C. Buddha's Hasty Musings

One of the primary reasons I stayed in Japan to work (instead of going back to the states) after graduating university was that I wanted to learn business Japanese. When I first came to this country, I was completely immersed in a Japanese environment, on my uncle’s church out in Asuka Mura. It’s in a very rural area. I saw other gaijin maybe once every couple weeks or so, usually they were visiting the ancient tombs for which the town is famous. So I went through some heavy culture shock and it was tough, but it helped prepare me for Japanese classes at Tenri University. The Japanese studies program, which…

When I was a kid I used to make miniature gladiator rings in my backyard by digging a ring in the hard-packed dirt and filling it with water, so the gladiators inside the ring could not escape. The gladiators, of course, were ants, because ants are just badass. I used to hold these fights between red ants and black ants, in a ratio of about 10:1 because the red ants were so much bigger and stronger. The black ants basically acted like a bunch of sissies until the red ants started tearing them apart – then the group mind thing would kick in, and the black ants would swarm the…