This debate was on science and religion, and was mediated by Jeremy Paxman. The following clips are approximately one hour.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

I think it’s time to show my blog a little more love. I spent an entire summer in Japan and only made two updates—that’s a bit sad! In an effort to redeem myself and to share some of my experiences I’m going to slowly update the blog with some photos from my semester abroad. I hope you guys enjoy it! I’ll start with a few from Kyoto.

Kyoto Station 京都駅

This is a picture I took when we first arrived at the station in Kyoto. It was a long trip, but not too bad since we took the shinkansen. I absolutely loved the architecture and had to get a few shots of the place. I was still a bit drained from the long train ride, so I didn’t get as many as I would’ve liked.

Out of all of the stations I’ve been to it was one of the busiest and full of tourists. One family from the UK that was leaving decided to dump all their tour books off on us as a “gift”….I think those books are still sitting somewhere in Kyoto til this day!

Sorry for the large file sizes. I don’t have any photo editing software on this computer. Check back soon and I’ll share some more!

I recently read a petition online that one of my closest childhood friends signed that infuriated me. Let’s get something straight right off the bat: Same-sex marriages doesn’t harm you, so why unnecessarily harm gay people? Stop the religious bigotry and open your eyes for once!

I’m in full support of freedom of religion, but not when that freedom imposes itself harmfully on the lives of others. Just because YOUR church and YOUR religious beliefs are against same-sex marriage doesn’t mean that everyone else’s is! Marriage didn’t begin with Christianity so stop trying to confine the rights that everyone has to suit YOUR religious doctrine.

I know the bible says that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, but guess what? Not everyone believes in the bible. Just because you do doesn’t mean that the rest of the society has to live by your rules.

It’s amazing how Christian fundamentalists are in full support of freedom of religion when it comes to teaching creationism in schools, but suddenly are against it when it comes to same-sex marriages, abortions, or anything else that doesn’t agree with them. Do you not see the hypocrisy? Are you really that incapable of thinking rationally?

I won’t say who the person is, but I know that she is much smarter than this. I just find it unbelievable that anyone (especially among those who are close to me) could be so ignorant.

Let’s look at part of what the petition says:

We believe that the family is the bedrock and backbone of our society. Therefore, the fundemental institution which creates the family, marriage, should be protected.

First off this wrongfully assumes that families can only exist inside of a marriage. If a married couple has a child and then later divorces does that mean that the father or mother is no longer a parent of that child? Or what about couples who have children and were never married to begin with? Could you really look at their children and tell them that they don’t have a family?

fam-i-ly adjective: parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not.

Other than certain legal rights (tax benefits, custody, etc) marriage isn’t the key definition of a family. Ask yourself this: If your son or daughter one day had a child outside of marriage would you really believe your grandchild was of no relation?

Further, we recognize that marriage as an institution serves a larger purpose than a demonstration of love and commitment between two adults.

Oh really? Let’s hear some examples outside of your own religious beliefs.

We recognize that the State has an interest in protecting the institution of marriage because it is vital to protecting the institution of the family and the family is the bedrock of our society.

Oh I wholeheartedly agree that families are integral to a healthy and functioning society, but I don’t see where marriage helps any especially with its high rates of divorce among Christians. Bitter and nasty divorces sometimes harm family members for the rest of their lives. What proof do you have that marriage between a man and a woman is more beneficial to our society than a same-sex marriage, or no marriage at all?

We acknowledge that marriage, while a demonstration of love and commitment, also serves for the betterment, growth and continuation of our society because married couples will produce the next generation of Americans.

Oh yeah, because we all know that unmarried couples are incapable of producing children.. /sarcasm. How about instead of being so concerned with producing more children we take care of the millions of starving ones we already have?

While not every married couple will produce offspring, no homosexual couple has the physical capacity to do so.

Your point?

I’m sorry, but this way of thinking really needs to end. If you’re against same-sex marriage take it up with your own church, but leave the rest of the nation out of it. Remember the little line in the bible that says “do unto others as you want done unto you”? If you really want people to stop imposing limitations on your religious beliefs and practices, then stop doing the same thing to them.

It’s amazing how many Japanese holidays there are during the summer. It seems that each week we have a day off, and this week just happened to be Friday. I didn’t go out partying, however, but instead stayed in my room and made a sincere effort to study.

I’m a little bit mad and disappointed with my Japanese class back in the states. Our class wasn’t taught nearly as much as we should have in terms of verb forms and kanji, and I’m split on trying to figure out why.

One explanation could simply be the book that we’re using called なかま meaning Nakama, which is setup horribly. During the first semester of Japanese you should learn around 50 kanji…our class learned 0. Yep. None. During the second semester you’re supposed to learn an additional 80. I think we may have learned about 20.

Kanji is introduced fairly late in なかま and doesn’t show up until somewhere around the 8th chapter. So the problem I’m having now is that I’m trying to take Japanese 201 here in Japan, but I don’t have knowledge of the verb forms and kanji needed.

The second explanation I can think of is that our sensei is purposefully going easy on us. We only covered chapters 6-9 this spring, which really isn’t anything when you think about it. Is it possible that she thinks we can’t handle it?

It’s frustrating me to go from being one of the best in my class back home, to being one of the worst here. I’m mad at not being prepared properly for the level I’m supposed to be at. So here I am trying to cram the entire げんき- Genki 1 book over the weekend to catch up with the rest of Japanese 201. Anyway, wish me luck!

Yesterday was an amazing day! A couple of us went to the Asakusa temple during a festival, and there were thousands of people there. It was kind of hard to stop and look at everything, because there were so many people and they pushed you along. There were colorful shops everywhere, and more food than you could imagine.

Yes I actually ate one of those! Well…kinda…I got too grossed out to eat the head!
After taking a look around the temple we came out and somehow ended with a front row view of the shrines as they passing through. The energy level of the crowd while they were passing through was intense. People were shoving, yelling, screaming, cheering and at first I didn’t know what to think. I saw a whole section of people watching from the side get shoved down! I was scared at first, but quickly glad I came. It was amazing to say the least!

So last night after an extremely long flight I made it in to Tokyo! Just a word to the wise and budget conscious: do NOT catch a taxi from the airport. I got here and immediately found myself forking over $280! Luckily when we all went out to eat the food was pretty cheap, because I had about emptied my wallet.

I woke to find that my room mate finally made it in last night after an extremely delayed flight, so I’ll keep this short to not wake her. Anyway, yay I’m in Tokyo! じゃね。

Sorry for my lack of posts lately, but balancing school, work, and preparing for the summer has kept me pretty busy. The good news is that I got accepted to Temple-Japan! The bad news, however, is that I’m still trying to come up with the funds necessary to cover the program. Time is quickly running out, and financially I’m still in the hole. Hopefully it’ll all work out in the end though, and I’ll get to enjoy a semester in Tokyo. It’s hard to get a student loan with the current state of the US economy. Major institutions such as Bank of America have stopped offering them all-together. I’ll cross my fingers though, and should know by the end of the week if I’ll be able to attend for sure or not.

I haven’t heard yet from Temple as to whether or not I’ve been accepted into their Japan program. I’m still crossing my fingers and being hopeful that I will. I think that my chances are pretty good, but I don’t want to set myself up for a huge let down. Other than that not much has really change–which could be a good thing. Classes are going ok, although I do have a big load of studying I need to do. I’m trying to work it down bit by bit.

I really would like to get my hair cut, but getting a hold of a good hair dresser has been impossible. Oh, and my goal for losing weight so far has been a success! I’ve knocked down about 10 pounds since I first started, which is a pretty healthy rate since it’s over the span of several weeks. About 15 more and I’ll be happy.

My roommate Tia is trying to get me to sign up for some network marketing thing selling Noni products. Although I’m a bit skeptical about if I should try it out or not. It wouldn’t be so bad if the starting rate weren’t so high. $550 is a lot to ask a college student to just shell out in hopes of making more. I could end up losing it all. So far Tia hasn’t been able to get anyone to sign up for the program, so I’m guessing her money is in the hole. It pretty much sounds like a pyramid scheme to me though. The only way to really make profit is to get other people to join, and stick with it. I really don’t know anyone who would be willing to do it. That plus the Tahitian Noni Juice I tasted was horrible, and I’m supposed to help sell it? I’ll give it some more thought.. I will be strapped for cash if I get to study abroad this summer.

Gotta love em’! Here I am about four hours later, with still not an ounce of sleep. Considering I have to be at work in two more hours it really isn’t worth it at this point. Falling asleep now would just make me more tired than I already am when I wake up. I spent the majority of the night (or morning depending on how you look at it) parousing the internet, reading various feeds. I’m just now starting to catch on to the RSS trend, and subscribed to a few international news sources.

If there’s anything all of my professors made clear on the first day of class, it’s that we need to start acquainting ourselves with global issues via newspapers, magazines, and other reliable sources, and stop depending on television. Although my tv watching days have drastically declined over the past couple years, I can still see the importance of catching up on world news routinely from respectable sources–especially those related to Asia. If I want to get my Masters in International Relations I need to know my stuff.

Hmm.. 10am.. I better get a move on it.

I really need a new job.. Wal-Mart is wearing me out. It’s a bad sign when the thought of having to go to work brings you to tears, and not ones of joy. My legs and feet ache so bad that I can’t walk right now. The stress, hours, and frustration are not worth the measly $10/hr that I am making right now. I have the job duties of a manager, but I’m making shit for money. I really need to find something different.

College really makes it difficult to find another job though, because the hours I’m available to work are very limited. This semester isn’t quite as bad as the last one. I could find a job at maybe a bank or something MWF during the daytime, before Japanese. I guess I should swing by Wachovia at some point and put in a job application. I wouldn’t mind working for the university if they weren’t so unreliable at paying you on time. With the amount of bills that I have I can’t really afford to be paid late.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that I’m applying to Temple University-Japan for their upcoming summer program! At first I was just going to go for 3 weeks to a language school there, but if I get accepted by Temple I can stay for 11 weeks instead, and get college credit. The fall semester would be even better since they offer Political Science courses, but Morgan State (my current university) requires that our last 30 credits be taken on campus. Either way I still want to go for the experience and I’m very excited.