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One of the reasons I moved my blog to WordPress was for the ability and convenience of sorting my various writing styles. For those of you who enjoy devotional style writings and/or poetry please check my most recent posts in “Contemplations” and “Poems”

“Why Japan?”

Recently, a friend asked me, “Why Japan?”

And I know that this is a question we will be hearing often over the next year and a half, as we raise our support for becoming long-term missionaries.

I have spent the last two blog entries talking about my personal love of Japan and the Japanese but I have not spent much time expressing the spiritual needs which burden us for the Japanese. Ever since the question was asked I have been thinking through a well-versed, consice, and eloquent answer.

However, the list of reasons is far too long and at the same time the answer is very simple – Japan needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. While it was the statistics that first compelled James and I toward Japan it is the first-hand, living amongst the Japanese that has opened my eyes to the spiritual pitch-blackness of this nation. In a society, that has never known the Creator God and his son Jesus Christ, the examples of depravity are endless! Therefore, I am adding a new side-bar entitled Thick Darkness (taken from Isaiah 60:2 – the passage God used to call us to Japan in 2002). My intent is to give my readers a better understanding of this broken society in hope that they would pray for God to shine the light of His grace on this land.

Two Homes and A Citizenship in Heaven

As I consider returning to America for the first time in over 2 years, I am filled with mixed emotions – much stronger than I expected. I find myself wavering somewhere between anticipation and anxiety. Japan has become home. So much so that James and I have just committed the next 15 years of our lives to our ministries here. That I have a home here, that I belong here, is probably the most certain thing I have ever experienced. (To understand more about why, visit James’ most recent post) Yet, I am American. America is my home, I know how things are supposed to be there, I know how the people think, I can speak on a heart-to-heart level with an abundance of individuals, and I have a comfort-zone there.

So, what causes the anxiety? Knowing that nearly every American that I will see does not share my love for the Japanese. They won’t understand my love for my second home. They will be interested, they will try to relate, but unless they have called a foreign country home, and specifically this foregn country home, they won’t fully understand. Often times feelings are just too complicated to articulate – you simply have to have shared the experience to really get it.

In the book, “Grandfather’s Journey” the author tells about his grandfather’s move from Japan to the US and how when in one home he would long for the other and vice versa. I can so relate to this feeling, and yet I have a comfort that the grandfather did not have. My two homes are really not separated. Oh, today they are but they will not be forever. “[I am] no longer a foreigner or alien, but a fellow citizen with God’s people and a member of God’s household…with Christ Jesus himself…” (Eph. 2:19-22) This thought has recently brought me an extraordinary amount of peace each time I think about the tension that comes from having two homes. It is the thought that my loyalty does not truly belong to either home. I have a true home that is like a tent, pitched over both homes, and my two families exsist under the same roof. One day my two families will know one another, and even love one another with the same passion that I have for each of them, because we all share the same Father. What a glorious day that will be!

Japan Specific

Since January 21, I have been recording my many thanksgivings. My goal is 1,000. So far I have reached 70 – an average of three a day! So, as I wrote in the “New Attitude” article, it might just take me a year to reach my goal. However, I am finding the result very rewarding. Going through my day looking for things to add to the list really helps me to see that God is working in my life and giving me good and perfect gifts of all shapes and sizes throughout every day.

This is a “special addition” to my weekly thanksgivings. Today I want to tell you about 10 Japan specific thankgivings I have. These are things I find unique to Japan and Japanese culture that I just love and am thankful to have as a part of my life.

1. Seafood Pizza -Have you ever tried shrimp, crab, octopus, scallop Pizza? It is really great stuff!!!

2. Kotatsu – This is a coffee table with an electrical heating element on the underside. The top comes off and you can place a blanket between the surface and legs of the table to hold the heat in. Great for a lazy winter day or morning devotions!

3. Genkan – This is the entrance to the house. The area in which you must remove your shoes. I like this because I love that I have to go slippered or barefoot when in doors.

4. Cherry/Plum Blossoms- I know we have these in America but they are EVERYWHERE in Japan and they are the most hopeful thing to see after a cold winter!

(I have even written a short poem inspired by the recent bloom of Plum Blossoms. You can read it by following the link to the Poems page.)

5. Mt. Fuji – It is so beautiful!

6. The sound of Mrs. Tomita praying in Japanese. I may not understand it but it is like the sound of a thawing brook in Springtime.

7. Ladies in Kimono – I find the whole package stunning, their hair, the layers of beautiful material, the wooden shoes…to me it is a beautiful picture and the opitome of femininity.

8. Sushi – YUMMY! Thank you Japanese for bringing this to the world!

9. Okonomiyaki – is a social dish, (something Japanese have a lot of). This type of meal is made and eaten together at the table. (Same concept as Fondue.) Okomiyaki is a cabbage filled batter, cooked like a pancake, and topped with various seafoods and meats, mayonaise, BBQ sauce, seaweed, and fish flakes. I’ve probably grossed you out but it

really is GOOD! I’ll make it for you while I’m in the US!

10. The customer is still always right – The Japanese are the most polite people in the world. I feel so priviledged to work among them!

A Miracle for an Illiterate Teacher

I am an illiterate teacher! When I go out in public I cannot read a thing. Slowly I am learning but I am still years away from literacy. Especially when it comes to the 5,000 Kanji characters that exsist in the Japanese language! So, when I read (in an English text book) that I needed Vermiculite for our upcoming Corn and Bean Science Lab I nearly panicked! How in the WORLD was I going to find THAT in a Japanese store! I didn’t even know what it was in English – there was no hope of simply recognizing the product or the packaging. But, determined to at least give it a shot, the assistant teacher and I set off for the lawn and garden store. As I weaved my way through the shelves of soil, sand, rocks, and fertilizers, cluelessly glancing from side to side, I prayed for help. Assuming that I was looking at a shelf full of bags of tiny landscaping rocks I reached out randomly to touch a bag. “Hey, that’s soft!” I said to Bekah, the assistant teacher. Absentmindedly, I slid that bag from the shelf, and very slowly sounded out the Katakana letters “Ba-Mi-Kyu-Ra-I-To” “Vermiculite!” I shouted to Bekah, “I found Vermiculite!”

We were so thankful as we both immediately recognized we had experienced a miracle. Among the thousands of bags of various gardening chemicals, I thoughtlessly reach out to touch the very one we needed. In addition to that, the name was written in Katakana, the alphabet used for writing foreign (to the Japanese) words. Which means, there was no special Japanese word for it, I did not need to understand Japanese to discover it.

Praise the Lord! He goes with his people, even to the Lawn and Garden stores of Japan!