I made this video for my roommate Rusty's byebye Party

Dec 12. Discussing photos sent from the US

Karaoke for the First Time

Food Show

Santa in Tokyo

Don K

A few favorite places

Thanksgiving in Japan

Ok I made it in less than two months between posts!! Get excited. I though you should all know that I went to an American football game at the Tokyo Dome (a baseball stadium) played by Japanese guys! My roommate met one of the cheerleaders for one of the teams and she gave us free tickets. Our team lost in overtime. It was one of those frustrating games. "Our" team (the deers, yes deers with an s, I know it's not a real word) was up the whole game then gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown with a few minutes left. Since the other team (the seagulls, they had both a white seagull and a brown one, appearantly to represent the seagulls that get into an oil spill, I'm not sure) had missed an extra point earlier so it was a tie. I'm pretty sure all the Japanese businessmen (the teams are corporate sponsored teams, and I know all the cheerleaders work for the company, not sure about the players) were completely confused as to what the "tb" as it said on the scoreboard (tiebreaker) was for. They played college rules with each team getting a shot at scoring. The gulls scored a touchdown on their chance, then missed another extrapoint (the first miss was a block this was just a shank, not high quality kicking, and you'd think this would be the easiest part since you just go find a soccer player to kick) so all "our" deers had to do was score a touchdown and make the extra point. Well they got first and goal from the 9 very quickly. Then proceeded to throw incomplete passes 3 our of the 4 downs to lose. "What's the big deal?" you ask. Well the team had thrown 9 total passes with an astounding 3 completions the whole game (and rushed 61 times) yet decide overtime was when their quaterback was going to suddenly become clutch!?! What was that? At least on the positive side the overtime was at our end of the field so we had perfect seats. Also it seemed the refs did a pretty good job calling the game. High fives all around. (Oh and all but one of the refs were wearing glasses. Pretty awesome.)
Have some good turkey the next few days. And enjoy your quality football.
Daniel

wow its been too long.....

ok. i have to apologize. it's been over a month and a half since i've posted on here. anna is disgusted im sure. she updates 3 times a day i think. anyways i did just send an email out so that should be your main source of the info. i do have a funny story though from yesterday. so movies in tokyo or slightly pricey. 1800 yen for a normal person. however, on the 1st of each month they are only 1000 yen. 800 yen off without doing anything! very nice. however of course most of the good movies appearantly come out between the 3rd and the 20. wouldn't you know. also even though i live in one of the busiest areas of the WORLD, none of the theatres in shibuya have more than 4 screens. now atleast none of the movies are doubling up and showing the same thing as another. so that is a positive. but there are 5 theatres at my station and here is the breakdown of screens per theatre: 4, 2, 2, 1, and 1. ARE YOU SERIOUS!? and one of the movies was a french (or italian, not sure) movie. therefore foreign language (french or italian)AND foreign subtitles (japanese). a little much for me to follow. actually the 2 movies i wanted to see opened 10/3 and 10/10 (although appearantly it premiered in tokyo 9/21 but who knows where). now here is the real kicker. the last showing at ALL the theatres....was between 7-7:45. what is that?! shibuya is hopping till 1am everyday. in decatur during school on the weekdays movies don't even START till 6. whewww. anyways good part of it was we found all the theatres in the area. and there was some adventure involved. (and yes i know i used WAY to many capital letters in there.)

anyways, i just got back from a retreat last week in the mountains. and this week we start rolling on going to the universities. so prays would be amazing. ya'll feel free to pray for anna, paul, and mallory my peeps elsewhere in the world. amazingly ive heard from all 3 of them in the last 3 days! so i know they would appreciate some prayin' too.

you guys are great!

A little Update

Ok guys. I know I've been slacking here. So I will try to catch you up. I am fully moved into my apartment now. One of my Japanese friends called it a mansion. It is a normal 3 bedroom for us in the states. But it is really nice and in a very pricey section of town. I now also am an officially registered alien, which means I can get a cell phone (which I do have and yes Japanese cellphones are definitely better than US) and I got a library card and have already used it 3 times in 4 days at 2 different branches (one has English books, the other has the cds, I haven't found any dvds yet). Today we also had the first meeting of a new house church, and Saturday another one started across town (which is actually a long way here in Tokyo =). Pray that the Japanese will open up as well as take leadership roles in the churches. On another note I randomly encountered a gay pride festival (at least I'm pretty sure it was) yesterday. Also this week is the festival of the dead where families remember their anscestors, many people go to their hometown and actual think about spiritual things (although certainly not Christian). Pray for a guy named Leon who I have been meetig with. He is a new believer and is on fire. Pray that I can help him grow deeper and that he won't loose that fire. Thanks for reading and all your prayers!
Daniel
PS - I've had Dr Pepper and grape Fanta in consecutive days. Needless to say, two pretty good days.

Shibuya Station

The infamous crosswalk at Shibuya.

In Tokyo

OK guys. I'm in Tokyo. I really want to put a video I made of Shibuya station on here but it's not working. I'll link it to my facebook though if you can watch it on there. So far we have already had 2 baptisms. (They resulted from the interns work this summer, plus the Holy Spirit and such.) I am somewhat over jet lag. I am in an apartment by myself at the moment (not a fan) but will move over with everyone else when the interns leave. If you would be praying that I can pick up this strange language everyone is speaking.
Thanks for your prayers
Daniel

Getting set to leave

Ok guys. I am back from Virginia. I've packed 3 bags. And I leave on Monday for Tokyo. I'm excited certainly, nervous as well. I've appreciated your prayers. Now is when I am going to need them even more. I'll be entering another culture; my first trip overseas, and I didn't pick a short trip =). I'm not sure what to expect, but my supervisors are suppose to be meeting me at the airport which is exciting. I am going to get to see the end of the "volunteer season" which should help prepare me for next summer. God is good and I know He will provide.
Daniel

Initial post

This is my initial post (obviously since that's the title). Just wanted to let anyone reading this that I am going to try to update this regularly when I get to Japan.
Daniel