A mother and daughter who went out of the way to take me to my destination.

Oct. 3, 2009: It rained hard during the evening and early morning, but by 9 AM the rain subsided. I needed to go to Kanazawa city in Ishikawa Prefecture for business the next day and opted to hitchhike rather than taking the bus in spite of the possibility of more rain later. I’m sure glad I did because the weather cleared up completely by noon and I met 6 interesting people whom I would not have met otherwise.

Perhaps the most interesting person to talk to was a nuclear physicist who said he worked in a laboratory in New York for two years. He was traveling with his wife to Nagano which meant I rode with them for a good 30 minutes as far as the Yoneyama service area on the Hokuriku expressway. Our conversation for the first few minutes was all in Japanese, but he started speaking English when I pointed out how Darwinian teaching has influenced at least two main branches of science, namely Geology and Biology which claims Evolution as its cornerstone.

I pointed out to the scientist how geology is based on false assumptions of the age of the earth and uses circular reasoning. The geologist says his rock is so many millions of years old because the paleontologist says the fossil found in the rock is so many millions of years old, and the paleontologist says his fossil is so many millions of years old because the geologist says the rock the fossil was taken from is so many millions of years old! This is not science! If an honest thinking person ponders the matter, he or she will see that evolution is based on certain assumptions, such as the old of the earth forming millions of years ago. The scientist only laughed when I told him according to the Bible the earth was created a mere 6000 years ago. I told him I’m not surprised he would laugh because he was raised under the false paradigm of Darwinism. Darwin himself didn’t dream up all his teachings but borrowed much of them from others such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), Charles Lyell (1797-1875), and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913).

Two young ladies on the way to a live concert. They took me to Toyama city from Kanazawa.

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Ian T. Taylor entitled, “In the minds of men — Darwin and the New World Order.” I gained so much valuable knowledge from this book that exposes Darwinism, and I highly encourage everybody to read it.

From Yoneyama, a man going to Obama City took me all the way to a bus stop near Kanazawa, a good two hours further up the road. I asked him if the economy of his city is better since Barack Obama became President. He said, “Not much.” The man’s accent was so thick I could only understand about half of what he said. Later I learned the language of Obama city is heavily influenced by Kyoto which is near proximity. The man was friendly and bought me lunch.

The last people to pick me up where two ladies, Mrs. Tokuda and her daughter. They saw me hitchhiking in front of Nonoichi train station and offered to take me to the exact destination I needed to go (about 6 more kilometers) if only I would come with them to the doctor’s office and wait while they had a check-up. I agreed because I wasn’t in a hurry and I knew this would give me an opportunity to share the Message of Jesus Christ with them. The mother said her parents sent her to a Christian kindergarten and so has some knowledge of the Bible.

Yoko Kosaka

Sept. 22, 2009: This is a continuation of my previous post. The return to Niigata from Aomori took me via Misawa city, the location of a large USAF base close to where I visited a friend to help him with his Windows Vista PC problems. Yoko Kosaka took me on the first leg of my journey.

The next day it only took 4 cars to take me the 550 kilometers back home. I had to wait for just a little over two hours at the Adatara Service area on the Tohoku Expressway to catch the last ride. One of the reasons I had to wait so long at Adatara was because the preponderance of the traffic, over 95% of it, was heading toward Tokyo. I nearly accepted a ride from a young couple going to Tokyo, but the thought of aborting the last leg of only two hours traveling to hitchhike yet another 300 kilometers or a possible 6 more hours the next day was just so tiring, and I was tired enough already. Though it was already dark after 7 PM, I knew I was looking at only a couple more hours travel by catching a car going toward Niigata and it would be only a matter of time before I caught that ride. There were at least couple dozen cars with Niigata license plates that drove past me, but the drivers either ignored me or shook their heads no.

This season in Japan is during a special 5-day holiday which runs from Saturday to Wednesday. It was Tuesday evening and there was much traffic, so much that even the Ban’etsu expressway was jammed at certain points! A little after 7 PM an elderly couple with their 8-year-old grandson saw my Niigata sign and stopped for me. They were going exactly toward my town, and took me to a point only 5 minutes walk from the house!

The Tohoku area of Northern Honshu, Japan. The red light shows my usual route to Aomori City, and the blue line shows the route I took on this trip.

The good Lord blessed my vision and faith by providing a sweet couple who took me all the way to Aizuwakamatsu in Fukushima the very first ride! They didn’t want to take the Ban’etsu Expressway but rather took route 49 instead. It’s a beautifully scenic route that runs through a pass in the mountains along the Agano river, one of the longest and cleanest rivers in Japan. I was so thankful to get this ride because I knew I would be arriving at Aizuwakatsu around 11 AM, which means I would be making good time.

After only a couple of minutes wait at the expressway entrance in Aizuwakamatsu, a man took me to a parking area on the Tohoku expressway that was just before Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region of Japan.

Mr. and Mrs. Abe who took me to Aomori City from just before Morioka

The last car was Mr. and Mrs. Abe with their lovely Border Collie named Hokuto. The Abes were on their way to Hokkaido, the north island, and would be spending the night in Aomori city. They took me to Aomori station from where I took a train two stations further. The total transportation cost of the 500-kilometer trip was 190 yen or about US $2.10. I arrived at my destination around 6:30 PM. 🙂

Somebody sent this to me long ago. I think it’s too good to forget. 🙂

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these things …….

Congratulations! You have risen to the level of the family dog.

I clicked on a link to access a certain article when all of a sudden a window popped up saying that my hard disk was undergoing an online scan for viruses and trojans. It reported that my private data is under attack and my PC is infected with security threats. I was advised to download and install “Total Security” to remove the threats.

Notice the interface of the PC screen in the image is that of Microsoft Windows? I’m not running Windows on my PC! I’m running Fedora Linux with the Gnome desktop environment.

The scan reported C drive and D drive infected, but Linux has no concept of drive letters as in Windows. My Linux system doesn’t have a C drive or D drive. Neither do I have any folders named “My Documents” and “Shared Documents.” This proves without a doubt that such unsolicited online PC scans that report problems are really scams to try to rip us off!

An 85 year old man who picked me up.

Sept. 4, 2009: After waiting about 15 minutes for a ride to get to a friend’s house on the other side of town, an elderly gentleman offered me a ride. I didn’t want to ask him his age for he looked quite up in years. Instead, I asked what he does. The man said he has been retired for 30 years from working as a railroad engine repairman from age 55. This makes him 85 years old! I think to date this is the most elderly person to offer me a ride. The man seemed very healthy, drove his small car very well, and had a sharp mind. He wasn’t going to any particular destination and so offered to take me to the very door of my friend’s house. I asked him what the secret of his good health is and he replied, “Don’t sit at home! Get out and get into some active work involved in helping others!” This was such an encouragement to me because now that I’m 59, I’ve often wondered how long I can continue my adventures throughout Japan by hitchhiking. Could it be that through the exercise I get by hitchhiking I will prolong my years on earth? 🙂

This is my collection of quotes from the movers and shakers of this world that I believe shed light on why the world is what it is today. If you have a quote that you would like to add to this list, please write it in the comments section of this post!

2009 is also the first year of global governance, with the establishment of the G-20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet.”
— Herman Van Rompuy, the first president of the European Union.

“One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”
— Chou En-lai, former Chinese premier

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
–Johann Wolfgang Goethe

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

There is no such thing in America as an independent press. You know it and I know it… The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his county and his race for his daily bread.
– John Swinton, newsman and former editor at The New York Times

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.”
— Edward L. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud who studied his uncle’s work. (Quote gleaned from “Flat Earth News” by Nick Davies

“We must now face the harsh truth that the objectives of communism are being steadily advanced because many of us do not recognize the means used to advance them. … The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a Conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst.”
— J. Edgar Hoover (Elks Magazine, August 1956.)

“A holy war will now begin on America, and when it is ended America will be supposedly the citadel of freedom, but her millions will unknowingly be loyal subjects to the Crown. Your churches will be used to teach the Jew’s religion and in less than two hundred years the whole nation will be working for divine world government. That government that they believe to be divine will be the British Empire. All religions will be permeated with Judaism without even being noticed by the masses, and they will all be under the invisible all-seeing eye of the Grand Architect of Freemasonry.”
— British General Charles Cornwallis to General George Washington

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“It’s not the votes that count,
it’s who counts the votes.”
— Josef Stalin

“There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears so to speak. Producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

— Aldous Huxley, Tavistock Group, California Medical School, 1961

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it
is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people
don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter
in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the
country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or
no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger.”

— Leading Nazi leader, Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials before
he was sentenced to death

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they
ought to have.”
— Richard S. Salant, Former President CBS News.

“One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of
public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other
forms of propaganda.”
— General Douglas MacArthur

“If you give a man the correct information for seven years, he may
believe the incorrect information on the first day of the eighth year
when it is necessary, from your point of view, that he should do so.
Your first job is to build the credibility and the authenticity of your
propaganda, and persuade the enemy to trust you although you are his
enemy.”

— A Psychological Warfare Casebook Operations Research Office Johns
Hopkins University Baltimore (1958)

“The first casualty of war is truth.”
–Rudyard Kipling

“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to
restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true
if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real
or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all
peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from
this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented
with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for
the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world
government.”
— Henry Kissinger speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers
meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss
delegate to the meeting.

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy
the American’s freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the
citizen of his plight.”
–John F. Kennedy, at Columbia University, 10 days before his
assassination.

“It is also important for the State to inculcate in its subjects an
aversion to any ‘conspiracy theory of history;’ for a search for
‘conspiracies’ means a search for motives and an attribution of
responsibility for historical misdeeds.”
–Murray N. Rothbard, in The Anatomy of the State

“The secret to success is to own nothing, but control everything.”
–Nelson Rockefeller

“I want to own nothing and control everything”
–J D Rockefeller

“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a
one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the
same tent, all under their control…. Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I
am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations
old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.”
–Larry P. McDonald, US Congressman, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines
747 that was shot down by the Soviets

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”

–John F. Hylan, 1922, then mayor of New York City

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question it’s methods or throw light upon it’s crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe… corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.
— Abraham Lincoln

“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field
of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that
there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so
interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak
above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
–Woodrow Wilson, from his book The New Freedom (1913)

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great
industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of
credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our
activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the
worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated
Governments in the civilized world – no longer a Government by free
opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the
majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of
dominant men.”
–President Woodrow Wilson (The president whose administration passed the
Federal Reserve Act)

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from
behind the scenes.”
–Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is
imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”
–Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, in a novel he
published in 1844 called Coningsby, the New Generation

“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am
convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the
breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits
amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me
that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall
ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is
your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families,
and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.”
–Attributed to President Andrew Jackson, who in 1836 forced the closing
of the Second Bank of the U.S. by revoking its charter.

“The Federal Reserve Banks are one of the most corrupt institutions
the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice
who does not know that this Nation is run by the International Bankers.”
–Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)

“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it”.
— Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa)

“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the
Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the
British Empire. And I control the money supply.”
–Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1777-1836)

“These are the rules of big business. They have superseded the
teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a
monopoly; let Society work for you; and remember that the best of all
business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax
exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does
not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation.”
–Frederick C. Howe, in Confessions of a Monopolist (1906)

“If we were merely dealing with the law of averages, half of the
events affecting our nation’s well-being should be good for America. If
we were dealing with mere incompetence, our leaders should occasionally
make a mistake in our favor. We . . . are not dealing with coincidence
or stupidity, but with planning and brilliance.”
–Gary Allen, from his book None Dare Call It Conspiracy

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet
it was planned that way.”
–Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot
survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable,
for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves
amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through
all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the
traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his
victims, and he wears their face and their garments, he appeals to the
baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a
nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the
pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no
longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
–Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 BC

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances, there’s a twilight where everything remains seemingly
unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in
the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the
darkness.”
–Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have
guns, why should we let them have ideas?”
–Joseph Stalin

“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses
over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its
speaker a raving lunatic.”
–Dresden James

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
–George Orwell

“If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
–Anatole France

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States.

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller, Bilderberg Meeting, June 1991 Baden, Germany

“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.”
–Henry Kissinger

“No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation.”
David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
— Strobe Talbot, Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.

“We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent.”
— Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950

“The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.”
— British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876

“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.”
— President John F. Kennedy
Address to newspaper publishers
April 27, 1961

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”
— New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922

“From the days of Sparticus, Weishaupt, Karl Marx, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, and Emma Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
— Winston Churchill, stated to the London Press, in l922.

“For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn’t. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared “ammunition” in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.”
— Curtis Dall, FDR’s son-in-law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father-in-Law

“The depression was the calculated ‘shearing’ of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market….The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank.”
— Curtis Dall, FDR’s son-in-law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father-in-Law

“The United Nations is but a long range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.”
— Curtis Dall, FDR’s son-in-law

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
— Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952

“Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government – a bureaucratic elite.
— Senator William Jenner, 1954

“The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power political, monetary, intellectual and ecclesiastical. What the Trilateral Commission intends is to create a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nationstates involved. As managers and creators of the system, they will rule the future.”

— U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in his l964 book: With No Apologies.

“The Council on Foreign Relations is “the establishment.” Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship.”
— Former Congressman John Rarick 1971

“The term Internationalism has been popularized in recent years to cover an interlocking financial, political, and economic world force for the purpose of establishing a World Government. Today Internationalism is heralded from pulpit and platform as a ‘League of Nations’ or a ‘Federated Union’ to which the United States must surrender a definite part of its National Sovereignty. The World Government plan is being advocated under such alluring names as the ‘New International Order,’ ‘The New World Order,’ ‘World Union Now,’ ‘World Commonwealth of Nations,’ ‘World Community,’ etc. All the terms have the same objective; however, the line of approach may be religious or political according to the taste or training of the individual.”
— Excerpt from A Memorial to be Addressed to the House of Bishops and the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies of the Protestant Episcopal Church in General Convention (October 1940)

“The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common: they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for “the purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government.”
— Harpers, July l958

“… when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.”
— H. G. Wells, in his book entitled The New World Order (1939)

“I you tell a lie long enough, loud enough and often enough, the people will believe it.”
Adolf Hitler

“People are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one.”
Adolf Hitler

“It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
— Henry Ford

“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.”
— Henry Ford

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
Strobe Talbot, President Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.

“We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world.”
— Professor Arnold Toynbee, in a June l931 speech before the Institute for the Study of International Affairs in Copenhagen.

“The government of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semioccult power which….pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.”
– British military historian MajorGeneral J.F.C. Fuller, l941

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
– A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, l933

“The case for government by elites is irrefutable”
– Senator William Fulbright, Former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated at a 1963 symposium entitled: The Elite and the Electorate – Is Government by the People Possible?

“Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation
that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing
falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any
refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war
is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process
of grotesque self-deception.”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916,
Ch.9

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” — Senior advisor to Bush talking to journalist Ron Susink (See www.hermes-press.com/suskind.htm to read this quote in context.)

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
— Quote from Morpheus in the film, The Matrix

“In a developed society…the seizure of political power is not possible until after the seizure of cultural power.”
Antonio Gramsci (Italian Party Communist leader)

“Revolutions are effected in two ways, by force and by fraud.”
– Aristotle

“One-fourth of humanity must be eliminated from the social body. We are in charge of God’s selection process for planet earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death.”
– Psychologist Barbara Marx Hubbard – member of Task Force Delta; a United States Army think tank

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
– Edward R. Murrow”

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
– George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

“It is easier to believe a lie that one has heard a thousand times than to believe a fact that no one has heard before.”
– Unknown Source

“It can be held certain that information that is withheld or suppressed contains truths that are detrimental to the persons involved in the suppression.”
– J. Edgar Hoover

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire

“Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!”
– Leonardo Da Vinci

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
– Benito Mussolini

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
– Hitler

“And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival… It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist… The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.
– George Orwell, 1984

“The United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that.”
— CNN’s Ted Turner’s comment to a group of foreign journalists in 1996

“It is fortunate for those in power that people do not think.”
–Adolf Hitler

I moved this site from blog.jamesjpn.com to jamesjpn.net. A problem I faced was there were 678 lines of code that pointed to photos on the blog.jamesjpn.com server and I needed to edit the posts to point the links to the new server on jamesjpn.net. Thanks to http://www.barrywise.com/2009/02/global-find-and-replace-in-wordpress-using-mysql/ I learned how to do a global search and replace in the Sql section of phpMyAdmin!

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘blog.jamesjpn.com’, ‘jamesjpn.net’)

It would have taken me a long time to do the job by editing each post, whereas Sql did a global search and replace of 678 lines of code in only 0.8187 of a second!

Natsuki (22) who took me to Echigo Kawaguchi

August 18: On a hot summer day I traveled in four vehicles 330 kilometers to Chiba city located east of Tokyo. The last driver went out of his way to take me right to the very door of my destination!

The first vehicle was a truck carrying long steel bars. The driver, a young man, said he needed to drop the bars off at Sanjo city first and then he would take me to route 8. Eventually he took me a bit out of his way to Sakae parking area which was just perfect for me! The driver asked me since I’ve been hitchhiking, and I told him since I was 13. 🙂

After a bit of waiting at Sakae parking area, 22 year old Natsuki picked me up. She said she was a bit scared at first because it was the first time to pick up a hitchhiker. I told her, *congratulations!* Natsuki was on her way home to Tokamachi — deep snow country in the winter. She took me to Echigo Kawaguchi which was just perfect for me.

Mr. and Mrs. Itou

August 11: Today is the last day of my road trip since last July 25th. It took only 4 vehicles from the Suita Service area in Osaka to get home. Two of the drivers went way out of their way to help me!

During the 8 days I hitchhiked in this trip, I traveled 3036 kilometers in 33 vehicles. One of them was a motorcycle! (See the August 4 post)

In the first car were two men from a paint company. The driver was really interested in me as a foreigner and asked many questions. I told him I painted a house once and he remarked that he heard many Americans like to do their own handyman work without hiring a contractor. They took me to a service area just before Kyoto city.

The second driver took me to Otsu Service area just past Kyoto. The third car was Mr. and Mrs. Itou, a newly married couple who run a Raman shop in Itami City in Hyogo. Mr. Itou at first said that he could take me only as far as Ryuo in Shiga Prefecture, but later changed his mind and took me to Taga just before the junction of the Hokuriku Expressway that runs along the Sea of Japan — the route home to Niigata. Mrs. Itou gave me her cell phone email address and we have been exchanging short emails.

After waiting only a few minutes in Taga, a man with Niigata license plates pulls up and offers me a ride! At first he said he would take me as far as Kashiwazaki, but later changed his mind and offered to take me all the way home — 60 kilometers further. I didn’t want to trouble him and said he could drop me off at Yoneyama service area just before Kashiwazaki but the driver was insistent. I then offered a compromise and asked him to take me to a train station in Sanjo from where I would take a short train ride the rest of the way. The driver agreed to that.

August 8: It was fine weather, a Saturday and close to the beginning of the Obon Festival when family travel long distances to their home towns. My destination is Mount Rokkō in Kobe, a distance of over 600 kilometers. I never hitchhiked to the Kansai area in a single day from Oita, but because of the 3 positive factors in my favor, I decided to go for the gold and try it. It turned out to be as good as it gets in the life of a professional hitchhiker! It only took 4 cars with the third driver taking me to Hiroshima to meet a friend and change cars. They took me 95% of the way of the distance of this day’s journey to my exact destination — the very same destination they themselves were going to!

The first driver was a mother with her 15 year old son, Izumi and Asuka who took me to Beppuwan Service area. They were going to Oita Airport to pick up a relative. Izumi was very pleasant and spoke some English. She encouraged her son to speak to me in English as well.

The second driver was a third generation ethnic South Korean man who took me to Nakatsu City on route 10. I asked him all sorts of questions about Japanese prejudice toward his ethnicity. Though both his parents were born in Japanese, they faced segregation when they grew up. The third generation was treated better, and the man said he even married an ethic Japanese woman!

The man told me that in 1958 North Korea was portrayed in Japan as heaven on earth. Many ethnic North Koreans who resided in Japan decided to move to North Korea in the hopes of having a better life. Two thirds of them died within only the first 3 years, many from starvation!

Okawa Shigeo, a retired highschool principal.

After waiting only a few minutes at an intersection in Nakatsu on route 10, a retired high school principle, Mr. Okawa picked me up. At first I told him I was going to Kitakyushu, but when he told me he was going to Kobe, I rejoiced and asked if I could ride with him to Kobe. As it turned out, his ultimate destination was Mount Rokkō!

Mr. Okawa was on his way to the reunion of his college graduating class in Kobe. He said he would get off the expressway at Miyajima in Hiroshima Prefecture, meet a friend, Mr. Mizushima, and then Mr. Mizushima would take us the rest of the way in his car.

Later Mr. Okawa learned that the reunion wasn’t to be held till the next day, on Sunday. He repeated over and over that it must have been God’s planning to cause him to make a mistake of the date, for had he not, he never would have met me or taken me to Mount Rokkō!

After getting off the expressway in Hiroshima, because we had an hour and a half wait before Mr. Mizushima would be ready to travel, Mr. Okawa took me on a guided tour of the island of Miyajima, a 10 minute ferry ride from the mainland. Miyajima is famous for its large Shinto shine and domesticated deer walking the streets among the public. The deer, unlike the deer at Nara park in Nara, do not beg food from the public and will let a person touch and pet them.

Youji and Miki

August 5: I hitchhiked to Oita City down route 10, a distance of over 60 kilometers in only 3 cars!

The first driver, Mr. Kihara saw me standing outside a hospital hitchhiking and wondered if I was a disabled man who needed help! He turned around and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was hitchhiking to Oita city and he offered to take me just out of the city limits to catch cars going out of town.

Mr. Kihara is a financial adviser. I asked him what advice he has now that the economy is down. He replied, “Know your dream!”

The next driver, Mr. Sumitomo took me as far as Yukuhashi City. Mr. Sumitomo is a company owner and speaks some English. He lived in South Carolina.

The next car took me all the way to Oita station! They were 20 year old Miki and her 15 year old brother Youji. They said they are Christians and were raised in a Christian family. It’s very uncommon to meet such people. Miki is a college student and was on the way to her university in Beppu which is just before Oita City. She went out of her way to take me to my destination.

New friend Shizu with Mannah, daughter of Caleb and Tabita

The third driver was a lady, Mrs. Kuwahara. She has been married for 6 years but has no children. It turns out she has a problem with her husband. It’s not uncommon for drivers to pour out their heart and personal problems to me. With women especially I try to listen without offering advice. I learned that women often feel better just to talk about their problems whereas a man would rather either fix the problem himself or seek advice on how to fix it from somebody he can trust.

Mrs. Kuwahara said that though she is not a Christian, she finds it interesting that anytime she is in despair, she runs into either a Catholic or a Protestant minister!

Megumi and Kohei. They went out of their way to take me to Hiroshima from Okayama

August 2: Today I needed to travel as far as Fukuoka City in Kyushu – a long distance of over 600 kilometers and unfamiliar territory passing through Hiroshima city which is the halfway point of this trip. Though I got off to a very slow start of less than 10 kilometers the first hour, I knew from experience my pace would get faster and faster the closer and closer I get to my destination. I started at 9:30 AM and didn’t get to Hiroshima until 4:00PM which meant I averaged only 46 kilometers per hour. But the next 300 kilometers only took me 4 hours averaging 75 kilometers per hour! One driver, a young man of 26 years old, was speeding up to 150 kilometers per hour.

After waiting with no success for 40 minutes at the expressway entrance ramp in the middle of Kobe, I decided to walk further down the road to a traffic light to catch the cars when drivers wait for the light to change. I had no guarantee the driver would be going on the expressway, but because the road was heading in the direction I was going, I would have been glad to catch practically anybody.

In just a couple minutes I was offered a ride and he went on the expressway! The man, Mamoru Watanabe is a Coast Guard officer who spoke some English. I thanked him for protecting Japan from the nasty North Koreans. He took me to Kyobashi parking area in the middle of Kobe. At least now I was on an expressway, but I still had to transfer to the Sanyo expressway which would take me to the end of Honshu.

At Kibi two young men, one with a video camera approached me and asked my destination. I saw one of them was holding a large paper binder with one page saying “Hiroshima” in Japanese and realized they were also hitchhiking! They said they are working on a scientific research paper on hitchhiking. I invited them to check out this blog.

From Kibi a man who is a sales representative for a petroleum company took me to Kudamatsu Service area in Yamaguchi Prefecture. From Kudamatsu a 26 year old truck driver took me all the way to the Oji parking area just before Shimonoseki which is the end of Honshu. He said he had to get off the expressway at Tokuyama to change to another car. We made good time because he was speeding up to 150 kilometers per hour. If caught going that fast, the driver would be looking at a fine of 70,000 yen or so.

Mr. Sawaguchi

July 30: After a short wait at Hamamatsu Nishi IC, Mr. Sawaguchi took me to the Miai parking area near Okazaki. He said that he picked up a Christian pastor before from Niigata!

The hardest part of this trip was to get past Nagoya. I waited two hours at the Moriyama parking area. A dozen people offered me a ride but they were only going as far as Komaki or Kasugai and I needed to get as far as the Owari-Ichinomiya service area on the Meishi Expressway. Finally one man, Mr. Saito, said that though his destination is Komaki, he would go a bit out of his way to take me to Owari-Ichinomiya!

Mr. Saito who went out of his way to take me to Owari-Ichinomiya

From there Mr. Ikari took me to Kusatsu service area which is only 10 minutes away from my destination of Otsu! Mr. Ikari spoke very good English. He works for a company that fast freezes food without chemicals.

After arriving at Kusatsu, within a minute I made eye contact with a man and said I wanted to go to Otsu. He immediately offered to take me!

Miss Mai

July 28: Today is low atmospheric pressure throughout Japan with intermittent and sometimes very heavy rain. My destination is Hamamatsu City in Shizuoka Prefecture, the city I visited on May 26th this year. I’m travelling from Osaka and the distance is only a fraction of my previous trip from Niigata. Nevertheless the trip wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. I had to take refuge from the rain from time to time, and I had to wait over an hour for a ride at two different parking areas on the Meishin Expressway which runs from Osaka to Nagoya.

The first vehicle was a car carrier truck. The driver took me from Suita Service Area in Osaka to Taga Service Area just before the junction that goes off to Fukui on the Sea of Japan. I was very glad to get a ride this far because it took me way past Kyoto. Normally when standing at Taga, I’m looking for rides going toward the Sea of Japan as this is the closest route on the way home to Niigata. However today I need to go in the direction of Nagoya. I figured it would be easy but it wasn’t. The first hour a dozen drivers offered me a ride, but they were either going only a short distance or the wrong direction away from Nagoya.

After an hour a car stopped with two ladies who said they were travelling to Nagano! Their distination would take me to the Chuo expressway past Nagoya which heads off away from my destination. Nevertheless because I knew of the Owari-Ichinomiya Service area which just before the junction to the Chuo expressway, I asked them for a ride.

The driver’s name is Eri and her passenger was her 17 year old daughter Mai. They both were glad to meet a foreigner to practice their English. Eri spoke better English then her daughter because she travelled extensively in the USA and Canada.

Man who took me from Owari-Ichinomiya to Moriyama

I had to wait yet another hour just to get a ride to a parking area on the Tomei Expressway which runs past Nagoya and goes to Shizuoka. Now my chances are better with more traffic heading in the direction of Hamamatsu. A man from an advertising company took me to the Moriyama parking area. Now I was sure to make it to my destination in spite of the rain!

After waiting a relatively short time, a young man, an off duty policeman named Mr. Itou took me to the Togo parking area near Toyota city. I enjoy meeting professional people and usually ask them many questions about their work.

From there a 34 year old single man named Mr. Suganuma took me to Toyokawa train station from where I took a short train ride the rest of the way. He works in the automobile manufacturing business which is now in a major slump. Mr. Suganuma asked me to buy a car, but I told him I prefer catching rides with others. 🙂

Rinko and Tamako. Parents took me to Ozumi PA on the Hokuriku Expressway

July 25: Today is the start of a 3 week hitchhike adventure from Niigata in Northern Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu. I won’t go directly to Kyushu from Niigata because others in the Honshu area are asking me to visit them first. This turned out to be good for my schedule because Kyushu today was drenched with torrential rain! Heavy rainfalls are frequent this time of year in Southern Japan and often cause landslides and a loss of life. At the time of this post, 8 people have died the past couple days.

]I left home at 8:20 AM and made it to Kyoto in 7 cars by 6:30PM. It was indeed a good trip considering the distance of 600 some kilometers. Only once I had to wait nearly an hour for a ride.

Hiroaki Suzuki, newly married only 3 months ago. Took me to Sanjo Interchange.

Two of the drivers spoke English well enough to converse in it. One driver was a doctor, a surgeon. One was a husband and wife with their two small daughters in the back seat. Only one driver expressed some doubt as to what kind of person I am. He said, “Don’t do anything to distract my driving!” I asked him what exactly he meant and he replied, “Like try to strangle me!”

Mr. and Mrs. Iinosan from Wakayama Prefecture who took me from Niigata to Toyama were on the way to Takayama city in Gifu Prefecture. They both spoke fairly good English. He is a farmer who grows all the vegetables his family needs for food! His wife has a job and earns enough money to buy their other needs. Only a few minutes after they dropped me off at the Arisoumi Service Area in Toyama I caught another ride from a man going all the way to Shiga Prefecture! This man was waiting in line at the gas station just in front of Mr. and Mrs. Iinosan’s car. When they saw the man offer me a ride, they rejoiced!

The man, Mr. Shinzawa, took me all the way to Shiga which means we passed completely through the next two prefectures of Ishikawa and Fukui. Normally I hitchhike in at least one of these prefectures to make it to the Kyoto / Osaka area. He is now retired and formerly worked as a researcher in semiconductors. Mr. Shinzawa was on his way to a fishing trip to Oki Island which is just off Tottori Prefecture in the Sea of Japan.

The trip from Shiojiri City in Nagano to Niigata.

July 19: This is actually the continuation of my previous post of my adventure to Kita-karuizawa. Word Press apparently doesn’t like long posts!

Today I’m on my way back home from Shiojiri City in Nagano Prefecture. There was a low pressure area all over Japan, but except for a few drizzles of rain in the early morning in Shiojiri, it still looked OK to hitchhike.

The first driver was a single lady in her 30s named Mayumi who took me 20 kilometers to the Azusagawa Service area from where I got on the Nagano Expressway. Mayumi said that she was ill though she looked well. I inquired further and she said she hears voices in her head!! I immediately said that I am a Christian missionary and understand spiritual problems. I told Mayumi that her problem is spiritual, and not curable by drugs or medical treatment. I asked her if I may lay my hands on her head and pray for her after we get to Azusagawa. She agreed. And I told her about Jesus and we held hands while she prayed to receive Him! After that I laid my hands on her head and rebuked the evil spirit telling it to depart.

Mr and Mrs. Ishibashi from Mie Prefecture

The next car was a husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Ishibashi from Mie Prefecture who were on their way to Myoko Kogen, an area famous for skiing. I told them there was no more snow, and they said they were going to escape the heat down south. Mr. Ishibashi is the president of a pharmaceutical company. I told them about meeting Mayumi and her spiritual problem. Though he runs a drug company, he agreed that drugs will not cure her!

Mr. and Mrs. Ishibashi took me to the Obuse parking area. From there a young man going to Iiyama picked me up. Ilyama is off the expressway but is on route 117 which is the shortest road back home. I knew I could get back on an expressway from Echigo Kawaguchi, and I had hoped to escape the rain because the weather was looking bad and I knew it was probably raining hard along coast of the Sea of Japan which is the route I would have taken had I stayed on the expressway.

I asked the young man to take me to a traffic light but instead he took me to a Seven Eleven convenience store where he said I could buy an umbrella. It had started to rain, not too hard, but hard enough to not want to stand waiting in it.

I went to the Seven Eleven but there were no umbrellas for sale. I then waited about 10 minutes under the covering of the store until the rain let up and started to hitchhike. A lady picked me up saying she was going only about 15 minutes up the road. I asked her to take me to a traffic light, but instead she eventually turned left at an intersection with no traffic light. It was raining hard and so I asked her to take me to a train station.

The train station is on the Iiyama line, and the next train was exactly 2 hours later! It was raining too hard to go anywhere. The train station was tiny and unmanned, but it offered shelter from the rain.

Across the street from the station was a typical Japanese shop. After waiting about 20 minutes the rain let up to the point that I could walk to the shop where I hoped would have an umbrella for sale. The shop owner didn’t look too pleased to see me and said she didn’t sell umbrellas. I saw several umbrellas that previous customers left in the umbrella holder outside the store and asked if I couldn’t take one. She said it was fine! Now I had some protection from the rain and walked back to the main highway.

Hitchhiking on a lonely country road in the midst of the mountains of Nagano on a rainy day is not a desirable situation. I was glad at least it wasn’t cold. The cars whizzed past me splashing water as they went. The drivers seemed to care less about my plight. But I knew it was only a matter of time. After about half an hour, a family going to Tokamachi picked me up. Tokamachi is still 100 kilometers from home, but I took a train the rest of the way back. It continued to rain hard intermittently.

Route from Niigata to Kita-Karuizawa

July 17: The purpose of this trip is to visit new friends, Brian from the UK and his Japanese wife Mieko. They spend their summers in Kita-Karuizawa near Mt. Asama in Gunma Prefecture, which is about 370 kilometers or 230 miles from my home. They first contacted me because of their interest in this blog. I had never met them face to face before. Though Kita-Karuizawa is in Gunma, I saw from the map that the surest way to get to it is to take a round about way through Nagano. I had never been to that area before. This trip took me over the 80,000 kilometer mark since keeping records from August of 2003.

Mt. Asama

Hitchhiking 370 kilometers to Kita-Karuizawa in only 4 rides with very little waiting time was as good as it gets! I left home at 10:30AM and arrived at the very door of my destination a few minutes after 4PM.

The first driver was a Yamazaki Bread man. He went out of his way to take me to the expressway entrance at Sanjo.

The second driver, Mr. Tsukioka, took me to Echigo Kawaguchi which was the epicenter of the Niigata Chuetsu earthquake of October 23, 2004. This was the second time to meet Mr. Tsukioka when hitchhiking! He remembered picking me up last year at Tokamachi City.

Tokyo man who took me to Kamisato from Echigo Kawaguchi

Brian and Mieko

Because Brian gave me the exact latitude and longitude to his house, I felt that Mr. Kubo may have turned down the wrong road and gone past it. He turned around and went back to the last intersection. I saw a man who appeared to be a foreigner walking in front of the house at the corner of the intersection and called out, “Brian!” He turned and said, “James, you made it!”

July 18: The next day at noon, Brian and Mieko took me to the Saku interchange of the Joushin’estu expressway. I called Mr. Kobayashi who lives in Nagano city and has a company in Chikuma city which is 54 kilometers from Saku. Mr. Kobayashi has been a good friend whom I met many times since we first met back in 2001. I was hitchhiking in Nagano and he picked me up. Mr. Kobayashi invited me to lunch and encouraged me to come as quickly as possible to Chikuma. At first he offered to pay for a train, but then realized I could arrive even quicker if I hitchhiked. I told him I would call again after getting picked up.

Young man who took me to Shiojiri City from Midoriko

After a 10 minutes wait at the interchange, a lady who appeared to be in her 30s, Sachie, offered me a ride as far as the Yunomaru Service area about 14 kilometers toward my destination. Sachie carries blood samples from doctor clinics to hospitals. She says she washes her hands frequently to avoid getting infected. It’s possible some of the samples may even contain HIV!

A few minutes into our journey, Sachie offered to take me all the way to Chikuma after a brief stop at a hospital in Yunomaru to drop off her blood samples. Chikuma was still 39 kilometers away and it cost her another 950 yen and 40 minutes of her time to take me there! Mr. Kobayashi waited for us at the Koshoku interchange exit. He was delighted that a lady picked me up and offered to take her out to lunch with me. However Sachie declined the offer saying that she still had more work that day.

Mr. Kobayashi took me back to his office where we met an associate of his, Mr. Sano. Mr. Sano was wearing a fine gold ring. When I inquired about it, he said it is a special ring that helps blood circulation and improves health. One ring costs 1,800,000 yen or about $19,000 US. I asked Mr. Kobayashi if he bought one and he said no.

Mr. Kobayashi knew that Mr. Sano was heading in the same direction I wanted to go, and he asked him if he would take me. Mr. Sano was glad to and said that he would take me to Akashina train station, about 80% of the way to my destination. Mr. Kobayashi then said I would not want to take the train but rather hitchhike the rest of the way. I expected that he would tell Mr. Sano how much I love to hitchhike and meet people, but instead he said I hitchhike because I have no money! I told them that’s no entirely true! I had plenty of cash with me, a little over 4000 yen or about 10 times what that train fare would be. Of course I do love to save money as well as meet people.

Kazuko

June, 21, 2009: Today is my 59th birthday. I went to one of my favorite traffic lights to hitchhike to downtown Niigata City to meet a friend to do some street evangelism. The first day of summer was a hot one, about 31 C. Though there was a lot of traffic waiting at the red light, everybody was ignoring me.

After about 10 minutes I heard a voice calling from a distance behind me. A lady turned the corner and drove to an adjacent road about 10 meters parallel to the road I was on. She was offering me a ride!

The lady’s name is Kazuko, 31 years old. We established an immediate rapport when she told me she went to a Christian high school in the area, Keiwa Gakuin, the same school that one of my friends sent his children. We talked about the deep things of life, love, unselfishness, giving, sharing, the paradox of hedonism etc.

Kazuko’s hobby is photography. She took my photo with an old Nikon F1 35 mm film camera.