Due to high demand...

So, several of you have asked for pictures of my apartment. I decided to give in and post them here. Really, I just wanted to wait until I had the place looking more like a home and it's getting there.

When you first walk in the front door, you see this:


Of course, sometimes there are a lot less shoes there, but this was taken when people were here. And yes, you do have to take your shoes off when you come in my apartment. In the beginning I thought it was silly, but I've grown quite accustomed to this now.

Straight ahead, after walking in the door, is my bathroom.


If you walk in the bathroom, you see a door that goes to the toilet and the shower.



I didn't take a picture of the toilet-sorry. If you really want to see it, just let me know so I can tell you how strange you are...

Now, if you don't walk straight into the bathroom, but turn right, you walk into my kitchen. I have a huge green refrigerator.


Here is my computer desk/Texas corner


Another angle of the room, showing the kitchen and computer corner


After walking through the kitchen and past the computer corner, you walk into the living room.


If you turn to the left, you walk into my bedroom. This is the least decorated room so far, so if you have any ideas on how to spruce it up, let me know.


My messy closet


So, there you have it. This is my Japanese apartment. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. You can leave 100 yen at the door on your way out.

Random Japan stuff…

Ok, I don’t really want to write a full post on any of this, so take this for what it’s worth—which isn’t much.
*Warning: Another picture overload...

The first meal I cooked in my apartment; spaghetti, green beans, and garlic bread


This sign was in the bathroom at Starbucks. I have no idea what sort of packages they were finding in there.


Lauren and I after a day of A LOT of shopping


Lauren and I after our first extended bike ride


That was the same bike ride that this happened to Megan…so sad. (She got a new bike shortly after this.)


Megan, Lauren, and I
This was our 3rd night in Japan. We were invited to dinner at the Kanda’s house. After dinner, we played games and did fireworks.


Just me…

Bored in Akihabara...

This is probably one of my favorite pictures so far. This was the day we went to the Tokyo Dome for the Colts vs. Falcons game. Before the game, we were going shopping around Tokyo. Kenechi, the Japanese guy with us, wanted to go to Akihabara, or Electric City, where you can buy just about any sort of electronic device you would ever want or need. Well, Kenechi insisted on going in one store that was 6 floors of ALL classical and jazz music. Seriously, who would ever want to go in there? So, while Kenechi perused the shelves, Lauren and I found a place to sit, got out some snacks, and made bored faces. (And probably made fun of a few of the patrons in the store as well...)

Surf camp part ni (that’s 2 in Japanese)

Well, surf camp was over 2 weeks ago, and I’ve already been back to the beach (or the sea, as they prefer to call it here) since then, so I figured I should just post a few pictures from the trip that I didn’t post previously. So there, you’ve been warned-this is mostly an all pictures post.

Here’s a random group shot on the beach before we went surfing. (I have no idea why Anthony is the only guy in this picture, but he probably planned it that way.)


This dude was working on his fifth plate of rice…ridiculous!


One of the few words this guy knew in English was ‘sexy’ which he continued to call himself throughout the week.


Here are a few ‘action’ shots of me surfing. This was when we were learning to push up on the board. (We put the camera away when we began attempting to stand.)




Lauren, Liz, Dave (surf coach), another surfer, me, and Megan
Dave is a semi-pro surfer sponsored by Quicksilver. Yep, he was our coach…how awesome is that?


This is Daisuke. (pronounced Dice-K) He’s one of the Young Life leaders and he plays guitar at New Hope Church, where I’ve been going.


Brittany and Sarah—they were here visiting from Arizona and helped run the camp


Sleeping Hajime (how could you not fall in love with the children here??) (Hajime translated means ‘creation’.)


Katrina and Joshua (Joshua is Dave’s son, so he’s Australian and Japanese…so adorable.)


Brett and Bong
He’s from Arizona and she’s from the Philippines. They are the sweetest couple. When we went back to the beach this week, we stayed at their house. They work with Young Life in Japan. (That’s actually how they met many years ago.)


All in all, it was a good few days and so fun to meet all the people. Oh yeah, and I also got to play soccer on the beach so that was great. It made me miss Sunday afternoons at Pollard Park. Hopefully I can find some people to play with here eventually.

GARY LIVES!!

Ok, some of you know that Gary and I got in a fight on the airplane over here. You see, he was refusing to play any of my music. I think he was still mad that we were moving, even though I had tried to tell him that he would fit in perfectly in Japan with all the technology. I think he was really just scared that there would be something superior to him and that I would drop him as soon as I found the newest thing offered here. (I think he may have seen me looking at Michelle's color screen with envy...) Well, after much coercing, he finally decided to start working again. You have no idea how excited I am to be reunited with him. It was tough going places without all of my music, you know.

p.s. Doesn't Gary look good in pink?

My apartment is shaking!!

Is it strange that it's normal for my place to shake now? I mean, earthquakes already seem commonplace to me. We just had a pretty bad one...of course, I can't understand the news, so I have no idea what it registered on the scale. The other day I was talking to Liz and Lauren after we had 2 earthquakes during the night. I told them that it seems like it's normal for the apartment to shake every night around midnight...ha. Ok, really though, don't be scared. The Japanese live with them all the time, so I'll be fine.

Update: Yes, the earthquake actually was a pretty bad one. It was a 7.2, however, the epicenter wasn't close to us, so we just felt the effects from 200 miles away. Insane...anyway, I just want you all to know we are all fine here. Pray for those that were injured.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8965567
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/usbvae.htm

Church in Japan

Before I came here, I asked Liz (the girl who was already here) about church. She told me that she had found a church here that she loved. Also, there were 2 other churches that she would show us when we got here, so we could choose where we wanted to go. So far we have gone to 2 different churches. The first one was the one Liz attends. The past 2 weeks, we've gone to another church called New Hope. I like it a lot there because there are some younger people, unlike Liz's church. Also, we were at the beach with New Hope church, so I already feel more of a connection with this group. There is still one other church that we'll visit, but right now I'm leaning towards New Hope.
Of course the service is in Japanese, but there is always English translation for us. At New Hope this week, Megan and I were the only English speakers, but Yuya interpreted for us, so it was great. After church here, it is a little different than in America. You know, at home we would go out to eat with people from church. Here's everyone goes out and gets lunch, then brings it back to the church and eats together. (Luckily I went with Yuya to get lunch today, so he could tell me what things were and keep me from buying something too strange...although he keeps trying to make me get fermented bean paste--YUCK!) This makes church really last around 3 hours...which sometimes seems draining, but the fellowship during lunch is always a lot of fun. Usually there are people around that want to practice their English. There are also always lots of cute babies to play with. These kids are so dang adorable, they make my heart melt every time I see them.
I thought being at church in Japan would be strange, but it has been so incredible. It is such an amazing feeling when you realize that you may not understand a word they are saying, but you know they're worshiping the same God. I love singing in Japanese. A lot of the songs they sing at New Hope are worship songs we do at home, so it's easy to catch on.
It is such a relief to find a place here where I can worship...Thank you Jesus.

NFL at the Tokyo Dome

On August 6 at the Tokyo Dome the Atlanta Falcons were playing the Indianapolis Colts.



Liz, Lauren, and I went to the game with 2 Japanese friends, Kenechi and Yuya. Being typical Americans, we decided to go all out for the game, including face paint, hair color, and hand-made shirts.

Here is the result:


Before the game, an ESPN camera man came up and taped us. We were so excited, thinking we would be on TV back home. We talked to the guy for a few minutes and he said he couldn't promise we'd be on TV. However, he told us where he'd be during the game, and he told us to come find him and he'd put us on. Awesome, huh? Yeah, we thought so too...So, during the game, we left the boys and went to find our guy. We spotted him, but we couldn't get very close to him, so we just started yelling. Then we realized that he was wearing headphones, so he wouldn't be able to hear us. At this point, we started hanging over the edge, throwing our arms in the air and waving at him. Well, after a good 15 minutes of repeating this process, we gave up on the guy. So yeah, we didn't make it on TV, but we had fun acting like fools anyway.

This is classic...we had no idea that we were doing the 'C' backwards until we looked at the pictures later.


Now, if you didn't know it, American football is not very popular in Japan, so most of them don't know the rules. Kenechi had to ask several questions during the game and never really knew what was going on. Yuya lived in the states for college, so he actually understood the game. Anyway, throughout the game, the Japanese fans would cheer, no matter what team scored. They had no idea what was going on. I think it was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. The Colts would score and the crowd would go wild. Then the Falcons would score, and again, the crowd would go wild. They just cheered. It was great...hilarious.

Lauren, Yuya, Liz, Kenechi, and me (left to right)


At the end of the game, in true Japan fashion, they misspelled an English word.


A couple random shots from the game



Well, in the end, the Colts lost. Of course I'm not really a Colts fan (we just picked a team to cheer for), but we looked pretty silly after the game since we were all decked out in Colts garb. One American guy walked past us at the end of the game, looked at us, and simply said, "Ouch". I suppose he was just laughing inside that we had to go out looking like that after a loss, however, in Japan it didn't matter because they didn't know what was going on anyway!

When we left, we decided to go see if we could meet some of the players. Kenechi wanted to get autographs, so we headed towards the team buses. On the way, some random drunk (American) guy came up to Lauren and I and hugged us. He told us that he 'needed to hug American girls'. Yeah, that's the way to get girls...ha.
When we were waiting on Kenechi as he was getting autographs, Lauren and I somehow got stuck talking to some dude in the Air Force. (Ok, actually it was all Liz's fault that we got stuck talking to him.) Anyway, the dude kept going on and on, and asked for our phone number. He said he wanted to hang out with us because he doesn't like any of the Japanese women he has met. (He actually used much more colorful language, but I'll just leave it at that.) He was completely wasted. Another guy came up and apologized for the guy's behavior. He told us that the guy really was a nice guy, but he had just had too much to drink...blah. Anyway, we told him sorry, but we didn't want to hang out with him in Japan and finally got out of there.
After that, we had dinner, then hopped on the train to get home.
All in all, it was a good night...Go Colts!

Surf Camp-part 1

We were at Ichimatsu beach this week, Tuesday-Thursday. We had a lot of fun. It was a Young Life Camp so we met a lot of people that work with youth in Japan. We also got to surf. Of course, we just had coaching, and it's not like you learn to surf in one day, but we had fun trying. I'll post more about that (with pictures) later though, because those pictures are on Liz's camera. There was a group here from Arizona helping with the camp so it was nice to speak English at a normal pace. Most of the Japanese that know English, need us to speak slowly, so it was nice to not have to worry about being lost in translation with those guys. One of the guys in the group reminded me so much of Cory (my brother) that it was scary. It was nice to have a reminder of him around though.
Here is me with Cory's clone-a.k.a. Jeremy (and yes, he does have his mouth full of food):

When I was at church Sunday, the people from Arizona were there too and were doing games and stuff after church so we stuck around. We did a relay and I was on a team of about 8 people, one of which was Jeremy. For my part of the relay, I had to chug a coke. I really didn't think I would do very well, but I was going to try my best for the team, because none of the Japanese people wanted to do it, and Jeremy was already doing 20 push ups, which I wasn't about to do. Anyhow, I actually managed to pull it off and do ok. When it was all over, Jeremy said to me, "You chug coke like I've never seen a woman chug coke before. That was awesome." So apparently I've found my new talent. Anyhow, you can see how Jeremy reminded me of Cory. Here are a few other pictures from the time at the beach:

Me, Lauren, Liz and Takashi


Surf Coaching


Lauren, Yuya, Liz, and me at dinner


Elijah, Jeremy, and Dan looking VERY cool


Lauren, Dan, Elijah, and me


Dan, Elijah, and Jeremy at the bonfire on the beach


Ok, I've overloaded you guys with pictures for now. When I get the rest of the pictures from us actually surfing, I'll write more.

Friday with Yoko

Ok...I'm finally back to the blogging world. I don't really know where to begin because there are so many random things that I've done lately. Most of you have gotten my updates via email so you know the basics. Today Megan and I went out with 2 Japanese English teachers. We saw a Japanese castle and went up in a tower in Chiba City. It was fun, but I was exhausted since we got back from the beach at one this morning. We had some awesome Indian food today. I'm definitely going back to that place...all you can eat curry for only 800 yen! (approx. $8.00 USD) I do like a lot of the Japanese food I've tried so far, but if I had to pick a place to go back to right now, it would be the Indian food place. All the Japanese people ask me if I like Japanese food. Most of you know I'm pretty picky, so you'd be very surprised at what I've eaten since I've been here. Anyhow, here a few random pictures from today.

Megan and I in front of the Japanese Castle:

A few shots from the tower and from the top of the castle: