem to be on the verge of searching for God, so do pray that they will be brought to a place where they see Him.
Steve will be starting to meet a student contact that another missionary (Stanley Ong) for English conversation. The student has neither shown interest or aversion to Christianity, but he seems to have a good impression of it. Pray it'll lead to greater things.
Steve is also going to be working with a couple of Japanese who are looking to start a housechurch in town. Both of them have been overseas before, and they are looking to start up a ministry among Japanese who are returning from exchange programs or homestay programs.
Coco's English Hour is still going well, and all the people who come have become rather good friends who are comfortable with each other. Pray for the Christian members of the group (Hideko, Yoshiko, Yumi), that they'll be able to share God's word with the others.

Ok think that's about it.

Spatior

2010-10-26T17:20:00.007+08:00

Today I went to 'teach' English to the two 5-year-olds that I got to know through my naginata instructor. I use 'teach' because as always, I'm not really sure if I am really helping them develop their English. In fact, today's lesson was almost half science, since I was talking about colours and was using this to show them how to form secondary colours when you mix primary colours:

You won't believe how excited they get over being able to see the colours being held up to the light. Then again, I'm still excited over holding these things up to the light and looking at them.

But as fun as today's lesson with Yuichiro-kun and Chi-chan was, that is not the point of today's post.

See, somewhere around last winter, I had this sudden urge to go walking about. It's a rather cheap way of being able to explore parts of Japan that you normally wouldn't be able to take a look at. And it saves on train fare. Plus, it's fun, as Gracia (who is probably a distant clanmember since we share the same surname) can attest to.

The thing is, two Tuesdays ago, after the English class, I decided to try walking back. And while I initially decided to follow the route I took in February (since I'm familiar with the path), halfway through, I suddenly decided to take a different path along the way, that was still heading in the general direction of home, but with which I had absolutely no experience with.

And I don't know why, but that was one of the most enjoyable times I had, just walking along, looking at all the 'new' places, while trying to follow my internal compass.

So today, I started to walk back, somewhat along the same route. I had wanted to follow the same path I took, when once again, my random leanings kicked in, and I decided to follow a different path.

And the same feeling of fun came back.

It's looking around, and realizing that you've never actually seen the place before. It's the slight thrill you get that you don't know exactly where you are (since I choose to go without a map, a singularly bad idea according to my JCC instructors). It's how your eyes play tricks on you, making you see shades of a Singapore from my childhood in the buildings and streets of a suburban Japan in the present, mixed with memories of Taiwan, while at the same time toying with the illusion that this is similar to what it would be like in Bangkok, all the while connected to an idealized, Age of Exploration-esque fantasy.

And I guess, for me, it fulfills a sort of psychological need to go on an adventure. Admittedly, in the unlikely (yes I do have that much faith, as well as residual arrogance, in my navigational training) chance that I do get lost, it won't be that hard to find my way to a train station. But I guess it is that possibility, the fact that I'm not exactly certain of where I am, but that wherever I am is a wonderful new place to explore, that makes such long rambles fun.

And I must also confess that whenever I come to a place where I recognize where I am, I actually do feel a pang of disappointment, that I know how to get back, that I've returned to the 'normal and mundane'.

But until that happens, I guess I'll continue to walk around, trying to find different ways to go on adventures (without having to spend ¥¥!), just me, my iPod, and the joy that God in His wisdom and generosity allows me to enjoy in my odd little endeavours.

Prayer Stuff #8

2010-10-25T09:53:00.004+08:00

Ok it appears that while ideally I should be updating once a week on these items, I haven't been doing so. But we don't live in a world that is exactly ideal (if not hot dog buns would not come in sets of 4 while hotdogs come in sets of 10), so I guess we'll just have to try to avoid the less ideal bits, and move to the ideal parts when we can.

Prayer stuff!

Thanksgiving for last week, had a couple of picnics (one with my naginata class on Sat and one with the Hanakoganei HC on Sun). And though both times swarms of yukimushi (a sort of aphid apparently) came upon us, it was generally fun.
The Urawa English corner is still doing well, and the regular people are still coming. Do continue to pray that their interest will continue to go beyond merely intellectual or social levels, and that they may start realizing the need for spiritual fulfillment.
Additionally, it seems that Miki-san from the Urawa English Corner has been asking a lot of questions with regard to Christianity, so that's a good sign.
Same for Coco's Coffee Hour. It's been good talking to the people and getting to know them, since we're all really sort of neighbours living in the same area.
English class for kids on Tuesday afternoon. The previous session two weeks ago went ok, I thought, but it's still something that causes me a bit of nervousness each time I go, since I really don't want to waste their time.
E-moms on Thursday morning.
There's a Celebration (gathering of HC members) this coming Sunday, pray for a good time of fellowship and encouragement, and that we'll be able to feel the presence of God with us.

And for the following week:

The Yokohama HC is meeting on Wednesday. Hasn't really been mentioned before, but this is something that Kodaira-san has been doing recently. At the moment, there are only 6 members (Kodaira, the Hoshinos, Asahina-san and Kanbei-san, along with me), meeting around Yokohama area. This week apparently is a hike or something.
As mentioned, the temperature has been dropping pretty quickly these past few days. Pray for health and stuff.
Short-term team from OMF coming up from Singapore. They'll be heading up to Sapporo, but will make a brief stopover in Tokyo. It is led by Daniel Lau, who was the missionary we worked with the most 2 years ago in 2008. His wife Joylyn, is projected to give birth somewhere in Dec, so well, it's kinda stressful for him I guess? And Dean (also from the 2008 team) will be with them as well. Pray for a fruitful time of ministry here.

Ok that's about it.

Commetior

2010-10-17T22:50:00.004+08:00

Being in Japan can get lonely at times... I have to live by myself, my family is 7000 km away, I can't easily call out my friends to go play CoH, or do many things that I would otherwise be able to do at home in Singapore.

Super Sentai Team: Not really possible right now.

However, being in Japan also affords its own perks. For example, I can get Japanese food at relatively cheap prices. I can also find lots of Japanese anime music which I either 1) will not be able to find in Singapore, or 2) cost $70 for a 5 track CD in Singapore.

And I am also able to pick up various things that may interest me, like martial arts.

See, as a kid, my dad didn't want me to take up karate or judo or taekwondo because he was worried that such martial arts training would lead me to grow up to become a horrible, violent, sociopath. His fears were pretty much unfounded; I have grown up to be a horrible, violent sociopath even without the martial arts training. But now that I am in Japan, I thought it would be nice if I could just go and try out some Japanese martial arts that I may not have the chance to do in Singapore.

One of the classes I picked up was the naginata. I started this earlier this year, and the net result of that is that I am now having to teach two 5-year-olds English. I will explain this some other time, since I want to post about naginata as well, but that's not what I want to focus on.

Then recently, I got the chance to try out Japanese archery. I've always thought the kyudo practitioners were really cool in the way they went through all the stylized actions of shooting. And as there was a beginners' course being taught by the local kyudo association, I thought I should join in just for fun.

I would post a picture of how cool kyudo looks, but since I wasn't able to take any photos then, this photo of me being happy with my beginner's certificate will have to suffice.

One of the interesting things about kyudo, as I read up on wikipedia, is the whole objective of the sport/art. In western archery, or most shooting sports with targets, the aim (pardon the horrible pun) of the whole exercise is to put your shot as close to the center of the target as you possibly can. And naturally, in kyudo, the closer the arrow is to the center of the target, the better.

The big difference is that that is not the main aim. The main objective of kyudo is to be able to have the correct form and actions, and the correct attitude in shooting. Which is really almost quite zen in its explanation, but it boils down to this: if your form and attitude is right, then the arrow will hit the target. But even if it doesn't, you've still managed to attain your objective. Conversely, if you hit the target, but don't do things correctly, then you've pretty much failed at it. You can go read up more on wikipedia if you're interested.

And I was thinking how this could easily be an analogy for many other things we do in life, where we have a target or objective that seems to be the main aim, but is meant to act more as a guidepost to getting the real lesson. (*Koff* studies *koff*)

And in life, we (generally) aim to be a 'good' person, and I'm thinking, being a 'good' person is a nice ideal, but that would be more like the target in kyudo. The main aim in life should be to become the person God wants us to be. And like an arrow that is shot when the archer's actions and attitude are correct, if we are able to find out what God wants us to be, we'll naturally be able to be a good person in life.

Prayer Stuff #7 (UPDATE)

2010-10-11T17:03:00.004+08:00

Ok, I think I shall make a slight modification to this 'weekly' update. In order to be more relevant to MW publications, I shall put up things for the following week. But since we have to backtrack a bit now, we shall do two weeks for this round!

Thanksgiving for a fairly decent first Alpha session. Hopefully the series will help people be willing to ask more questions, and that the Holy Spirit will give understanding to those who come (including us Christians)
Taira-san (Tokorozawa HC) has gotten a month of no-pay leave, which he is quite happy about. He's been working very hard and felt like he could not take the pressure any more, so he went to speak to his section head, and they gave him a month.
The 5-year-old English class was kinda ok, but it really is hard to maintain their attention. And my trump card failed, because one of the kids is not that fond of candy.
Kids' club this Friday.
Alpha session 2 on Saturday, and sounds like a couple more people will be coming, though leader Karen is unable to make it, as she has to give a presentation in school... which means I will have to do the English section while Sylvia (other leader) will do the Japanese section.
Just received news from Liu Wen (formerly of Shinjuku HC) that his father, who was battling advanced cancer, has passed away. Pray that his family and relatives will be able to receive comfort from God as they deal with this loss, and that Liu Wen will continue to be the channel of that peace.

And for the following week:

Eh... actually seems like not a lot of stuff going on the following week, but there is an outing planned for the naginata class I attend on Saturday, so well let's hope for more good relationships to be formed. Will update later if I know more stuff.

Ok so that's about it.

Prayer Stuff #6

2010-10-04T21:26:00.002+08:00

Ok so I missed out on last week's stuff. But here's this week's!

Have to teach the two 5 year-olds English tomorrow, one of whom is the grandkid of my naginata sensei. While I am not particularly worried about her beating me up if I don't do a good job, I am extremely nervous, since I do not want to waste their time. Additionally, as I told some others at the HC the other day, I already know nothing about teaching English, and I know even less than nothing about teaching English to 5 year-olds. So there.
E-moms on Thursday morning, pray once again for a good discussion on not just English, but also Christianity.
Shinjuku HC's Alpha Course is starting up this Saturday; they'll be doing both an English and a Japanese session each time. So far, there are two non-Christians (T, who is a regular member of the HC, and ZR), as well as a Christian guy who wants to practice his English (Kawazoe).
L of the Tokorozawa HC has been given an eviction notice, and he will have to leave his apartment by December. Although it's still far away, it is not exactly easy to find (long-term) housing if you're a foreigner in Japan, even more so when you need to take care of children. Pray for the Lord's provision.

Ok so that's about it, trying to gather my thoughts for the English thing tmr...

Prayer Stuff #5

2010-09-19T12:20:00.002+08:00

Hi Everyone!

It's gotten a lot cooler in Japan these few days, temp's dropped to high 20s, which is definitely way better than when it was mid-30s. It's also raining a bit more, which is not saying much, but I already got caught in the rain twice this past week, so yeah.

Prayer Stuff!:

Taira (Tokorozawa HC) is still pretty busy, he says he's been leaving work on average 9pm, but he seemed a lot 'brighter' today. Guess part of the reason is that he found out that one of his managers at work has the same interest in the piano that he has. Pray that he will continue to be able to find joy in life like this.
Wednesday will be the next 'Yokohama HC' meeting. I'm putting it in inverted commas because at the moment, I'm still not too sure what it is, it's not quite a housechurch like some of the others, seems more like a leaders' group, but not sure about that either.
One of the things I picked up while in Japan was the naginata, and my instructor is asking me to help her grandkid (and friend) with English. Which is all well and good, except for the part where I don't know anything about teaching English to 5-year-old children. Need wisdom, resources, and let's throw in some tolerance as well... not too sure how I'll be able to handle 5-year-olds.

Yup that's about it.

Prayer Stuff #4

2010-09-16T12:01:00.003+08:00

Whoops ok sorry was a bit late this round.

Prayer Stuff!

Urawa group is back up to the usual 5 members (Michiko, Fuyumi, Kimiko, Izumi, Miki) and maybe one guy who turned up before may be coming back (Yuzo). Some of the members though, are attached to the group because they want to meet Steve, not because of the Bible study. Pray this will change from former to latter (esp since Steve is leaving for home assignment next summer)
E-moms this morning was ok, despite rain, 3 mothers came for the meeting.
Kids' club tmr!
Temperature's going down, probably the start of autumn. Karen (Shinjuku HC) especially, is one of those who are sensitive to the cold, so pray for health for all of us.
Simon (Shinagawa Kai) has been informed that his teaching contract will not be renewed at the high school he currently teaches at. He really is quite keen on being a teacher, and this is a slight setback for him, though he is not too devastated since he knows God will take care of the details. His current teaching contract ends in March.
Jiehuai and Jules stopped by one their trip around Japan, was great fun having them in and showing them around.

Till next time!

Seriously?

2010-09-08T11:39:00.002+08:00

So I'm reading in the news that some 'pastor' of a 'Christian church' somewhere in Florida has the intention of burning the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks. He wants to 'show' that America will not back down from terrorism, that by burning the books, he's doing the work of God, and that he is legally entitled to do so by the American Constitution.

What. The. $@(&.

Seriously. What. The. $@(&.

I don't even know what to say, as my mind is simply overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of this venture. There have been times when I was serving in the army where I really wanted to curse, but this trumps it all. It's so freaking STUPID that even cursing with all the fluency of my platoon sergeant in English and Hokkien would not be able to convey just how repulsed I am by this idea.

How is this Christian? I'll like to ask. How is taking the holy book of another religion and burning it contributing to the work of God? As Christians, we are called first to "Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind," but the next part is to "love your neighbour as yourself" (Luke 10:27).

How is burning the Quran, which is the most important book for Muslims around the world, gonna show love for your neighbours? Doesn't Jesus love them as much as he loves us Christians? Would the Lord of Love be proud of you for burning the Quran?

I'm totally disgusted by the fact that he considers his actions similar to the work done by so many other real Christian workers who are showing true Christianity.

What are you trying to do you moron? Start the Crusades again?

Dreams III and Prayer Stuff #3

2010-09-06T07:21:00.007+08:00

Last night I had kind of a weird dream. See, I dreamt that was in my study room. I know it was my study room because it looked sort of like how my home's study room looked like before my grandparents moved in with us, and I know it was 'mine' personally because in dreams, you kind of know that sort of thing.

So I was there, and I was doing my own stuff, and then I noticed that there were some bugs in the room. I guess part of it was because I was reading Dotz' blog last night, hence the reference to bugs. But anyway, there were more bugs than are normally allowed in a study room. So I looked up from whatever I was doing, and I was horrified to see that the entire wall was a giant infested mess of bugs and bugs' nests. Imagine it sort of as seeing lines of ants walking all over the place, with a huge termite-ish nest on the wall, and when you open up some of the PVC wire covers, there are like maggots and spiders and stuff dropping out. And I can't remember if there was a smell or not, but whatever, it probably would have smelled pretty bad.

So I took out my insecticide to try and attack the bugs. But my insecticide was about as big as your average cologne bottle, and just about as effective as cologne at getting rid of bugs. Notwithstanding that fact, I continued to spray for all it was worth, with expected, failing results. Then I heard a voice saying, "This is the state of your heart, which has been contaminated by your sins, and no matter what you do, how hard you try, you will never be able to clear up this mess. So let me help you."

Quite obviously, that voice was Jesus, and my dream kind of ended around there, but if I could continue it in my own imagination, Jesus attacked the infestation with a flamethrower and burned away all my sins.

There was a follow up dream to that. This time, it was a very short dream, and I don't remember much dialogue, but what I do recall, with the memory of that first dream still in the back of my mind, was that I was sitting at a table doing some very simple handicraft task. What exactly the handicraft was, I don't remember, but that was not an important point. The important bit was that that handicraft thing was in service for the Lord. And in my mind, this was way too simple for 'someone of my caliber', as I thought. (Please don't think I'm disgustingly arrogant, this is just the impression that I'm getting from my dreams. Ok maybe I *am* slightly arrogant, but please don't use this against me).

The next thought was that well, obviously, I had to do something simple, since it's kinda like someone who's been grievously injured and was undergoing rehab. As capable (and I only use this in the broadest sense of the word) as anyone has been, if he had to go through rehab, he would have to start doing the simple actions first before he can go on to the more advanced stuff, and maybe return to how he was before the injury. And in the same way, since my heart had been infested with bugs, I had to do simple things.

But the most important part of this next dream was that as the camera zoomed out from the handicraft I was making, Jesus was sitting there next to me doing the exact same handicraft, as if showing me that He considered my simple work and myself important enough to sit with me and do it with me.

And it's not like I'm a particularly important person in this world, but to Jesus, I know I am particularly important. As is everyone else on this earth. I know they like to make fun with this quote, "You're unique, just like everybody else", but to Jesus, that is true. Like in the book The Shack, God is "particularly fond of you", failings and all. And that is just one of the most wonderful images I can remember.

Ok, anyway, on to prayer stuff!

OMF prayer for this month took us to the Imperial Palace, where if you follow the outer circuit, you'll come across special pavement tiles every 50m or so that is a representation of one of the prefectures of Japan. Pray for Japan.
Izumi-san came to join us at Urawa today! She's been unable to make it for the past several months because she's been sick for a long time, so hopefully, this is the start of her recovery and return to the English group, where she will be able to ask more questions on Christianity.
KHCN missionaries meeting on Thursday morning, pray that God will continue to show His guidance to us, and to the ministries that we are doing or intending to do.
One of Karen's (Shinjuku HC) colleagues at the university will be leaving for USA soon, and Thursday is his farewell party. Pray that his time there will bring him in contact with good Christian friends.
Jiehuai and Jules flying up for holiday, pray for a safe journey for them.
Taira-san (Tokorozawa HC) has been able to get by daily with his work, and he's grateful that God gives him just enough energy, motivation and joy to get by each day, but he does hope that he will be able to experience the fullness of joy in God.

Ok so that's it for now.

Prayer Stuff #2

2010-08-31T19:34:00.002+08:00

Ok, so I've at least managed to get the second one of these posts up. Go perseverance!

Thanksgiving for Simon's (Shinagawa Kai) confirmation last Sunday. He attends a Lutheran church on Sunday, so this is almost the same level as a baptism.
This week is travel week for me. Apart from point 1, which was held in Totsuka (near Yokohama), I will also be going to Ibaraki (for HC) on Thursday, and Yokohama again on Friday (for prayer session).
Regarding the Friday prayer, it is run by Kodaira-san, and it is for Yokohama HC, which he is party to.
This Saturday, Shinjuku HC will be starting Alpha training.

Yup so that's it right now.

Prayer Stuff #1

2010-08-25T12:02:00.003+08:00

So I think I shall make this a slightly more regular posting with a very specific focus on events and happenings in my little area of Japan. And I'm guessing not everyone knows the entire background on all the stuff, but it's a bit too hard to recap everything, so if any questions, please ask in the comments or on the tagboard.

Anyway, on to prayer stuff.

Coco's Coffee Hour with Steve on Tuesday mornings has started up again since Steve got back, and he's started to do some simple Bible passage studies during and after lunch. Pray that this will continue to develop, so that it might become like the Urawa English group.
Urawa English group, while continuing, still kinda stuck in the 'need for comprehension' phase. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work among the members to give them the understanding they need.
Shinjuku HC will be planning on starting up Alpha course, so just like in church, pray for wisdom for Karen (HC leader), for people to come, for people who are coming to be prepared by the Holy Spirit, and for finance management. Last point is because Karen's church in Singapore (Wesley Methodist I think) is supporting by giving money for food, as well as to pay for transport fees of any students who may be going.
Taira-san from the Tokorozawa HC (and occasionally Shinagawa Kai) still feels sort of bummed out about life in general. Pray that he might find joy in life, and in searching for God.
May have Kids' Club on Friday.

So that's about it right now, update more later.

Bubbles

2010-08-23T20:21:00.002+08:00

This morning, I woke up and as usual, went to make my morning cup of coffee from instant mix. First I would get the sugar out and put it into my cup, then I would add the freeze-dried coffee. It's better that way because then you won't get coffee powder in your sugar. It's not so bad if you get a bit of sugar in your coffee powder.

So anyway, I added in the hot water, and then I must stir the mixture for a while so that all the coffee dissolves in the water before I add the milk. It's a habit. I don't like seeing undissolved grains of coffee powder after I pour in the milk.

You see, before I pour in the milk, it's still ok, cos it's all so dark so I can't really see the undissolved coffee powder. But if I pour in the milk, and the drink turns lighter brown, and I see undissolved coffee grains, the first thing I think is not: "I have undissolved coffee powder in my coffee". Instead, I think: "Argh there are ants in my coffee!".

So I made sure I stirred it longer than a simple swirl of my teaspoon, since long ago, I would just swirl the coffee about a bit, and then add in milk, and then see undissolved coffee grains and think: "Argh there are ants in my coffee!".

Then I added the milk. After returning the milk carton to the refrigerator, I stirred my coffee some more, this time to mix the milk well into my coffee. That's when I saw these little darker brown specks.

This time though, the first thing I thought of was not that there were ants in my coffee, since I have been getting used to it, so I thought these were undissolved coffee grains. So I stirred it a bit more, and then looked again. But the specks were still there.

Now, I started thinking: "Oh no, maybe there really ARE ants in my coffee". So I stirred a bit more, and then a couple of the specks separated from each other, and then I felt: "No, can't be ants, even if these are ant bodies, they shouldn't separate that easily". But I was still thinking of ants.

So I used my teaspoon to carefully scoop out a few of the dark specks, and drained the coffee off so that I could get a good look at the specks. Maybe because it was a bit dim. Maybe it was because my glasses are a bit old and I should get a new pair. Maybe it was because I still hadn't drunk my morning coffee and my mind was not awake yet. But the examination was inconclusive.

"It can't be ants," I thought to myself, "Since ants shouldn't disintegrate so easily. Therefore these should be undissolved coffee bits, though it's kind of strange that it takes so long to dissolve. Maybe I should stir some more."

So I continued to stir. But the specks were still there after some rather vigorous stirring.

"Strange," I thought. "They still aren't dissolving. Maybe I should look once more, just in case these are ant bodies that so happen to disintegrate easily."

So once again, I carefully picked up some more of the specks with my spoon to take a closer look. I cautiously poured as much of the coffee out as I could, and peered closer at the dark specks that had been giving me problems this morning, and which was preventing me from drinking my morning coffee, and going on to make my toast.

That's when I realized I had been trying to dissolve bubbles into my coffee.

Bubbles: Not so dissoluble in coffee.

45

2010-08-09T20:54:00.010+08:00

So several years ago, a certain Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues decided it was in Singapore's best interest to forge a path separate from their bigger neighbour on the Malayan peninsula. And I, for one, am not gonna complain about that move, since quite obviously, we have had a pretty decent existence since then, even though all the naysayers then predicted that Singapore would (choose one):

Be a weak, weak country
Fall to a communist insurrection
Have no economic powers
Quickly go running back under Malaysian hegemony
All of the above

And so today, like any true-blue Singaporean (yes yes, I know, stop laughing), I went to celebrate the nation's independence.

First of, there was a KHCN meeting, where all 4 of us (Steve is away in America right now) remembered Singapore in our prayers. And then we went out to eat (how very Singaporean) at a Singaporean restaurant in Akasaka.

See my lunch? So Singaporean. Such Singaporean...er... Hainan Chicken Rice.

The food was really quite good. The chicken rice tasted like chicken rice, the chicken tasted like how chicken rice chicken should taste, and the shop-owner even gave us a free sambal kangkong because we told him we were there to celebrate NDP.

You can tell how Singaporean a shop is by the size of the merlion it has. This merlion is fairly big, therefore it's quite Singaporean.

And then I had to rush up to Urawa for English conversation group there. But on the way back, I went to settle some other NDP thing.

See, it's pretty much de rigueur for my family to watch the NDP parade while eating pizza. Specifically, pizza from Pizza Hut. And as I know the location of a nearby Pizza Hut in Shin-Tokorozawa, I was able to get my hands on another pizza in remembrance of the family tradition.

In true Singaporean fashion, this pizza was on sale, so I only had to pay about $14 for it. Whee!

Incidentally, something unfortunate happened last year, in that my family was unable to get pizza, since the telephone lines were overworked. So here's the contingency, as per last year:

Just in case!

Yup, so Happy National Day everyone! Hope you had a great long weekend!

[UPDATE!] Hmm, I guess it appears my fears this year were unfounded.

もし冬はピアノとバイオリン、やっぱり夏はアコーディオンだ*

2010-08-05T18:30:00.007+08:00

Late last year, due to my compulsive need to save money (didn't want to take Shinkansen) and my inability to wake up on time (I missed my Limited Express train), I had the opportunity to take the Chuo Line Limited Express train from Nagoya to Nagano. It was a bit of a detour for me, since I would have had one direct train to take me from Kyoto to Nagano.

At any rate, the nice thing about taking the Chuo Line train was that it kinda goes through the mountain ranges in the middle of Honshu. Up till that time, I hadn't actually seen any snow in Japan, so it was quite an experience going through the mountains and seeing snow all over the place.

I also happened to be listening to Nao Matsushita on my iPod while on that particular trip, and the music really seemed to fit, mesh even, with the scenery that was rushing past outside my window. If you are able to imagine traveling at about a hundred klicks an hour through snowy mountains and pine forests, you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about.

This was the only video I could find of this particular song. Sorry, no MV. Just imagine the mountains. And the pines. And the snow.

Now it so happened that today, while traveling out to the Totoro HC in Ibaraki, we were in a car belonging to a guy called Serizawa. He recently started joining Kodaira-san to do ministry in Ibaraki, since he himself lives in Ibaraki with his wife. The cool thing about this dude is that he plays the accordion.

So while zipping by in the countryside of Ibaraki, we were listening to accordion music in the car. And just as the music of Ms. Matsushita seemed perfect to listen to in the cold, clear air of winter, so accordion music seems to have been made specifically for listening to on hot, sunny, summers, especially if the skies are blue, with white clouds floating in idyllic shapes over bright green fields.

It was almost Studio Ghibli-esque.

Just imagine green fields, with white clouds in a blue sky overhead.

[UPDATE!!] I was able to transfer the photos I took with my mobile phone to my computer, so now you can see what Ibaraki prefecture looks like in summer!

As you can see, it really is summer

Oh and just a random thought that occurred to me. When I was in the house at Ibaraki, I saw a spider on the window. And if you think about it, some crabs look kinda like spiders in shape. So, if you were to think of crabs merely as oversized spiders, would that make crabs look less appealing, or make spiders seem more appetizing?

*If the piano and violin are meant for winter, then the accordion is definitely meant for summer

Zen

2010-08-04T23:07:00.002+08:00

So at the Shinagawa Kai today, we just so happened to be talking about the general differences between males and females, which allowed me to use the knowledge I've gleaned from the book that the Shinjuku HC is using.

One of the things that cropped up was how generally, guys are able to sort of get into a phase where they are thinking of absolutely nothing. You know, when they are really just thinking of nothing. Or not.

And so we kinda delved into our discussion. Shion and Amechi both said they had never really come to a point in life where they were thinking of absolutely nothing. Koji and Taira both said they have had such experiences (though strangely enough, Koji said his wife had a lot more of such moments), and I have had lots of such experience.

It's kind of what we would call stoning. Just gazing off into space with a somewhat vacant expression on our faces, which really shouldn't be a surprise, since there is absolutely nothing going on in the mind.

And then Taira said: "That's almost like Zen."

"Yeah, we can be like Buddhists now," added Shion.

So now, if you ever come across someone zoning off, he's not really thinking of nothing. He's achieved enlightenment.

Ok, off to sleep now. Going to Ibaraki tmr.

Cheerio!

Relationship

2010-07-30T23:55:00.005+08:00

Shinjuku HC is currently doing a study based on a book on relationships, and that got me thinking, what exactly would I look for in a girl?

Good Christian
Able to cook
Fairly attractive (to me)
Able to tolerate my inanity and foolishness

These are the few that are always kinda 'given', but now I just realized I would like one more: She should be able to 'protect' me from other women.

Now I don't mean that she should be possessive, or that she should protect me from my mom, but if I ever find myself getting distracted by other women in a bad way, I would hope she would have enough initiative to step in and either drag me away or smack me in the head.

In return, I'll promise not to play so much Xbox or PSP, unless she's a gamer too, then it won't be an issue. Oh, and protection when the zombie apocalypse happens.

Cheerio!

P.S. Please do not read anything into this. I do not have a girlfriend. It's just a thought I had.

Back in Japan

2010-07-23T12:28:00.004+08:00

So I've been back in Japan for just over a week, and I'm happy to note that I have not forgotten quite as much Japanese as I thought I had, which is quite funny, since the first week or so back, I just could not get the Japanese-ness I had picked up out of me.

Like on a train, if I bumped into someone, or was trying to get further in the carriage, I would say 'sumimasen'. Or if I was at a food stall, trying to get the attention of the auntie behind the counter, I would say 'sumimasen', which is completely normal in Tokyo, but somewhat less common in Singapore.

At any rate, by the 2nd week I was in Singapore, I realized I had started to forget my Japanese, but on hindsight, I guess it was kinda like getting put into the storage area, instead of the common use area of my brain.

So the weather is ridiculously hot now. Still not the worse (I think that comes in August) but pretty close, and the humidity is pretty high too. Yeah, it's about 35 degrees about now, though it looks like s storm will be in for the whole of next week, which should cool things down a bit.

On the way in, there was one thing that I was really thankful for. See usually, when you take a flight, as the plane ascends or descends, pressure will build up in your ears. And you can usually alleviate the pressure by yawning or swallowing. Unfortunately for me, the past 4 or 5 flights I've taken, I've always had problems 'popping' my ears on the descent. Which usually leaves me with a dull pain in my ear for about half an hour after I disembark.

But this time round, I'm not sure why, but the pressure never got to build up fully. I guess I can thank God that this time round, He helped me through that little bit. (It might seem little, but it really irritates me when it happens).

I also went to a summer festival last Sunday at Hana-Koganei. While there, I managed to meet up with the Komai family (they live at Hana-Koganei) and talked to them for a bit.

Miru Komai. Last I remembered, she didn't like taking pictures, but maybe that's cos the other person was using a DSLR and I was using a titchy little IXUS.

Couple of prayer pointers, in case you don't get access to MW from my church:

T from Tokorozawa HC, has a new project and now must commute further to work everyday. He says he finds it hard to be enthusiastic about work, and finds daily living tedious. Pray that God will grant him joy in life.
LW formerly of Intercross, he went back to China to be with his father. His father's cancer has spread and it's taking it's toll not just on him but also his family. Keep them in prayer.

Ok that's about all I have for now. I really should get down to doing my assignments for my CMS course, but inertia is such a difficult thing to get over...

Cheerio!

Conatum

2010-06-27T22:12:00.002+08:00

A sudden hush had descended over the throne room when the powerfully built warrior had strode proudly in, and now that he had finished giving an account of his task, there was utter silence. The task given to him had seemed both impossible and humiliating to do, but against all odds, the warrior had returned in triumph.

Several of the youths in the room, young men who would one day be mighty fighters in their own rights, looked up at him in hero worship. The maids, hiding behind the pillars and under the doorways, admired his physique and rugged good looks. But for every person in the room who looked in awe, there were three who stared with hatred, and among them was the king.

There was no mistaking the loathing in King Eurystheus' eyes as he glared at the man standing in front of him. He slowly took a deep breath, and tried to calm the roiling anger that was threatening to boil over.

How can it be, he thought to himself, that no matter what I make this fool do, he comes back victorious? Why is it that this man is always successful? Surely there must be something he cannot do!

He had already taken down that vicious lion with the impenetrable skin, by managing to find a way to strangle it.

Then he had gone to Lerna, and had killed the seven-headed beast that resided there and was terrorizing the nearby villages. Nine-headed, he reminded himself, since the cretin had charged in and cut off two of the creatures heads, not knowing that each stump would sprout two new heads... in fact, if it had not been for that other idiot Iolaus who helped him burn the stumps...

Acquiring the golden-antlered hind of the goddess also hadn't proved a problem. How he managed to bargain with the deity he did not know, but the huntress maiden had agreed to lend him the last of her swift-footed does instead of killing him the way she had all others who had attempted to even touch one of her favoured deer.

And when he had brought that man-eating boar into this very room! The king still remembered how he had recoiled in horror when the evil creature, with it's blood-stained tusks, had been led in by the warrior, and how the warrior had pretended to let it loose on the king... oh the horror of it all.

And now this. King Eurystheus silently cursed the heavens. He had sent the warrior to the great stables of Augeas, who had sailed with the legendary ship Argo. Since returning from that voyage, Augeas had been dealing in cattle, and he had huge herds of cattle that had been blessed by the gods themselves. But the blessing had been a double-edged sword, for they produced a great deal of waste, and after 30 years, no one had been able to go within 2 miles of the stables due to the stench that emanated.

The warrior had been told to clean up the place in a day, a humiliating assignment for any warrior, much less the son of the chief god of the Olympians. And yet, he had managed to do it, and even the son of Augeas was giving an eyewitness account of the feat.

"It's true my lord. He diverted the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through the stalls and in less than half a day the place was as clean as the temple of Zeus!" claimed the youth.

The king felt his self-control losing it's grip on his anger. Oh how he wanted to beat his hands against the wall, to scream out the fury that had been building up inside of him, to smash something, but most of all, to wipe that smirk off the face of the warrior standing easily in front of him! Surely there had to be something he could not do, something that no matter how muscle-bound or cunning or intelligent he was, he would never be able to accomplish... something...

And with a start, the king set up. In the quiet and stillness of the room, that movement seemed as loud as the shouts of the phalanxes as they charged into battle. And a disconcerting change came over the king. His eyes, which had been wide with rage, had suddenly narrowed into cold, cold slits, and a cruel smile slowly spread its way across his narrow face. And even the warrior, who had up till then been standing tall and proud, suddenly felt a chill wash over him as the king addressed him:

"Heracles, I have now decided what your six task is." King Eurystheus allowed the deadly silence to hang in the air for a moment.

"Heracles, I want you to lick your elbow."

* * *

I had been watching a history channel program on the 12 Labours of Hercules (Heracles is his actual Greek name. Hercules is the Latin pronunciation) with brother the other day, and this is what he would have made Hercules do if he had been king. For me, I would have loved to see Hercules' reaction if the king had ever given him such an assignment.

Anyway, just a short update on what's been going on, I've finished my 2-week course at TTC (it was really good, learnt a lot of stuff and met new friends there) and have gone for YA retreat (kinda short but it was nice, though I wish they provided golf buggys/buggies for us) and church retreat, which was really awesome, since the Holiday Inn Melaka is really nice, and the bar was showing the world cup matches. Plus it was fun getting to play with the kids, and to get to know the German friend.

I am still aiming to return to Japan as soon as possible, and it seems that most things are falling in place. Most of my medical and psychological tests are clear (which simply means they haven't discovered my mental imbalances yet heh), as are the admin issues. I still don't like taking jabs though, and it didn't help that I've had to get more in the past month than in the past 5 years combined. I've got one tomorrow in fact gah.

I also have an interview with the home council on the 5th of July, so if I do get to leave, it'll definitely have to be after that.

Alright, have fun everyone. Looks like England's gonna be out, but at least for now, Japan's still in. 日本頑張れ！

Cheerio

Iustus

2010-05-24T23:04:00.004+08:00

We paid a visit to a social service center in the west part of Singapore earlier this evening. While we were there, we met a man. His name is K, and he has a diploma in Electrical Engineering. He was a bit shy at first, but slowly opened up.

K really puts in a lot of effort for his work. On most weekdays, he starts work at 8 and leaves only after 7. When he has to do OT, he welcomes the opportunity to stay on and do more work. He has to work on Saturdays too, but he faces it with the same sentiment as whenever he's up for OT.

But K does all this only for $500 a month... because he's from Bangladesh. He lives with 13 other Bangladeshi workers in a cramped apartment somewhere in Jurong West. Every morning, for the past 5 years, K and his bunkmates wake up at 6.30, leave their home at 7.30, and work long hours for one of the many shipbuilding companies that makes millions of dollars for Singaporeans, but close to pittance for them.

We see these people everyday. They are the workers at the construction sites, the welders at the shipyards, the tired-looking men in dusty clothes packed into the back of Daihatsu pickup trucks along the CTE. They have been making Singapore the city that it is today. But we never notice them.

When we visited K today, he showed us to his apartment. The other 13 men inside were all unwinding after a long day of work, sitting around in the 'living' room, but the moment we stepped in, they quickly stood up and offered us the few chairs they had in their room. One of them wanted to get us drinks from their kitchen (which at $0.80 a can, would have been exorbitant for someone earning less than $600 a month), and it took all of our convincing to tell him that he didn't have to.

These men are poor. They paid a tremendous sum of money to go to a faraway land to work long hours for low pay. (I mean, honestly, can you imagine a Singaporean having to work under such conditions?) For all intents and purposes, they are getting exploited by people we call our countrymen. But when we step into their room, the first thing they want to do is to make us feel at home.

And these guys are the lucky ones, especially when you compare them with the ones in the video below.

There are the others in the documentary; the ones who have paid the agent's fee for coming to Singapore, and who after coming in, discover that there is no work for them. Companies who have extra quotas for workers use these quotas to generate money for themselves, without regard for the lives they are jerking around.

The Singapore government is trying it's best to prevent this. They have been taking steps to try and ensure that this does not happen, and I am glad that our government is alert to the problems that these workers face. But there is only so much they can do. And for all their efforts and policies they have implemented, there's nothing they can do about the workers who have already been cheated by Singaporean employers, and have had to return to their countries with nothing but a US$6000 debt.

Two semesters after I chose to retain my American citizenship, I sat for an American History class in NUS. And after that, I wished I hadn't chosen to remain American, as I discovered just how devious and twisted some of their foreign and domestic policies had been. I feel that same feeling now after hearing some of the stories about these workers. It pains me to know that there are Singaporeans who would take advantage of these foreign workers.

And as much as I rail against this injustice in Singapore, I know there's not much I can do for them. I'm a history major. Not a lawyer, or a politician. But what we can do as the Church in Singapore, at least, is to pray for these people. Pray that they will receive the justice they need. Pray that Singaporean employers will have greater regard for the lives of these people than the thickness of their wallets. Pray that the people in Singapore will see the unseen people group living among them.

We need to pray for our land.

Back in

2010-05-23T21:44:00.006+08:00

So before I forget to make a post for the month of May and regret it for the next several years, now would be a good time to make a post.

In case some of you don't know, I have been back in Singapore for close to a month now. And Singapore is as hot as I remember it to be (though according to my dad and other reliable sources, it's even warmer and more humid than normal). And the weather, unlike in Japan, is apt to change several times over the course of a day. But it still is good to be home and to do the things that I did in Singapore before I left for Japan.

As hot and sunny as I can remember. Still better than ice and snow though.

My friend Chuya was visiting Singapore from Osaka during the first week of May. Chuya used to be at the Kotesashi campus of Waseda University, and was in charge of the E-Crew (English Conversation Club) when we visited in 2008. Now he works for a railway company in Osaka. So a few of us met up with him and brought him around one Saturday...and then his kidneys started to act up and we had to bring him to Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Fortunately, he recovered pretty quickly from that, and since he is from Kansai*, he laughed the whole incident off as a wonderful experience in Singapore that most of his friends could never boast of having. During the stay in the hospital, he did ask me what I, as a Christian missionary, would say to people in a hospital if I was in Japan. So I mentioned to him that I would talk about how God knows everything that the future is in his hands, so I do not need to worry and could just be at peace. And I wasn't the only one to talk with him about Christianity. Leah (from the 2008 team) also talked with him about the Bible and God, so hopefully, this will lead to him getting to know God better.

Chuya (far left) and some of us before he left for Japan

I also started attending a 2-week course at Trinity Theological College last week. I must admit, I was really rather apprehensive about attending the course at first (it's my whole aversion to commitment thing, plus it was stay-in, bringing back memories of BMT), but after the first week, I'm really glad I had gone for it. Not only are the other students really friendly and nice people (which means I also got to meet new friends), but I have been able to learn quite a lot from the classes, like the morning worships (both worship and analysis rolled into one) and the interpretation of Bible texts (very useful, and it appears to me I have been reading quite a few passages out of context).

So now I'm glad to be back at TTC, having just returned from supper with some of the classmates, and I really ought to be going off to sleep soon, but I shall chill out a bit more in my room first.

Cheerio

P.S. Gah it appears my tagbox has been deleted nefariously by the flooble admin.. bother it all.

*In Japan, the stereotype of the Kansai person is that he (or she) is generally more laid back and has a better sense of humour than someone from the Kanto region. Or anywhere else in Japan really.

Coming to an end

2010-04-27T16:16:00.003+08:00

When I first got here to Japan, I was thinking how long a whole year doing work here was. The first few days were packed full of things to do and places to go, but it still didn't seem to go by too fast.

Then life settled into a routine, and things started to speed up. And after a KHCN meeting, while talking with Shu and Ten, I came to realize that one year wasn't really quite as long as I had thought it would be.

And now one year is almost up. Having to prepare to say goodbye to friends, to try and settle what I need to do so I can leave the place, and to try to pack all my worldly belongings into three bags and hope it weighs less than 27 kilos... it's so difficult to do all that...

Good thing I'm coming back.

The Sakura/Good Friday/Easter Edition

2010-04-04T21:22:00.006+08:00

So the Holy Weekend went by just like any other normal weekend, since here in Japan, we don't get a holiday on Friday like those of you in Singapore... so I just had to read the Bible passage myself on Good Friday, and console myself with going to see sakura. At any rate, I shall recount my weekend over the next few paragraphs.

On Friday, as I mentioned, we had nothing much except for the hanami near Yasukuni Shrine that Koji had organized. It wasn't at the shrine per se, but there was a matsuri-style pasar malam there, and one of Koji's friends had set up a stall there, so we went there to eat some food first, then walked over to where the night hanami was, at the Kita-no-Maru park.

My first hanami ever in Japan

It really was quite pretty, since most of the trees were in full bloom, and they had set up lights to highlight the trees at night, which is why one was able to get shots like the above. Unfortunately, since I was also trying to co-ordinate with a friend of mine, that was the only shot I got of the Kita-no-Maru walkway area place that I got. Still, it was pretty good, and my friend, Yuki did turn up later. He had just started work the day before, and he rushed over as soon as he was allowed to leave.

It really was the Shinjuku HC that remained for dinner. (L-R): Liu Wen, Esther, Tim, Karen, Yuki

We went to eat after that, since those of us in the picture hadn't really eaten dinner and all, and we left at around 11 and reached home exceedingly late, but it was still cool, since Yuki was able to join us.

Saturday was kinda busy because we had quite a lot of things going on. It didn't help, of course, that since we had been out late the night before and all that, we woke up at 11. Anyway, we went to Rekiji's place for Bible study, and then after that we started to watch the SuperBowl, which Rekiji had taped, with another of Steve's friends, Kaz. I wanted to watch the whole thing, but even before the first quarter had ended, Tim and I had to leave for Shinjuku HC. The game reminded me of Madden '09 at Farand's place.

Shinjuku HC was er, kinda odd, since Karen had wanted us all to watch the Passion of the Christ, but unfortunately, 1) the DVD code for the DVD was different from her computer, and 2) the DVD must have really liked the computer despite the different codes, as it refused to come out. I had to leave for Watanabe's baptism, so I'm not sure what really happened, but last I heard, the DVD was still stuck inside Karen's Mac.

Now for those of you who don't know, Watanabe, or Wattsu, as he is called, is one of the regular guys at the Shinagawa HC. He's Catholic and so a few of us (Koji, Koji's fiancee Misaki, Shion and I) went to St. Ignatius Church to see his baptism. It was the first time most of us had attended a Catholic Mass, and I must admit that it was pretty impressive. They had a pipe organ, and a choir, and all the people knew what they were to sing, a bit like a Gregorian chant I guess.

As impressive as it looked and sounded, I must say that the one thing that really made me feel God's presence was from a deaf person that was seated in the section to my left. In the sanctuary, the left-most section had a person up front doing sign language for the people, and when we were singing the hymns/chants, there was this lady in the front row who was also worshiping using sign language. And I don't know why, but I thought that was way more thought-provoking than all the grandeur of the Catholic church.

The baptism was a bit different than what I was used to, since they do sprinkling, and not dunking. It didn't help that we weren't even able to spot Watanabe because he was being blocked by the other baptismal candidates. So, well, no pictures. But it was great that we could go there and join Wattsu in his baptism. Incidentally, he chose the baptismal name of John, and we were joking that with a name like John Watts, he could pass off as an Englishman.

After that, we went to a nearby Thai restaurant, which was cool because, 1) they had Chayen. 2) they had basil leaf minced meat and rice, and 3) they had Mango Sticky Rice. We didn't order number 3 (it cost ¥1200!) but the fact that they had it was pretty cool.

Sunday morning we had Tokorozawa HC as usual, but Miyako and Kenji had invited us to go to Koganei Park for hanami in the afternoon. It really was quite a beautiful place, just a pity that it was cloudy and so the pictures weren't that great...

Hanami at Hanakoganei!

Still, it was a really pleasant time. The weather was cool, there was lots of good food and drinks, and really good company, as besides Kenji and Miyako and the kids, there were Steve and Kathi and the Matsumoto family. Steve organized a short egg hunt for the Komai kids, and then told the Easter story using the eggs.

It really was stuff that was in the eggs, kinda like what my dad used to do for us as kids with Advent at Christmas time.

So each of the eggs had an item that represented one part of the Easter story, like a nail, a cross, a rock etc. The last one of course, was an empty egg, since Jesus did not remain dead in His tomb, but was raised back to life.

And sometimes, I know so much and have heard so much about the Easter story, but feel no emotional connection... like all head knowledge and stuff but not feeling it in my heart. But in the end, it doesn't really matter what I feel, as long as I believe in the Resurrection, and trust Jesus.

Hope everyone had a blessed Easter!

Extendo

2010-03-28T08:05:00.001+08:00

I just got notification from the Immigrations Bureau of Saitama, telling me that my application for a visa extension for my stay here in Japan has been approved, I guess. I'll have to go there to get it done early next month.

Thank you God!

Transmarinus

2010-03-25T11:49:00.004+08:00

Just last week I got a new housemate. His name is Tim, and he's on a short-term trip here to Japan. And he's from a friend's church in Singapore (actually, I know three friends from that church but ok).

So anyway it's been pretty good so far. He's kinda quiet, I'm kinda quiet, so we're pretty chill most of the time. But I guess so far he's had a rather decent time. He's helped out in the Kids' Club, he's gone to help Steve do Bible Study, and he's also attended the housechurches. Here's the evidence:

Tim is the one on the extreme left side, next to JP.

Incidentally, that day during Shinagawa Kai, there were a grand total of 7 nationalities in that group (8 if you consider me to be American). You can see it in the picture above. I'll describe it from left to right.

So Tim is from Singapore, JP is from Brazil. Simon is from New Zealand, Sam is Swiss. Shion, and the guy next to him, Jun, are Japanese, as is Koji, who's on the extreme right. Yannick is German, and Kaede is from Hong Kong. Plus American photographer = 8.

So anyway, since I've been here a bit longer than Tim, usually I get to show him stuff like a senpai. But just because I've been here longer than him doesn't make me immune to making dumb gaijin mistakes, for example, this:

Japanese red packets sometimes make the ones I get for CNY look a little shabby. Not that I'm complaining though.

What we have here is a relatively standard Japanese red packet (Shugibukuro 「祝儀袋」), meant specifically for weddings. You know it's for wedding cos it's got pink and red and gold stuff all over. Very pretty. And it's for one of my friends, Motoka, who's dad met my dad when they were both in Wisconsin, and have been friends since then. She's getting married some time later this month, so I bought this on behalf of my family to give to her.

The problem, of course, is in the name on the front. No, it's not that it's wrong kanji. That really is her name in Japanese, 小山田基香 (though after the wedding, it probably won't be Oyamada anymore). The problem of course, is that as a foreigner, I automatically assumed that you write the recipient's name on the front of the letter. Thing is, you're supposed to write your own name on the front so the recipient (as if it could have gone to anyone else) would know who it's from.

Good thing they had spare slips inside for me to write another one. haha.

Cheerio!

ギリギリ

2010-03-03T14:30:00.002+08:00

One thing really cool about Japanese is the amount of onomatopoeia that's found it's way into common language. I mean, in English, there is quite a lot of them too, from simple things like woof, to the bangs that have been popularized by the old Adam West Batman series, to even new netspeak like nom nom nom, but I think Japanese may have a lot more.

One of them is the above title, which is pronounced 'giri giri', if you can't read katakana. Not quite sure how it came about, but well, it basically means that you 'just made it'. What my BB officers used to refer to as 'making it by the skin of your teeth'. (Which of course, can raise up a whole discourse about how teeth do not really have skin etc.)

So for example, if I was running for a train, and I manage to make it just before the train door closes, that that'll be giri giri. Or if I needed to be in the 70th percentile to pass a test, and I was the 70th percent-ed person, that'll be giri giri.

If you imagine the guy as Indiana Jones, and remember that scene from the Temple of Doom, that's giri giri

Anyway, today, I was checking on how to go about booking a return flight to Singapore. See, last year in April, while preparing to come to Japan, I booked an open-ended ticket through a travel agency. The thing about open ended tickets though, is that they really aren't open-ended. You have to set a preliminary date of booking or something. Of course, I did not realize that, so I kept on trying to discover how to book a date through the website.

After a while, I gave up trying to use the website and called their customer service dept., since I really wasn't able to find out how to do things. So I gave them a call yesterday (2nd of March) and they told me that since a travel agent booked it, only they could do the changes necessary.

So I thought 'ah ok, that's not too bad, I still have the travel agent's email and stuff, can get back to her and ask her to help me book', so I sent an email, asking her if I could change the date.

This morning, I checked my mail, and this was in it:

"Hi Daniel,

You have a return flight booked for the 4th of March at 1130 AM. Would you like to change it?"

So I was all calm and stuff for about a 3 seconds: "Ah.. 4th of March... isn't that tomorrow?" before it hit me like: "AH!!!! 4th OF MARCH!!! ISN'T THAT TOMORROW?!!!"

While I was almost freaking out, I quickly sent a mail back to her requesting a change, but I was still kinda worried. What if she didn't get my mail? What if she was out of the office and only back later? What if she's on leave these few days? What if she can't change the timing? etc etc. So of course I had to turn to a source of stability, and so I said a short prayer.

And fortunately, the travel agent managed to change the booking for me to one that's a lot more suitable for my schedule. If I had waited just one more day, I would have missed my flight, and then I would have to buy another one-way ticket. Which is not cheap I can tell you.

And that, is giri giri.

散歩

2010-02-18T17:02:00.006+08:00

I never realized how gray it had been, until today I guess. The past week (weeks?) had been cloudy/overcast I guess, but I never really noticed it... or at least, I never really noticed the lack of sunlight until today.

See, what happened was that I had to wake up early this morning for E-Moms. It didn't help that last night was Shinagawa Kai, since that usually means I only get home around 11 (no nomikai this time, if not it'll be 2 am when I get home). So when my alarm rang, I dragged myself out of bed, which is even harder to do when you realize it's freezing outside the confines of your blanket. And yes, I meant that literally: it was snowing this morning.

So I stumbled about and finally found myself at Hana-Koganei, where I had breakfast at Mr. Donut, before meeting Steve to go for E-Moms. And after E-Moms, Steve had another appointment at Akitsu, so I took a lift from him over to Akitsu station.

Now usually, I would take the train back one stop to Tokorozawa station. But I was feeling kinda bored, and since it had stopped snowing, I decided to try to walk back to Tokorozawa. So I started walking, and found a bakery along the way.

Some stuff I found there at bakery.

It was kinda nice I guess, since it was still cold, and the air was dry, but it was still somewhat cloudy, until I had walked about halfway back, when the sun started to come out. And I don't know why, but as I told Sul, it made me almost psychotically happy.

In fact, it made me so unstable that I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon walking. So after eating lunch and doing some other stuff on the 'net, I went out to buy a map and compass (since as we all know, only the map and compass are correct; you're always wrong) and just started walking.

So I guess it's a little different than in Singapore, since in Singapore, it's kinda hot and humid and after about 3 minutes you get all icky, but here, it was really quite pleasant to walk about. Especially with the sun out and helping you keep a little warm (it is winter here after all).

And for my first checkpoint, I decided an easy course: to walk from Tokorozawa station to Nishi-Tokorozawa station. The easiest way would be to follow the tracks, but with my map and compass (which are always right, though I may be wrong), I cut through central Tokorozawa City and reached CP1 pretty easily.

And that's where I felt I hadn't gone far enough. So after consulting my map (which is right) on where to go to next, I decided to walk down towards the Seibu Dome area. And walking there kinda reminded me of walking about in Taiwan with my army buds. Halfway to my CP2 though, I saw an interesting road branching out to my right. It was actually pretty large, since it was the bypass that led to route 463 out towards Hanno. So since the theme of the walk was whimsicality (is that even a real word?), I changed CP2 from Shimo-Yamaguchi to Kotesashi station, and started walking that way.

Pretty decent view from the top of the bypass.

When I got to the crossing that would bring me to Kotesashi, I felt like I could go a little further, so I set up CP3, which was the next station: Sayamagaoka. And continued walking there. By the time I reached there, almost 2 hours had passed, so I ended my trip. Also, cos my map was for Tokorozawa City only, and details did not extend beyond Sayamagaoka station.

I'm not too sure why, but I found the whole trip rather relaxing and fun. I guess, it's all about going to somewhere new, which is really quite like having an adventure. I guess I felt the same way when I went to Hanno, or even the first time I went out to Ibaraki for housechurch. I also had that same feeling when we were in Taiwan, when we were left to our own devices to muck about in the hills. Just being able to explore somewhere new, to walk there and just see the place, was really nice. It helped too, that I was able to sense God walking with me, even though the trip wasn't really meant to be a retreat or anything.

And like I said before, sometimes, we do need to go out on a whim, just without any cares (ok, you need some care. And a map and compass, since they are righter than you are), and just to walk about as far as you feel like, stopping whenever you want to.

Hmm... 5 posts in one month.. what's with the sudden overflow of words? Maybe it's something I ate...

P.S. Sorry if you don't know where the locations are and all that. If you really want to, you can check up Google Maps or something.

Fish and Cat

2010-02-17T14:04:00.005+08:00

(May require understanding of Japanese)

So last week at Shinagawa Kai, we were all sitting around at the free space in Shinagawa Grand Commons, and Koji led a short study on prayer. And he used a rather interesting acronym to help us remember.

Most of us in the English speaking groups, may have heard of the ACTS style: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. Which if I'm not wrong, came from a general breakdown of the Lord's Prayer.

But to help us remember the different forms of prayer in Japanese, Koji came up with the 'Fish and Cat' idea. Now, it sounds kinda odd in English, which is why if you are able to speak Japanese, this will make you go "...ohhhhhh..."

Anyway, in Japanese, 'Fish and Cat' is 'Sakana to Neko'. In hiragana, that would be さかなとねこ. And here's the breakdown:

さんび（賛美）[praise]
かんしゃ（感謝）[thanksgiving]
なんでも（何でも）[anything]
とりなし（取りなし）[intercession]
ねがい（願い）[requests]
こくはく（告白）[confessions]

...which I found pretty cool, even though we really do need to point out that the confessions here listed in Japanese is not really quite the same idea that we have in Christian confession. But ok.

After which some of us went for nomikai (飲み会) where we all loosened up a bit and laughed at each other.

Shinagawa Nomikai: Shion, me, Watanabe, Simon, Taira, Koji.

Just fyi, nomikai is a drinking meeting. And I wanted to get the full experience:

Mmmm... nom(u) nom(u) nom(u)

Of course, I had to do this without breaking my vows of ServeAsia (no alcohol being one of the 5 great commandments), so if you look closely enough, this is Kirin Free, no alcohol. But it was fun.

Laketown

2010-02-10T11:21:00.017+08:00

So just last Saturday, I traveled over to Tokiwadaira in Chiba prefecture for Yan Moku's hotpot party. It was great fun, ate lots of good food, made several new friends, got to hang out with people etc.. Anyway, the most convenient way for me to get over to his place, was to take the Musashino Line. I would have to change trains twice, but I would get one long ride in the middle on the line itself, which sort of appealed to me. The line also traveled through an area which was less densely populated, which meant nicer views.

In addition, there was also a shopping complex along the line that I heard about called the Aeon Laketown. Apparently, it was pretty big, so I wanted to go and take a look and see what it was all about.

And it was really kinda huge. I've been to several large shopping complexes before, but this one takes the cake. It consisted of two large buildings that had all manner of shops and stuff. (As an aside, I'm guessing my dad was glad that my sis did not get wind of this place while the family was here). In fact, huge probably doesn't even begin to describe it. This place was massive. How massive? I was there on a Saturday afternoon, and there were throngs of people, but it didn't feel terribly crowded. That's how big.

But as my science teachers used to tell me, you need empirical data to back up your theory (unless you're dealing with theoretical physics, whereupon you can't really find said empirical data, like cats being both dead and alive at the same time). So I have kindly compiled some evidence to show just how big the place is.

It needs two maps to show you the entire place. As I mentioned earlier, there were two main buildings, Kaze (wind) and Mori (forest). Both are only three stories, but they still need two maps to show you everything in side. And these aren't three panel brochures either. They're like 11 panels or something like that.

Laketown: needs two maps
It has travelators. This place is so big, you need travelators to get from one side to the other. And if you notice, there are actually two travelators. Cos one's just not enough.

I was trying to do healthy lifestyle, so I chose to walk instead. And get these pictures.
It has Krispy Kreme. Now, it's a well-known fact in Japan that only big places are allowed to have Krispy Kreme. I mean, Osaka doesn't have an outlet, and last I heard, Osaka's a pretty big place. Therefore, evidence of bigness. [UPDATE: My friend in Osaka, Joanne, just told me that Osaka now does have a Krispy Kreme.]

Laketown: Has Krispy Kreme
It has FOUR Starbucks joints. Yes, that's right. It was feasible enough for Starbucks' Management to open FOUR shops in the same mall. Needs no further explanation.

1 Starbucks! Ahahahah (Kaze, 1F)

2 Starbu.. 2 Starbuckses? (Mori, 1F)

3 Starbu... 3 Starbuci? (Mori, 1F, outside)

Aha! I got it! 4 Starbucks Joints! Ahahahah (Mori, 3F)
It has a JR station named after it. Even Disneyland doesn't have a JR station to itself.

Laketown: has JR station.

So now you know too that Laketown is a pretty big place.

Laketown: pretty big

Dreams II

2010-02-03T11:19:00.003+08:00

A while back, sometime in the middle of last year, I mentioned that I had some dreams about forgetting to do my re-entry pass. Quick recap in points:

I am in Japan on a religious work visa.
I can easily leave, but to get back in on that same visa, I must also have a re-entry stamp.
I dreamt (several times) that I had forgotten to do it, and ended up being questioned by someone in authority.

Thankfully, when I went back in November for an important event, I had already gotten my re-entry stamp when I went to the immigrations bureau in Kita-Yono with Steve, which saved me the trouble of explaining to said-people-in-authority, and saved Fuzzy the need to come over and smack me.

However, several weeks ago, I was sleeping at night, and then I had a dream again about forgetting to do my re-entry pass. And then last night, it happened again. Which is understandable, since although I don't really intend to return to Singapore anytime before my one year is up, I am planning on coming back again for another year... which of course would be a lot easier if I had a re-entry pass.

And so now I'm wondering if the dreams were meant more for my end-of-contract return than for my holiday return last November.

Better make a mark on my calendar to go and get my re-entry stamp done again.

The cause of my dreams. Or really, the potential lack of said item when I return to Singapore which is causing my dreams.

Revelation(s)

2010-02-01T21:54:00.003+08:00

So I was at the Urawa English Corner earlier today, and we were discussing some questions, which were based on the Bible passage where a paralyzed man was lowered through the roof of a house by his friends so that he could meet Jesus.

At any rate, the group was split up into three smaller groups, and I ended up with one of the ladies, called Izumi. Now, Izumi is really quite a sharp-minded lady, and she's also not afraid to voice out her opinions regarding the Bible stories. But in case you're thinking she's a loud, nasty person, you're wrong. All the ladies at the Urawa English Corner are nice people, and Izumi is no exception. She's quiet and soft-spoken, just that she does share her opinions.

And her English is pretty good, which is kinda awesome.

So anyway, we were discussing some questions, and one of the questions went: "Do you think it is easier to heal the physical body, or to forgive sins?"

The following is a summarized transcript of what happened. Please take into account, that this is really just a common conversation. In no way am I implying or attempting to start a cult or anything of that sort:

Izumi: Hmm... I think both are really difficult to do.
Me: Yeah, I agree... but I think it's harder to forgive sins because I can say it, but I can't really, you know, forgive sins, since only God can really do that, and I don't think I'm God. (of course, I was saying this in an understated sort of way, since quite obviously, I'm clearly not God.)
I: Well, who knows, maybe you are?
Me: ??!! (Thinking ahhh noooo I'm a heretic) No no, I'm quite sure I'm not God...
I: But didn't Jesus just appear suddenly and start doing his work? And since the Jews are still waiting for their Messiah...
Me: Eh.. yeah, but see, before Jesus was born, He knew He was God. Before I was born, I, er, didn't know anything!
I: I see... (looks thoughtful) Is Jesus coming again?
Me: Oh yes He is, but He'll come in a slightly different way... In these stories, Jesus is a gentle, nice person, but when He comes again, He'll come as a conquering king.
I: Is that in the Bible?
Me: Oh yeah. It's in Revelations, the last book of the New Testament..

And so apparently, just by mentioning the 2nd Coming, I have managed to pique Izumi's interests enough to go and read through the book of Revelations.

So here's hoping and praying that this will be a step for her on the way to knowing Christ.

Cheerio!

Incognitus

2010-01-26T13:22:00.002+08:00

I received a letter a few days ago, sent by my dad, from someone who had given me some stuff, but chose to remain anonymous.

So to anonymous-person-who-gave-me-some-stuff, I'm not sure if you know I have a blog, or even if you'll be able to see this, but thank you.

Cheerio!

I feel...

2010-01-21T00:06:00.003+08:00

... a sudden urge to pray for Haiti, because they've just been hammered by another quake.

Even though it's 1.15 in the morning.

And I have to wake up early tomorrow.

I want to send money, but I don't have a lot, and even if I did send, would that really help?

I want to go over and help, but I can't, and even if I did, I think I might get in the way more than anything.

So since I am powerless to help the people of Haiti, I pray.

Won't you pray with me?

日曜日十時半

2010-01-19T20:46:00.002+08:00

...or what you can learn from Genesis 20 in the Tokorozawa HC.

The HC was meeting up just like always, at 1030 on a Sunday morning. And as mentioned, the passage for the day was Genesis 20, which was being led by Steve, though considering the way the HC works, he was more a facilitator than a preacher.

So now we can point out some lessons we saw through our discussions.

Abraham's name in Japanese (アブラハム) can also be taken to mean oily ham (油[あぶら]ハム).
Sarah must have been a really good-looking lady, if Abimelech wanted to make her his wife (she was at least 90 by then).
God and Abraham were really close friends, so much so that when Abimelech took Sarah, God took issue with him instead of with Abraham for lying. (Whether Abraham got punished later or not, no one knows).

However, I guess the biggest thing we did learn though, was about God's goodness and mercy, since although he threatened Abimelech with the extinction of his line, God did not allow him to end up an innocent victim of his circumstances.

So after church, Shion, who had dropped by that day, invited Taira and me to go watch his colleague perform as part of the Tokyo Luft Ensemble. And while I'm not too sure about it, I think the orchestra is composed of people with an interest in music who play their instruments only part-time. It still was really good though. Here's one of the pieces they played that day:

(Just imagine it in a more brightly lit concert hall, with Japanese musicians, and no conductor)

So that's about it.

Oh and if you're really into lego, you may like this site:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/

Cheerio!

クリスマス

2009-12-24T23:26:00.002+08:00

A few days ago, at the Tokorozawa HC, we were having a short discussion about the Nativity. Yoshitaka-san was leading it, and one thing that all of us noticed about the birth of Christ was how sad/pitiful/difficult it was for Mary and Joseph.

Everyone: murmur (about how sad it was)
Yoshitaka: So you all noticed it was quite difficult for Mary and Joseph.
Hideko: Yes, they had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. It was quite far.
Emiko: And by that time, Joseph and Mary had to endure the stigma of her being pregnant before getting married.
Me: And also they had to stay in the stable when they got to Bethlehem.
Yoshitaka: Do you know why all this happened? Do you know why it was so terrible for them that first night?
Yoshiko: Because Joseph didn't make a room reservation in Bethlehem!
Everyone: *stunned*

Yoshitaka's point was that even when Jesus was born, the forces of darkness were already working to cause problems, even though Yoshiko's joke kinda threw us off track for a bit.

My family came up on Monday to go and visit Japan. First time they've been here, and it's been a little bit hard for my Dad because:

Some of the best food is raw.
Some of the best food has mushrooms.
My mom and sis are experts at shopping.

It has been pretty fun going around doing stuff with them (Disneyland, meeting old friends, going shopping), but I think perhaps I have done a bit too much fun, especially since there's more fun (Hakone, Kyoto) coming up, so I have to stay at home and do work tomorrow. Which can be a bit of a bummer, but is actually very much like what most of my Japanese friends have to do, since Christmas isn't a public holiday here. (Though the 23rd of Dec is, since it's the Emperor's birthday).

Anyway, around this time of the year, many people have what is called a Bōnenkai (忘年会), where they would have lots of drinks, and forget the worries and bad stuff of the past year. But the KHCN people decided to have a Christmas party, which instead of a Bōnenkai, would be a Kinenkai (記念会), where we would look back on the year and remember what we can give thanks to God for.

I can thank God for the friends I've made in Japan, for the friends I've met in Japan, for colleagues who are friends, for a church that has supported me, for a family that supports me.

But most of all, I can thank God for being a God who loves me so much that His arm always protects me, even when I'm not a good Christian.

So yeah, that's about it.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Acrophobia

2009-12-17T17:55:00.007+08:00

I'm not sure when it started, but I've always had a bit of a fear of heights, or more specifically, a fear of falling. You can just about imagine what happened last time when I had to do rappelling in BB and the army, as well as that High Confidence Course (it was high, but it didn't help very much with my confidence) in Hendon Camp.

Oh yes, I remember that Hendon Camp experience. The one that affected (traumatized) me the most was the one where we had to jump off a platform and grab a trapeze-like bar which was suspended about 5 meters above the water. And then, when the instructor said "Now!", you had to let go.

This of course, explains why:

1) I was terrified while traveling to the top of the Umeda Sky Tower in Osaka,

Consider the trauma I went through for this picture!!!

2) I only did those high jetty jumps at Telunas under tremendous peer pressure,

It was peer pressure! I didn't want to look like a wuss! Even though... even though now I guess everyone know's I'm a wuss.

3) I don't like taking roller coasters.

There's a valid reason why I don't like sitting in that orange thing as it starts dropping.

(Un)fortunately for me, when Teresa came up from Singapore, I agreed to meet her and do some stuff with her. As it turned out, due to her tour's timetable, that 'stuff' was to 'take rides at Disneyland cos her aunt wasn't keen on taking rides'. Yeah, those rides. Not the riverboat or the tour tram. The kind with screaming and high drops.

So when I met Teresa (with her aunt), she said she wanted to take those with the triangle marks next to the names. Obviously, those triangle marks meant "DANGER!!" or something along those lines. It didn't deter her one bit, though I tried to suggest taking something a little more peaceful, somewhat along these lines:

Me: Hmm triangle signs? So I guess those must be the fast ones huh.
T: Yeah!
Me: The kind your aunt doesn't want to take huh.
T: Yeah!
Me: Ahh I see... hmm that paddleboat on the river looks pretty nice...
T: I took it already. It was sooooo boring.
Me: Right.
T: Who knows, maybe you've already conquered your fear of roller coasters!
Me: Or maybe I'll wake up screaming at night because I've been dreaming of falling.

She did give me one piece of advice as the Splash Mountain ride started. She was all calm and stuff. I was trying to act calm.

T: I hope this ride was worth the wait!
Me: You should be grateful that I'm putting myself through this.
T: Oh it's not that bad. What you should do is take a deep breath as you get to the top, and then exhale on the way down.
Me: You mean scream.
T: No, exhale.

And guess what, it worked. Of course there was a rush of adrenaline and stuff (I was still jittery when we got off the ride), but I think I don't mind taking roller coasters quite as much as I did before.

So thanks Teresa, you helped me overcome my fear of small-to-medium-sized roller coasters. I'm just glad you didn't have enough time to go to Korakuen and see the big coaster at Tokyo Dome City.

It'll take a lot more convincing for me to get on that.

Cheerio!

Ode to my coat

2009-12-07T21:00:00.004+08:00

This morning I took a look outside
And thought "I think it'll be alright,
I'll really rather travel light"
And did not bring my coat.

The morning train was quite a squeeze
But 'cos of that I did not freeze
I really did feel quite at ease
That I didn't bring my coat.

I traveled somewhat further north,
And boldly, outside, ventured forth
And really did not think much of
The absence of my coat.

But then the skies began to frown
And lo, the rain began to pound
The temperature dropped way, way down
I wish I'd brought my coat.

So now I huddle in the train
And though protected from the rain
The thought of cold still brings me pain
I should have brought my coat.

So I went up to Tsuchiura last Thursday, and I'm not kidding, I was wearing only my Puma jacket, which is useful for springtime and church services, but not really for late autumn-early winter times. So even though most of the stuff happened indoors/traveling in car with heater, I still could feel the chill, especially when it started to rain around midday.

The temperature has really dropped, and as I have observed to my friends, growing up in Singapore prepares you for the summers here, but not for the winters at all. Fortunately, I have a kotatsu (from Shu and Ten), an electric blanket (inherited from Louis and Chris), an aircon with a heater (in the house) and an ofuro (which is really useful).

Oh and speaking of Louis and Chris, this happened on a skype conversation, when they were trying to get me to use the electric blanket.

Louis: *random stuff*
Me: *random stuff*
Auntie Chris: (in background) Has Daniel found the electric blanket yet?
L: Eh, Daniel, have you found the electric blanket yet?
Me: Yeah I found it, but I'm leaving it in the living room for Justin (Louis' son, coming to visit soon)
L: Eh you should use it lah, don't you feel cold?
Me: Yeah, a bit, but I use the heater in my room.
L: Eh, you shouldn't do that you know. Heater is expensive ok...
Me: Ohhhh... I see...
C: (in background) Don't tell him that! Later he won't use the heater and then he'll freeze to death.

????

So anyway, the team from WEFC came up already, and they've already done one kids' event last Saturday. Thank God that

Quite a few kids came, even though it was raining
Two dads came, since usually only moms turn up
The event was stretched for an extra hour, but the team still had stuff up their sleeves to keep with it
The afore-mentioned rain only started after the team had reached the building, since we had to walk from the station (quite far) while carrying all the barang (quite a lot)
One of the dads, Kenji, drove us to the station after the event was over.

I think most of us had a good time then, playing with the kids and getting to know them. Do continue to pray for the team as they will be doing lots of things this whole week, and will have to meet the kids again on Friday.

Ok, so that's about it for now.

Cheerio!

Domum

2009-11-30T22:07:00.005+08:00

A few months ago, when I had just been in Japan for about a month or so, my baby sister told me a dream she said she had had.

In the dream, I had returned home, and suddenly appeared in front of her, and she felt so happy that I was back, but then, she woke up, and realized it was a dream, and felt sad.

So naturally of course, I filed that story in my mind, and when I was preparing to go back for a short while, I decided to try to do it. But I didn't want to just stop at my sister. I wanted to prank my parents too. I would've thought of pranking my brother too, but it's more fun to rope him in and prank others.

I touched down on 20th November and managed to sneak my way into the house relatively undetected. My parents were suspecting I would be returning soon, but I had very cleverly avoided talking to them on Skype and not answering their questions about my flight details, so they did not know when I would really be back. Brother let me in, and I managed to get to my room without anyone realizing.

Unfortunately, while waiting for my dad to go and sleep so that I could go shower and sleep, some twit started calling my home phone. The twit would call, and when someone answered, he (or she) wouldn't say anything. Which of course, woke my dad up. And despite my brother's best efforts to keep him out of the room and in the dark, my dad found me hiding behind the door.

Oh and my grandma detected my presence the next morning because she spotted some abnormalities in the shower room. I bet she was like a counter-intelligence operative or detective when she was younger.

When I was trying to survive in Tokyo with the at-times-8-degrees-weather, I would think that I was more used to hot, humid, tropical weather. Once I got back to Singapore, I realized that being used to it didn't make me any more immune to disliking feeling sticky all the time. And now, what my brother calls 'cooling weather' is still too hot by my standards. But still better than shivering.

So anyway, I went back mainly for Josh & Aggie's wedding, which was on 28th Nov. The Tuesday before the wedding, Josh suddenly asked me to be one of the 'brothers' to help him gate-crash Aggie's place in the morning. Fortunately, most of Aggie's sisters were nice people, so the things we had to do weren't too terrible. At least, from my perspective. Probably not the same view for Jiehuai, Chai and Josh.

I guess the wedding felt somewhat different, maybe cos it was on Sentosa instead of in church, but also because it just seemed strange to see two people you have grown up with exchanging their wedding vows at the front of the hall.

I guess this means that next time I want to ask Aggie out for lunch, I'm really gonna have to ask Josh for permission first haha.

Also got the chance to meet up with several other important friends (there were lots of other important friends I didn't get to meet up with, so sorry), and settle some other important matters (saving the world vicariously through CoH, submitting PR documents).

Was rushing around quite a bit, doing stuff, meeting people, playing games, and it felt so packed. I wasn't even able to have like proper QT most days, and at the back of my mind, I kept on thinking how I wasn't getting rest.

But when I read Sul's message "...hope you had a good rest...", I realized that actually, I was feeling quite refreshed and all. Even though I was trying to reconcile having to re-adjust to being back in Japan after sort of adjusting to being in Singapore.

And well, hopefully this will help last till I finish off my term in April-ish.

Cheerio!

P.S. New official couple in church. And looks like they may not be the only ones.... haha...

P.P.S. Some people still think 31st Nov is real.

Dear America,

2009-11-16T22:49:00.002+08:00

I'm an American citizen, but I've grown up in Singapore. And I would like to mention something with regard to your foreign policy.

Please stop telling the rest of the world to do what you think is best.

Please stop telling us that we are undemocratic.

Please stop telling us to stop censorship.

I think censorship is necessary, as I think it is a lesser evil than rampant liberality.

I feel that having a strong, one-party government makes our country more stable and flexible than having a president who is handicapped by politicians whose interests lie almost as much in altruism as in selfish gain.

I do not want your style of society, where people criticize others in a chaotic, tabloid-style manner, and where you can sue a fast food company because you got fat eating their food.

We may not be perfect, and sometimes, we may have a lack of 'human rights' (both real and imagined) but let's face it, no one is, not even you. And we don't tell you what we think you should do to your country.

We appreciate the concern you are trying to show the rest of the world, by showing us how America got to how it is. But in case you have not noticed, we are not America.

We are different from you. We have our own cultures.

You are not us, so how would you know it'll be good for us?

So thank you very much, but please, stop telling us to become more like you.

Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama

雨

2009-11-12T21:43:00.003+08:00

Today was a cold and rainy day. Cold as in 15 degrees cold. Rainy as in there was a bit of a drizzle, you know, the kind that makes you feel depressed. The skies were overcast, and it was kinda gray.

So of course, when Steve and I went to E-moms, and only Miyako turned up (with Au-chan of course), Steve felt kinda bummed out. It didn't help that he had been psyching himself up for today's English conversation, since he was planning on using the idea of Thanksgiving (the holiday) to talk with the ladies, and to try and give a Christian-based view on the meaning of that day.

After the E-moms, we were supposed to go with Miyako to her place to plan for kids' club stuff, but since there were so few people, Miyako suggested we just go over to her place. It would also be a lot easier to distract Au-chan in her home than at the community center.

It was true that Au-chan was a lot less noisy at home than at the community center, especially after Miyako put on a video for her to watch. Then Steve got down to discussing Kids' Club stuff with Miyako while I ended up taking care of Au-chan.

And after the discussion was over, Steve asked Miyako if she was interested in doing the study he had prepared for E-moms that day, since Au-chan wasn't disturbing them, so Steve managed to talk to her about Thanksgiving and about how we can be thankful to God and stuff (I didn't really hear what went on during the lesson), but at the end of it, Steve realized that even though E-moms had more or less been canned, he had the opportunity to really share with Miyako.

So in the end, he was happy.

And I was happy cos I got to meet Mel in the evening.

Cheerio!

Wao!

2009-11-11T09:01:00.001+08:00

Looking through the news this morning, I read this sports article about a Saudi striker who scored just about off the first touch, 2 seconds into the game.

Talk about shades of Shaolin Soccer...

Cheerio

Piratae

2009-10-08T07:51:00.002+08:00

I was looking around the net to check on updates on the typhoon and stuff, when I came across this piece of news abour some not-so-smart pirates operating near Somalia.

I don't know why, but I found it absolutely hilarious. It kinda reminded me of the time the two robbers from Malaysia tried to escape by boat to an island around the area, but happened to disembark on the worst possible island they could have, by going ashore on Tekong.

I can almost imagine the "oh shit" feeling the pirates must have felt when they realized the boat was not a tasty cargo vessel, but a fully armed warship.

EPIC FAIL.

Eurus

2009-10-08T01:23:00.007+08:00

So right now, Tokorozawa is starting to feel the effects of a typhoon that's bearing down on Honshu, I think. Nothing too drastic yet, just the advance rains I guess. The train companies have started to take notice and to issue notice as well.

If you look close enough, you'll notice it says 'Typhoon' in the right most column. And it wasn't just the Kawagoe Line which was issuing the notice. The Saikyo Line, the Yokosuka Line, the Utsunomiya Line, and a whole bunch of other lines were also sending out notices.

In fact, I just heard a police car going by, I'm guessing they're saying something like "please stay indoors" or something like that. Quite rare for people to go around making announcements at 3 AM in the morning.

Anyway, E-mums, which was supposed to be on later on, has been canceled. And according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, Saitama's gonna get hit by storms, causing heavy rain and potential flooding. Still not as bad as Kanagawa Prefecture though. They're getting hit harder. And I'm not even looking at the Chūbu region. Read somewhere on the news that even the Toyota factory in Nagoya will remain closed today on orders of their top brass.

Anyway, some updates before I start losing consciousness. It has been getting colder (even without the typhoon), and it is more or less autumn already. According to good friend Shion, you know it's Autumn when you have to wear your tie to work. Ties are not necessary in summer due to the heat. Kinda hard to imagine that summer's over already.

Outreach at Waseda has technically started, but so far, we've been rained out both weeks. It's just how it works: if it's raining, it's a bit hard for us in the Waseda outreach group to strike up conversations with people in the open.

Kodaira-san, who is one of the most tireless workers in the KHCN, has fallen sick recently. The dude really does a lot of work, doing ministry in 4 prefectures (ok, really 3 prefectures [Kanagawa, Saitama, Ibaraki] and a special administrative region [Tokyo]), and is also one of the main leaders in the KHCN. Do pray that he will get better soon.

And a couple of weeks ago, we were having Bible study at Hanakoganei with Rekiji and Ken. One of the passages we used was on the Prodigal Son, and since I had just done that the Saturday before for the Shinjuku HC, I felt fortunate. So we were in the midst of a serious discussion, which went something like this:

Steve: Do you see how much the father loved the son in the story? He was standing there waiting, looking out for the son.
Me: I think what was important too was that the son realized the error of his ways and went back.
S: Yes that is important too. While the father was waiting out there, he didn't go to find the son. The son had to realize his wrong and decide to go back.
Me: I agree.
Rekiji: It is a very nice picture of what God is like isn't it?
S: Yes that's how it is with God.
R: (Musing out loud) Still, I wonder what would have happened if the son came running back to the father, and the father was so glad to see the son and ran to meet him, and then the son says to him: "Dad, I need more money".

I don't know why but that sounded so funny that we laughed our heads off.

Ah well that's about it. I'm having fun using skype with friends (free comp-to-comp calls!), but I really should be sleeping. More updates soon!

Cheerio!

Srsly?

2009-09-23T23:15:00.004+08:00

I was sorta browsing through the net and I saw an article with this news titles:

FULL MOON DOES NOT AFFECT SURGERY OUTCOME

I used to think scientists would spend time and research grants looking for important things like the cures for cancers, or how to help the world's poor, or a solution for global warming, but maybe some of them just spend hours to discover things that we already knew.

Thanks for the information, Captain Obvious.

English

2009-09-17T18:51:00.004+08:00

I happened to see this video on youtube:

Seems funny, but I wonder, how would she feel if she saw this video?

Cheerio

Journey to the West

2009-09-01T22:05:00.012+08:00

So I went to Osaka for a short personal holiday, just to get to see the Kansai area, but really, it was because I wanted to take the Shinkansen. Naturally enough, I was excited about leaving Tokyo to go out to another city, much like when I took the day trip south to Yokohama.

However, I started off a bit late. I had really intended to go to Tokorozawa HC in the morning, and then leave as soon as service was over to quickly get back home, pack (yes, I hadn’t packed yet), and then get out to the trains as fast as I could. After all, Tokyo station isn’t exactly near to my place, and I was pretty sure it would be crowded, and I wanted to try to get a seat on the side facing Mt. Fuji, and I was thinking that I should try and squeeze as much time at Osaka as possible.

Thing is, on Sunday, we found out that Tomoho-chan was leaving Tokyo to go back to stay with her family in Aomori. And so I felt it wouldn’t be good to quickly run off, especially since this was one of the few times she could stay around for lunch. So a few of us went to eat nearby. Of course, this meant I reached home at around 2.

It was 2.30-ish by the time I left my home, and I got to Tokyo station at about 3.30. Unfortunately, being the dope that I was, I wasn’t sure how to do the Shinkansen tickets at the turnstiles. Especially since they gave me a total of four tickets to use. So I got in, and since I didn’t want to rush for a crowded train leaving at 4, I went to the adjacent track to wait for the 4.17 train.

Making a quick assessment of the seating arrangement, I managed to get a neat window seat on the correct side of the train. That is until I realized I was sitting in the smoking section.

So of course, by the time I transferred to another car, all the window seats on the Mt. Fuji side were taken up. Fortunately, I still managed to get a window seat on the other side. I must have looked like an idiot tourist, taking photos all the time and stuff, but well whatever.

Because I was playing the tourist, I can get to take this sort of nice shots from the Shinkansen.

It was 7 by the time I reached Shin-Osaka station. And after bumbling my way around, I finally managed to reach Ishibashi station, which is where I met Philip, and later on, Ryan. Both these guys are working with Campus Crusades, and I got to know them through Yoshitaka, and I would be staying with them because they were willing to open up their spare room for poor missionaries like me who came by to visit.

Ryan, Philip and me. They are two cool guys who are Campus Crusades staff in Osaka. They've been here for several years already.

I went out soon after to meet my friend Joanne at Umeda station. I knew her from my LAJ classes in NUS, and she’s here in Osaka teaching English as part of the JET program. And she was kind enough to show me around on Sunday night. Not just around Umeda station, where she introduced me to this thing called negiyaki (pancake with lotsa spring onions, tastes like chai tau kway), but also to Namba town, which is kinda considered the heart of Osaka city.

Joanne from NUS/LAJ/JET. This was after two failed self-photos I tried to do. She realized it would be better to get a passerby to help us instead.

Next day I woke up late, and after eating lunch with Philip and Ryan, I decided to go to three places that sounded interesting: the Aquarium, Osaka castle, and the Umeda Sky Garden. I got to the Kaiyukan easy enough, but didn’t really feel like paying ¥2000 to get in, so I ended up taking photos around the place.

There’s this ship there that’s also supposed to be like one of the icons of Osaka called the Santa Maria, but it didn’t unfurl it’s main sail bother it all, so I couldn’t get a very nice shot of it.

The little ship that didn't... unfurl it's sail to let me take a nice picture of it.

It was kinda a gray day at that point of time too, which is why I really didn’t feel like staying around there too long, or taking the ferris wheel. So I left and went over to the castle.

Got this picture in the park around the castle. I's a good photographer.

The original castle was built by Hideyoshi (one of the 3 unifiers of Japan), but it was pretty much razed cos his son started to rebuild the defenses, something the Tokugawa Ieyasu had forbid him to do after the Tokougawa shogunate was in power. This castle was rebuilt relatively recently, and Wikitravel describes it as a museum that was built like a castle, but whatever. It’s still really awesome. Also because when I was there, the sun came out. And we all know that having good sunlight helps make good photos, and helps make you feel happier (generally. Let’s not talk about army route marches and SOC). And I’m kinda thinking, if a Disney movie was set in Japan, you could almost imagine a scene where the castle rises out of the forest and stuff.

It radiates awesomeness!

And since I had decided not to splurge the ¥2000 on the aquarium, I thought I would go in to the castle to see the museum and stuff. Unfortunately, I decided to go in at 5 in the afternoon, which if you’re guessing, is the time they close. Bother.

Got to meet Joanne again for dinner at a curry place she said she preferred cos it actually was somewhat spicy. Then I went to the Umeda Sky Garden.

Was up there at the top

I wanted to go there because I read online that the place offers a really good view of Osaka city. It should; after all, it is 173 meters up in the air. But as I was taking the lift up, and the lift shot out from inside the building to a transparent tube, and the ground started falling away at a rather fast pace, I suddenly remembered that I am absolutely terrified of heights. Of course, since I was with another couple and a family of four in that lift, I tried to act all nonchalant and stuff, but if you had looked, you would have noticed I was gripping the handrails much tighter. It didn’t help that my brain was telling me I was suspended over several hundred feet of air only by a lift cable.

But I got to the top safely, and managed to get some really stupendous shots of the city skyline. (Once there is a proper floor under me, I feel better). Here are some of them. Didn’t stay too long, and I didn’t buy any souvenirs from there, since they were all kinda tacky. But having my pictures was enough.

Osaka at night!

So anyway, as I was preparing to leave this morning, I realized I had this “I-don’t-want-to-leave” sort of feeling. The kind of feeling I had as a kid when my family would go on holiday and we had to leave to go back.

And I guess part of it was that I was begging to settle into the place. And I got to make two great new friends, and got to know an old friend better. I had reached a point where I was starting to get comfortable with being in Osaka, but hadn’t yet fully explored everywhere. And also cos I know I probably would not be heading back to Osaka anytime soon (OMF is based mostly in Kanto-Tohoku-Hokkaido, and I can’t really take or afford that many holidays).

But in the end, I have to go, since my job is in Tokyo.

And I can take solace in the fact that in the modern age of technology, there is facebook for communication, and also, that I have found out how much better takoyaki tastes in Osaka.

I actually wanted to tabao another packet for the train, but that would have just been greedy.

Cheerio!

Dreams

2009-08-18T23:07:00.002+08:00

A while back, I dreamt I had returned to Singapore. Unfortunately, in that dream, after having returned to Singapore, I realized I hadn't gotten my re-entry pass to get back into Japan.

Now, some background. I'm in Japan on a religious work visa. And I can get into the country, which I did in May. But if I want to leave and come back, I have to go to the Immigrations Center and apply for a re-entry pass. If not, when I leave, my visa will expire.

So anyway, in my dream, I had forgotten to do that. And when Pastor Ivan asked me if I had remembered to do that (in my dream), I had the "oh crap I forgot" feeling. Thankfully, I woke up before I peed in my pants or whatnot.

And then just last week, I dreamt that once again, I was back in Singapore. And I was happily doing stuff in Singapore, when I realized that I hadn't done my re-entry pass before leaving Japan.

Funny thing is, in my dream, I could remember that I had dreamt about forgetting to do my re-entry pass in my previous dream, and that I was so stupid to have forgotten (again?), and once again, I had that "oh crap I forgot" feeling, though this time, it was my dad questioning me instead of Pastor Ivan.

I hope this is not a sign that I will forget to do my re-entry pass when I do decide to go back for holiday.

And speaking of dreams, here's a video of a song about dreams:

Reminds me of childhood again. This, along with American Tail, the Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. Plus the teenage mutant ninja turtle emoticon. haha.

Cheerio!

Day Trip South

2009-08-13T21:16:00.015+08:00

So yes, I know it's almost a week since I went down to Yokohama. But I was busy. Sort of.

Anyway, before I had the chance to go on a bit of sightseeing in Kanagawa prefecture last Friday, I went up to Ibaraki for the monthly "Support Ibaraki Housechurch" journey, though since Louis has gone back to Singapore, this time was with Yoshitaka and Kodaira-san.

Generally speaking, the trip was rather uneventful. It was the first time that Yoshitaka had gone up though, and I made the same remarks to him about how the place reminded me of Miyazaki anime, so he told Shirai-san (the lady in charge of the housechurch) that she could name the housechurch the "Totoro HC".

I bought some candy bars to eat in case we got sleepy (specifically for the driver [Yoshitaka] if he got sleepy), and put it in the car. On the way back, when he started to get drowsy, he asked me to help him get some eats out, whereupon I discovered that not one, but both packets of chocolate had become squishy.

I was somewhat surprised, since the day itself wasn't terribly hot. But then we both realized it was because I had left it at a spot in the car where the engine heat was getting to it. (Don't look at me like that. It's where people usually keep candy in the car. Between the two front seats!) Which of course, naturally resulted in this:

After refridgration, of course.

So anyway, back to talking about Yokohama. I woke up late and left home later, it was close to 12 noon by the time I got out of my house. I was considering going on another day, but then I felt that I had been cooped up at home for too long already (due to my overspending last month and the need to save money), so I toddled off to the station.

It was rather cloudy when I left Tokorozawa, and as I was heading to Ikebukuro, it seemed to get darker, which to me, was a bit of a bummer. It didn't look like it would rain, but when you go to a nice port city like Yokohama, especially if you want to see the sea and stuff, generally, you prefer to have sunny skies.

Fortunately, as I traveled further southwest, the weather got better and better. And I started to feel all sunny and excited inside as the train continued rolling along. I'm not sure why. Guess part of it was having been cooped up so long, and part of it was that it was sunny (the weather had been cloudy for close to two weeks already), and also part of it was that it felt like an adventure. Going to somewhere similar in Tokyo, like Odaiba, probably wouldn't have elicted the same emotions in me.

Following the recommendations of a guidebook I inherited from one of the Lau families, I did not stop at Yokohama, but went straight to Sakuragicho. Especially since I wanted to see the ocean. This is what growing up in a small island nation does to you.

View after stepping out from Sakuragicho station. Pretty. Plus, I like clouds.

The place, of course, is really beautiful. I guess the clear blue skies and bright sunlight affected my judgement as well. As I mentioned, Tokyo had been kinda gray the past few days. And being surrounded by buildings all this while (when not surrounded by the four walls of my room) made me forget just how... liberating it was to stand in the middle of an open plaza. Even if it was beginning to get a little warm.

So I started my little tour of the place, roughly following the coastline. And of course, with two batteries fully charged, I started doing touristy things!

There's something appealing about sailing ships...

Being the stingy miser that I was, I didn't go on board this ship, though I did admire it from a distance, and through my camera lens. Generally, I made sure I went to places where I would not have to pay entrance fees. And there were enough there to occupy me for half a day, so no complaints. The specter of my overspending still hung over me.

Pretty, oh so pretty...

Did I mention that the place was scenic? This pictures currently sits on my desktop. And it looks even better if it is like large. Like if it was on your desktop. The ferris-wheel-and-island also reminds me a lot of Odaiba, which is another place I enjoyed going to (haven't gone there yet this time). This is an artificial island, I think. There's a small amusement park, and a huge shopping mall. Didn't really explore the entire place, but one of the points of interest of the island are the old red-brick warehouses.

Looks European

They aren't used as warehouses any more, though they still stock lots of goods in the form of a shopping arcade. And a rather atas one at that. As you can probably guess, apart from admiring the place, I did not buy anything.

Spider!

Incidentally, this year is also the 150th anniversary of the founding of the city. So they have all sorts of fairs and attractions as part of the celebrations. One of the most iconic shows that is there is this giant mechanical spider. Think it was a rest period or something, so it wasn't moving. But I'm pretty sure you can find videos of it on youtube. Think I heard it was 15m high.

Reminds me of Singapore!

Next up was a visit to the roof of the International Passenger Terminal (Osanbashi). It kinda reminded me of Marina Barrage, with the large open air space, the grass on the roof, the view over the sea.. And you can get lots of good photo opps from here.

City skyline with waterfront... reminds me of Singapore too!

This was just one of the shots I got from the roof of the place. Admittedly, Singapore has many more skyscrapers, but I'm not the only one to think that there is a similarity. Yoshitaka thought so too. Maybe if I put up the nightshot I took...

Reminds me of Singapore!

...here. There, this does look a bit more like Singapore right? Ok maybe not really. But well whatever. Incidentally, the tall building on the left is the Landmark Tower, and is one of the tallest buildings in Japan. You must remember that Japan is earthquake prone, so unlike Singapore, they have to take that into consideration.

From the same place...

This is the other side of the terminal. The front part with all the trees is Yamashita Koen, which is good for taking night photos of the bay area, and famous as a lover's park. Many couples go there together, though it seemed like a normal park when I went walking through there. Maybe at night...

One of the five gates leading to the Chinatown

And of course, part of the reason I went to Yokohama was to visit the Chinatown. According to guidebooks, it's as old as the city itself, and is the largest Chinatown in Japan. It has a lot of history. Though I would be lying if I said I was going there for the history. As much as I enjoy history, I was really going there because they had char siew pau.

Reminds of Singa.. no this *is* from Singapore!!

I went wandering through the streets, and through several shops as well. There were quite a lot of food places too, serving Japanese style Chinese food. I must admit that although I was hoping to get nice Chinese food there, during dinner time, none of the shops appealed to me enough for me to go in. I did get my pau though \(^_^)/

So that's about it. I went back to the Osanbashi to take several nightshots, then went down to the Chinatown again for souvenirs before heading back home.

It was fun. Maybe funner with more friends but oh well.

Cheerio!

Okay...

2009-08-13T08:37:00.002+08:00

So I've heard of monsoon seasons, and I've heard of typhoon seasons. And I've even heard of tornado seasons.

But is there such a thing as an earthquake season?

Because I felt another one today...

Again?

2009-08-11T09:52:00.003+08:00

Wow who would have thought that another major earthquake would happen less than two days after that 6.9/7.1 magnitude one? This one was a lot closer to Japan though, just 30 km out from Shizuoka and about 170 km from Tokyo.

Felt the same, ground was sort of like shaking/moving. It kinda felt like if you were standing at the entrance of Yio Chu Kang station and a train was pulling in, just a bit longer than that, as I told brother on Sunday night. Brother also sms-ed to ask if everything was ok. Haha. He must have inherited part of dad's worry syndrome.

And this quake wasn't the only major one to hit this morning. There was also another in the Indian Ocean that was even stronger. Fortunately, no tsunami.

Ok, now back to routine. Got work to do.

Cheerio!

独立記念日

2009-08-09T20:00:00.005+08:00

Went out in the evening to pick up something important for dinner.

Though I'm not even officially from the country, there are still some traditions that I feel, need to be kept.

In fact, it's not even about the nationwide celebrations, so much as this is one of the few times I know when everyone in my family makes it a point to be home (this year, it couldn't happen). And while it may not seem like much, it is symbolic, in a way, of what we do every year (except for one year when we had to settle for inferior goods).

Two stations out isn't really that far to go anyway, compared with some places I have been to in the past few days.

I guess, the thing I'll miss most, apart from the family time, would be that I will be unable to join the LAN sessions/Xbox sessions/Wii sessions that will undoubtedly take place tomorrow.

Traditional NDP food

Happy National Day everyone!

Cheerio!

P.S. ->Jo: No, we didn't sing National Day songs (you all sang it two months early last year anyway), and there are probably some parties but since I'm not Singaporean... Karen did mention that one Singaporean restaurant was offering 44% discounts to people who could show their pink ICs.. How very Singaporean...

P.P.S. Ooh there was a major quake off the coast of Japan, registering 6.9 (or 7.1, depending on sources) on the Richter scale. I could feel it!! The ground was moving!

Day Trip South Prologue

2009-08-07T22:37:00.001+08:00

As today was a free day, I decided to travel out of Tokyo itself and go to Yokohama.

It was really quite fun, and the place is really beautiful.

But I'm too tired to spend time writing about it, so I shall do that sometime in the near future (hopefully, I won't put it off until I have forgotten what happened).

Cheerio!

Mind-blowing events

2009-07-26T22:41:00.024+08:00

Today, for the first time in my life, I ate natto.

It happened after I decided to attend Matsudo housechurch in Chiba prefecture. Usually, I don't go there, since my work here in Japan is centered mostly around the west side of Tokyo, that housechurch doesn't need me to go and help out (I really can't do a lot, but what little I can do is not really necessary), and it's really far.

Ok, so really far is not so much an issue as having to pay for the train fare, which can be pretty expensive. So I usually don't go that far. Of course, going there is also good, cos the people there are really warm and friendly.

So anyway, I was at Matsudo. And after the housechurch, some of us went to Ootoya to eat dinner. I had the good fortune of sitting with Flo (who's from Belgium), as well as Mr. and Mrs. Ichikawa. And the moment Mrs. Ichikawa heard that I had never eaten natto before, she made sure she ordered an extra bowl of the stuff so that I would have to get my baptism of fire.

Now, just a short background on natto, in case you do not know what it is. It is basically, fermented soy beans that is rich in nutrients and stuff. It's a really wonderful health food, just that the taste is polarizing: you either love it or hate it. It doesn't help that it doesn't really look very appealing either. Just for your info, here's the Wikipedia entry on it.

When it arrived, Mrs Ichikawa divided it into several portions. I think I got about a third the amount. And I ate one bean.

Honestly, if taken in small amounts, it probably wouldn't be too bad. Cos that one bean tasted slightly coffee-ish (a bit like barley tea, just not as strong), and didn't seem too bad.

So I thought to myself, perhaps this isn't quite as bad as Jan and JP make it out to be.

After several more beans, however, I started to realize I didn't quite like the taste of the stuff. So I started mixing it with various other foods I had in front of me. I ate it with the salad (the dressing helped to mask the taste for a bit), I ate it with some soy sauce I got with my fish (not quite so effective), I ate it with rice (not really a good idea, unless you like natto), and then, I found out that the miso soup pretty much washed the taste away, if you drank it after eating the natto.

That's when I made the mistake of thinking that eating it all in one shot and then drinking the soup would help me get rid of the natto.

I managed about two chews before my body tried to make me spit it out. Fortunately for me (and for Mr. Ichikawa, who was sitting opposite me), I managed to hold it down and use my soup to wash away the taste.

The taste of the thing is not terribly strong, like wasabi, and the smell is not terribly strong either, like smelly tofu. But I think I've discovered that I really am not a fan of natto.

Still, dinner with the Ichikawas is really fun, cos they may be about twice my age, but can relate to us like peers. And they are really good at keeping conversations going. Even with inarticulate gaijins like myself.

* * *

Yesterday, I also went to watch fireworks at Tachikawa. It was a combined outing between the Shinjuku, Shinagawa, and Matsudo housechurches, and our friends. I managed to get Shigeki, whom I last met in May with JP, and he was keen to join us that day. So most of us met at Shinjuku station, and then we all went to the Showa memorial gardens, where Karen had booked some space earlier in the afternoon.

It was really crowded over there. There were thousands of people gathering in the field, and this was just one part of the park. By the time I finally got out my camera, it was starting to get dark, so this was one of the few shots I got:

Told ya there were many people

Karen wanted to start by doing an icebreaker, but after only about 5 minutes or so, the fireworks display started, and so we all settled down and watched the show.

Happy firework!

Now, you probably can't see it from here, but some of the fireworks were really huge. They could easily have been several hundred meters in diameter.

This one was probably only about 100 m across, methinks, making it one of the average-sized ones.

In the midst of my trigger-happy mood, one of the things I noticed, is that if you go to a hanabi, and want to really enjoy a good show, you can't spend all your time taking photos, cos you'll miss out on the hanabi itself.

So pretty

The second thing I noticed is that all the pictures, and the videos I took of the event, did not do justice to what really happened there. The colours, though nice, are not as vibrant. And the atmosphere there creates a whole different sense of the event.

It's like my Japanese culture class teacher (can't remember if it was Prof Teow or Prof DuBois) used to say, part of the sense of the aesthetic, is that the beauty that you see is transient, the 'mono no aware' (物の哀れ). And I guess part of that beauty of the fireworks is that you can't really reproduce it. Or at least, not with my Canon Ixus.

Yeah. Really doesn't do justice.

A final thought that occured to me was that this was probably the best wide-screen show I've ever had. Ok, yes I know, we've probably become so accustomed to all these 'modern' techonologies that we now need to compare nature to it, instead of the other way round.

Circles within circles....

But seriously, sometimes, we are so impressed by what we have made, that we forget to see what God has given to us already. And while we go chasing after that 43-inch plasma TV or give effusive praise to the iMax theater, we fail to notice that great wide-screen expanse known as the sky.

And I'm glad that at least for an hour and a half on a clear Saturday night, I am reminded that not only is my God the God of love, but also the God of all creation.

Could be a rock concert. But it isn't.

And do pray that for some of our non-Christian friends who went, that they would realize that there is a Creator. That the icebreaker that Karen did with postcards about how Jesus loves us would speak to them. And that this event would help us in getting to know them better as well.

Ok, that's about it for now.

Cheerio!