Well, not really. I just realized that I should give a proper #self-introduction after a few days of posting my #writing and rambling. How rude of me. I apologize!
Greetings, Steemians! Allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Ken Dewitt. Well, that's not exactly true. It's actually just my pen name. My real name is Bill.
That's really me, when I was about seven or eight. No, I should say that WAS me.
I'm gonna start from the present and work my way back I guess, because that seems just as logical as the other way around, so...
I'm an American who's been living in #Japan for the past 9 years or so, running my own small English school. I enjoy teaching, but I've been getting the urge to pack up and head to greener pastures lately. So if you're interested in living near #Kyoto and running an English school, hit me up.
When I'm not teaching I'm usually in #Osaka with my girlfriend. She's not Japanese though, she's Thai. She likes taking photos.
And other times I'm barbecuing at Lake Biwa with friends.
Or, you might find me hanging out at a local bar.
And on occasion I still train in #Bujinkan Taijutsu. I finally got 4th Dan, which means I still don't know what I'm doing, but with more authority than when I used to be a green belt. This is my training partner and teacher. He trains more than I do, that's why he gets to wear the panda mask.
Oh yeah, and when my muse speaks to me, I write. I've been working on this monstrosity called The Self-Published Self-Publisher's Guide to Self-Publishing. It's all about a guy figuring things out for himself, and learning to separate shit from Shinola as he traverses time, space, and parallel universes in search of the secret to making his living online. I'm not planning on a paper version, because I figure that by the time I finish it, nobody will be publishing paper books anymore. I'm considering having it engraved on a stone tablet, though.
I've also been dabbling in Cryptocurrency for the past year or so, first with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and now with Steem. I'm focused on the long term. I want crypto to take over. I don't see how it can't, but which ones will come out on top years from now is the big question. I'd be really surprised if Steem isn't one of them. You never know, it could turn out to be the
but I don't think that's very likely.
I have a love / hate relationship with Japan. I like most of the people I know on a personal level. People are people everywhere. But I can't stand the strict #hierarchical-society and unquestioning obedience to the rules. Form is everything, function is an afterthought. I'll go into that in other posts.
There are a lot of beautiful places here, though. And a lot of interesting things to see and do. I like driving around and exploring, or hiking up mountains once in a while. This is from a Zen temple not far away.
And this is from a nearby nature preserve, I guess you could call it. I have no idea what this is, but it looks like something from the Jomon period.
And this is a Tengu statue somewhere in the Kyoto area. Tengu are associated with ninjas and foreigners. Hence the long nose, as that's how Japanese traditionally view Westerners.
But you know, what I really like is what a lot of what people in Japan have to say through their clothing choices, which I'll use a few more of in this post.
I also like a lot of #Japanese-food. But, then again, I like food, period. But there are always interesting options on the menu here.
These are all good, but the pork is unbelievable!
Before Japan I was in the Los Angeles area for five years with my ex-wife, getting my degree in East Asian Studies. Why? Because before LA I had been in Japan for a year and a half, studying #Japanese diligently and wondering what I was going to do with my GI Bill money. So I did the most obvious thing, breeze my way through school with something I already knew I could do well with.
Fast-forwarding further back in time, I was in Japan (first time), Pittsburgh, Seattle, and before that, Chiang Mai, #Thailand for a while. That was in 1999. Love it there. Best vibe I've existed in.
This kid helped his dad fix my buddy's flat tire on his bike, then he gave me his visor! So I gave him my hat. Thai culture is all about giving and waiting for it to come back to you. I still have the visor. I'll do a whole post on that later, too.
I studied a little Thai but didn't live there long enough to get it up to the same level my Japanese is at. But according to them I have an infinite number of lives to get that sorted out.
I also started training in Bujinkan in Chiang Mai with my best friend who'd been training in Japan. We rented out the Muay Thai ring at the night market and went at it. I'm pretty sure the guy who rented it to us wasn't the manager.
Years later, I finally got to train with the grandmaster of the Bujinkan, Masaaki Hatsumi and that was pretty awesome. He's so much older and Yoda-like now than when I used to read about him in the books and magazines when I was a kid.
And before that, from around 96 to 99, I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for three years, training Saudi Air Force guys in the subtleties of swap-tronics and booting up ancient computers from reel-to-reel tape drives with manually entered hex code.
In my off time there I partied a lot with my coworkers, drinking homemade beer and moonshine AKA siddiqi, or "my friend" in Arabic. We also went camping out in the desert. Great parties and great people. There's nothing like watching a meteor shower (Leonids I think it was) in a clear desert sky where you can see all the stars, and on Halloween no less, with people in costumes having a great time. It's like a magic carpet ride.
From 92 to 96 I was in the Air Force. That's what I did after high school instead of going to college. I'm fortunate to have never been deployed in battle.
Most of my time was spent around Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City. I actually drove through downtown about an hour before the OKC Bombing.
I had been out that night to see a ska show, MU330, and ended up coming home in the morning.
I woke up in the afternoon and my roommate told me the news. When I went outside, it was the quietest place I had ever been. It was a surreal day. I spent the next week or so as a volunteer at the Red Cross.
Oh, and I was the frontman in a #punk band called NaroMinded for about a year. We were all about being anti-racist, for unity, and stuff, which I still believe in, but not so much going around trying to pick fights with neo-nazis anymore. I'd rather pick peace now.
We played a few gigs around OKC and even opened for Hagfish a couple of times.
We built up a bit of a following in the OKC punk scene. I remember some punk kid came to our second show with his homemade Narominded t-shirt, ranting and raving about how our lyrics were "so true!" And then it just kind of fell apart, as a lot of things do.
Rewind some more. High school. I moved a lot. Hoquiam, WA, Olympia, Pittsburgh, back to Hoquiam again. I did OK, but failed art class once because I couldn't get my projects done on time. I guess good art has to be punctual. I almost failed English lit. because I didn't have time for the books. Which was strange, because I did a lot of reading. I guess this is where I learned to just do my own thing. I got kicked out of another English class once when the teacher asked the class what a stereotype was. I found out he didn't like to be used as an example. That was dumb. I've since learned not to be a smart-ass unless absolutely necessary. And luckily, I can't really say that
or anything.
I spent much of my time in junior high and into my first year of high school working three paper routes to save up for an #Amiga 500. If you don't know what that is, Google it. The Amiga was the best computer ever made. Period.
The excitement surrounding a new Apple or Android product simply can't compare, maybe because we've all been through it too many times before. And it's a kind of manufactured excitement. The only thing I see today that seems to have some of the same spark to it as #Steemit and other blockchain stuff.
In elementary school, my biggest conundrum was what to be when I grew up. I had basically two choices - #breakdancer or #ninja .
I don't think we had guidance counselors in those days, but I don't think they'd have been much help. Obviously, I chose to combine the two and become a breakdancing ninja, which is why nobody ever sees me #breakdancing. But I do, it's just real subtle moves, and I only do it when I hear a shakuhachi or taiko drum.
I grew up in a very small town called Humptulips, in WA state.
I spent a lot of time in the woods playing, climbing trees, building forts, going on adventures, and looking for #sasquatch . Never saw one, but if you buy into the #parallel-worlds theory of #quantum-physics , then they pretty much HAVE to be out there somewhere, don't they?
