It has been interesting to sing Christmas songs in Japanese this year.  Because we sing them every year, sometimes Christmas songs can become old hat, and I, for one, don’t often pay attention to their meaning.  This year however, because I don’t know most of the words I’m singing, the words I do know jump out at me and I find myself paying a lot more attention to the meanings of Christmas songs now than before.

One word especially has caught my attention.  Sukui is the Japanese word for help, aid, relief, or salvation, and it happens to be in a number of Christmas songs I have sung.  Now, singing the songs in English, mind you, I probably would never have given this word a second thought, but because it was one of the only words I understood, I spent some time thinking about it.

And in thinking about salvation, I began to realize afresh how this is the entire point of Christmas.  It was for our help, aid, relief, and salvation that Christ came.  So much meaning wrapped up in such a small word.  Truly, the English equivalent is longer, but oftentimes we say it so quickly that maybe we don’t give the extent of its meaning much thought.

And so because of God’s help, aid, relief, and salvation given long ago, Colby and I wish you a wonderful Christmas celebration.

The Lighthouse Ube Christ Church 2009 Christmas Photo

For quite a while now, we have been studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test 3 and we are hoping to be ready to take it toward the end of January.  This test is over approximately 150 grammar forms, 300 pictorial characters, and about 1500 vocabulary words.

Colby and I are feeling that by the end of January we’ll be decently ready, but will have to work quite hard until then to master everything.  We both feel comfortable with the pictorial characters as well as most of the grammar forms.  For Colby, the listening section may be the most difficult, whereas for me, getting all of that vocabulary into my thinking and usage might be most difficult.

It has been interesting studying for this test in comparison with the tests I studied for in school.  Always in school, I would study to get a good grade and then invariably after the test would not remember hardly any of what I studied.  Here, not only is it important that I get a good grade on this test, but even more so I desire to use what I’m learning in conversation.  It has given a whole new meaning to learning.

A funny language story before I close:  At Colby’s Japanese class the other day, they were talking about various transitive and intransitive verb pairs.  The teacher showed a picture of a vase of flowers that had fallen over.  She pointed to the picture and asked Colby what it was in English.  Thinking that she meant the verb, he answered that it was “to topple”.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” she replied, “because, at least in British English, this is called a vase!”

Needless to say, language learning is sometimes funny for both us and the Japanese!

Please pray for Colby and Theresa as they prepare to hopefully take their test at the end of January.  Pray that they would learn the material well not only for the test but also for daily conversation.

Most of the emails that I had received from the US in the last two weeks have ended with the same line, “Hope you have a good thanksgiving! (You do have thanksgiving in Japan, right?)”

Well the answer is Yes and No. On November 23rd Japan celebrates a holiday of appreciation. It was previously the imperial harvest festival, but was changed in 1948 to be oriented toward the collective efforts of the Japanese workforce. As such, the best way to translate it would probably be Labor Appreciation Day, similar to Labor Day in the US. The fourth Thursday in November is just another day in Japan and most of the Christar workers did normal things like church activities and English classes.

That being said, the enterprising American is able to whip up a decent Thanksgiving feast, and most of us do. The hardest thing to find here is the Turkey. Japanese grocery stores don’t seem to sell anything whole (except fish) and so finding something to roast can be difficult. For people living in Yamaguchi prefecture, the best place is the Costco in a large city about two hours south. Our teammates had gone there for an event a few weeks ago and bought four turkeys to get them through all their holiday entertaining. There is also a fairly large Marine Corps air station about two hours north of us, and we recently found out that the KFC on the base also sells small rotisserie Turkeys.

Ready to dig in to our delicious dinner.

We actually ended up celebrating, not once, but twice. We had planned our own dinner with our teammates and some Japanese friends for this past Saturday, but were also invited to the home of some other Christar workers after we finished with our regular church activities on Thursday. It was nice to enjoy fellowship, some laughs about language learning, and, of course, the turkey with all the fixings.

We are thankful for all that God has done in our lives and how he has worked to bring us here and provide for us in many areas over the last nine months. We count you, our supporters and friends, amongst our many blessings!