Another Christmas Past

It has taken me four whole days to get around to writing this blog. It's hard to write about Christmas when it feels like it was a few months ago instead of just a few days ago. Actually, Christmas this year was quite anticlimatical; on the Japanese calender it's just another work day, another school day, that you might get a present or two and eat Christmas cake - as soon as it's over, it's over. There's no Christmas leftovers like Christmas lights hanging on the houses until February, no growing piles of Christmas trees in mall parking lots, no family get-togethers and no Christmas sales. You just blink and it's gone. I actually got a late Christmas card in the mail yesterday and I felt really weird opening it, like it was completely the wrong season.
But none-the-less I thought I would share some Christmas memories with all of you that I did not get to share in the yultide with in Canada this year.
-Of course there were all my little Japanese-Israelite children speaking poorly accented English. We did the Christmas story play in two towns, so we had performances on back to back days, which was quite hectic.
-I unexpectedly got a gingerbread house kit from home; it was amazing. I would open the box and the scent of gingerbread and cinnamon came wafting out. What a good Christmas smell. I built it with my one high school girl during class. She had never made one, and most people who saw it after had never really seen anything like it in real life and were all fascinated by it. I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but that candy was sooo sweet!! I could hardly eat it. I was saddened by how much my mouth's capacity for sugar has changed and I wonder if it'll ever work back up the tolerance I had to sugar that I had before. Then we all ate it on Christmas Day after Christmas dinner.
-Bonita and I made the traditional Christmas dinner for the people in our church (which is not huge). We made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, a baked squash dish, buns, broccolli salad, a danish kringle, and my grandma's kringle. None of the 9 Japanese people that were there had ever had anything like it in all their lives, and it was really funny watching them eat and comment on things; it's interesting how different cultures just take different things for granted, like how I took all those Western Christmas traditions for granted. Bonita kept saying how everything was in America, and how it was a traditional American meal (while I shouted in my head "Canada!"...I'm patriotic that way) and how it felt just like home. I couldn't help but disagree with her. There was nothing about it that felt like home; everybody was talking Japanese. (Actually, I'm not gonna lie, it felt like Christmas all day until the Japanese people showed up.) So for Christmas Day there was Christmas decorations and Christmas food, but the atmosphere was nothing like Christmas at all.
-During a Christmas party in my Friday morning ladies' class we sang a couple of carols. When we were singing Joy to the World in Japanese one of the ladies started making a ruckus. We all stopped singing and asked her what the heck was going on. Through her laughter she told us that she had confused the meaning of the chorus. In Japanese it's "shuwa kimaseri", which means "the Lord has come". It's pretty straightforward, but she had always thought it was written in one alphabet instead of another, which completely changes the meaning. So instead of it being the Lord coming, written in old honorific Japanese it turned into someone coming yelling a Japanese comic hero fighting noise. Think ninja noise and picture fighting hands and then say this word: 'shuu-WA!'. And that's how Jesus came. I laughed everytime I sang that song for the next two days. I hope I remember it next for year.
AND...OH WOW. I'M ON A JAPANESE FRIEND'S COMPUTER AND I JUST ACCIDENTLY HIT SOME SORT OF CAPS LOCK BUTTON BUT I CANNOT FIND FOR THE LIFE OF ME HOW TO TURN IT OFF. BEATS ME.
BUT, AS I WAS SAYING....
AND THOSE ARE SOME OF MY CHRISTMAS MEMORIES OF THIS YEAR. AFTER SPENDING TWO DAYS IN AKITA CITY WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE, THEN SPENDING TWO DAYS ALL BY MYSELF AT HOME IT'S TIME TO GEAR UP FOR NEW YEARS. I'M LEAVING TOMORROW MORNING FOR TOKYO FOR FIVE DAYS. THAT'LL BE A CHALLENGE IN ITSELF, THE LONGEST STRAIGHT PERIOD OF TIME I'VE EVER SPENT IN JAPANESE. I THINK I'LL EITHER COME BACK FLUENT OR SEVERELY DEPRESSED. THERE'S NO CHANCE OF BECOMING FLUENT, SO I'LL TRY HARD TO BE SATISFIED WITH TALKING ABOUT WHERE WE'RE GOING AND WHAT WE'RE EATING.
SO...I GUESS THAT'S THE YEAR. AND NOW I CAN ALMOST SAY "I'M COMING HOME THIS YEAR".
HAPPY NEW YEARS! (HAHA THAT ALMOST DOESN'T NEED AN EXCLAMATION MARK BECAUSE IT'S ALREADY CAPITALIZED)

The Christmas Typhoon

I have just survived a storm...
How do I explain the busy-ness? Yesterday was Christmas in Odate, which was busy, but that now seems like a holiday in Hawaii compared to what today was. Yesterday was only a Christmas party with my ladies class in the morning, decorating cookies with all the kids before they put on their Israelite gear and rehearsed their memorized English lines in the afternoon, then the adult party at night. Today was....wow.
I rolled out of bed at 10:15 (forty-five minutes after my alarm went off), and, after taking an hour for myself instead of hurrying to be on time (justifying it because I hadn't even been home for twelve hours yet), left for the church. There we spent a frantic two hours getting ready for the next eight hours of endlessness. We decorated cookies with about 60 kids, then did the English play (I will insert that all the kids did amazing and I now know what a proud mom or dad feels like when they see their kids do well), had a tea time, an ocarina concert, a candle light service, another tea time, pizza making, song singing, and then finally cleaning up and going home.
It is now 10:15. My jacket is still on (mostly because it's freezing in here), my house is a mess (I have absolutely no time to even clean it even a little) but thankfully my neighbor is not chanting tonight; that's enough to make anybody happy.
I will note that I never want to have Christmas with this level of franticity (if that's a word) ever again.
One of my responsibilities was the candle service. I took the Christmas story portions of the bible and highlighted them into parts, like 'angel', 'narrator', 'wisemen', 'King Herod', so it wouldn't be boring for everybody listening if they just read the story straight through. Then I had it all arranged into sections so they do a little reading, then we stop and sing a carol, do more reading and sing again, and so on. Then I gave the members of our church parts last week, which we practiced a few times. But today the narrator decided not to stop in the middle of the Matthew account to switch into Luke, and it got read straight through, despite my reminding him right before he started. And there was nothing I could do; I tried stopping him during the first few verses of the magi story, but he just kept on plugging through the story. Consequently, the wisemen showed up at the stable before Jesus had even been born, and even before Mary and Joseph had travelled to Bethlehem; a song or two also got cut out because of the mistake.
I was more than a little frustrated that the story got messed up so badly, but mostly because my apparent lack of being able to communicate. But alas, it was one of those things I just had to let go and let happen, and go on with singing 'Joy to the 'World'.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve...so the calender says. My calender says church and then an English Christmas party in Aikawa (which I am obligated to attend and I really don't want to go to). Maybe Christmas Day will be less busy; Bonita and I are just making Christmas dinner for some church members. Boxing Day: going to a doctor in Akita City early in the morning and who knows what else in the afternoon. The next day: going to Akita City again with a friend for shopping, Starbucks and puricura. The day after: collapse... and don't feel the least bit guilty for not leaving my house (haha or even my bed).
So yes this is Christmas. A perk to being 'abroad' for Christmas is that every day you come home there's mail in your mailbox...even if you have no idea who it's from...I'm definitely not complaining.
I'm sure this is a Christmas I will remember years and years down the road. It's like 'Baby's First Christmas', except in my situation it should be called 'Adult's First Christmas'... my Christmas typhoon.

Christmas as Mary

There is something that is just so cute about little Japanese children dressed up to look like Israelites.
Yesterday was the dress rehearsal for the English Christmas play in one of the cities I teach at; the performance is next week. A little Joseph pulling little Mary in a cardboard box donkey to the painted sheet stable; little shepherds warming their hands over a flashlight and tissue paper fire and little angels appearing to them in tinsel and white drapes singing hallelujah; 4 little wisemen (one of who's Magi hat keeps tipping over) following a star taped to a broomstick handle to King Herod's chair (where the king keeps untying his servant's costume so it falls off), and bringing three fancied up cookie tins from Tokyo Disneyland to a baby doll Jesus. I think this is how Christmas is supposed to be, never perfect and always a lot of fun.
But I made it through the week and once again it's Saturday. On Monday night I was seriously wondering how I would be able to function for the next five days; I was sick from a head cold, had absolutely no energy and was fed up with teaching. I showed up at the church to lesson plan on Tuesday morning and was fighting the whole time to not cry because I was so burnt out. But I'm under amazing missionaries, and they offered to teach my night classes for me so I could go home after the morning class. God gave me just enough energy to not collapse during that class, and then I went home and spent the next two days in bed. I think I've had more rest this week than I've had in the past two months; I can't remember the last time I was at home for so many consecutive hours. It was really weird, but amazing all at the same time.
Next week is full of Christmas parties and Christmas play practice, and then it will be over and I'll be in Tokyo...and then it will be next year.
But I will not think of that yet. For now, for today, for this weekend, I'm just content to be doing much of nothing and not having much responsibility.
I've decided that it's so much easier to me a Martha in this world, and it feels like heaven when you actually have time to be a Mary.

Stalling with Kisses

So here I am Sunday morning, eating Hershey Kisses and stalling because I don't know what to wear today. From what I can tell so far, today's going to be a good day. I can see a little blue sky through my bevelled balcony door/window, this morning I could actually get out of bed without much trouble, I can't see my breath in my apartment today, and my neighbor didn't chant very loud for very long this morning. All in all, so far a good day.
I went to Hirosaki yesterday with one of my friends and her family; there is a Christian book store there with a little coffee shop and she wanted to check it out. So we got dropped off at this tiny place while her husband took the kids to the onsen. And we continued to sit there and sit there, look at the books, eat lunch, eat dessert, look at the books again, and sit and sit and sit; I just about went crazy. Yesterday was one of those days I had more the attention span of a kid than an adult, and being trapped in this tiny place for over three hours with someone your conversations are very limited with was a great test of patience for me. And a little frustrating because I'm not fluent yet. But alas, just another day in Japan.
I was in a couple newpapers last week. How exciting. The Christmas 'Concert' out at the ski hill last Sunday night attracted TV cameras and newspaper reporters, and I happened to be in the pictures that made it in the newspapers. One is of me, sitting down playing the guitar and singing with a lady from New Jersey (she went home last week). It's quite an odd picture because it's from the back, and you can only see Nancy's arm; I think they were aiming for the crowd shot. Nonetheless it appeared on the front page. But the TV special is on the 22, and I'm hoping someone will tape it for me. I'm practically famous. Just kidding.
But in the process of stalling I've proceeded in becoming excessively late. I must get out of my pajamas now...And so it will be just another Sunday in Japan, going to two church services, two fellowship times, and going out with the church at night. Busy, busy, busy...and today's a rest day.
God's peace to you all...and a reminder to not take all the friends around you for granted, and the hugs that you receive every day. Japanese don't give hugs.

(Sing:) It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It has been snowing for a few days now, and it's perfect because Christmas is in three weeks. I was wondering if we were going to have a white Christmas over on this side of the world, or if it was just going to keep raining eternally. It seems like winter came overnight; one day it was rainy and I was still toting my umbrella, then the next day this Japanese countryside was turned into a snow-globe.
I just got home from a Christmas party and have Christmas songs running through my head. That, together with complete peace in your heart, is enough to make anybody satisfied. My church went to a community party at a ski hill and did a special Christmas 'program' - the poster that was distributed falsely advertised us as a 'concert'. Basically we sung carols, and did a candle service. I also sang and played one of my songs that I wrote less than a month ago. It was amazing to me because we were in a big concrete ski lodge with high ceilings and I was concerned about my little voice carrying...but I asked God for a supernatural mic, and wow, yeah, you could definately hear me. I just hope the 70-ish (non-Christian) people who were there heard not just another song, but a little bit of Jesus too.
Yesterday, after the ladies' Christmas tea at church, I went to my friends' (Japanese parents') house to decorate the Christmas tree and sleep over. It was a lot of fun; we laughed a lot, and I laughed inside a lot too. Christmas here is so different than at home, mostly because I'm not attached to any traditions here that I've grown so used to from a lifetime of Christmases. We decorated a small (but large by Japanese standards) Christmas tree with a string of lights, a string of gold star garland, and a small (not even grocery size) bag of tree ornaments...compared to the huge tree and 2 moving boxes full of ornaments at home. There were only about 4 different kinds of tree ornaments, including balls that I think look like cat play-toys, cotton ball fluffs and plastic red apples.
Christmas will definitely be different this year, but different in a good way. Because the only way I'm going home for Christmas is in my dreams, I will have to adopt where I am now as home, complete with their Kentucky Fried Chicken and Christmas cake. But with the way things are going now I will have no problem with adopting this country as home, because they are quickly adopting me.