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So it has been a while.
Right, it's been a while.
I haven't done a show in a long time.
I haven't done a live show for a while.
It's good to be back.
And the issue is, why have I not done a show?
Where have I been? Why have I been gone?
Well, the truth is, I've been just really, really busy with my kids, for a number of reasons.
One of my children has a very serious health problem, and I've been focused on that quite a bit.
And the other issue just is that with my kids, they get up really early in the morning.
So usually, I would do my live shows in the mornings.
But the kids get up really early in the morning, and they always want me to spend time with them and play with them.
And like I said, plus, I'm doing these kind of extra therapy things with one of my children, and we do homeschooling, which I do a lot of that.
So I've just been super busy with them in the daytime.
So you'd say, well, maybe I could do them at night.
But the problem is, when my kids go to bed at night, we have such a small apartment that they wake up.
They hear me doing the shows, even though I close the doors where they're sleeping at the front of the apartment and where I am at the back of the apartment, but they still hear me.
And then they wake up.
And so it's just kind of a mess.
So anyway, what I decided to do, since doing live shows right now in video doesn't seem to be working, is go back to doing more of these audio podcasts, because I can kind of, you know, like the walk and talks I used to do many years ago.
Over five years ago, I used to do these walk and talks, and I would take this little handheld recorder, which I'm using right now, and I could go outside, and I would just go for long walks and just talk, talk about anything that popped in my head.
So you would get a lot of different topics in those walk and talk podcast shows, right, where I'm just talking about my day or talking about what I see as I'm walking around.
So I'm going to try to do that kind of thing again, I think.
Those were really popular.
People loved them. And I think that fits better with my current life.
Doing the live video shows.
I'll still try to do them sometimes when I can, but I'm just finding them very difficult to do.
But right now, see, I'm outside, so I'm not in the apartment.
I can't wake the kids.
I've got the handheld recorder.
I'm just kind of in front of our local train station here at night.
The kids are sleeping.
And this way, I don't need to worry about waking them up.
And it's kind of nice.
It's a nice summer night here, summer 2024 in Japan.
I'm talking to you from Osaka, Japan, by the way.
The last time I'll be talking to you from here for a while, which I'll get to in a minute.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
But I'm here at our local train station.
And in Osaka, a suburb of Osaka.
Quite nice. You know, there's lots of lights out here, but it's fairly cool in the evening.
And yeah, it's just a nice environment.
I don't need to worry about waking up the children.
So very nice. So let me get to what I just mentioned, which is today is our last day in Osaka for a while, because we are traveling to America.
We're taking a very big, long trip to America, obviously with the children.
This will be the first time we have done, you know, a really big international trip with the kids.
The kids are five years old now, so they're very active.
In Japanese, they say genki.
Genki means very energetic and active and healthy and lively.
All those kind of ideas together, genki.
So both of them are very lively, very genki.
So them having to sit all that time.
Oh, to be honest, I'm quite nervous about this trip.
You know, I'm a very experienced traveler.
And before the kids came, you know, I really wasn't nervous about travel at all anymore.
You know, we say a veteran means someone has a lot of experience.
I was a veteran world traveler.
You know, I got to the point where I would just take a small little backpack and I would hardly plan my trips at all.
I would just, you know, get on the plane, throw a few things in a small backpack, you know, just carry on.
I stopped buying guidebooks.
I would just show up and, you know, maybe look at a few things online, but I didn't just figure things out when I arrived.
So I'm quite used to that.
Very relaxed and confident traveler.
But it's very, very, very different with children, especially small children.
And I'm super nervous about this trip because we have a 12 hour flight to the west coast, San Francisco, in fact, of the United States.
And then we have a 12 hour layover, which is I think it's just terrible.
So we're getting a hotel there, but, you know, there's really not enough time to sleep and we're going to be all weird and jet lagged.
Maybe we can swim in the pool or something with the kids.
So just have half a day in San Francisco.
So we're not doing any sightseeing.
We'll just hang out at the hotel, maybe get a bit of a nap, then back to the airport again.
And then another overnight flight to Indiana.
We're going to Indiana to visit my and stay with my family for a while, specifically my sister.
So that's a lot for small children, five year olds.
The whole trip will be if you count the time, starting from our apartment, we got to take trains to get to the airport and then the check in and all that.
I think from the time we leave our apartment to when we arrive at my sister's, it's probably 30 hours, 3 -0, 30 hours.
So I can do it. I usually don't like traveling that way, but I can handle it by myself.
But with the kids, it's going to be tough.
I hope they're able to handle it.
Okay, I know it's a lot for small children.
You know, one of the reasons we're going is for the medical reasons.
Like I said, one of my children has very serious medical issues, may require some major surgery.
And I decided to probably have that done in the United States.
So we're going to be going to...
We have a doctor's appointment in August.
And we're waiting a month just so we can relax for a month.
But then we have a doctor's appointment and then we'll find out.
And if the surgery is necessary, you know, then we could end up being in America for four to six months, perhaps, as possible.
So like I said, this could be a very extended trip.
And the reason I decided this is that...
The reason we decided not to have the surgery because we've already had two surgeries.
One on a child was a very little baby and then again at two years old.
But the system here in Japan is just absolutely horrible for children.
They do not. You know, I think they have good technical ability.
You know, for the surgeons for surgery, there's good technical medical ability.
And for adults, I think it's fine.
It doesn't matter. But they are heartless when it comes to children in their hospitals.
Absolutely heartless, terrible.
So my poor child after surgery, they wouldn't let me come stay, you know, like be there in the room for one week.
So the poor child has just gone through this huge major surgery and his, you know, anesthesia is coming out of it and is scared and they wouldn't let me come and be there for a week.
And then we stayed another week in the hospital together.
But that was very, very traumatic and horrible.
And I feel terrible about it because I think it's a very traumatic experience.
It was a very traumatic and painful experience.
And I decided at that point I will never ever let that happen again.
And America has children's hospitals.
And America, you know, has a very problematic medical system.
It's not a, I don't trust the medical system in America for many things.
There are a lot of problems with the medical system.
Super expensive, super complicated.
They push, you know, the vaccines like crazy.
There's a lot of bad stuff.
So I personally avoid doctors as much as I can in America and anywhere.
But we have no choice with our child.
Believe me, if there was an alternative, if there was a choice, I would do it.
But anyway, the positive thing is that the children's hospitals in the United States, most of them, have actually very kind and very good systems.
Much more gentle, much more caring for the children.
And the number one thing is that at least one parent can be with the child immediately after the surgery is over.
So as soon as the child wakes up, the parent is there to comfort them and is there until it's time to leave.
You know, as long as it's necessary for the child to, you know, heal and recover, that might be one to two weeks sometimes.
But I can be there the whole time.
So when our child wakes up from that surgery, they're not terrified.
I mean, they're going to be in pain and probably scared.
But at least there's dad's face right there and I'm there with him the whole time.
Not just a bunch of strangers and oh my God, where are my parents?
For a week. I feel so horrible and I want to say I feel guilty that they went through that.
But never again. I'm never allowed to happen again.
So that's why we're going all the way to America for this.
Just because I think that the experience will be less traumatic overall and I can be with our child there from, you know, the whole process.
And hopefully, you know, the surgery and everything is, you know, very successful and just as good as here and all that.
We'll find out. But so anyway, as you can imagine, I have been super stressed.
I mean, to be honest, I've been super stressed for five years because this was a medical problem that came up, you know, at birth.
And like I said, we've already had two surgeries and, you know, we have to go to the hospitals all the time.
Hospitals are extremely stressful.
I just like I said, I hate the medical system completely and they have to be my poor child has to be in that system all the time.
I just makes me sick with stress, honestly.
So that's when what's been going on with me and why I have been much less active doing shows and things in case you're wondering.
I know a lot of people have been wondering and kind of know I've had some things going on.
But that's what it is.
It's not just normal stuff with kids.
Believe me, when the kids are just healthy and happy and we don't have to deal with hospitals or doctors.
Ah, so easy. So easy even with twins.
Just the normal kids stuff I find now is so easy.
It's all this other stuff that is so tough.
So we're going to America.
And the reason we're going to America at this time is not a very enjoyable one because we know that next month in August we got a hospital visit, a doctor visit and that's when we'll probably hear and they'll decide for sure.
Does my child need surgery?
Probably will. The Japanese doctors are pretty sure.
And then after that then it'll be another hospital stay for probably some tests which will be at least a couple, a night or two overnight staying in the hospital always stressful.
And then the surgery itself which could be up to two weeks in the hospital.
And any of you parents out there know that seeing your child scared or in pain or suffering is so difficult.
You know, it would be difficult as an adult to have to do this, all this stuff, right?
But again, as adults, we can kind of face these medical problems, right?
I wouldn't want to have to do this myself.
It would be difficult but much easier than watching my small child have to go through it.
That is just a thousand times more stressful and worrisome.
And I try to use all the Tony Robbins techniques and all the psychological tricks I know but in the end because I'm worrying about my child rather than myself.
I'm not worried about myself but when it comes to my children, it's very tough.
So because of that, we are flying out tomorrow.
Now on the happier side because there is a happier side to this trip and that is that I get to see family since my mom passed away.
I have not been back to America actually in over five years since the kids were born.
I have not been back to America.
So, you know, my sister is in Indiana and I have an aunt and uncle and cousins there.
Actually two uncle, three uncles.
So a bunch of family there and I think my father is gonna come up to Indiana and see the kids as well.
So all my kind of American family, extended family, very excited because they want to see the kids.
Because we live in Japan, most of them have not met the kids.
My sister came over here to Japan when the kids were born.
They were I think six months old when my sister visited, six or seven months old.
So she saw them when they were little babies but she hasn't seen them since and nobody else in my family has met them.
My mom came here to Japan before she died, thank God.
So my mom got to meet them and which was great.
So anyway, that's very nice.
I get to go see my sister and of course all my nieces and nephews because my sister has five children.
And like I said, aunts and uncles and cousins.
Everybody's super excited about going and the kids are excited about going to America.
My kids. There are a lot of nice things I think there where we're going.
That'll be a nice change for my children.
We live in a city, we're in Osaka, Japan so it's a very city environment.
I take them to parks most days but there's not a huge amount of nature here whereas in America and Indiana where we're going in the United States, my sister lives out in the country.
She has this big house out in kind of the countryside and this big, big yard.
Lots of wild animals come through her yard like rabbits and vultures and of course tons of squirrels and other birds and owls and deer walk through there and raccoons and bobcats.
These are all animals she's seen right there in her yard at different times.
So I've been telling the kids about that.
They're very excited.
They're excited to see their cousins and at least two of the cousins are young enough to play with my kids.
So they're excited to play with the cousins and there's a lot of things in America we can do.
A lot of outdoor things that will be enjoyable for them.
So I'm looking forward to that.
We're gonna do everything we can to make the trip a happy one despite the difficult reason we're going.
So when we're not dealing with the medical stuff as long as both the children are able to we'll get out and do a lot of fun stuff and really explore.
Of course after the surgery there'll be a couple weeks in the hospital and then a few more weeks after that at home where they'll need to rest as much as possible.
But then after that they'll be able to do normal stuff.
Maybe not hard exercise or things like that but we'll still be able to do some fun things.
So going to try to take advantage of this.
And honestly I have kind of mixed feelings about going back to America.
Not just about the medical but just in general.
I've been away from America for how many years?
12 years since I lived there full time?
Because I've been in Japan since the kids were born full time.
And then for many years before that we would spend we kind of moved around we'd spend a few months in Japan a few months several months down in Southeast Asia like Thailand.
And then maybe a little time in Hawaii just kind of America but not like the rest of America.
So I've been gone for America a long time it's going to be reverse culture shock for me.
America has many many many many many problems political problems a lot of people know about but just problems with the culture and the society it's just a mess.
I've been happy to be away from it all in Japan which is a much more how to say peaceful organized stable culture and society that's why we're raising our children here and why I've chosen to live here it's not perfect I don't really like living in a city that's probably the one thing I don't like about Japan is that it's
very urban and it's hard to live way out in the countryside in Japan especially as a foreigner there's just nothing out there so it's so extreme in America you can kind of get in the middle more easily there's so much more space so like my sister she she lives out basically like on a little farm almost
out in the countryside but 30 minutes she drives 30 minutes and she's in the center of the city so it's actually really convenient and also she's maybe 10 minutes from a good -sized town you know plenty of grocery stores and whatever anything she needs so in Japan it seems like it's you gotta get way
way way way out to really have any kind of land nature and then you're so far out there's nothing out there I mean there's really it's just kind of dead socially culturally like I wouldn't be able to do jujitsu anymore for example if I move if we moved out so for that reason we live in the city here
but I you know I miss I miss forests I miss farmland I miss all those wild all the wild animals and hiking and all of that that's still the best part of America is the land the amount of nature there's so many state parks national parks even great little city parks sometimes or towns it's just it's
fantastic so we're going to try to do a lot of that that's what I'm looking forward to the other cultures unfortunately we're going in at an election year I just don't want to even talk about it to anybody when we go back I don't want to hear it it's just you know and I know America was crazy about the whole
COVID vaccine stuff was just awful there terrible I think America is probably the most propagandized mind -controlled nation on earth now I shouldn't even say nation America's not a nation anymore it's an empire but a country there might be others you know but I haven't been to any others you know people
say things about all this stuff about North Korea but I've never been to North Korea so that's just the media I don't know what North Korea is really like but of all the countries I've actually visited yeah Americans are super brainwashed I guess Australians and Canadians and much of Western Europe
is similar at this point but uh anyway so there's no point in discussing anything with people I just want to go there and have a good time with family with my children and with our relatives get out in nature and that's my plan and try to avoid everything else and I hope we can get out of there you
know fairly soon my hope is we can come back home to Japan in three or four months if we're lucky we can do that and I'll be doing shows again for you back here in Japan so that's the big news what else?
oh jujitsu I'm still doing jujitsu still it's my one hobby at this point other than my children still doing jujitsu I recently got a purple belt in jujitsu which is the middle belt so middle between white and black purples in the middle I'll be honest I don't really feel like I'm that like I'm good
enough to be a purple belt because you know my idea of a purple belt and some a lot of purple belts I've seen I just feel like that are way better than I am and I'm not that good still but you know whatever it's nice I never thought I would get to that level and I just got to work harder to earn it
to really deserve it I will be able to do jujitsu in the United States in Indiana luckily there's a dojo a gym there that is the same kind of jujitsu I do called Gracie Jujitsu and that's important because you know there's a lot of BJJ which is called Brazilian Jujitsu is very popular now in much of the world
but a lot of the gyms are very intense very rough and just the truth is I'm 56 years old and I'm very busy with my children and I'm not that tough and I can't handle fighting you know the 24 year old super athletic very aggressive you know mixed martial arts fighters or guys who used to be black belts
in judo or tough wrestlers I just my body can't take it maybe once but not every week so I like Gracie Jujitsu because Gracie Jujitsu is they're very focused on regular normal people not super athletes and not like super aggressive people and not people who train jujitsu six days a week those people
are fine that's great good for them but I'm happy there's a place for normal regular people who have businesses or jobs and families and lots of other things in their lives and who might be older or also too a lot of people are just smaller or weaker and they can't handle it my sister tried jujitsu
in Indiana at a different gym and hated it because it's a mixed martial arts gym which they're kind of famous for being a bit more rough and aggressive and it was a lot of really huge big guys and strong guys very aggressive and she's a tiny tiny woman in her 50s and she just felt super uncomfortable
and just yeah she didn't continue unfortunately I think she might have been okay if she did Gracie but oh well my kids I've done a little bit of jujitsu with my kids but the truth is the last several months I've been so worried since we got the diagnosis right since we were told by the doctors that we'd
probably need another surgery soon I've been so it's all I can focus on but before that I was doing a little more with teaching and homeschooling but I really try not to force my kids or even pressure them with learning things because I don't want them to feel or think that learning is a chore a job
right learning should be should come from inside curiosity and it does with kids it's very natural so what I like is I like them to ask me I want them to push me and that's that means they're loving it they're motivated and then they really really learn much better so for example instead of me pushing
them for example let's say to cook cooking's an important skill so I could just try to push them okay you know every day we're gonna have a curriculum and we're gonna study all these recipes and all these techniques of cooking and then it becomes like school right and gradually they it's gonna they're
gonna feel like oh this is something dad is making us do it and they get all the natural love of it and curiosity and joy of it just starts to disappear and then eventually they start hating it right we see this with school kids all the time so I kind of take the opposite approach maybe too much maybe
too extreme but I I like I want them to almost beg me to teach them something or to do something so for cooking for example you know I'll mention it maybe and they'll like oh you want to you know you guys want to do make something today and then yeah yeah yeah we want to do it we want to let's make
cookies let's make bread let's make you know it's nothing too complicated but it's coming from them right the excitement the motivation the the request I have the same feeling about jujitsu so I when they were little like really little like two years old I played around with this little stuffed animal
bear and taught them some jujitsu stuff a little bit we've done a bit here and there but um I haven't pushed it too much and I felt like they you know they kind of got interested and they they wanted to do it a little bit at least my daughter my son not so much but then she didn't she didn't really
like he requested very much and I just thought well you know I don't I think I'm gonna just wait she's asked me about going to the classes a few times but but then she just kind of drops it and I'll say I'll tell her you know you can go to jujitsu class if you want to but just think about it or I can teach
you some stuff so I can it's kind of gentle that's kind of how I take I'm the same with reading and this has worked very well this is a good note for parents um my kids request reading I don't push read I never ever ever ever push reading on my kids right I never go to them and say okay now we got to
sit down and now we're going to do our reading work okay now we got to sit down and read something never do that I never do it I might say hey let's read you guys want to read something and then they always say yes yes yes right but it's because I've we've just encouraged this love of reading and books
in them so at five years old they can't read yet like they can't actually read the books by themselves but still like my kids both they go over we just have a bookshelf in the middle of the kitchen and they constantly go over there by themselves pick out a book open it up and read it especially some
of their favorite books they already know the stories so they'll sit there and look at point at the pictures and they'll say out loud what's happening and they'll say little parts that they remember and they do this by themselves very frequently they also very frequently will just bring books to me
so I'll just be in the living room sitting there and let's say my son for example will he'll run he'll run over get a book pull it off the shelf run into the living room sit just sit down in my lap and say daddy this one read this one and that's what you want parents that's what you want to create right
because then they're going to be lifelong readers then it's going to be their whole life they don't need me pushing them all the time oh you need to read you need to read no they they want to read they're pushing me in fact sometimes I'll be like oh I'm busy and look dad come on right there they're
requesting they want to read more more more and that's the situation you want to create and for reading it's worked out very well so I encourage that with your if any of you parents out there who are doing homeschooling or just with your kids even if you're sending them to school and you want to encourage
them to read on their own let them pick things that they love you know find those favorite books and stories and there I of course I highly recommend classics but I think one of the keys Dr.
Krashen recommended this and maybe and I agree with him because I've noticed it's powerful one of the keys is just to have the books there easily available so we have a low bookshelf right it's at their level their little five -year -old level they can reach all the books and grab them themselves and you
know we got full there are books everywhere there's just two these this this whole bookshelf just full of books and you know so there's a whole lot of variety if they seem to like something then we'll go buy more for example there are these books by a guy named Richard Scarry Richard Scarry I'm not sure
how his name's pronounced S -C -A -R -R -Y they're kind of old I think they're written back in the 60s they've got really cute drawings very nice so we got one of those books one time just by accident I think and they love them so then of course we do we go buy a bunch more of them and now they got oh there's
a whole bunch of them they love them they love the Peter Rabbit stories right so we got Peter Rabbit they love the Peter Rabbit so I went and bought the whole collection of Beatrix Potter book stories the woman who wrote Peter Rabbit she's got 23 stories about all these different animals some of them
are very simple like very easy some of them are medium and there's also several that are pretty long and more difficult and the kids love those so you just stock up on things that they love to read and no matter what their ages you can read aloud to them you know you can read together read out loud
to them even if they're older kids and they can read by themselves you can still read books together sometimes so this is the way to do it rather than some kind of force or curriculum or the school method now my challenge as a you know homeschooling dad is to figure out a way to make math the same way
and I haven't quite figured it out yet I'm struggling and it's my problem not my kid's problem it's my fault because I'm not all that excited about math honestly I love reading reading is wonderful I love it so that's pretty easy for me just buy a bunch of books and read them out loud to them but for math
I've struggled a little more of like how do I do this with math how do I get them interested in math we've done a little bit with cooking is a good way to introduce some math stuff you know you got to count things out and measure things and I've looked at different math curriculums but see that's the school
approach so I'm trying to find a little bit more natural way of doing math if you have any suggestions send me suggestions on social media like on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook you know if you follow me if you have an idea of how to make math like interesting and exciting for small kids like five
six years old please you know please send me ideas I'm doing okay with that part it's not terrible but uh anyway I'm looking for ideas so please help okay well it's getting later and we fly out tomorrow so I need to get going back go home pretty much packed but uh I want to get to bed kind of early
tonight because we got a long long long long long trip with kids and it's so much harder with kids I don't mean to scare anybody who doesn't have kids but um traveling by yourself is no problem traveling with small children small kids I think older kids no problem but that's about a hundred times more
difficult because you got to manage them and worry about them you know so anyway we'll get through it we'll survive I'll do my next show will most likely be this my next audio podcast show will most likely be from Indiana once I have recovered from jet lag so lots of love to you all I know many of you
have sent me messages on gab and Facebook Instagram Twitter and you know said you missed me and really nice messages very encouraging thank you so much I hope now you understand a little more of why I have been absent quite a lot and just had a lot been a lot of going on with our family but I'll do
my best I think this audio format this audio podcast approach will work for now especially when once we get to America I may not have fast internet so doing these audio podcasts with my recorder I can just go outside and do them anytime anywhere I'll try to do this if you want to support me and if you
want to learn English and speak English fluently and confidently go to effortlessenglishclub .com my website and get one of my courses if you're just if you don't know which one to get first get Power English that's a good one to start with if you're kind of advanced get the VIP program and you can get
one of the specialty courses as well pronunciation business lots of love to you all luckily trains in Japan run on time so it's very easy to plan a trip to the airport in America I always worry about it because you know there might be a traffic jam the trains might the subway or the trains might be
late if you're in the city so I always try to get to the airport super early when I fly in the United States and many other countries too but Japan like the the trains that are like clockwork you know I've heard that Germany is the same I don't know never been to Germany but Japan if they say the train is arriving
at you know 1247 it will arrive at 1247 if it's one minute late they apologize oh we're so sorry that it arrived at 1248 so that's nice because very easy to plan for tomorrow we got to take our take the train take a couple trains to the airport and then check in get the kids into their seats and then
hopefully get them to settle down they're going to be so excited hopefully we can get them to relax and stay in their chairs for the whole flight all right lots of love to you I will talk to you next time take care and I'll talk again soon bye
