Colby and I recently read a fascinating article on Japan’s aging population and its growing “parasite single” population.  While it is well established that there are a great number of older people in proportion to other age groups in Japan, it is not as well known that there are also a number of  people who are in their 30′s and 40′s and are still single.

It has long been a tradition in Japan that when someone gets married, they usually tend to live with their parents and/or grandparents as multi-generational families.  Although society seems to have slowly gotten away from that custom, these days a lot of these single people continue to live with their parents after graduating from college, thus coining the term “parasite single”.  Due to it becoming more and more difficult for young people to find secure, well-paying, life-long jobs, they are more likely to have temporary jobs that don’t pay as well and thus make it harder for them to live on their own.

Restaurants, like the one pictured here, often have large areas of seating for single diners.

With this in mind, as a number of articles we have read have alluded to, Japanese young people today are, in general, rather depressed.  Their future looks bleak and doesn’t seem to hold hope for any sort of change.  Indeed, there is some truth to that as most governments and economies do take a long time to change, let alone ones that are many hundreds of years old. When you are the person in this kind of situation, without knowing the God who deeply loves you and has a plan for your life, the circumstances do seem hopeless.

Please lift up the young people in Japan who feel like they have no future.  Pray that they would come to know the One who holds everyone’s future in His hands.  Pray for hope and salvation for Japan.

To many people learning Japanese, many words that are legitimately different sound identical (or at least are hard to tell apart). Japanese employs a “TS” sound (think of the sound at the end of the word let’s) along with the normal “S” sound. They also have elongated versions of their vowels along with the normal versions (e.g. “O” vs. “O—”). In fairness, navigating this is easy compared to the trouble native Japanese speakers have with all the different vowel and consonant sounds in English.

Because of understanding this confusion, I could resonate with a Dave Barry column that was recently republished:

Today we are pleased to present another episode of the highly popular feature “Ask Mister Language Person.” We were prompted to do this by the unprecedented volume of mail we recently received from Ted Brown of Austin, Texas, who wrote us a letter stating that he and his wife are studying the Japanese horticultural art of “bonsai.” Mr. Brown raises a linguistic question that we are sure has been nagging at many of our readers:

“I have learned, ” he writes, “that ‘bonsai’ means ‘tree in a tray.’ My question is, why did the Japanese soldiers of yesterday shout ‘Bonsai!’ (‘Tree in a tray!’) when they attacked? I want to know before we get in too deep.”

Mr. Brown, very frankly there have been times when we have asked ourselves whether being an internationally respected language authority is really worth all the effort we put into it. But just when we’re about to give up, along comes a thought- provoking letter such as yours, clearly demonstrating the caliber of our readership, and we are reminded, once again, why we had a security system installed in our home.

But to answer your question: The Japanese soldiers, except for the members of the much-feared 157th Tactical Shrubbery Division, did not, in fact, yell “Bonsai!” What they yelled was “Banzai!” which means: “There is a cheese in my clarinet!” Is everything clear now, Mr. Brown? Just nod your head. Good! Now get some rest.

Copyright 2010 Miami Herald Media Co. All rights reserved

Read the full column at http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/07/1909249/with-regards-to-the-aforementioned.html

Except for the very end, Barry’s response is actually correct. I suppose that it can be easy hear them as the same, but there is a significant difference in Japanese people’s minds between “bonsai” and “banzai” (which, by the way, means 10,000 years, as in “May the emperor reign for 10,000 years.”)

A typical Japanese bonsai tree.

The corruption of foreign words goes both ways. American pronunciation of words like karaoke and karate are rather off. Japanese uses many English loan words, but adjusts them to Japanese pronunciation, often making them almost unrecognizable in the process. Trying to keep these Japanese pronunciations and their English counterparts straight can be tricky.

The first time I led worship this past summer, instead of saying “EE-ZA-YA” (the Japanese pronunciation) I told people to turn to “EYE-ZAY-YA” for the scripture reading, which prompted a cry of “Huh, where?” from the pastor’s daughter sitting in the back row.

Another time, as we were talking with our Japanese tutor, she kept telling us that we need to put a “BOO-EE” at a certain place in the sentence. It sounded like she was saying “buoy” to us, but knowing that couldn’t be right, we began furiously looking in our dictionaries for the meaning of the Japanese word. It was then that we were chagrined to realize that “BOO-EE” us the Japanese pronunciation for the letter “V”. She was telling us that this is where we put the verb.

Eventually, you acclimate to the Japanese pronunciation, but not before getting some laughs or strange looks. Pronunciation is just one part of language learning that is good at keeping you humble.

Praise God for the relationships we have been able to form as we both learn and teach language. Pray that the forced humility inherent in language learning will lead to a greater openness and ability to form relationships.

This past weekend our “little” town (at least compared to some really large cities like Tokyo) grew by 150% as it hosted its annual festival.  People came from all around the region to enjoy the international food court (the city called it the “warudo kichin” or world kitchen) and see the parade of dancing groups including the finale – the “everyone join in” dance in the middle of town. This festival celebrates the town’s anniversary – this year is it’s 59th.  That’s awfully young for Japan, you say.  Well, truth be told, the city of Ube has existed for a long time, but it has been a city for only 59 years.  Aside from food and dancing, the two-day festivities included a flea market, other live performances, and various vendors and local groups set up with displays.

The “everyone join in” dance occurred at the end of the parade.  Colby and I decided to just watch, but it was fun to see everyone dancing together.  When the Japanese do activities like this, they often smile from ear to ear and this weekend was no different.

As Colby and I talked about this, we noted that it was unfortunate that this dance in the streets seemed to be a very temporary substitute for real inner joy. The Japanese are no different than most people around the world, always searching for something to give them a purpose and make their lives feel less dreary. However, in a country where the suicide rate is sky high and people turn to all sorts of oddities for entertainment and fulfillment, the veneer is easier to look beyond.  It seems that most people live busy, unfulfilled lives and use festivals, among other things, to try to manufacture happiness.  Probably many of the people in the parade went home afterward and felt just as empty as they did before.  Searching for happiness is not unique, but it seems like finding it in festivals and performances like this is a distinct part of Japanese culture.

Us at the Ube Festival

For those of us who have a relationship with the Living God, and who know that fulfillment comes only from Him, it is heart-breaking to watch these wonderful people wander through their lives looking for happiness and purpose.

Pray that the Japanese people would come to realize that it is only through a relationship with God that they can have purpose and fulfillment in their lives.  Pray that God would give us additional opportunities to share with those around us as they open up about their inner desires and longings.

For the last couple of weeks, Colby and I have been busy enjoying some time with Colby’s parents here in Japan.  They were able to come from the 13th to the 28th of October and we kept them busy going here, there, and everywhere.

One of the highlights of the trip was when one of the ladies in my English class put on a kimono party for Colby’s mom.  It was a neat chance for us to interact with the Japanese ladies and for Becky to wear a kimono.  Japanese women love kimonos but don’t often get the chance to wear them and so it was fun to see them ooh and awe over Becky.

We were able to take Colby’s parents to church with us one Sunday where they met the pastor and church members.  Since many of the church people are able to speak at least a little bit of English, it was nice for them to be able to talk with Bob and Becky and find out more about them.  One of the ladies, Mrs. Koikawa, showed Becky how to make onigiri, a Japanese rice ball snack, that we ate at the youth event that night.

Another of the many highlights was for Colby’s parents to be with us in our English classes.  They got to sit in on each one, meet the students, and practice their English (they did very well).  It was also a good experience for the students to have other English speakers to chat with and new friendships were formed.  We went out to lunch as a group after our intermediate English class for more fun and fellowship.

There were a number of famous shrines and temples we visited and we were glad to be able to show Bob and Becky a little bit of what life in Japan is like!

We praise God for safe travels and an enjoyable time together with Colby’s parents.  Please pray for the Japanese people they interacted with in the English classes that they would become more and more interested in Christ.

Part of life is having ups and downs – and life in cross-cultural ministry is no different. Sometimes the discouraging things take you by surprise and knock the wind out of you. But occasionally, the encouraging things can take you by surprise as well. That was the case this weekend.

Theresa and I have been developing a relationship with the family of one of the men in my English class. This man has a daughter Theresa’s age and, as we had been hoping to get to know her better, we were a little disappointed when we found out she would be moving to Korea for a while. To our surprise, we got an email from her father telling us that Nao was home for a visit with her boyfriend and was wondering if we could get together. (In case you’re wondering, people in eastern countries often do things through third parties like that.)

John & Nao

Of course, we gladly accepted and met up with Nao and her boyfriend at a café for lunch. The surprise came when her boyfriend (who happens to be Korean and also spoke English), very straightforwardly informed us that he was a Christian and that Nao has been attending church and Bible study with him. It sounds like John comes from a strong Christian family and we were able to talk a little bit about his brother’s interest in going to seminary and his desire to come to work and minister in Japan someday.

After lunch, we came back to our apartment for a few minutes and were able to give Nao a bilingual Bible study book that she and John can do together and we also answered some questions about bilingual Bibles.

The next pleasant surprise came during the worship service this weekend. Recently, attendance has been down a little at the church. Although people trickle in, some weeks we start the service with just the pastor’s family and us. This week we were expecting a visit from Makoto & Megumi Ono, a couple that had attended the church previously, but as the service proceeded, the guests continued to trickle.

By the time the message was over, we had double our normal attendance with many people who had not come in a while deciding to show up all on the same week. The wife of the visiting couple is a talented pianist and so our worship time was unusually energetic. Even though the increase was happenstance as much as anything, it was nice to see the service full and get to fellowship with people who we had not seen in a while.

Pray for Nao as she continues her spiritual journey. Pray that she would become connected to the church she is attending, despite it not being in her native language. Pray for wisdom for John as he seeks to start a language school and also to use his language aptitude to serve God’s kingdom.

Pray for the continued ministry of the Lighthouse. Pray that many of the people who are occasional attendees will become an integral part of the ministry. Pray that the people of the church would also build strong relationships with the non-Christian people in their lives.

I was very excited this past week to find something I have been looking for since we arrived in Japan – gluten flour. This may seem ironic because of the growing awareness in the US of people with gluten intolerance, but I am not one of those people and gluten is an essential ingredient for making 100% whole wheat bread. Here in Japan the popularity of whole grain products is much less than it is in the US. If you don’t live in an extremely large city, the only way to have 100% whole wheat bread on a regular basis is to make it yourself. Whole-wheat flower has less gluten than its processed white counterpart and so you need to add it to the recipe if you want to activate the yeast and get the bread to rise properly.

Our gluten flour along with some fresh rolls.

One of the things you learn when living outside of your home country is that many of the things that you might ordinarily buy can be made from scratch if you are willing (or forced) to do so. Some of our Japanese friends have been surprised by the things we have cooked up or created. Japanese people would be more prone to think that the making of things should usually be left to people who are experts and if you can’t find something, you just do without. This fatalistic (i.e. things are left to fate) is very different from the America mindset that anything can be accomplished if you just keep trying. There is a well-known Japanese saying – “shikata ga nai” or “There’s nothing you can do.” – which epitomizes this mindset. While Americans view being “be a go-getter” and “never give up” as cultural ideals, the Japanese laud accepting one’s fate and doing the best with what one is given.

Like many things in life, this is a two-sided coin. Sometimes Americans rage against things that are truly out of their (or anyone’s) control. I remember reading a story about the blizzard that happened last December in the mid-Atlantic. One woman had had her flight canceled because of the snow and then realized that the metro line that would have taken her home from the airport was also shut down. She decided just to park herself in front of the (now locked) entrance to the metro line until something was done. “I’m just going to wait for Metro, however long that takes,” she is quoted as saying “This is all just ridiculous.”[1] The truth is it wasn’t ridiculous; it was just a blizzard. Things like nature phenomena, accidents, and other such inconvenient events sometimes happen. But rather than accept them as part of living in an imperfect world, we get upset and look for someone to blame – often resulting in a lawsuit. In the process, we cause ourselves untold stress and frustration.

The Japanese flip-side of this coin can be seen in Japanese churches. Japan can be a hard place to do evangelism with many people not interested in the Bible or the gospel message. Sometimes churches or people who have been Christians for a while pick up a defeatist attitude. They believe that this is just how things are and that keeping their church going is the best they can hope for. The plod along, being faithful to what God has given them, but seldom dreaming big or thinking outside the boxes that they have come to accept.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle of these two perspectives. Life has many difficult or unpleasant circumstances which must simply be accepted as part of God’s sovereign plan or part of living in a fallen world. Then there are times when God wants us to have a vision bigger than our current reality or calls us to fight against something that is different than how the world was intended to be. The best approach is asking God for (as the well know prayer says), “the wisdom to know the difference.”

Pray for wisdom for the Japanese Christians and us as we seek to grow the Kingdom of God here. Pray that we would be both accepting of hardship, but also willing to move outside of excepted norms to see the church here grow and expand. Pray that the Japanese Christians and we would know when to embrace Japanese culture and when to challenge it with Biblical values.

[1] Washington area digs out from record-setting snowfall, by Ashley Halsey III, Sandhya Somashekhar and Josh White (Dec 21, 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122001153.html

Because August is the month of summer break from school, it has been busy with special events for kids.  In addition to our yearly junior high English camp put on by the field (mentioned a couple of posts ago), the church here likes to do a kids’ overnight camp in the middle of the month.  A time filled with games, food, Bible lessons, crafts, and some star gazing, it is usually quite fun for the kids…and quite hectic for the adults.

Colby playing Twister with Pastor Uchida and some of the boys.

This year we had 11 elementary school kids come, most of whom were boys full of energy.  We were blessed to have a group from a church near the Tokyo area who came for the weekend to help out.  The kids were taught the Creation story and learned about how they were made uniquely by God.

Theresa and a couple of the girls after putting together the Eph. 2:10 verse.

When nighttime came around we were supposed to do our yearly star gazing with the help of a church lady’s husband and his telescope, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much of anything.  The kids enjoyed setting off fireworks instead.  Full of energy still when they got back from their bath at the public showers, they did not sleep much that night!

Please be in prayer for these children, as well as the junior highers from the English camp.  While a few of them have expressed interest in knowing more about God, they all need to understand and experience His love.  Please pray that they will remember what they have learned at these camps and that it will change their lives.

One of the things we are learning about the Japanese is that they seem to enjoy making things cute.  We have often noticed signs and food packages “made cute” with various pictures of cartoon animals, hearts, stars, etc.  Hello Kitty, one of Japan’s largest “cute” industries, is still quite popular even years after it was first created.  Probably many of you have heard of manga, a type of comic book here in Japan in which the characters are often featured with large, round eyes.  Even each of the 47 prefectures has its own cute mascot – Yamaguchi Prefecture’s happens to be a puffer fish.

One of the effects of this cuteness is that it helps to make difficult or unpleasant things a bit more tolerable.  For example, a couple of weeks ago when we were at the English camp, the camp instructor had to explain to the kids how they needed to put their beds away at the end of their stay.  Because kids don’t normally enjoy being told rules and regulations, the instructor made it more fun (aka – cute) by demonstrating bed-making with a stuffed animal and a tiny futon.  And yes, it actually was rather cute!

Another unpleasant thing is having bugs in your house.  Since we found a cockroach downstairs in the church, Colby and I wanted to set some traps in our kitchen as a preventative measure.  Well, come to find out, the Japanese don’t just have traps for cockroaches – they have hotels for them!  Of course it is still a trap and will still kill the cockroach, but the outside of the cardboard box is decorated like a hotel.  As I was setting ours up, I could imagine the fun that Japanese families probably have as parent and child work together to “build” a hotel for the little critters.  And thus, an unpleasant project is turned into fun all because of cute!

The Cockroach Hotel - come once and never leave!

Please continue to pray for Colby and Theresa as they adjust to Japan and its “cute”-ness.  Pray that they would be careful to interact with the Japanese in culturally sensitive ways.

This past week we had our yearly Friendship English Camp at a camp located a couple of hours away.  Every year the Christar cross-cultural workers put on a junior high and high school English camp for the kids in the local Christar churches to attend.  This year our attendance was the most ever as we had 32 students (5 boys, 27 girls).  Also, due to various furloughs, this year we had the lowest number of staff ever, which, as you can imagine, made for an interesting time.

As you can see, no one likes to sit in the front row.

FEC is usually held at a camp that is located at the top of a mountain, which provides a very pleasant breeze in midst of the heat.  All of the girls sleep in one cabin (which was quite crowded this year) and all of the boys sleep in another.  The meals are served by the camp staff and we adults get to enjoy the buffets without having to worry about cooking and cleaning.  Each year there are a variety of activities, some of which are English classes, games, praise and worship, crafts, and the Bible times.  The theme this year was how we are God’s masterpiece, taken from Ephesians 2:10 which the kids had memorized by the end of their stay.  Colby and I were in charge of teaching the 11 junior high kids English and then of the water games in the afternoon.

Theresa and a few of the junior high boys.

Many of the kids that came have been coming to FEC for a number of years and have heard about God many times.  Most of these students do not know the Lord as their Savior, and it is uncertain how open they are to Him.  However, I did hear that after one of the Bible times, five of the girls indicated that they would like to learn more about God.  What a blessing!

This was everyone!

Please pray for these five girls that God would be at work in their hearts to help them understand the gospel and receive Him as their Savior.  Pray for the other kids also that God would grow in them an interest in Himself.

Funny things can happen when you’re in another culture, don’t read the language very quickly, and think that you are buying something in particular because it fits your preconceived notions.  Everyone gets through life by unconsciously working off of assumptions.  It’s what keeps you from having to remake every decision on a daily basis.  However, when you live in another country or culture, these assumptions don’t always hold true.  Allow me to illustrate…

Right after we arrived here last February, Colby and I were out doing our grocery shopping.  There were a number of things we needed, laundry detergent being one of them.  Unfortunately, we forgot to look up the word for laundry detergent before we left home, and so we found ourselves at the store gazing at all of the bottles that could possibly be detergent.  I had a mountain of laundry at home and so it was imperative that we get detergent that day.  We both knew the pictorial character for “to wash” and so that narrowed our search to just one or two shelves.  After some debate, we settled on a bottle that had the wash character on it along with a picture of some shirts with bubbles all around them.  “There,” we thought, “this must be it!”

A month later,one of our co-workers was here at the church doing some clean-up and asked if she could borrow some laundry detergent.  I gave her what we had and after smelling it and looking at the consistency, she said she didn’t think it was detergent.  She said she didn’t know those characters off the top of her head, but they didn’t look like the ones for detergent.  I went to my computer and looked them up and low and behold, it was shirt whitener!  (Why the bubbles on the bottle? I don’t know.)  So for the whole first month we were here in Japan, I had been washing all of our clothes with shirt whitener.  Needless to say, the clothes were nice and bright!

A few months later, we found ourselves at the hundred yen store (like the dollar store) looking for white-out.  We were in the office supply section, had found something in a bottle similar to the normal one for white-out, and it had the characters for “to write” and “to erase” on it.  “There,” I thought, “this must be it!”  So we happily bought it and brought it home.  Later though, when I went to use it, it came out clear on the paper!  Low and behold, it was some kind of solvent for cleaning ink off of hard surfaces!  Thankfully I went back to the store and was able to find some actual white out for paper and not walls.

The last story is what prompted me to write this post.  A few months before we came to Japan, I had begun using hard contacts instead of glasses.  In America, the cleaning solution and the overnight preserving solution for the contacts are in separate bottles and are usually bought separately.  After running out of my American solution, I went to the drug store here to buy the more, not even giving a second thought to the fact that they might be sold differently.  My wrong assumption was confirmed when I saw two bottles of solutions side by side, one larger and one smaller, just like in America.  So what that they happened to have the same picture on them – they must just be from the same company, that’s all.

After faithfully using both bottles as separate solutions for the last year, I went to the eye doctor recently to get my prescription updated.  With the new contacts, they also gave me a bottle of solution to use.  It was a small bottle and so I thought, “This must be the cleaning solution and I must have to get the preserving solution elsewhere.”  Then I looked more closely at the characters on the bottle and found that it said both cleaning and preserving (I’m now able to recognize those words).  “Oh, isn’t that interesting?” I thought, and suddenly a tiny suspicion about my two bottles at home started to grow inside of me.  Upon returning home I checked both of the bottles  and they both also had the same two words on them – cleaning and preserving.

It is usually at this point when previously held cultural assumptions shatter. However, not to be outdone for the third time by a store product, I calmly told myself I would wait and ask my language helper what the difference between my big and small bottles was.  Alas, my helper said that the two bottles I had bought were different in one simple way – size.  So from here on out I will only need to buy one bottle of solution!

They sure look different, don't they?

Unfortunately, just as it was easy to wrongly assume things about store products, it can also be easy to wrongly assume things about the Japanese.  We desire to understand the Japanese and their perspectives, but sometimes it can be hard to keep an open, unassuming mind when they do or say things.  People from other cultures act differently and look at life in different ways than we do, which is neither good or bad, but just different.  One of the most important things for being effective here is for us to be very careful not to rush to conclusions about the things Japanese people do and say.  By taking the time and putting in the effort, we can learn more deeply about them which will have an effect on how we minister in the future.

Please pray for us as we continue to have our understanding of Japanese culture modified.  Pray that we would be careful not to assume various things about people and their actions, but that our hearts and minds would be open to seeing the Japanese for who they really are.