People continue to ask me to write more, but there is so much to say that I don't know where to begin. As you all know I am in Nippon, also known as Nihon, better known as Japan. I take an adventure every day of my life now ... adventuring in another country is the best life I could ever ask for. I must say, to all of the people reading this that have not travelled or experienced another culture in some way shape or form, please do so.
A friend of mine, and I, have a continued discussion about how Americans do not have culture. This is a very sad thought but if you think about it, what is the culture? Is your culture giving presents on Christmas Day and shooting guns on New Years. What about - bbqing in the summer and going to the club on Saturday night. Name one thing that is specific to JUST America. Exactly! You are probably still thinking. The only thing that we could come up with was baseball.
But, when you consider nihon-jin (japanese people) they have so much culture, so much wealth, so much prosperity, so much truth, so much! They have specific things they do with their family, which is mostly everything. They vacation as a culture. They do a lot of things. There are some things that I find very interesting about these people though.
Nihon-jin are extremely fashionable. For those that know me know, Im not fashionable or stylish - I just wake up and put on clothes that match. But in Japan everyone has Gucci and Louis Vuitton because its normal. It does not bother them that a purse costs 100,000jpy, thats just normal to them. Its normal to them to go spend their cash at Zara, Gap Woman (exclusive to Japan), Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Dolce and Gabana (sp?). It is normal to them to dress their children in the best designer fashion on the face of this planet. It is normal to them to spend more money time and effort on fashion then it is, lets say, transportation. Most people in Japan do not have cars, though they are not a necessity, its just interesting. If I called my most materialistic fashionable friend and suggested he gets rid of his car in order to only wear LV, Gucci, Feragamo (sp?), Cartier, Rock and Republic and shop at Saks and Neimans, I dont know if he would. Though all of those names are big to him, being able to get around is more important because he may be to bougie to catch the public transportation, unless he lives in New York. When I think about necessities in life, it seems to me that the necessities of this country are vastly different form in America. I also find it very interesting that they only use cash. It is very rare that they own credit cards. HOWEVER, they could charge something with their cell phone! Yes, they can use their cellular devices to charge something, crazy, right?
I am making an attempt to learn nihongo (japanese) and it is quite challenging. After you learn the vowels you can spell everything, which is great, but then you dont know what it means, lol. Its also interesting because the rules of japanese language are so intense that if i say akita (uh-kee-ta) they have no idea what i am talking about because they say (ah-kee-tah). Yes, very different in japanese. They have various ways of contact, the syllabification is amazing, and the sentence structure is difficult. Example: akita desu ka. translates to: akita where is question mark. They do not have question marks, periods, etc. They have inflections for most statements and ka represents a question. Its very interesting.
In other news, I went out with my conet, manager and managers husband yesterday and it was so much fun. We started our journey to Osaka at about noon and headed to a mexican restaurant, el pancho, that was GREAT! Then we ventured off into the wonderful world of shopping. It was cold and rainy, but it was a good day. We also went to the international store (jupiter) and got some goodies. Thats all I have to say about that day, I cant remember what I wanted to blog about.
Additionally, yesterday was Sunday which means, CHURCH! So, in church (ray of hope, online) the preacher (rev. jaz, guest preacher, its revival) spoke on the year of new beginnings and coming from behind in order to take over. So yesterday I experienced a Happy New Year type of situation. Since Ive been in Japan I have learned a tremendous amount of information. I have learned about love, prayer, life, self, intelligence, intellectualism, desires, interests, wants, needs, travel, culture, language, decision making, independence, dependency, fake-isms, and probably a host of other things. But, the most important part of the sermon I grasped is "even though you are experiencing an issue you are not the issue." For so long I have been experiencing issues ... life and death, loyalty and dishonor, & love and hate. Everything that bothers me has resolved around those three differences. But the pastor also said something else, "you are at your lowest point today. God is using you to create a new better being and you will never be at this point again. You are not the first to experience what you are experiencing and you wont be the last so you must simply push past this, sew your seed and move on." For those of you that don't know I am a religious and spiritual person. I believe in a higher being and I believe that everything happens for a reason. I have always seen myself as the woman that will change the world, one person at a time. I have always been that girl that will love everyone, often before she loves herself. But now that I am gone, I am realizing so many people and relationships that I had while I was at home were irrelevant. I had a lot of salt inflicted wounds because of the company I kept. I was not a happy person and I was not able to see my unhappiness until I started experiencing happiness. Example: I took care of my grams for the summer as well as my dads puppy. Now, as crazy as it seems I was happiest in the simple moments. I was happiest when lillie mae, yoshi and i would be in the front yard laying, sitting and standing ... talking about random stuff like the leaves on the trees. I was happiest when I would pick grams up and she would talk about Barack Obama, how that woman was so in the know, i still dont know. The days that we talked about why it rains, and why flowers are purple or laughed at yoshi because he is secretly a human - those were the days that I loved. Its amazing that through death I continue to find life. As I looked at Geeper for the last time I knew that I had some sort of purpose. I knew that he fulfilled a purpose that was so great noone could ever forget his memory and the legacy of love he left. When I saw grams take her final breath after I told her she could go now because I could handle it, I felt a sense of rebirth. And in the sermon I realized my storm is not quite over yet, but my rainbow is forming through the raindrops. I like this place I am in now. I like the feeling of creating a person on the basis of love (God creating the Garnet he wants) and me falling in love with that person. If you do not love yourself, first, how do you expect someone to love you unconditionally.
This is my post ....
hope you enjoyed.
ahava
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