a philosophy of babies

I am surrounded by babies. Probably by more babies then I've ever seen in my life. All in the space of one month. There's probably as much crying around here as there are gawking girls drooling over their very dippers hoping that perhaps they too will one day have the privilege of holding a dear smelly one of their own. And bless their hearts. But despite the incessant noise protruding from their wide open cake-holes, babies make me think. Why do they cry? Sure its because they fell, or they want more jello even though there's none left--but why is crying the first sound they make when they're born? There's a 3 week old baby that I watch cry when someone flashes a camera in his face, or when he's grumpy, or...whenever he starts crying for no particular reason (as babies so often do). It makes wonder if they don't want to be here on earth. And why would any one? Surely we who have been alive longer then a few days know that life is pain and pain is crying. When babies cry perhaps they are lamenting life itself. It seems from their first moment on earth they protest loudly and continue to do so until they are eventually assimilated into this hostile environment so that the daily pain of life is bearable.
Cant blame then for crying really
...except when they're being snotty pricks

i wish i was a baller

no i don't wish i was baller but thats not a big deal i just thought it sounded cho genki.
its me brent livin in the north alps of japan, and I'm lovin' IT! woop woop...me and my co-guide gabriel-san got back from our adventurous hike of five nights and six days, by the way where i spent my twenty-first birthday....yes, i love my birthday but mine actually blowed because of the onsen problems (no big deal i:ll explain it if you really want to know) but the exciting thing about my birthday after i had come home from our hike my beautiful north star friends gave me a big bash, well actually they just sang me happy birthday and made me some yummy ice cream tower that looked like a poop mountain but was so tasty but since i am so thin i couldn't finish it so my fat friend amy did! i love her fatness!!! ok back to my hike...it was so amazing, um, we saw a bear that looked like a brownie because it was so far away, i wanted to eat it but knowing about my thinness i knew i wouldn't be able to... i wished amy was there. gabriel is also anorexic like me. no he's not I'm not either but its just so you get the idea of how fit me and my friend gabriel-san are. yeah about my hike: I just want to let you know/ remind you that i am really bad at telling about my life experiences so im sorry if this doesnt seem in depth enough or whatever... i will try to do my best.....oh radical-ness i went to a coldplay concert yesterday in Nagoya which was the shiznet! they were beautiful like they were so simple yet so gorgeous, like the music isnt like so complex where you are like going wow did you hear or wasnt that amazing on the guitar but its just like yeah you know? i think you do. beauty in its most expensive form. like it was reminiscent of sitting in nature and just being surrounded by beauty but it costed like 100 dollars. yep. oh lately honestly i fell in love with the computer and im on it like every three seconds so its like absolutely insane...seriously people are calling me their internet lover (amy, the fat one) im on the computer because i am doing like a mountaineering guides manual: intense.
btw also known as by the way, does anybody know about how to post pictures on this bad boy? if so let me know. coolness.
i feel like there is more that i want to say but its hard to put my finger on it...hmmmm.
oh right i totally forgot: i won a dance competition! i rock so hard, my moves are like kick ass, i move like michael jackson! you would have cried if you saw it it was honestly perfection. i won stickers. yeah thats right STICKERS! I ROCK!
its so neat that i can speak japanese, its such a blessing to be able to utilize my language gifting of the tongue for the good of humanity and adventure camp sport telephone fire....that made no sense, and i am sorry for that, but really it is good to be back in the motherland speaking my tribal language. YES...i really believe thats all this is aboot. ok peace from your sensei, live long and prosper.... dun dun dun dun du dun dun du dun dun dun dun ok i cant finish that but htat was the imperial march, vaders theme...weve got some serious star warriors here, losers. i never watch it im too cool for that i like to sleep.

yarigatake

My co-guide Gabe and I are leaving for a 7 day 6 night hike in the Northern Japan Alps. We are intending to climb Yarigatake, one of Japans highest and most famous peaks. Should have lots of hot springs and lots of 10,000ft mountains. Our mission is to scout trails for future possibilities of leading campers up them, mark evacuation routs, make contingency planns etc. A 7 day hike is by far the longest I've ever done and should be an excellent way to spend my birthday...as long as we don't run out of food.

babies?

Today I held a one day old baby. For many, their first time holding such a young little thing is a life changing experience.—it makes one think about priorities in life, beauty, and the meaning of life itself. I would just like to preface my following statements by saying that I am not a horrible person, I do not hate small humans, and some people have even been known to call me “nice”. As privileged as I am to receive these flattering comments I am not mentioning them without purpose; I will trust you keep these things in mind for the remainder of this post. For you see, unlike the average dreamy male who loves the little things to death, I look down to the smelly bundle in my hands and recognize him as a representation of all the crying babies I have ever encountered on air, land, and oceanic transportation devices…and a bundle that somewhat brings to mind prunes or lizards for some reason. Naturally, I wonder if I will always feel this way towards miniature humans and something tells me I wont but we’ll travel intrepidly so as not to wake the sleeping babies. I look forward to the day that I come to respect mini-humans as cute little "snookie-wookums" as grannies always say.

In more of an update, a YWAM team of 9 just joined the lofty ranks of the Northstar staff. They’re fresh from America but surprisingly willing to be assimilated to Japanese culture—a rare and admirable combination…for being Americans. Good people though, very good. I’ve also been doing a fair bit of translating from Japanese to English; a new and somewhat nerve racking hobby to be forced to undertake, but my skills in Japanese are slowly returning. Every word I remember is treated like the prodigal son-with celebrations and feasts and rainbow coats and the killing of fatty animals. The best part about the arrival of the YWAM team is that now we have regular meals because before YWAM came the staff numbers were so few that there were no meals. Of course you must understand there are no campers yet either so having regular meals for four staff members seamed understandably superfluous. It was thus commissioned from a higher rank that we not be fed, but instead reap our own fields in spring, if you know what I mean. So that meant coffee for breakfast, a role for lunch, and plain rice for dinner. I also weighed myself for the fist time in 2 years and found that I had lost 12lbs since high school. This came as a surprise to Brent who, not having much to loose in the first place, was likely invisible from the side view much as paper is invisible when looked at from the right angle.

state plainly

The state of Japan is at best depressing. Here are people who have everything if not more than our white neighbors have. There are no scenes of poverty in this country that will bring churches to pass around offering plates, there are no naked, barefoot, starving children wasting away on the streets, there is no civil war, ethnic cleansing, oppressive government, not even rampant crime—it’s the safest country in the world! There is nothing I can see that will tell me how sad this place is. The problem is so indefinable and undiscoverable that most who visit here never see or understand that there could possibly be a problem—a problem that can’t be fixed by throwing money at the situation, preaching, becoming a Christian, or sending them away. And I haven’t the foggiest idea what it could be. But there is desperation for something I don’t know, for life.

Put your offering plates back on the shelf, for one thing I believe strongly; money will not reverse the damage that money has caused.

Shin-ShimaShima

First, a thought from the office I used to work at (emphasis on *used* to work at, thank goodness). There’s no lying about it, we've all had more then our share of evil elementary teachers. For me that teachers name was Mrs. Anderson you can imagine how easy it would be to pick on a foreign kid disguised in white skin who couldn't read the word "cat" while all his classmates were reading Pilgrims Progress in old English. And to make matters worse, I was going to a Christian school. But that is not what I am trying to talk about--it has plagued me for many a year as to how these evil teachers become evil. Surely at some point they were normal. And in the rare case that your evil teacher has found a suitable mate--she must have been human enough to feel some kind of emotion and look attractive enough at some point in life. Well I have now seen how these teachers happen and now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense--office ladies. Office ladies are anal about small things, have favorites, suck up to their bosses, expect everyone to be wrong except for themselves, and I’ve noticed they have a particular aversion to people. When I was talking to one of these type of office ladies about future ambitions I vomited a small amount in the back of my throat as she told me she was studying elementary education and wanted to become a teacher. Suddenly I was standing in front of Mrs. Andersen II talking to her pre-teacher self. May those children’s souls rest in peace.

I am excited to announce that I have officially made it to Japan. The way you can tell a stand-by passenger from a normal one is by looking around during the safety demonstration; the only people who have their heads held high and are beaming like they've just won the lottery are probably them. In light of its cheap price I tend to forget the high price one pays for a stand-by ticket. In a grueling battle of attrition between me and the airplane, 3 precious days of transportation were lost to what I now call, "limbo"--Greek god of grayness. His chariot? the most notable invention of the 20th century--the air plane. In a moment enlightenment I realized that the pressure of an airplane, the complete compressed enclosure of its doors seems to parallel the complete vacuum of time it represents. You simply sleep when you want and the meals are given out at amazingly random times, i.e. why are you serving me lunch at 2 in the bloody morning? I don't care if its lunch time in Siberia! I need my sleep!

In any case, I was a bit apprehensive when disembarking the plane. I had a slight feeling of guilt in my stomach; similar to the kind of guilt I would imagine would be felt by someone who was committing adultery. For you see, I had given up my long lost proven friend for a cheap fling out in the Americas--a fling which I thought would complete my being and solve my problems, but which I have found to be as empty as Americans answers to geography questions. With this odd comparison in mind, I timidly exited the long vacuum-cleaner-hose walkway back to the country that I have dreamt of returning to for so long. In order to complete my happiness, I moved Japan time from the secondary time on my watch to primary, and American time to secondary. After inhaling a long, humid, hot breath I knew that I was really back. Although self-admittedly I am somewhat apprehensive. I knew a Japan really well when I lived here, but I have changed and many of the people who made Japan for me are now gone. In the back of my mind I wonder if Japan and I are still going to be friends. Its the way I wonder about old friends when we go out to coffee, are we still friends even though we've both changed in so many ways? Can the same friendship still be had, because chances are that there's not enough time to build a new one.

Now that I have arrived at the Northstar campus near Shin-ShimaShima (ya, the name of a station. Try saying it, its fun) in Nagoya I realize that Japan is home to fantastical natural beauty. I haven't seen such a beautiful place since Austria--and that’s just what it looks like too, flowery fields surrounded by foothills while off in the distance rises the Japan alps all snowy an jagged like. I've always suspected Japan might be home to natural beauty but this is more than what I expected. So to all of you out there who think Japan is nothing but city, tell all your friends that its not, it is your obligation to spread this rare truth.

As far as Northstar is concerned, I am super excited and super privileged to be able to do what I am doing here. Due to Japans dire need for outdoors people who know what they're doing, it seems my area of study, and therefore, I, am some kind of rare specimen around these parts. My duty is to develop, standardize, and lead 4 day backpacking trips around this area. What I am most excited about is Northstar’s desire for excellence and professionalism in the activities they do--apparently it is this that separates Northstar from the few other camps around Japan. All told, good vibes so far.
Good vibes.

stand-by 101

Dirt-bag travelers, hearken these words of wisdom.
The time is upon us my dear friends in but eleven short days I will be standing in a crowded airport staring blankly at the ticket agent who will be trying to convince me to go home instead of chancing a flight to Japan when all the seats are oversold. If you’ve done it before, you know exactly what I’m talking about; stand-by flying…when you metaphorically, literally, spiritually, ecumenically, and grammatically fly be the seat of your pants. For most, the goal of stand-by flying (henceforth referred to as SB flying) is to get there. By any means possible. In the past I have even contemplated breaking the legs of paying passengers in an attempt to heighten my chances of getting on the plane or just stick my foot out and trip them just to see if they break an ankle…or head. You could call SB flying the great equalizer of modernday man. I am convinced that no matter how nice you are when you step into the air port, as soon as you step into the security line and pass through the S.S.S.S. (“Super Special Security Screening” - an unfortunate custom observed with every SB passenger where the guards make you take off everything but your pants and shirt in an effort to thwart terrorism. But what kind of dirt bag terrorist would fly stand-by anyways? If you’re going to kill yourself at least do in comfort and style-that’s what I say). There are a few rules of SB flying that I have learned over my extensive experience there of:

1. Never listen to The Check in Lady. Her main purpose is to get rid of you and treat you like trash. Remember—you are not a paying customer, therefore your opinion doesn’t matter, you are only extra work.

2. Be head strong. Many times the only way of getting a Check In Lady to help you with something is by being persistent and annoying. This is not an act of rudeness because you will find that they react the exact same way, and in fact treat everyone with the same rudeness. One might call this the airport culture.

3. Be open to friendliness especially with other SB’s. You could be in the airport stranded for days or weeks, there’s only a few other people who know your troubles like you do, the SB’s. They are your protection and your theft control at night-you must trust these people and comfort each other in your journeys and trials. As much as possible, learn the names and do small talk with The Ladies Behind The Desk and make yourself a friendly recognizable face-this will help you feel more at home and may also serve as an anti-theft device.

4. Take everything in stride. Never panic or show signs weakness, I’m convinced the Ladies Behind The Desk like to see us that way. We will not ever let them win. Never.

5. Your primary objective of going to the airport is NOT to catch a plane (a common misunderstanding). Make your own primary objective i.e. make friends, carry old ladies stuff, read a book, do 50 push ups, make a Desk Lady laugh, time your run from one end of the air port to the other etc. Your secondary objective is catching a plane. With this attitude The Ladies always lose, and you are in a win win situation.
Now, go forth and do likewise my young choco-bean and be fruitful.

As you may have guessed, I am flying stand-by to Japan from Seattle on the 16th—18th area. A mere 11 days away, and though I feel bad for quitting my cruise ship office lady job so soon, I cant help but feel totally elated for busting out of that climate controlled prison of my soul. Almost there.