I just came back from the Tokyo area for the LIFE MInistries Day of Prayer. Quick thoughts.

I'm definitely a city boy. When I rode in someone's car, I was happy there was traffic. Oh, the people here in Date sometimes complain about the car traffic. But when they complain about traffic here in Date, they're talking about 5 cars in front of them at a stop light. I think they'd go berzerk if they drove in the bay area around the MacArthur maze. When I rode the train, I was elated that there were so many people around me... with the exception of the time when I caught the last train of the day in the Tokyo area, and hence the train conductor pushed us all in the train car with his white gloves.

I walked a lot. In Tokyo you walk or you stand. And I did a lot of both. In Hokkaido, you don't do a lot of either. We sit a lot. We drive a lot. And it showed by how exhausted I would be at the end of the day in the past weekend.

Missionary get-togethers are weird. They feel so surreal. I mean, everyday, you work with Japanese people with Japanese values, speaking the Japanese language, and then for a concentrated few hours or days, you go to some place and see, talk to, and interact with all these Western people doing the same kind of work as you are. I'll probably write about this more a little later.

I visited this really interesting church that Sunday. Super conservative. Super traditional. But a good number of the congregation were 20, 30, and 40 year olds. Totally weirded me out.

Have no fears. I am ok.

At 4:50AM, a large earthquake (8.0) hit off the coast of the island of Hokkaido. Guess where I am? You guessed it. Hokkaido. If you want to hear the news aspect of the earthquake... here's the CNN article on it.

So, what was I doing when the earthquake hit? It was 4:50AM. What do you think I was doing? I was sleeping. And as many of you know, I am a heavy sleeper. This is coming from a guy who slept through his roommate dressing him up in a ridiculous costume made up of a surgeon's mask and sunglasses among other things. Well, surprise surprise, I woke up this time around to the earthquake.

My first thought? "Ehh, I ride this one out." Then I started hearing Mrs. Weaver, my 1st grade teacher saying, "If you feel an earthquake, duck and cover." So, I thought about it. Should I duck and cover? Should I run over to the sturdy table and curl up like a sow bug? Mind you, I'm thinking while the ground is shaking. I'm still thinking... and about 10 seconds pass.

By this time, I just thought, "Ehh, the earthquake can't last much longer. It's not worth the effort to get out of bed." But sure enough, it kept going, and I kept waiting. I was playing chicken with an earthquake. And I won. Yeah. Stupid? Yeah.

So now, in the aftermath, I'm living in an official tsunami warning area. That's pretty cool. Oh yeah, and there's an ever present volcano eruption warning in this area too. When I first moved in, I got a poster with a map of the area and its nearby volcano saying, "Be careful if you live within the colored area on the map." The colored area encircled the volcano and its surroundings. Sure enough, there was my neighborhood colored in yellow. At least I'm out of range from lava flow. That would not be cool.

In related news, go check out BET's blog about his conquests over Hurricane Isabel.

Every Wednesday night, our church has a prayer meeting. For part of the prayer meeting, we well, pray. And the pastor makes a printout with a list of prayer requests that he passes out to everyone who comes.

This past Wednesday's handout was full of typos. The best one?

"From the 'end of the world' to the beginning of next week, Hideyo Satake will be Tokyo for the LIFE Ministries Day of Prayer."

What he meant to type was "From the weekend to the beginning of next week..."

Instead he got the "end of the world." How? The Japanese pronunciation for the term "end of the world" is the same as the Japanese pronunciation for the term "weekend." BIG DIFFERENCE. But same pronunciation. "Shuumatsu." But of course, the Chinese characters, the Kanji of the two terms are very different.

So, it looks like I get "left behind." I mean, I'm gonna still be in Tokyo after the world ends. Well, at least until the beginning of next week. Who knows what happens after that.

Hey, if you're a guy, go check out the 5823 "Are you a metrosexual?" quiz. Props out to Danny for making a way better quiz than the one on ESPN.

Personal notes about the quiz. I got 13 points. So far, that means I'm between Cal and Danny in terms of my metrosexuality. Question #8 about the last book I read upped my score quite a bit. 3 points. Last book I read... Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Great book about writing a book. And yes, it was recommended to me.

We are now coming to the end of the American baseball season. This, of course, means the end of the fantasy baseball season. It's a weird thing... playing fantasy baseball with American people when you're away from America. A lot has happened in the American sports world over the past 2 years. And I didn't witness any of it. A new crop of stars have sprung up and I don't know any of them.

Example: I joined a fantasy football league with some friends from high school. We had a live draft a while ago. (There was the whole "I'm in Japan Standard time, how am I supposed to join a live draft with Americans?" thing, but that's not all that interesting so we'll skip that.) At the end of the draft, I noticed that I've seen about a third of the players I drafted, play in the pros. The only reason why I knew to draft them was because of their stats from last year. Now, that we're into the season, they're nothing but stats on a box score to me. I mean, I wouldn't have known that Chad Johnson, the wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals was black had Yahoo! Sports not put a picture on all their player profiles.

Some random thoughts,

Foreigners are always the last to know in this country. Doesn't matter what it is... doesn't matter how important it is... we're the last to know anything. Most recent example: Today, we're going to have a singing concert at the church involving the children attending the English classes. Last Wednesday, the organizer asked me to speak for it. "10-15" minutes he said. To begin with, I obviously need more prep time than the average Japanese person to give a talk in Japanese. A week to prepare? Doable, but difficult. And secondly, I'd like to see someone else do it. It's an opportunity to discover giftings, an opportunity that should be reserved for a Japanese church attender I thought. I brought up the concerns, but the organizer insisted that I do it. At the end, he said "Think about it." The following Sunday, after service I was going to tell him that I'd decline, but a different church member asked me how the preparation for the concert speaking was going. Apparently, there wasn't anything to think about. I was assigned the task even though I refused at first and intended to refuse again. Oh well.

Completely different topic. Michelle Wie, the Korean-American female teenage golfer who now has entered in 2 men's events. She's 13! 13! What the heck? LeBron James step aside. At least you were 17 when you were discovered by the national eye. When I was 13, I was like 3 feet tall, memorizing the Abbott and Costello Who's on First routine for my English class, and doing science fair experiments. Which reminds me, she's 13 and she's like 6 feet tall. That's like twice my height at the same age. I'd be afraid that she was gonna eat me. Now that's gotta be awkward for those already awkward junior high school dances.

I wrote this before, but I webcam with Dean weekly. Starts Tuesday 11:30PM JST (that's Japan standard time). Sometimes we go well into 2AM JST. Kinda crazy!

What do we do? Well, together we're doing an LTG (Life Transformation Group). Bible reading, accountability, sharing news, etc..

This time around we messed around a lot. I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long long time. Among other things discussed was what a Chris Rock comedic routine would be like if it were adapted for Christian audiences.

"You know what I hate about hypocritical Christians? They take credit for things they're supposed to do. They're like, 'I love people who love me.' You're supposed to love people who love you. What? You want a cookie?" (Matthew 5:44-46)

Wow, lots of stuff floating around in my head. But today, I'll finally get around to addressing Bob's comment a few days back. How did you decide to apply to seminary?

The reason why I decided to put this topic aside for a while is cuz when I first read his comment, I said, "Oh no. I'm gonna hafta write a college essay-like thing and post it on the web for everyone to see." I mean, his question is the topic for one of the essays I'm gonna hafta write for the app process. And the last time I went through the college essay writing process it was long and not fun. It ended up becoming one of the assignments for our English class... a what-seemed-like 4 month assignment. And it very well could have been, I don't remember. 4 months from the first draft to the final. Ugh. What did I write about 7 years ago? I wrote something about wanting to go to college to rediscover myself and my ethnic roots... and somehow I weaved Tupac in there. Yeah yeah. He's black (err was... I dunno), and I'm not. So, back to the topic at hand... have no worries I won't write some college essay-like thing. I'll do the short run down. And Tupac'll probably be left out as a result. Too bad.

In my last year of college, I knew two things. In regards to the whole "Whaddya wanna be when you grow up thing" I knew God was calling me to serve Him. And I knew God was telling me to go to Japan now. And so, I interpreted it to mean that this short 2 year (now 2 1/2 year) commitment was an experiment, a testing ground for my faith and trust in Him. I didn't know one big thing though. What am I gonna be when I grow up? But I went. And here I am. I went knowing that if I took this first step, that God would light the next one.

The perfect storybook ending would be that once I got here, God totally confirmed everything and then gave me this huge vision, and now I know. And if the end product is all that matters and if you shrink down "huge" to maybe "semi-big," then, yeah, the perfect storybook ending is what happened. But the process has been CRAZY. Stretching anything, including faith, causes tension and stress. I've been frustrated, tired, burnt out, angry, pissed off, drained, exhausted, sad, lonely, hurt... YET, I will praise Him. And because of that process, I'm starting to sense that I've been given a gift. Not absolutely certain yet, but it seems to be a vision to see God transform the Asian American church into an Antioch. One that truly does send out.

I read through the books of the prophets a while ago. And as I read through them, I learned that with a vision from God, comes a very big responsibility. A responsibility to communicate that vision/revelation. I still don't know what my role is in this vision. I don't know the title that I'm gonna carry. But, I feel that going to seminary will help train me in, and clarify the beginnings of this vision.

So I went to a Japanese wedding today. This is the second time for me for the wedding itself while it was the first time to go to the reception. Christian wedding, so it was very Western. Why is that? Why does Christian equal Western? Ehh, but that's a whole different topic. Regardless, even though it was very Western there were differences... quirks if you will from the way that I'm used to, the American way.

Number 1, the wedding itself is short. I timed it. The wedding went for 40 minutes. Now, I don't know how long a standard American wedding goes, but this wedding was all in Japanese, I didn't understand everything, and it still felt short. Why?

Well, that goes into number 2 which is, the couple don't exchange vows. The pastor did the whole "Do you?" "I do" thing (I'm so romantic) to them both, but then when the rings came out, they just slipped them on each other.

Number 3, when the bride made her entrance, nobody stood up. Instinctively, I almost stood up... good thing I wasn't completely oblivious to my surroundings, which is a nice change.

Number 4, even though the ceremony is short, the reception is long. So, the wedding starts at 2PM. It ends at 2:40PM. It takes about 45 minutes to get everybody to the reception hall and seated. It's about 3:30PM. 3:30PM! The reception. You know the place where people get together, talk, and eat. Who eats at 3:30PM? We did.

And number 5, the reception is full of speeches. That's right speeches. Not toasts. Speeches. Actually come to think about it, the reception wasn't very long. It was pretty standard actually. We left at about 7PM. About 4 hours. But it felt longer. Speeches can do that. And from what I hear, the speeches at this particular reception were shorter and fewer in number.

Number 6, people don't buy wedding gifts. Instead, people give them money. But in an indirect way. No, they don't slip em a bill through a handshake like a bribe. Instead, the people who go to the reception pay way too much for the reception dinner on the day of. Yeah, it's kind of strange. Everybody knows that the money goes to the couple. But it's labeled and given as payment for the reception dinner. Example. I paid 7000 yen for tonight's reception dinner. That's about $60. Now, the food was good. But it wasn't that good.

Interesting thing that came up in conversation. Apparently, here in Japan, people think I'm older than I really am. How did this come up in conversation? Well, at the beginning of the day, I prepared myself for the two question/comments I was sure to get at the wedding. "How old are you?" and "So when are you getting married?" And sure enough I got them both. Yeah, I won't touch that second question in this blog... or ever.

So, anyway, I get asked "How old are you?" I tell them the truth. Yeah, that's right, them. It was a group question. I say, "23." And they respond back with "Oh, I thought you were 2 or 3 years older than that" "Yeah, me too" "Uh huh." The weird thing is that this isn't the first time I've heard this in Japan. Why is it weird? Because when I'm in the States, I often get mistaken for a 16 year old. In strict movie theaters, I get carded for R rated movies. The last time I came home, I helped my mom out at El Cerrito High, and some people there thought I was a student there. I wanted to shake em real hard and say "I graduated 6 years ago."

So, again bringing it back from the tangent... after the group said "I thought you were 2 or 3 years older than that" I was unexplainably happy. They were visibly perplexed. "Why are you happy that you look older?" And I couldn't answer. So, I responded back with a really slick "I dunno." Yeah, that's right. I was real cool. Haha.

Oh, quick Happy Birthday shout out to my brother Kei. Hope you got the package by now.

"The man is no fool who loses what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

Why is it that churches keep pens and markers that are outta ink?

Every church I've been to (granted it's a small sample size) has a seemingly endless supply of useless pens and markers. And of course, they're all together in a canister or cardboard box somewhere. When I teach English at the church here, I use a white board... you know those dry erase boards. And there's this box that holds all the dry erase markers... along with a bunch of other junk like tiny broken pieces of chalk, dirty rags, small magnets, and broken colored pencils. In this box, there are probably about 10 dry erase markers. 4 are black, 3 are blue, 2 are red, and 1 is green. Does that add up? Yep.

Ok. So, of these 10 dry erase markers, only one works well. There's one fat black marker that works well. Good, continuous, dark streaks. The other ones? Dried out. Thin streaks. Weak color. But for some reason, we keep them. Maybe it's because they work well for the first stroke on the dry erase board. And it'd be wasteful, especially for a church, to throw away a pen that's still good for the first stroke of usage. It's always the same. I pick up one of the dry erase markers, start to write something (and it's good for a little while), and then of course it starts running outta ink real quick. So, instinctively, I put the cap back on, chuck it back into the box, and pick up another marker. This process goes on with the black markers until I find that one that's good. This happens everyday. When I put the bad markers back into the box do I think that they'll magically become good again? I dunno. And of course, I don't go to the local store and buy new dry erase markers because we have 10 dry erase markers in the box. Why would anyone need more than 10 dry erase markers?

Maybe I should change the initial question from "Why is it that churches..." to "Why is that Hideyo...". Just call me the bad dry erase marker savior.

Ohh... this week's Strong Bad email was hilarious, or at least I thought so.

I just finished video conferencing with Dean. Weird thing about video conferencing... there's of course a window showing the dude you're video conferencing with... but then there's also a window showing yourself. Well, at least in iVisit's case there is. The first few times I used iVisit, I tried to ignore my window. But I dunno, it's hard. Sometimes, I feel the urge to take a peek at myself for some strange reason. What do I look like when I look surprised? What do I look like when I'm being sympathetic? Do I look fake? Ever wonder this stuff? Or am I the only one? Maybe I'm just vain... or self-conscious, or both. Whoa, what a scary combination.

Well, anyway, the last 3 times that I've video conferenced (is that a word?) with Dean, I decided to hide my video window behind one of the other windows so that I don't become distracted and can devote my full attention to what he's saying.

Sorry Bob, that post'll have to wait.

So, this morning I sliced off a piece of my left thumb. As I type I'm learning to use my right thumb to push the space bar. Ughh, this is taking a long time. I was clumsily using a grater... as in for use in cooking, and a chunk off the tip of my thumb got sliced off.

Man oh man... those monkeys have it hard. Opposable thumbs are great. You can brush your teeth, you can comfortably grip a steering wheel, chopsticks are usable, and space bar pressing is as quick as lightening.

Bob, yeah, you didn't miss anything. I never posted about it before. Never realized that the whole process never made it to the online version. Oh well.

So anyway, a while ago, I requested app information from some schools online. Some interesting things that happened as a result...

1) Online requests for app info are not internationally friendly. To request for information, all you have to do is provide em with your address. Sure, some of em have a little box that says "Country"... but at the same time the rest of the address boxes are just not very useful. Take the "state/province" box for instance. Two letter limit. Naturally... if you live in the United States or Canada. CA, NV, HI, BC, ON, etc.. But what if your province is... oh say, "Hokkaido." What do you write? HO? HK? One might send it to the North Pole while the other'll go to Hong Kong, or Jeff's house. And don't get me started on the "postal/zip code" box with it's 5 number limit.

2) Every school thought I was an international student. I didn't request for international student info. But I got it. Must have been the combination of the Japan address and the Japanese name. Yeah yeah yeah. I didn't use Alfred. That's my middle name by the way (yeah, that's right, get all your Batman jokes out of your system now). Anyway, I got all this literature about the TOEFL. Stroke the ego? Maybe not.

3) Seminaries are crazy expensive. I had no idea. At the end of almost all the pretty brochures is the estimated costs rundown. Yowzuh.

4) I got a personal email from someone at one of the schools. This was really cool. Completely unexpected. And cool.

Something that's bugged me since the beginning of this entry... what's the two letter code for Alberta? Cuz Alabama took AL right? AB? But that's a blood type. And American Eagle took AE. AR? That's Arkansas... I think. AT? Automatic transmission? AA? Yeah, I think we all know what AA is.

Just started on seminary apps. Crazy stuff. When I first got em a few weeks ago, I sorta hid em because they were scary. Ok ok. I didn't "sorta" hide them. I really hid them. Away into the abyss between books on my bookshelf.

Why so scary? Well, for the last 3 or 4 years, I haven't known specifically "what I'm going to do when I grow up." Sure, in that 4 year span... the beginning was pretty scary. All of a sudden, the goal of "gettin' my learn on" got a little cloudy. But, with time the uncertainty became my friend. I got used to it. It became the norm. And soon, the uncertainty transformed into something else. It transformed into freedom. Ch-chur-chur-chur-chi. That's the sound of a Transformer transforming.

In taking this step in applying, it almost feels like I'm losing that friend. Maybe it's the whole committing to a set path thing that was giving me a small case of the heebie-jeebies.

Now, I'm getting a major case of the heebie-jeebies because I gotta write a couple of essays. A person a couple of years removed from living in an English speaking country is expected to write an essay in English! Oy. It'd be so much easier if I could write the essays in Hideyoese, a personal mix of Japanese and English. Demo shikataganai yo ne.

I love blogger.

I just noticed now that the banner on all blog pages at the top has a "Related searches" thingy. Cal's banner has "pancakes" among other things right now. Me? I have "middle finger" and "static electricity." Great. I'm now linked to the middle finger because of my post on August 31st.