The Holidays

For those of you wondering, I am alive and well. For those of you who don’t know, I was pretty stinkin’ sick two weeks ago. I arrived back in Japan from Thailand on Friday, January 4^th. After spending a week in Thailand’s “cool season,” 90+ degrees F, Japan’s winter, and my walk from the station back to the church building where I parked my bike, seemed extremely freeeeeezing. I shivered the whole way and wondered how I was going to survive the, even colder, ride home on my bike. Anyways, the next day I went for a run (first one in a long time) and came home tired, cold and feeling funny. This funny feeling lasted the rest of the afternoon/evening and I went to bed around 10pm thinking, “I’ll just skip class at church in the morning to get an extra hour of sleep, wake up feeling better and then go to worship service.” Little did I know I wouldn’t get even a wink of sleep until abour 4:30 or 5am due to the fact that even though my bedroom was 70 degrees I was shivering, every time I laid down my stomach felt really sick, and I had to get up every 15-20 minutes to go to the bathroom or throw up. Most places in Japan, apartments included, do not have central heating. My bedroom was warm, but my kitchen/bathroom was probably around 40 degrees. Let me tell you, the toilet seat in an unheated bathroom during the winter is cold in itself, but tack on a fever and chills and you’re asking for a very unpleasant experience. To keep a long paragraph from getting too much longer, I went to the doctor the next day with my good friend Mark, found out I had a stomach virus and got some medicine. I had to miss 4 days of school two weeks ago and spent a long, boring week in my apartment while everyone else was at work. I made it back to school on Friday and, after eating only broth, soup, crackers, toast, and drinking Aquarius (a sports drink) for a week (thank you to my wonderful friends who brought me movies and things to eat), I finally got to start easing some real food back into my stomach on Saturday and Sunday.

I’m feeling great now and was even able to make a trip to Tokyo with Wade on my holiday last week on Monday. We went up to the top of “Tocho,” the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and the second tallest building in Tokyo. It is one of the only places in Tokyo with a free observatory. This was my first time to get a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, but sadly it was a cloudy day and, although we could see mountains on the other side of the massive concrete jungle, Mt. Fuji was hiding in the clouds. I was a little disappointed so I guess I’ll have to go back up again another day. We also went to China Town in Yokohama and Ogawa-machi. Ogawa-machi is in the middle of Tokyo and has a bunch of sporting goods stores filled mainly with ski equipment at the moment. But most importantly we ate a good ole’ American lunch and dinner at TGIFridays and Subway, my favorite reasons to go to Tokyo. Thank the Lord my stomach was able to handle real food by then.

So, the actual reason I started writing this post was to tell you a little about my trip to Thailand. I guess it’s time to do that now. Thailand was lots of fun. Thankfully, I stayed healthy the whole trip and didn’t get sick until I got back home. I went there with one of my Japanese friends, Minako, and we met up with a bunch of her Thai friends while we were there and traveled with some of them. We spent three full days in Southern Thailand around the Krabi area and 3 full days in Bangkok. On the way to Thailand we had a layover in Taipei, Taiwan and on the way back we had a short layover in Hong Kong and a 12 hour layover in Taipei. Because the 12 hour layover was at night we couldn’t really do anything so we slept in the airport.

Southern Thailand was really beautiful. In our area there were huge rocks and cliffs jutting out of the ground all over the place, land and water. Minako and I met her Thai friend, who we called Kani chan, at the Krabi airport and thanks to some connections we were able to stay for those three days with a Christian family in their home. The father was out of town on business, but we stayed with the mother and their 3^rd grade daughter who was really shy at first, but pretty cool and fun to be around. It was really cool to spend time with them and get to know other Christians in a different part of the world. While we were in that area we rode an elephant, went to a park with lots of monkeys (seeing a wild monkey has been a lifelong dream of mine even though one of them chased me), went to James Bond Island, went sea canoeing, hired a guide and stopped at about 4 different beautiful islands in the Andaman Sea in his little motorboat and saw some others, saw beach monkeys (who had big teeth and chased some unsuspecting girls into the ocean, which was really funny), and went snorkeling.

After Krabi we flew back to Bangkok and spent 3 full days there. I met about a million different people, with names that I couldn’t pronounce, while I was there and on the first night we went to a New Years party with a bunch of the Christians from that area and it seems like I met about 900,000 of the million people while I was at that party. This party basically consisted of a bunch of people eating for about 5 or 6 hours and then some skits and door prizes. Let me tell you, Thai people love to eat. I’m sure I gained a few pounds while I was in Thailand, but then I lost more than that when I got home and at ate near nothing for a week. My teachers kept commenting on how thin my face was when I got back to school, and that’s with my beard. The next few days, we did lots of stuff with a bunch of cool new friends. Of course we went and saw lots of famous places, like the Golden Palace, and went to some markets. I also rode in a few taxis, which were always exciting and amazingly cheap, and also a tuk-tuk. Everything is cheap in Thailand, not only taxis. I could watch a new movie for about $3, compared to the $20 it costs in Japan, buy a 10 piece chicken nuggets meal with fries and drink at McDonalds for $3, and at the mall in the food court I could eat for a dollar or two.

Oh, I guess I should tell you one more story. Let me lead into it with this: mosquitoes in Japan and America don’t usually want to bother with me. I guess I have sour blood or something, but if someone else is in the room with me they will just ignore me and if they do happen to bite me it doesn’t leave a bump or itch. My first 4 or 5 days in Thailand I heard lots of people complaining about the mosquitoes, but I didn’t get a single bite. Then one night at the Ram (short for another word I can’t spell or pronounce) Christian Center, where I stayed in Bangkok, it was pretty hot so I slept with the window open and fans blowing on me. I had done this the previous night and had no problems. (Quick fact: most places in Thailand don’t have air conditioning or hot showers for that matter.) Back to the story, I went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning with over 130 dark ugly mosquito bites on my face, neck, arms, and hands (yes, I counted). These weren’t little welts and they weren’t itchy, but they were just these little, dark, very visible bumps all over me. They didn’t start going away until about 5 or 6 days later. The funny thing is, though, these creative super Thai mosquitoes left a happy face made with bumps on my right hand. I didn’t know how it was possible for 8 mosquito bites to just somehow be in the perfect shape of a happy face. There were two eyes, a nose, and a mouth which was made out of 4 bumps. These were either very intelligent mosquitoes or God was leaving me a reminder on my hand to be happy even though I looked like I had a skin disease. I like to think the mozzies had a stomach ache after they got feasted on me. This is a quick version of my time in Thailand. There were many other things that happened that I can’t think of right now or don’t feel like typing because my fingers are cold and hard to move right now in my freezing cold school.

On to more recent things…my scooter, True Blue, which was a faithful and reliable, albeit slow, mode of transportation was stolen on SaturdayL. This scooter has a lot of tradition here in Mito. It was used by about 4 or 5 different people before I acquired it, more recently including my brother, Travis, and Mark Barneche. I was at Kendon’s apartment in Migawa, a section of Mito, watching a movie and some stupid person took it pretty early in the evening, sometime between 6 and 6:45 pm. Kendon’s landlord called the police and we had a powwow in his apartment with the po-po’s, otherwise known as filing a report. After this I got to ride in a Japanese police car with 3 policemen and try to explain to them in Japanese how to get to my apartment. Then on Tuesday I heard what I thought was some good news. I was told that my scooter was found and that the police had it. Then later on I was told that it was damaged and I couldn’t use it. The key hole was messed up, the seat cushion torn off, and below the key hole part of the scooter was cut, or torn, apart in what looks like was an attempt to hotwire it. There were also some other, less noticeable, problems. Right now I am using my friend Amber’s scooter since she has a car as well. The bad part is my scooter is ruined, but the good part is her scooter is faster than mine was! It kind of brings the exciting new scooter feeling back again.

Update: the scooter man picked up my bike, checked it out and told me it would cost 3 man (approx. $300) to fix it. Considering the fact that I only paid 50 bucks for it, the end has come for True Blue L. This is a very sad time, but she is being disposed of.