A Quarter Year in the Land of the Rising Sun
A long time ago, in a nation far, far away, there was a girl named Pamela. She was a college student. But that time has long passed, and she landed in Japan under cloudy skies one fair September the thirteenth. Three months passed. Therein, she was subjected to the study of a strange and foreign tongue. Her senseis were patient and glowed with happiness and praise at the progression of their students, but Pamela, though brave and true, remained quite ignorant of the native tongue. She now could, however, participate boldly and valiantly in such activities as telling threatening train conductors that she had used the wrong train pass, and her language skills withheld their most fearsome attacks and the transaction was completed.
She did venture out of school into a place of native worship, and with those of almond eyes did raise her voice to the most high. She did not understand the words, but their hearts sang to Him together. They learned to speak in smiles and to serve each other when words failed them. Time passed, and they learned a few words, and their friendship became deeper. Hand in hand, they retold the story of that time, two thousand years past, when that which is too joyous to fully understand happened and He who is Most High was swaddled by human hands. The fair church folk wrapped Pamela's shoulders in an embroidered cloth and placed a graduation cap atop her head, marking her as one of the three wise ones in the story they told. She raised her voice in the strange tongue with the other two, and they proclaimed the mystery and gifted a small babe with the brightest gold, sweet smelling frankincense, and bitter myrrh.
And Pamela did continue to move among the people of the Land of the Rising Sun. She wandered the narrow aisles of the food markets and felt a child again, unable to identify those foods which had sustained her stomach through all the days of her youth. For the calligraphy was foreign to her. But each return trip to the food market increased in ease, until she could venture to the market and home again without even the smallest frustration.
She tried to live as light, and among a people clothed in clothing all of black, those working in bitter labor and with faces sometimes without hope, she donned a cloak of bright orange as a symbol of that light and hope which comes from life with Him who is awesome and great. She heard the cries of the hopeless who thought to throw their lives before a great beast of metal and she shed tears for them and lifted them to the arms of the Loving Father. And through the lifting up, she did feel hope for those in chains, and she walked in the light that is Hope.
And she continued to move among the people as a stranger. She saw them with a stranger's eyes. She heard tales of the most ancient days of the brave Japanese, she heard of honor and of shame, and they told her the tales of those who had risked being pounded down by proclaiming the name of the Messiah. Like any stranger, her ways often fell into error. But Pamela lived her mistakes in laughter. And the people of the Land of the Rising Sun were kind and forgiving of her faults. In both an eternity and no time at all, the first year of her time in that land came to an end. She walked the streets as the bells tolled the midnight of the first New Year, and she knew that it was good. For the Land of the Rising Sun had brought change inside of her. A stranger she would remain, but a stranger now at home in Japan.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Sumimasen, hablas Espanol?
Happy Advent, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
Another month in Japan, another email from your friendly wacky missionary friend! Or, for some of you, this is the first email from your friendly wacky missionary friend. A warm welcome to Leslie, Jen, Ernie, Rich, Sarah E., Katrina, Haidee, Jenae, and Cassie!
We'll start out with some terms again. :-)
LLI: Lutheran Language Institute. The place where I learn Japanese and where many of my more missionaryish activities take place.
Kanji: the Japanese alphabet based from Chinese in which each symbol loosely stands for a word. Actually, many of them are still only parts of a word. So, the word sensei, for example, is two kanji. "Sen" comes from the kanji that means "previously" and "sei" from the kanji for "live" or "birth", so, sensei (teacher) kind of literally means "one who has lived before".
Hachioji: My assigned church that I attend on Sundays. It's a nice congregation with about 30 people on a Sunday. We wear slippers inside, so it's always hard for me to remember that I need to be more concerned with what socks I am wearing to church than what shoes.
The holiday season in Japan is very busy. And for we missionary types, there were many opportunities to reach out to the community in the name of faith, turkey, and Santa Claus. I had three different Thanksgiving dinners over the course of one week at the end of November. The first was a massive dinner that was prepared by my missionary friends and served as outreach to many of the church members and English students at LLI. My housemate disappeared to help cook for about two days preceding the dinner and finally returned, exhausted and smelling of garlic, the evening the dinner took place. Many of the forty some people there were Japanese, and I admit it was vindicating to have multiple Japanese people asking "What is that food?" about things very familiar to me, such as cranberry sauce. After our kids' day from the first month we were here where there were only two kids, it was amazing to see how many people were there. In addition to the dinner, a Japanese man led a praise style worship time. That gave us the opportunity to do some fun singing and to be crazy. We taught the Superman meal prayer and performed our own version of the Humble Thyself / Awesome God medley with Sarah on the piano and Haidee on the guitar. I'm over here with some really talented ladies!
My second Thanksgiving dinner was on Thanksgiving Day itself, and it involved a very special pizza dinner with some of my friends. Cheese is next to non-existent here, or at least very expensive, so the dinner was a big treat. The final Thanksgiving dinner was at long-term missionary Dave's house and was comfortingly familiar and fun.
Non-holiday life in Japan also continues to be amusing. I have officially become the founding member of the Orange Jacket Revolution here in Tokyo. So far, it is a one girl revolution, but it feels strangely productive. Especially on the trains going to LLI in the mornings, there are a ton of people wearing black. I had purchased a black jacket the first couple weeks I was here, and it finally got to the point where I couldn't wear it. What can I say? I've always been something of a non-conformist. So, I went out in search of a new jacket. At first, I was looking at my normal favorite choices of blue or green, but then I saw the orange ones. I'm kind of in a mood right now to be as bright as possible. So, now I wear my orange jacket all over the place and feel a strange affinity with all the other people I see wearing orange or yellow or red.
One of my orange jacket's first experiences was a lovely hiking trip up and over two mountains. Rest assured, dear Wyoming readers, these were not Rocky Mountains, but it was still a very long hiking trip. Sarah (my housemate) and I accompanied two members of my church youth group. It is probably worth explaining that youth groups are a little different in Japan than in the States. I am the youngest member of my church youth group here in Japan. :-) It was a good, bilingual and bicultural day. My Japanese friends introduced us to Kushi-Dango, which is three rice dumplings on a stick with a sweet soy sauce drizzled over. We introduced them to trail mix.
Another fun youth group activity at church was making puppets. Koji, one of my good church friends, asked me a couple weeks before Christmas if I would help him make puppets after choir practice that Sunday. I agreed, and headed up after practice, assuming that we would be making sock puppets or something of the sort. When I arrived, however, I was handed a sphere of clay and shown a model of a sculpted face that I was to imitate. The experience showcased the communal aspect of Japanese culture very well. Before I had finished sculpting, I showed the head to one of the other puppet makers and kind of joked via gestures that the nose was too big. The head was immediately snatched away from me and the woman began adding little bits of clay here, scraping some off there. I felt myself getting offended. I hadn't even been given the opportunity to finish my best shot and here it was already being 'fixed' as though I hadn't done a good enough job! But then I remembered how much the focus is Japan is not on one individual person's work but on what the group could do together. Once I had given up my individual hold on the project, it was much easier to look at the assistance from other people in the group as assistance and not as corrections to a job I had done inadequately. I have to admit that the finished project was much better because there were multiple people involved.
In terms of language, there have been many big explosions since my last email. In class, we started learning kanji, which is the third and final alphabet that I will learn. Of course, where as the first two alphabets could be learned in a matter of weeks, even Japanese people cannot read all the kanji. The really big explosion, though, has been understanding. I can often get the gist of what people are saying, even if not the fine details. Sometimes this is bad, because I'm getting used to not understanding a lot of things. I had a meeting with a Japanese person about playing handbells, and in it I sat down and just started nodding and listening. The longterm missionary who was with me, eyebrows slightly raised, told me to let him know if I wanted things translated. It was only then that I realized I was only catching about two words a sentence, so I let him translate. ;-) I suppose speaking Japanese is getting much better too. Intellectually I know it is, because I gave a speech a couple weeks ago in which I talked for five minutes about St. Olaf in Japanese. But there are still many things I wish I could say but can't. Occasionally, my brain comes up with ingenious statements like "Sumimasen, hablas Espanol?" (Excuse me (in Japanese), do you speak Spanish (in Spanish)?) But my brain is gradually separating the languages, even if only by murdering my knowledge of Spanish.
Talk about language leads me to Christmas time. The five minute aforementioned speech took place on Speech Day, which was also a big Christmas party and our second (or third?) time to lead Holden Evening Prayer at LLI. I announced the Holden Evening Prayer part of Speech Day in Japanese at Hachioji Church, and then I was in trouble because everyone in the congregation knew I spoke Japanese. I was approached after church by one of the people who had been making puppets with me. She showed me the completed puppets and explained, completely in Japanese, something that involved "puppets" "Pamela-san" "Japanese" and "acting". There was little to do except say, "Yomimaska?" (Am I reading?). And I was, therefore, enlisted as a member of the cast of our Christmas pageant.
At LLI, we had another kid's day for Christmas. I got to help teach a handbell version of Away in the Manger to 24 little guys. Let me tell you, Japanese kids are talented. We only played the song once and it had a couple notes where you had to know octaves or flats and there was not a note missing. The day was such a miracle! Having that many kids was super energizing and fun! We even had a family from the local French school who contributed by teaching us to sing "O Christmas Tree" in French. It was an awesome day.
Christmas as a member of a Japanese congregation is a marathon sort of affair. At Hachioji, we started on December 23rd with a children's day of our own. This was the day that I was to be in the puppet show, but it turned out that I wasn't really a puppet but a live person who would interact with the puppets. In particular, I was Wise Man B. My church friend Koji had taken my script and written it out in nice, big Hiragana (the phonetic alphabet) in place of Kanji. The church members had lovingly decked me out in a decorative scarf, almost tunic, and small graduation cap. It almost went really well, until the woman with the line right in front of mine forgot her line and we started improvising. Or, rather, they started improvising while I stared at the script in rapt concentration waiting for it to return to any Japanese I recognized. Luckily it wasn't that formal of a performance, so our little bloopers just added to the fun.
After the puppet play I had my inaugural appearance as Santa Claus. Somehow, all the kids instantly knew it was me. I'm not really sure how...couldn't have had anything to do with my bad Japanese. ;-)
The next day at church was Christmas Eve. We had a morning service at 10:30, lunch after that, various Christmas presentations (gifts given to the oldest members of the congregation, a second showing of our Christmas pageant, and a wacky English solo from the resident missionary (I'm still not sure how they talked me into that one.)), and then a break until the evening candlelight service at 7:30. The evening candlelight service was a serious candlelight service. None of that only lighting the candles for Silent Night at the end. The candles stayed lit for almost the entire service. For those of us in the choir, that made things very interesting, because we were all sitting VERY close together in the front and juggling a bulletin, a choir folder, and a lit candle. But I am happy to say that there were no repeats of my childhood experiences of nearly burning down churches during candlelight services (which was my little brother's fault anyway... ;-) ).
I was very thankful for no church on Christmas day, and also very thankful for technology. My family and I were able to be "virtually" together on Christmas morning by using webcams. That definitely made the first Christmas away from home more bearable.
This past weekend was New Years, the big holiday here in Japan. I was asked more than once if this would be my first New Years away from home, which I suppose it was, but it was hard to explain to some of the Japanese people that it was Christmas, and not New Years, that I was concerned about. I was in a convenience store buying a sandwich when the New Year started. The Japanese teller wished me a happy new year in English with a big, embarrassed grin on his face. It is rare for a teller to say much more than "523 yen" or "thank you for waiting". It made me smile.
Amusing Gaijin Error of the month: While attending a Christmas party, a Japanese guy approached me and introduced himself. Except he used a lot of words to introduce himself. I had my dictionary with me and, determined to have some idea what he was saying, I picked what I believed was a key word and tried to look it up. He tried to dissuade me first by saying that it wasn't in the dictionary, and then finally said "That's not a word, it's my name." Oops. Lots of bowing on Pamela's part followed.
I hope that the holiday season is ending well for all of you, and that all of you had a chance to rest amid the festivities.
Blessings and peace!
Pamela
p.s. I now have pictures up online! I sent an email to most people on this list about the first album, but now there is a second album as well. The website is: http://picsbypamela.shutterfly.com/ The online pictures are not quite caught up with the emails, though.
p.p.s. I have absolutely loved getting little emails from those of you who have sent them. Sometimes I have been busy and not managed to respond, but I always read them and they are a wonderful treat and gift. I am sorry, though, for those of you who have not gotten a response. I am trying to get better at responding.
Another month in Japan, another email from your friendly wacky missionary friend! Or, for some of you, this is the first email from your friendly wacky missionary friend. A warm welcome to Leslie, Jen, Ernie, Rich, Sarah E., Katrina, Haidee, Jenae, and Cassie!
We'll start out with some terms again. :-)
LLI: Lutheran Language Institute. The place where I learn Japanese and where many of my more missionaryish activities take place.
Kanji: the Japanese alphabet based from Chinese in which each symbol loosely stands for a word. Actually, many of them are still only parts of a word. So, the word sensei, for example, is two kanji. "Sen" comes from the kanji that means "previously" and "sei" from the kanji for "live" or "birth", so, sensei (teacher) kind of literally means "one who has lived before".
Hachioji: My assigned church that I attend on Sundays. It's a nice congregation with about 30 people on a Sunday. We wear slippers inside, so it's always hard for me to remember that I need to be more concerned with what socks I am wearing to church than what shoes.
The holiday season in Japan is very busy. And for we missionary types, there were many opportunities to reach out to the community in the name of faith, turkey, and Santa Claus. I had three different Thanksgiving dinners over the course of one week at the end of November. The first was a massive dinner that was prepared by my missionary friends and served as outreach to many of the church members and English students at LLI. My housemate disappeared to help cook for about two days preceding the dinner and finally returned, exhausted and smelling of garlic, the evening the dinner took place. Many of the forty some people there were Japanese, and I admit it was vindicating to have multiple Japanese people asking "What is that food?" about things very familiar to me, such as cranberry sauce. After our kids' day from the first month we were here where there were only two kids, it was amazing to see how many people were there. In addition to the dinner, a Japanese man led a praise style worship time. That gave us the opportunity to do some fun singing and to be crazy. We taught the Superman meal prayer and performed our own version of the Humble Thyself / Awesome God medley with Sarah on the piano and Haidee on the guitar. I'm over here with some really talented ladies!
My second Thanksgiving dinner was on Thanksgiving Day itself, and it involved a very special pizza dinner with some of my friends. Cheese is next to non-existent here, or at least very expensive, so the dinner was a big treat. The final Thanksgiving dinner was at long-term missionary Dave's house and was comfortingly familiar and fun.
Non-holiday life in Japan also continues to be amusing. I have officially become the founding member of the Orange Jacket Revolution here in Tokyo. So far, it is a one girl revolution, but it feels strangely productive. Especially on the trains going to LLI in the mornings, there are a ton of people wearing black. I had purchased a black jacket the first couple weeks I was here, and it finally got to the point where I couldn't wear it. What can I say? I've always been something of a non-conformist. So, I went out in search of a new jacket. At first, I was looking at my normal favorite choices of blue or green, but then I saw the orange ones. I'm kind of in a mood right now to be as bright as possible. So, now I wear my orange jacket all over the place and feel a strange affinity with all the other people I see wearing orange or yellow or red.
One of my orange jacket's first experiences was a lovely hiking trip up and over two mountains. Rest assured, dear Wyoming readers, these were not Rocky Mountains, but it was still a very long hiking trip. Sarah (my housemate) and I accompanied two members of my church youth group. It is probably worth explaining that youth groups are a little different in Japan than in the States. I am the youngest member of my church youth group here in Japan. :-) It was a good, bilingual and bicultural day. My Japanese friends introduced us to Kushi-Dango, which is three rice dumplings on a stick with a sweet soy sauce drizzled over. We introduced them to trail mix.
Another fun youth group activity at church was making puppets. Koji, one of my good church friends, asked me a couple weeks before Christmas if I would help him make puppets after choir practice that Sunday. I agreed, and headed up after practice, assuming that we would be making sock puppets or something of the sort. When I arrived, however, I was handed a sphere of clay and shown a model of a sculpted face that I was to imitate. The experience showcased the communal aspect of Japanese culture very well. Before I had finished sculpting, I showed the head to one of the other puppet makers and kind of joked via gestures that the nose was too big. The head was immediately snatched away from me and the woman began adding little bits of clay here, scraping some off there. I felt myself getting offended. I hadn't even been given the opportunity to finish my best shot and here it was already being 'fixed' as though I hadn't done a good enough job! But then I remembered how much the focus is Japan is not on one individual person's work but on what the group could do together. Once I had given up my individual hold on the project, it was much easier to look at the assistance from other people in the group as assistance and not as corrections to a job I had done inadequately. I have to admit that the finished project was much better because there were multiple people involved.
In terms of language, there have been many big explosions since my last email. In class, we started learning kanji, which is the third and final alphabet that I will learn. Of course, where as the first two alphabets could be learned in a matter of weeks, even Japanese people cannot read all the kanji. The really big explosion, though, has been understanding. I can often get the gist of what people are saying, even if not the fine details. Sometimes this is bad, because I'm getting used to not understanding a lot of things. I had a meeting with a Japanese person about playing handbells, and in it I sat down and just started nodding and listening. The longterm missionary who was with me, eyebrows slightly raised, told me to let him know if I wanted things translated. It was only then that I realized I was only catching about two words a sentence, so I let him translate. ;-) I suppose speaking Japanese is getting much better too. Intellectually I know it is, because I gave a speech a couple weeks ago in which I talked for five minutes about St. Olaf in Japanese. But there are still many things I wish I could say but can't. Occasionally, my brain comes up with ingenious statements like "Sumimasen, hablas Espanol?" (Excuse me (in Japanese), do you speak Spanish (in Spanish)?) But my brain is gradually separating the languages, even if only by murdering my knowledge of Spanish.
Talk about language leads me to Christmas time. The five minute aforementioned speech took place on Speech Day, which was also a big Christmas party and our second (or third?) time to lead Holden Evening Prayer at LLI. I announced the Holden Evening Prayer part of Speech Day in Japanese at Hachioji Church, and then I was in trouble because everyone in the congregation knew I spoke Japanese. I was approached after church by one of the people who had been making puppets with me. She showed me the completed puppets and explained, completely in Japanese, something that involved "puppets" "Pamela-san" "Japanese" and "acting". There was little to do except say, "Yomimaska?" (Am I reading?). And I was, therefore, enlisted as a member of the cast of our Christmas pageant.
At LLI, we had another kid's day for Christmas. I got to help teach a handbell version of Away in the Manger to 24 little guys. Let me tell you, Japanese kids are talented. We only played the song once and it had a couple notes where you had to know octaves or flats and there was not a note missing. The day was such a miracle! Having that many kids was super energizing and fun! We even had a family from the local French school who contributed by teaching us to sing "O Christmas Tree" in French. It was an awesome day.
Christmas as a member of a Japanese congregation is a marathon sort of affair. At Hachioji, we started on December 23rd with a children's day of our own. This was the day that I was to be in the puppet show, but it turned out that I wasn't really a puppet but a live person who would interact with the puppets. In particular, I was Wise Man B. My church friend Koji had taken my script and written it out in nice, big Hiragana (the phonetic alphabet) in place of Kanji. The church members had lovingly decked me out in a decorative scarf, almost tunic, and small graduation cap. It almost went really well, until the woman with the line right in front of mine forgot her line and we started improvising. Or, rather, they started improvising while I stared at the script in rapt concentration waiting for it to return to any Japanese I recognized. Luckily it wasn't that formal of a performance, so our little bloopers just added to the fun.
After the puppet play I had my inaugural appearance as Santa Claus. Somehow, all the kids instantly knew it was me. I'm not really sure how...couldn't have had anything to do with my bad Japanese. ;-)
The next day at church was Christmas Eve. We had a morning service at 10:30, lunch after that, various Christmas presentations (gifts given to the oldest members of the congregation, a second showing of our Christmas pageant, and a wacky English solo from the resident missionary (I'm still not sure how they talked me into that one.)), and then a break until the evening candlelight service at 7:30. The evening candlelight service was a serious candlelight service. None of that only lighting the candles for Silent Night at the end. The candles stayed lit for almost the entire service. For those of us in the choir, that made things very interesting, because we were all sitting VERY close together in the front and juggling a bulletin, a choir folder, and a lit candle. But I am happy to say that there were no repeats of my childhood experiences of nearly burning down churches during candlelight services (which was my little brother's fault anyway... ;-) ).
I was very thankful for no church on Christmas day, and also very thankful for technology. My family and I were able to be "virtually" together on Christmas morning by using webcams. That definitely made the first Christmas away from home more bearable.
This past weekend was New Years, the big holiday here in Japan. I was asked more than once if this would be my first New Years away from home, which I suppose it was, but it was hard to explain to some of the Japanese people that it was Christmas, and not New Years, that I was concerned about. I was in a convenience store buying a sandwich when the New Year started. The Japanese teller wished me a happy new year in English with a big, embarrassed grin on his face. It is rare for a teller to say much more than "523 yen" or "thank you for waiting". It made me smile.
Amusing Gaijin Error of the month: While attending a Christmas party, a Japanese guy approached me and introduced himself. Except he used a lot of words to introduce himself. I had my dictionary with me and, determined to have some idea what he was saying, I picked what I believed was a key word and tried to look it up. He tried to dissuade me first by saying that it wasn't in the dictionary, and then finally said "That's not a word, it's my name." Oops. Lots of bowing on Pamela's part followed.
I hope that the holiday season is ending well for all of you, and that all of you had a chance to rest amid the festivities.
Blessings and peace!
Pamela
p.s. I now have pictures up online! I sent an email to most people on this list about the first album, but now there is a second album as well. The website is: http://picsbypamela.shutterfly
p.p.s. I have absolutely loved getting little emails from those of you who have sent them. Sometimes I have been busy and not managed to respond, but I always read them and they are a wonderful treat and gift. I am sorry, though, for those of you who have not gotten a response. I am trying to get better at responding.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Happy New Year!
Looking back, 2006 may very well have been the most significant year of my 22 years. Being an adult is cool that way...cool to be in a place where my responsibility is to the world and not to professors. Which isn't to say that I don't take the opportunity to act like a kid every chance I get. :)
Anyway...notable events from this year!
-Spent a month in South Africa.
-Helped plan and lead one of the most fun (if stressful) SCA events I've ever been a part of
-Realized that I don't just like to dance, I *love love love* to dance.
-Traveled to Seattle for spring break to finally meet a friend in person
-Survived the hardest semester to be academically focused of my life with, ironically, one of my highest college GPAs.
-Somewhere along the line began considering myself a mainline conservative Christian instead of a mainline liberal Christian.
-Went to a bar with friends for the first time. Still holding off on ordering more than one drink. ;)
-Said goodbye to four of the most lovely friends I have ever had.
-Became a college graduate.
-Began a process of completely rethinking the way I look at peace.
-Began doing real drawings every once in awhile.
-Successfully threw away something like 20 billion boxes of things I'd been hanging onto and didn't need.
-Moved to Japan
-Met some really incredible new friends.
-Read the book Intercessory Prayer and completely changed the way I pray.
-Began a prayer assignment to end suicides on the Chuo Line in Tokyo
-Learned that, if one wishes to have a nice social time at a pub, telling even one person in the pub that your group is made up entirely of missionaries who are out to celebrate Martin Luther's birthday is not the best way to do it.
-Bought an orange jacket. Traded the desire to blend in for a desire to be a bright force in the world.
-Bought a Mac. (Still slightly in shock about that one, but happy.)
-Spent my first Christmas away from home
-Went from knowing no Japanese to being able to read two new alphabets and to give a five minute speech about St. Olaf.
My first event of 2007: I wanted into a convenience store at about 12:02am this morning to buy a sandwich. The streets were pretty much deserted (I had just arrived home on the last train) but the sounds of people ringing large temple bells could be heard from at least three directions. Typical to Japan, there were three tellers standing behind the counter to serve a completely empty store. But when I came up and bought my sandwich, one of them said, "Happy New Year!" with a big, embarrassed grin on his face. It was one of the only times in Japan I have had a store employee say more to me than "Thank you for waiting", "do you have a point card?", or tell me the total cost of my purchase. It was such a nice change after Christmas, when I told a woman working in a bakery Merry Christmas and she said nothing in return. Definitely left the store smiling last night.
Anyway...notable events from this year!
-Spent a month in South Africa.
-Helped plan and lead one of the most fun (if stressful) SCA events I've ever been a part of
-Realized that I don't just like to dance, I *love love love* to dance.
-Traveled to Seattle for spring break to finally meet a friend in person
-Survived the hardest semester to be academically focused of my life with, ironically, one of my highest college GPAs.
-Somewhere along the line began considering myself a mainline conservative Christian instead of a mainline liberal Christian.
-Went to a bar with friends for the first time. Still holding off on ordering more than one drink. ;)
-Said goodbye to four of the most lovely friends I have ever had.
-Became a college graduate.
-Began a process of completely rethinking the way I look at peace.
-Began doing real drawings every once in awhile.
-Successfully threw away something like 20 billion boxes of things I'd been hanging onto and didn't need.
-Moved to Japan
-Met some really incredible new friends.
-Read the book Intercessory Prayer and completely changed the way I pray.
-Began a prayer assignment to end suicides on the Chuo Line in Tokyo
-Learned that, if one wishes to have a nice social time at a pub, telling even one person in the pub that your group is made up entirely of missionaries who are out to celebrate Martin Luther's birthday is not the best way to do it.
-Bought an orange jacket. Traded the desire to blend in for a desire to be a bright force in the world.
-Bought a Mac. (Still slightly in shock about that one, but happy.)
-Spent my first Christmas away from home
-Went from knowing no Japanese to being able to read two new alphabets and to give a five minute speech about St. Olaf.
My first event of 2007: I wanted into a convenience store at about 12:02am this morning to buy a sandwich. The streets were pretty much deserted (I had just arrived home on the last train) but the sounds of people ringing large temple bells could be heard from at least three directions. Typical to Japan, there were three tellers standing behind the counter to serve a completely empty store. But when I came up and bought my sandwich, one of them said, "Happy New Year!" with a big, embarrassed grin on his face. It was one of the only times in Japan I have had a store employee say more to me than "Thank you for waiting", "do you have a point card?", or tell me the total cost of my purchase. It was such a nice change after Christmas, when I told a woman working in a bakery Merry Christmas and she said nothing in return. Definitely left the store smiling last night.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Speech Day and Church "Fun"
So, I've been more or less away from home for something like six days now. But! I am now officially on Christmas break, which means that I only have church and other sorts of activities and no language class.
Friday was the ever so "looked forward to" Speech Day. Earlier in the semester, we were assuming that this meant we would give a speech in front of our class and the teachers would give us a grade and write down little things we'd done incorrectly. But no. In fact, Speech Day is an afternoon 'event' in which all the new missionaries are initiated by being made to give 3-5 minutes speeches in front of about twenty Japanese people. In addition, we had to make food and provide music. All in all, it went quite well, though. I made rommegrod (my favorite Norwegian food!) and people seemed to like it. That may only be because the Americans in the group are in Cream of Wheat withdrawal, though... ;)
Sunday was yet another day at church. I was elected to play one of the wise men in our kid's puppet play for Christmas, and I decided (very wisely, I might add) to play the one who only has five very short lines. After going over the puppet play, one of my church friends pulled me into another room and had me sit down in preparation of something he was going to ask me. He was so serious about it that my brain began coming up with possible scenarios, such as that he was going to propose to me completely out of the blue. Thankfully, nothing like that happened, but he finally got to the matter at hand. "Two years ago...the J3...John...at the kid's Christmas party...(long pause)...he wear the Santa suit." I managed to repress my sigh of relief. "You're asking me to wear a Santa suit for part of the Christmas party?" He bowed very low. "Onegaishimas." (Please.) I happily agreed. His next request was that I sing something for the Christmas party, which I slightly more reluctantly agreed to. By this point, he was down on the ground bowing to me in thanks. ...never quite know what to do in a situation like that.
I trekked out to the other side of Tokyo after church for a nice relaxing "We've survived the first half of orientation!" sento trip with the VYMers. It was lovely. Haidee and I were talking about how it would be a great activity for junior high kids, because you actually get to see that even the skinniest women carry fat in the same places.
Tomorrow we are going to go see the Messiah and get all dressed up for it. We are having Bible study in the morning and it is my turn to lead worship. I am seriously considering making the group do interpretive dance. *evil grin*
Friday was the ever so "looked forward to" Speech Day. Earlier in the semester, we were assuming that this meant we would give a speech in front of our class and the teachers would give us a grade and write down little things we'd done incorrectly. But no. In fact, Speech Day is an afternoon 'event' in which all the new missionaries are initiated by being made to give 3-5 minutes speeches in front of about twenty Japanese people. In addition, we had to make food and provide music. All in all, it went quite well, though. I made rommegrod (my favorite Norwegian food!) and people seemed to like it. That may only be because the Americans in the group are in Cream of Wheat withdrawal, though... ;)
Sunday was yet another day at church. I was elected to play one of the wise men in our kid's puppet play for Christmas, and I decided (very wisely, I might add) to play the one who only has five very short lines. After going over the puppet play, one of my church friends pulled me into another room and had me sit down in preparation of something he was going to ask me. He was so serious about it that my brain began coming up with possible scenarios, such as that he was going to propose to me completely out of the blue. Thankfully, nothing like that happened, but he finally got to the matter at hand. "Two years ago...the J3...John...at the kid's Christmas party...(long pause)...he wear the Santa suit." I managed to repress my sigh of relief. "You're asking me to wear a Santa suit for part of the Christmas party?" He bowed very low. "Onegaishimas." (Please.) I happily agreed. His next request was that I sing something for the Christmas party, which I slightly more reluctantly agreed to. By this point, he was down on the ground bowing to me in thanks. ...never quite know what to do in a situation like that.
I trekked out to the other side of Tokyo after church for a nice relaxing "We've survived the first half of orientation!" sento trip with the VYMers. It was lovely. Haidee and I were talking about how it would be a great activity for junior high kids, because you actually get to see that even the skinniest women carry fat in the same places.
Tomorrow we are going to go see the Messiah and get all dressed up for it. We are having Bible study in the morning and it is my turn to lead worship. I am seriously considering making the group do interpretive dance. *evil grin*
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Fill My Cup and Let It Overflow
This weekend was so incredibly healing and relaxing and wonderful. I have been feeling really down the past few weeks...which was discouraging to me because I didn't really know what I was feeling down about. My back had gotten to the point where when I finally asked a friend for a backrub she described it as more denting her fingers than her fingers denting my back. This girl gives the most effective backrubs I have ever had, and apparently the look on my face while I was receiving said backrub was making everyone within a twenty or thirty foot radius hurt as well. My back honestly hadn't been hurting too badly before the backrub, but it was starting to give me headaches at night. After the backrub, it hurt very badly, but the boulder that it had been had turned into a rather tender back with several large rocks still floating around.
I honestly have a point to all these backrub ramblings, I swear. Because what I figured out over the weekend is that the way my back had been getting was pretty much what I had been doing with all of me. I'd been taking all the stress from moving and just kind of holding it tightly and convincing myself that I didn't really feel it. The process of trying to release the stress has been painful, but I am starting to loosen up. I am starting to make friends. The real Pamela is beginning to show her face again. But loosening the stress has meant spending some time crying and being lonely and reminding myself that I really am an emotional person and really shouldn't try to lie to myself about that fact.
We traveled out to Okutama, which is about an hour towards the "out of Tokyo" direction from our house. There we saw mountains, and breathed fresh air, and spent some time walking around in nature. *happy sigh* We were in Okutama for the Hongo Bible Camp. Technically we were staff, but it was relaxing anyway. The Japanese folks there were either Christians or English students at the Hongo Center. The event was pretty much all in English.
We did several skits throughout the course of the weekend. The first was of Mary and Martha, and focused my dear housemate as Martha dashing around doing terribly important tasks such as making rice and walking the dog. Then we did a Good Samaritan skit (except we did the Good North Korean) in which yours truly got beaten up, and had her shoes and her left sock stolen.
The best part of the weekend for me, though, was sitting around the fireplace (no campfire because it was raining) and singing Bible Camp songs. We led a devotion there too in which we brought in a bunch of rocks, shared some Bible verses and then had people come up and lay a rock on the cross to represent giving their burdens to Christ. I can very safely say that it was not only the Japanese people who needed the devotion.
We roasted marshmallows for s'mores afterwards, and I think I nearly gave several nice Japanese ladies heart attacks. Apparently they don't really 'do' marshmallows in Japan, and if they do, they stick to the nice conventional s'mores. The sight of a young missionary making a blazing torch out of her marshmallow, blowing it out, and immediately pulling the charred sugar off and eating it was a little shocking. They kept saying "daijobu?" (are you okay?), so I think they were afraid the marshmallow was a lot hotter than it really was. I tried to convince them that it was the best way to eat marshmallows, but not even one of them tried it. Perhaps their hesitation was aided by the fact that all the other missionaries thought I was crazy too. ;)
I honestly have a point to all these backrub ramblings, I swear. Because what I figured out over the weekend is that the way my back had been getting was pretty much what I had been doing with all of me. I'd been taking all the stress from moving and just kind of holding it tightly and convincing myself that I didn't really feel it. The process of trying to release the stress has been painful, but I am starting to loosen up. I am starting to make friends. The real Pamela is beginning to show her face again. But loosening the stress has meant spending some time crying and being lonely and reminding myself that I really am an emotional person and really shouldn't try to lie to myself about that fact.
We traveled out to Okutama, which is about an hour towards the "out of Tokyo" direction from our house. There we saw mountains, and breathed fresh air, and spent some time walking around in nature. *happy sigh* We were in Okutama for the Hongo Bible Camp. Technically we were staff, but it was relaxing anyway. The Japanese folks there were either Christians or English students at the Hongo Center. The event was pretty much all in English.
We did several skits throughout the course of the weekend. The first was of Mary and Martha, and focused my dear housemate as Martha dashing around doing terribly important tasks such as making rice and walking the dog. Then we did a Good Samaritan skit (except we did the Good North Korean) in which yours truly got beaten up, and had her shoes and her left sock stolen.
The best part of the weekend for me, though, was sitting around the fireplace (no campfire because it was raining) and singing Bible Camp songs. We led a devotion there too in which we brought in a bunch of rocks, shared some Bible verses and then had people come up and lay a rock on the cross to represent giving their burdens to Christ. I can very safely say that it was not only the Japanese people who needed the devotion.
We roasted marshmallows for s'mores afterwards, and I think I nearly gave several nice Japanese ladies heart attacks. Apparently they don't really 'do' marshmallows in Japan, and if they do, they stick to the nice conventional s'mores. The sight of a young missionary making a blazing torch out of her marshmallow, blowing it out, and immediately pulling the charred sugar off and eating it was a little shocking. They kept saying "daijobu?" (are you okay?), so I think they were afraid the marshmallow was a lot hotter than it really was. I tried to convince them that it was the best way to eat marshmallows, but not even one of them tried it. Perhaps their hesitation was aided by the fact that all the other missionaries thought I was crazy too. ;)
Monday, November 6, 2006
Life in Japan
Hello all!
Well, I have had the ability to write this email for quite a while now, but I have been afraid of how long it will get with everything that has happened this first month and a half. But, the longer I put off writing an update, the harder it will get. So! Diving right in!
Some important terminology for you all:
J3 = My job. It stands for "Japan" "3 years". There are two other new J3s: Matt and Sarah. Sarah is my housemate, Matt lives in the next "town" over (about a fifteen minute walk).
VYMers = The Missouri Synod Lutheran missionaries who are going through orientation and training with us. They are four girls: Katrina, Haidee, Cassie, and Janae.
Kumamoto = a city on the island of Kyushu (southern Japan). J3s are stationed either in Tokyo or in Kumamoto after language training. Two out of the three new J3s will be stationed at Luther Gakuin (a Lutheran High School) after our orientation.
The Hongo Center = The center in Tokyo where the Lutheran church teaches English and some Christianity classes. One J3 will be stationed here after our orientation.
Katakana = The Japanese alphabet used for foreign words adopted into the language, such as my name. My name is now written: パメラ サーセン, which is transcribed as Pamera Sahsen. :-) If you want to know what yours looks like, let me know and I'll send it to you.
Now we should all be on the same page...or, if we're not, I'll try to explain as I go. ;-)
So, our first week in Japan was mainly time to get lost on the trains, have people talk at us in Japanese (I mean, get registered as legal aliens and get bank accounts and the like), and Learn to Use Chopsticks Now Week. It was a week when small successes seemed monumental. The major successes of week one were: successfully eating rice with chopsticks, getting to the correct eki (train station) without having to go backwards, and finding low fat milk.
Soon after our week of leisure and learning, we jumped on the Shinkansen (bullet train...think 250 km / hour!) and went down to Hiroshima for the J3 Retreat. Here we met up with all the J3s from the country--probably ten people aside from us. There are only two J3s stationed in Tokyo right now. The rest are down in Kumamoto teaching junior and senior high English classes. It was fun to have the whole group together, and amazing to see how good some of their Japanese was. It was also amazingly lovely to flee the endless buildings that are Tokyo. A Japanese movie I saw once used the phrase "lost in an urban wilderness", and that sums up what Tokyo feels like sometimes. Our lodgings in Hiroshima, though, were on an island with lots of trees and mountains and the ocean.
It was our lodgings in Hiroshima where we got our first very traditional Japanese meal, though. If any of you are thinking of visiting Japan, I would recommend getting good chopsticks skills first. It makes it so that if you don't know what something is, you can just try a little bite of it. Verses me, who was forced to put an entire mystery glob of food in my mouth, with varying results. It was usually fine, though. The exception was sushi squid, which, as my housemate so accurately described it, "is the only food that gets chewier the more you chew it."
Speaking of food, Japanese food is amazing. My favorite is katsudon--it's a breaded pork cutlet and egg on top of rice. Yummy!
Seeing the sites in Hiroshima was very emotionally moving. I could easily write you an entire email on the moral thoughts that were crashing around in my head as I walked through the museum there. Questions like: What would have happened if we hadn't dropped the bomb? When it comes to warfare, is the number of lives cost the only determining factor for whether an attack was moral, or are there some actions that will always be immoral? Perhaps the best thing I can say after seeing the museum is: nuclear bombs are scary. Please let's not use them ever again.
We went straight from Hiroshima to Kumamoto where we visited the schools and possible future bosses. The schools are definitely Japanese. The students are there for hours and hours during the day, and the teachers are as well. Some positive things about Kumamoto that I learned were that I might have the opportunity to help out with a bell choir there and I also might be able to teach a class at a kindergarten once a week. But in terms of the teaching itself, I think I am better suited to the Hongo Center.
Speaking of the Hongo Center, we also have taken the opportunity to spend time there on Friday nights. Paul, the current J3 who will be leaving in March, teaches a Christianity Today course and Aaron, a longterm missionary and pastor, leads an English Coffee Hour afterwards. Most of the Hongo students are in university or they are professionals. One man is a neurologist who studies the Bible in French, German, English, and who-knows-what-else so long as it isn't Japanese. He thinks studying the Bible in Japanese is boring. If I were placed here, I would be teaching adults during the week. I think my teaching style is a little better suited to adults, and I like the idea of teaching the Christianity Today class.
***INTERMISSION***
Anyway, about a day after we returned from Kumamoto, we began our Japanese classes at the Lutheran Language Institute. We have two teachers. Nunokawa Sensei is one of those amazing teachers that you know loves you and wants you to learn. She could beat just about anyone I know at charades. Our other teacher is Miyazawa Sensei, and she speaks my language when it comes to language instruction. That being said, I have come close to being murdered by my classmates while discussing grammar with Miyazawa Sensei on more than one occasion. Apparently, my enthusiasm for the Japanese classes can be intimidating at times. I'm trying to tone it down. Really.
...but grammar is so interesting! And I have to clarify about it sometimes because that's how I know how to use it correctly. Ahem. I'm done now.
One of the real lights of my time in Japan has been the time we have spent with the VYMers. We've been doing Bible studies with them once a week. And when my church experiences are all in Japanese, having that time to worship and pray in a group in English has been amazingly filling. We've made a point of doing things outside of class and Bible study as well, which resulted in my first trip to a sento (public bath). Contrary to my fears, the sento was great and relaxing. I've actually, with the help of a Japanese friend from church, located a sento within walking distance of my house now. Sarah and I are planning on checking it out at some point. We're just hoping it's not one of the mixed gender ones, because that would be more than we can handle.
I've been attending my assigned congregation, Hachioji Church, for about month now. It's a nice place, and the people all seem very friendly. It is both a blessing and a curse that there are almost no English speakers there. The hardest part is the sermon, which is usually around 45 minutes long and, of course, all in Japanese. My Japanese is getting "good" enough that when we have meals together at church and it is discovered that the gaijin (the foreigner--me) likes shiitake mushrooms when one of the energetic extroverted Japanese guys doesn't, I can say "mada tomodachi?" (still friends?) and people laugh. The relationships with people from church are really different from other relationships. We can't say much to each other, but we can do little things. I can help move tables for lunch and they can compliment my ability to write my name in katakana (I have yet to go to church without someone being impressed by this).
I am going to leave you on a darker note, which is my prayer request for this email. One of the trains that I ride to school every day is called the "Chuo Line". A popular way to commit suicide in Japan is to jump in front of a train, and it so happens that the Chuo Line is the line that has the most suicides. I asked a Japanese man why the Chuo has so many, and he said it was one of the great mysteries of Japan. My Christian perspective has some possible answers to this that would make it a less mysterious, however. There are times riding the train when it has felt like a very 'dark' place. A couple weeks ago, I felt called to pray for the Chuo line. So, I have been praying, listening to applicable Christian music, or reading applicable Bible passages while riding that train. Please join me in prayer for the trains. Pray that light would come to those living in darkness, pray that the suicides would stop right now, and please pray for my perseverance in praying for these things while on the train. The train ride is about forty minutes long, and especially on more tired days I need the perseverance prayers.
Okay, so I know I said I was leaving you on that darker note, but that really seems not nice. So, I will end with a story that a few of you have heard before, a.k.a. Pamela's Amusing Gaijin Blunder #2. The other day, I was doing one of my convenience store lunches and decided it would be nice to have some protein. I saw some of the usual stuff like canned tuna and sardines and, sitting next to them, what looked like canned chicken. I was intrigued. I took the can back to school, peeled back the lid, and ate a piece. It didn't seem quite right, and asked one of the VYMers if she thought the chicken needed to be heated up. Rather than responding to my question, she asked, "Are you eating cat food??" Oops. Needless to say, my lunch was proteinless. I tried leaving the cat food outside for some of the stray cats in the neighborhood, but it was still there after class, so I had to throw it out.
That seems like a better note to leave this long email on!
Love you all!
Pamela
Well, I have had the ability to write this email for quite a while now, but I have been afraid of how long it will get with everything that has happened this first month and a half. But, the longer I put off writing an update, the harder it will get. So! Diving right in!
Some important terminology for you all:
J3 = My job. It stands for "Japan" "3 years". There are two other new J3s: Matt and Sarah. Sarah is my housemate, Matt lives in the next "town" over (about a fifteen minute walk).
VYMers = The Missouri Synod Lutheran missionaries who are going through orientation and training with us. They are four girls: Katrina, Haidee, Cassie, and Janae.
Kumamoto = a city on the island of Kyushu (southern Japan). J3s are stationed either in Tokyo or in Kumamoto after language training. Two out of the three new J3s will be stationed at Luther Gakuin (a Lutheran High School) after our orientation.
The Hongo Center = The center in Tokyo where the Lutheran church teaches English and some Christianity classes. One J3 will be stationed here after our orientation.
Katakana = The Japanese alphabet used for foreign words adopted into the language, such as my name. My name is now written: パメラ サーセン, which is transcribed as Pamera Sahsen. :-) If you want to know what yours looks like, let me know and I'll send it to you.
Now we should all be on the same page...or, if we're not, I'll try to explain as I go. ;-)
So, our first week in Japan was mainly time to get lost on the trains, have people talk at us in Japanese (I mean, get registered as legal aliens and get bank accounts and the like), and Learn to Use Chopsticks Now Week. It was a week when small successes seemed monumental. The major successes of week one were: successfully eating rice with chopsticks, getting to the correct eki (train station) without having to go backwards, and finding low fat milk.
Soon after our week of leisure and learning, we jumped on the Shinkansen (bullet train...think 250 km / hour!) and went down to Hiroshima for the J3 Retreat. Here we met up with all the J3s from the country--probably ten people aside from us. There are only two J3s stationed in Tokyo right now. The rest are down in Kumamoto teaching junior and senior high English classes. It was fun to have the whole group together, and amazing to see how good some of their Japanese was. It was also amazingly lovely to flee the endless buildings that are Tokyo. A Japanese movie I saw once used the phrase "lost in an urban wilderness", and that sums up what Tokyo feels like sometimes. Our lodgings in Hiroshima, though, were on an island with lots of trees and mountains and the ocean.
It was our lodgings in Hiroshima where we got our first very traditional Japanese meal, though. If any of you are thinking of visiting Japan, I would recommend getting good chopsticks skills first. It makes it so that if you don't know what something is, you can just try a little bite of it. Verses me, who was forced to put an entire mystery glob of food in my mouth, with varying results. It was usually fine, though. The exception was sushi squid, which, as my housemate so accurately described it, "is the only food that gets chewier the more you chew it."
Speaking of food, Japanese food is amazing. My favorite is katsudon--it's a breaded pork cutlet and egg on top of rice. Yummy!
Seeing the sites in Hiroshima was very emotionally moving. I could easily write you an entire email on the moral thoughts that were crashing around in my head as I walked through the museum there. Questions like: What would have happened if we hadn't dropped the bomb? When it comes to warfare, is the number of lives cost the only determining factor for whether an attack was moral, or are there some actions that will always be immoral? Perhaps the best thing I can say after seeing the museum is: nuclear bombs are scary. Please let's not use them ever again.
We went straight from Hiroshima to Kumamoto where we visited the schools and possible future bosses. The schools are definitely Japanese. The students are there for hours and hours during the day, and the teachers are as well. Some positive things about Kumamoto that I learned were that I might have the opportunity to help out with a bell choir there and I also might be able to teach a class at a kindergarten once a week. But in terms of the teaching itself, I think I am better suited to the Hongo Center.
Speaking of the Hongo Center, we also have taken the opportunity to spend time there on Friday nights. Paul, the current J3 who will be leaving in March, teaches a Christianity Today course and Aaron, a longterm missionary and pastor, leads an English Coffee Hour afterwards. Most of the Hongo students are in university or they are professionals. One man is a neurologist who studies the Bible in French, German, English, and who-knows-what-else so long as it isn't Japanese. He thinks studying the Bible in Japanese is boring. If I were placed here, I would be teaching adults during the week. I think my teaching style is a little better suited to adults, and I like the idea of teaching the Christianity Today class.
***INTERMISSION***
Anyway, about a day after we returned from Kumamoto, we began our Japanese classes at the Lutheran Language Institute. We have two teachers. Nunokawa Sensei is one of those amazing teachers that you know loves you and wants you to learn. She could beat just about anyone I know at charades. Our other teacher is Miyazawa Sensei, and she speaks my language when it comes to language instruction. That being said, I have come close to being murdered by my classmates while discussing grammar with Miyazawa Sensei on more than one occasion. Apparently, my enthusiasm for the Japanese classes can be intimidating at times. I'm trying to tone it down. Really.
...but grammar is so interesting! And I have to clarify about it sometimes because that's how I know how to use it correctly. Ahem. I'm done now.
One of the real lights of my time in Japan has been the time we have spent with the VYMers. We've been doing Bible studies with them once a week. And when my church experiences are all in Japanese, having that time to worship and pray in a group in English has been amazingly filling. We've made a point of doing things outside of class and Bible study as well, which resulted in my first trip to a sento (public bath). Contrary to my fears, the sento was great and relaxing. I've actually, with the help of a Japanese friend from church, located a sento within walking distance of my house now. Sarah and I are planning on checking it out at some point. We're just hoping it's not one of the mixed gender ones, because that would be more than we can handle.
I've been attending my assigned congregation, Hachioji Church, for about month now. It's a nice place, and the people all seem very friendly. It is both a blessing and a curse that there are almost no English speakers there. The hardest part is the sermon, which is usually around 45 minutes long and, of course, all in Japanese. My Japanese is getting "good" enough that when we have meals together at church and it is discovered that the gaijin (the foreigner--me) likes shiitake mushrooms when one of the energetic extroverted Japanese guys doesn't, I can say "mada tomodachi?" (still friends?) and people laugh. The relationships with people from church are really different from other relationships. We can't say much to each other, but we can do little things. I can help move tables for lunch and they can compliment my ability to write my name in katakana (I have yet to go to church without someone being impressed by this).
I am going to leave you on a darker note, which is my prayer request for this email. One of the trains that I ride to school every day is called the "Chuo Line". A popular way to commit suicide in Japan is to jump in front of a train, and it so happens that the Chuo Line is the line that has the most suicides. I asked a Japanese man why the Chuo has so many, and he said it was one of the great mysteries of Japan. My Christian perspective has some possible answers to this that would make it a less mysterious, however. There are times riding the train when it has felt like a very 'dark' place. A couple weeks ago, I felt called to pray for the Chuo line. So, I have been praying, listening to applicable Christian music, or reading applicable Bible passages while riding that train. Please join me in prayer for the trains. Pray that light would come to those living in darkness, pray that the suicides would stop right now, and please pray for my perseverance in praying for these things while on the train. The train ride is about forty minutes long, and especially on more tired days I need the perseverance prayers.
Okay, so I know I said I was leaving you on that darker note, but that really seems not nice. So, I will end with a story that a few of you have heard before, a.k.a. Pamela's Amusing Gaijin Blunder #2. The other day, I was doing one of my convenience store lunches and decided it would be nice to have some protein. I saw some of the usual stuff like canned tuna and sardines and, sitting next to them, what looked like canned chicken. I was intrigued. I took the can back to school, peeled back the lid, and ate a piece. It didn't seem quite right, and asked one of the VYMers if she thought the chicken needed to be heated up. Rather than responding to my question, she asked, "Are you eating cat food??" Oops. Needless to say, my lunch was proteinless. I tried leaving the cat food outside for some of the stray cats in the neighborhood, but it was still there after class, so I had to throw it out.
That seems like a better note to leave this long email on!
Love you all!
Pamela
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
A Tea Party
Last Sunday Sarah and I went over to our neighbors house for a tea party. I was proud of myself, because I was responsible for responding to her invitation and sent a beautifully Japanese letter to her. Not that I wrote it in Japanese, but I was culturally on top of things! It went something like this: We'd love to come...yadda yadda. However, 14:30 is a little difficult for us. My church is in Hachioji, so I often do not make it home until 14:30 or 15:00. Translation: There's no way we could possibly make it to your house at 2:30. I think I conveyed that successfully, because she responded by saying that she understood my schedule and that we could have the party at 15:30.
It was a really nice little party. Her English is not spectacular, but she invited her children and grandchildren over, so two of them had really nice English. Sarah and I arrived at separate times, both of us with some nice bread as a gift to our hostess. The tea ceremony was carried out by our neighbor's oldest granddaughter, who is 16 and is in the tea ceremony club at school. The tea is served in a bowl. You sit with your feet under you, bow before picking up the bowl, turn the bowl two times, and drink. Once you have finished you turn it another two times and set it down. Our hosts were very gracious about showing us what to do.
Afterwards we had a lot of great cultural sharing. Her junior high age grandson played some folk songs on a Japanese flute. Her elementary school age grandson showed us a traditional Japanese toy. It was a wooden handle with two ends, one wider than the other, and a wooden ball hung off on a string. The goal is to flip the wooden ball up and get it to land on one of the ends. He also showed us the Japanese version of Cat's Cradle, which was similar to the American version but with some different ways of passing the string. It was really interesting! I'd see one and think, "Oh! I know how to solve that one!" and then they would take it in a completely different way. I'd like to learn how they did it.
The only awkward part was towards the end when it was becoming obvious that it was time for us to leave, but we weren't sure who was supposed to initiate our leaving. Finally, our neighbor said the equivalent of "Oh, look at the time..." and we did our thanks saying and bow thing all the way to the door. I'm not sure how many times we said goodbye and bowed in between her house and ours, but it was a lot. It really was a good time, though.
It was a really nice little party. Her English is not spectacular, but she invited her children and grandchildren over, so two of them had really nice English. Sarah and I arrived at separate times, both of us with some nice bread as a gift to our hostess. The tea ceremony was carried out by our neighbor's oldest granddaughter, who is 16 and is in the tea ceremony club at school. The tea is served in a bowl. You sit with your feet under you, bow before picking up the bowl, turn the bowl two times, and drink. Once you have finished you turn it another two times and set it down. Our hosts were very gracious about showing us what to do.
Afterwards we had a lot of great cultural sharing. Her junior high age grandson played some folk songs on a Japanese flute. Her elementary school age grandson showed us a traditional Japanese toy. It was a wooden handle with two ends, one wider than the other, and a wooden ball hung off on a string. The goal is to flip the wooden ball up and get it to land on one of the ends. He also showed us the Japanese version of Cat's Cradle, which was similar to the American version but with some different ways of passing the string. It was really interesting! I'd see one and think, "Oh! I know how to solve that one!" and then they would take it in a completely different way. I'd like to learn how they did it.
The only awkward part was towards the end when it was becoming obvious that it was time for us to leave, but we weren't sure who was supposed to initiate our leaving. Finally, our neighbor said the equivalent of "Oh, look at the time..." and we did our thanks saying and bow thing all the way to the door. I'm not sure how many times we said goodbye and bowed in between her house and ours, but it was a lot. It really was a good time, though.
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