Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

What I wore for our Christmas English classes at Iitomi Elementary school. My kids thought it was great!
Merry Christmas everybody! I hope that it is a glorious celebration of our Lord Jesus Christ’s birth for all of you. It certainly has been a great Christmas here for me, even though I am far from my immediate family and my good friends in the U.S. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the part of my spiritual family that is here in Japan.
At Mito Church of Christ there was a beautiful Christmas Eve candlelight service and afterwards a hand-bell concert. I enjoyed immensely singing Christmas songs in Japanese right along with many Japanese and foreign brothers and sisters and the hand-bell concert afterwards was absolutely stunning! Then, all of us foreigners who did not return to our respective countries for Christmas stayed the night in two separate apartments (one for the boys and one for the girls of course) together so that we could bring in Christmas by opening up the stockings that we stuffed for each other. It certainly wasn’t the Christmas I have experienced for the last 23 years with my family, but it was a blessed, enjoyable one regardless. God is so good!
Christmas here in Japan is nothing but a commercialized, materialistic holiday that has quite a different meaning to those here in Japan. If you ever want to see Christmas without Christ, come to Japan (and then even the atheists in America would think twice about all the crap they are trying to do in taking Christ out of Christmas). Anyways, the main concern of most single people is who they will go on a date with on Christmas Eve (it’s shameful to not have one on this special night). Christmas morning, Japanese children wake up to a present on their pillow, where Santa had sat it. Families gather and have a Christmas cake (I saw them in the store and do you know how much they are? The cheapest is about $25!!) and eat fried chicken (Kentucky Fried Chicken was REALLY busy today). Christmas is just not a special a holiday here like it is in many other countries around the world, but New Year’s certainly is.
I did a Christmas Power Point presentation to 6 classes of fifth and sixth grade students at one of my elementary schools about Christmas in the U.S. It was full of pictures and as many facts about our Christmas as I could cram into it (it was a good 45 minute presentation). It might interest you to hear some of the questions I was asked afterwards:
Was Christ a boy or girl?
How old is Santa Claus?
What does Santa do if there is no chimney?
Can Santa bring you a real baby if you want one? A handsome boyfriend?
Will Santa bring you gifts if you have been bad?
Was Santa rich?
Elves help Santa make presents?
Santa has a wife?
How do the people who put up so many Christmas lights afford the electric bill?
You put Christmas presents under the tree?
What does a girl do when she doesn’t want to kiss the boy who holds mistletoe over her head? (I told them they should run away very fast.)
You don’t eat Christmas cake in America?
Are there boy angels?
How old are angels?
Some of these questions are understandable questions, while others show differences in celebration. And the others, well the others show the thing that saddens me most – the serious lack of knowledge of their God and Savior. People don’t know about God and Christ here – but isn’t that why God brings so many of His believers here to Japan?
Onto the next subject. I will say Happy New Year’s now because I won’t be writing any blog for about 11 days (I know that’s typical anyways). I will be in Thailand! Yup, I’m going to Bangkok for three days, a tropical island named Koh Chang for five days, and then to Taipei, Taiwan (where I’ll get to meet up with my good friend Gary Kuan) for two days. The 8 of us who are going will leave bright and early at 5 in the morning tomorrow.
I am very much looking forward to it. But I want you family and friends back in the U.S. who actually read this blog to know that I am sad that I couldn’t spend these special holidays with you. I love you very, very much and I wish that I could bring all of you along with me to experience this.
Please pray for us and our safety. Again I will say MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Things My Students Say

During the time I have been here in Japan, I have overheard some very interesting English words randomly thrown out in Japanese conversation, and I have also had many students say some very funny English.
Once, I was teaching at Iitomi Jr. High with a really good teacher – Sunaoshi sensei – and we asked the seventh grade students to make some sentences with the grammar pattern “Do you know ~?”. I demonstrated with a few sentences, and then it was their turn. They were throwing out all sorts of famous Japanese people, most of whom I didn’t know since I don’t have a TV, when one of the boys shouted out, “Do you know Bump of Chicken?”. I started laughing and everybody stopped talking and looked at me, the strange foreigner laughing her head off. Through fits of laughter (and a few snorts), I managed to ask the English teacher who or what was Bump of Chicken. After she and the class explained to me that it was the name of a famous rock band here in Japan, I tried to explain to them that it was some very….interesting English.
Well, there is a lot of English around in Japan. Down the street from church, there is a shoe store that is named At the Breast. I have seen a restaurant named Men and Sushi (men is the Japanese word for noodle). There is a brand of car around here called Naked.
Unfortunately, the English that a lot of my students are exposed to comes from American movies, which isn’t always good English. I cringe every time a student – or any Japanese person – says “Oh, my G--!”. I never realized how much that phrase was said in American movies/TV shows until I came to Japan. I have been flipped off by my students a number of times (usually by my upper Elementary school students). I know that most of them don’t completely understand what it means to give the bird, but they do know from the movies that it is offensive to Western people. So, when they flip me off, I usually don’t respond because they lose interest in trying to see if I would respond like they do in the American movies. After the first or second time, they stop.
I have one sixth grade student who says to me every week: “I want you to be my girl.” I ask him in Japanese if he knew what he was saying, but he never answers me. Now I just say, “OK!” and he runs away from me as fast as he can go. So maybe he understands what he is saying.
The other day I was teaching the eighth grade communication class with Sunaoshi sensei. This class is a pretty genki (energetic and fun, sometimes crazy) class. We were doing an activity where pairs of students had to make a conversation using English verbs they had drawn from a pile. They also had to include the grammar patterns ‘will’, ‘have to’, or ‘must’. The first time they had to make only two sentences, the second time, four, and so on. Here are a couple of the conversations that made me chuckle:
S1: I will walk to school. S2: No, you must not walk to school.
S1: Ok. Will you drive me to school? S2: Sure.
S2: How are you? S1: I’m fine, thank you.
S2: Do you have any friends? S1: Yes, I do.
I was totally confused about the randomness of this conversation and I told them so. Then they explained to me that it is a conversation between a mother and son, the second part of which occurs in the car on the way to school.
Here is my favorite conversation. This one was constructed by the coolest boy of the class. Since he is so cool, he had no problem constructing these sentences without a partner (whom was absent). He also has the best English of the class, so he always creates some very interesting conversations. Here is the conversation he had with himself:
A: What do you do? B: I will give love to you.
A: Really. B: Yes, I will give big love to you.
A: Oh, thank you.
Many times, my students fire questions at me in Japanese, especially my younger elementary school students. Today, a first grader showing me something so I could admire it, stopped in mid sentence and said, “Jessica sensei no me wa aoi des.” (Your eyes are blue). I responded with a “So da yo ne!” (Yup, that’s right!) and then asked him to say it in English since he knew the words eyes and blue. On the playground, one of my fifth grade girls asked me why my hair wasn’t black. I told her in broken Japanese that it’s because my father’s hair isn’t black either. Quite often, my students ask me if I have a boyfriend or if I’m married and when I say no, they start asking me who I like and start listing off all the names of the male teachers. They are all about the “hook up”, even more than the people I met during my Oklahoma Christian University days.
I will end with the phrase “Kids say the darndest things.” The more Japanese I learn, the more I’m opened up to their world and it is quite often hilarious. Now, since I can follow some basic conversations in Japanese, I really enjoy laughing with everybody else where before, I just sat quite because I had no idea what was said.

Things that make me happy:

1. God. He’s number 1. He is my Savior, my love, and my life. I prayed and He answered by whisking me off to Japan. What a blessing!

2. My family. I love them. No matter what, I love them.

3. My friends. I’ve got so many of them. God has given me many in every situation and place, and He has taught me a lot through them all.

4. Close friends. I’ve got a few, and they mean more to me than I could ever say.

5. Church family. God has blessed me by showing me a part of His family in any part of the world I have lived in/traveled to. I am currently being blessed by His wonderful children here in Japan.

6. My students. They are so funny. Through them, God always reminds me how great teaching English in Japan is, especially when I am going through times of not liking it.

7. Japanese people. They are nice, helpful, and giving. They are also very funny to me and do very interesting things. The greatest thing is, I am very funny to them and do really interesting (weird?) things.

8. Chocolate, curry and rice, umeboshi, and katsudon. Oh yeah, and dill pickles.

9. Thunderstorms and Oklahoma sunsets.

10. My futon. I love sleeping, especially on a comfy futon. Even though I have to take that blasted thing out of the closet every night and fold it up and put it back in the closet every morning, I love every fluffy inch of it.

11. Heaters, stoves, hot carpets, and hot blankets. There certainly isn’t much wall between a person and the outside here in Japan, so these things make the winter bearable.

12. Hokkairos. I swear, these things have kept my feet from getting frostbite during the Japanese winters.

13. Christmas. I love everything about Christmas, except the unnecessary stress.

14. Dogs.

15. Books. I love books. The Bible is #1 (the ultimate action-packed, change your life love story), with fiction novels coming in second.

16. Riding on airplanes. I love being in the atmosphere. There’s so much interesting stuff to see and so much cool stuff that goes on there.

17. Water. Nothing quenches your thirst like water.

18. Green tea. Even though I thought it smelled like marijuana the first time somebody put it in front of my face and I didn’t quite like it, I have grown to really like it and look forward to a couple of cups of “ocha” everyday. Besides, it’s helshi (Japanese for healthy).

19. YahooBB. Without this wonderful phone service, I wouldn’t be able to call the U.S. for a mere 3 cents a minute, nor would I have high-speed internet that keeps me connected to the world.

20. Mexico. Even though I’m not there yet, the people are still on my heart and I want to go and live there more than ever.

None of these are really in order (with the exception of the first ones). What makes you happy?

Duh!

Anyone who denies that The Chronicles of Narnia book series have allusions to the Bible (not just some, but a whole bunch in each book) either knows absolutely nothing about the Bible and the Life of Christ or has never actually read the books.
I simply can't believe that there are people out there who don't really think that these wonderful children's books written by C.S. Lewis have a lot of parallels to the story of Christ as recorded in the Gospels and to they way God has worked in this world since He created it.
I really hope that the movie is true to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, even though many critics and even the very actors/actresses in the movie don't really think there is a Christian connection.
Come on people - open your hearts!!

Gotta Love Culture

I like learning about other cultures. They really fascinate me. I consider myself an amateur anthropologist, though it goes no further than a hobby (and it also really comes in handy when you are a missionary, so I’m very thankful that God has made learning about and knowing other cultures a joy to me). So I like to read stuff about other cultures. Since I am in Japan now, I have tried to read anything written in English about Japan that I could get my hands on – books, internet articles, English newspapers in Japan - which give me insights into this very foreign culture.
A couple of months ago, I started a book called The Japanese Mind written by Robert C. Christopher. It was published in 1983, and this man obviously knows what he’s talking about since he has studied Japan’s language, culture, and whatever and since he has lived in Japan. Experiencing Japan for the past year and 8 months, I’d say he knows what he’s talking about. And the book has made me aware of some things I didn’t know and put words to things I knew, but couldn’t formulate words (in my head or vocally) for. The one problem with this is that it has really brought things to the front of my mind that bother me (and almost despise) about Japan. Things that I think a lot of foreigners that live/stay in Japan for an extended period of time really have problems with. I won’t list those things because A.) That’s not the point of this blog and B.) If you are really interested, you can read the book or come to Japan and see for yourself.
The point of this blog is that living in a foreign culture can really suck, especially when there are things about that culture that really go against the grain of what your own culture has taught you to do and to be.
This particular book has helped me to really understand things about this culture and the Japanese people better, but I found that the more I read it, the more frustrated I got about a few things that I just don’t want to accept or even condone. I found myself dwelling on this frustration, sometimes allowing it to go into anger and even worse, discontentment. Reading about and thinking about the negative truths of the Japanese culture in this book, together with less sun, it getting colder, and having a couple of bad culture stress weeks really made me discontent all of the time. Actually, it didn’t make me, I allowed it to have this affect on me.
Don’t worry, the worst most complaining part of this blog is over because I am doing something about this. First, I prayed/am praying more. Second, I stopped reading that book. I think I’ll finish reading it sometime after I leave Japan (maybe like 10 years after I leave Japan). Third, I started reading another culture book – one that takes a more humorous look at Japan and its culture – Dave Barry Does Japan written by none other than Dave Barry. I am happy to say that while Dave Barry spent only three weeks in Japan, never learned Japanese (though he did try to learn a little), never went to school to study about Japan, and he isn’t even an anthropologist, his book was pretty insightful and very funny. I laughed out loud quite often while I was reading that book. And reading that book has helped me to see the humor in the differences between my culture and the Japanese culture – even the differences that frustrate me most. Now instead of getting frustrated or angry, I laugh (usually inside because if I did aloud, they might think I’m laughing at them). Sure there are things about this culture that are just really difficult (I’m not talking about sinful things, though there are those. More like “Why do this?” kind of things). But what’s the point of allowing those things to get in the way of caring, loving, and sometimes simply liking these wonderful, God-created people? Your right, there is not point!
And of course, God is hearing my prayers (praise Him!). I’m not content, but God is listening to my prayers and He is changing my heart (praise Him always!). He is also opening my eyes wider to all of the blessings in my life. Take our Thanksgiving Dinner for example. Just take a look at this picture and see how blessed I am.

Yummy food!