This one's kind of a downer...ごめん。。。

These days life has become increasingly testing on me. At first I was able to bear it with the strength of wanting to be what others want me to be. However, as the days have worn on, my strength to be such a person has been waning as I continuously wonder why God put me here in Japan, and how in the world I could possibly deserve such an experience. I am frustrated, because I never feel like enough. I am not fun. I am not outgoing. When I am outgoing, I usually offend someone, so I'm trying to avoid that at all costs... It really sucks to be shy. I feel as though I am often hiding the real me from people, or even assuming myself that the real me is different than I perceive me to be. I need a lot of prayer for my attitude and for loving people since I've hit this slump, and it's been difficult to not allow my internal processes and feelings to affect other people.

Well, that was the downer, now here are some pictures after our trip to stay up overnight in a family restaurant in Tsukiji and then go out to buy the freshest sushi ever...:

Tokyo Tower at night


me, Nanako & Ashley at the restaurant:


me, Nanako, Ashley, Yuki, Miku, Walter & Ross at the restaurant....with coffee (and Mark sleeping in the background):


Here's how we stayed awake....Ross and Kev drank far too much coffee for their own health:


And Walter sang some crazy bunny song (I'm not sure if he knew I was recording this...muahaha):


And here's Kev and Tomohito with a live crab...:


And on Sunday, I spent the day with Miki, who is a really cool girl! We had so much fun...we ate Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (that's Miki's hometown!) and Osaka-style okonomiyaki and we were SO full....but what's okonomiyaki without the ice cream, right? So I got some melon flavored ice cream and she got green tea ice cream...mmm... :) So, then we went to purikura (sorry, I don't have any pictures of that online...only in sticker form...), which was lots of fun! And then we did some window shopping and sat in this Japanese-Italian restaurant called Saizeriya for the drink bar, and we drank some delicious tea and melon soda...mmm... :)

Here's a picture of Miki and me! (courtesy of Liz's pictures on Facebook...this is from Karaoke):


Also, this part of the post is from later today, after I wrote the first part, but I was listening to some mewithoutYou (as always...), and my iPod started to play the song "Yellow Spider", some lyrics stuck out to me that I wanted to share (I will also share the video from YouTube)

"Builder with the broken bricks
Mother to the baby chicks
You made this world to look so nice
I wonder what the next one's like...."