Just as I was finishing up a tutoring class one evening last week, the father of the family came home. He stood outside the front door and called for his teenage daughter to bring some salt. She ran to the kitchen, grabbed the salt shaker, and sprinkled him liberally. I couldn’t understand. As I stood there mystified, the mother explained, “He went to a funeral … ” As soon as she said “funeral” I remembered that that’s what they do in this country, “… to ward off the spirits of the dead.” Both parents are very well-educated, well-traveled, sensible people who were educated in Western schools and speak English quite fluently. These people, who on occasion have been somewhat offended at how “religious” I am, faithfully follow old Japanese superstitions. As Westernized and technologically advanced as Japan has become outwardly, it is still pagan to its core. Superstition controls the everyday lives of the people.

In Japan, there is a system of lucky and unlucky days. If you buy a calendar made in Japan, chances are every single day of the year is marked lucky, unlucky, or one of the four degrees in between. This is one reason I only buy calendars made in America or Europe. Most people follow these days very closely. For example, people never have weddings on Butsumetsu, the day that Buddha supposedly died. (So most of my friends’ weddings were on Butsumetsu, because everything is cheaper! LOL.)

The numbers 4 and 9 are considered unlucky numbers because 4, (pronounced “shi”) is a homonym of “death” and 9 (”ku”) is a homonym of “suffering.” Hospitals and most apartments do not have fourth or ninth floors. Apartments are numbered 101, 102, 103, 105… and parking lots are numbered 1, 2, 3, 5, and so on.

Some other customs include the ritual purifying of land before starting to build anything. Everyone does that. There is even ritual purifying of automobiles, though not everyone does that.

When Ben, Berek, and I went to kendo lessons, the students had to bow before and after every lesson to the teacher, to a shrine, and to the room itself. This gets carried into sports. When my brothers went swimming, the students would bow to the teacher and then to the pool. This is at a swimming school that trains Olympic athletes. When they went to our local basketball club, people would bow to the teacher and the basketball court. Of course, we only bowed to the teacher and skipped bowing to the shrine, pool, and gym. The teachers at the swimming school allowed Ben and Berek to stand upright while all the kids did their extra bows. The folks at the basketball club didn’t really care either way. Some people there did it instinctively. But one of the older kendo teachers (he only visited on test days) flew into a paroxysm of rage when we three refused to bow to the shrine and to the room we practiced in.

Quite often, I hear laments about how moral standards are falling so low in America. Granted, I agree they are getting very bad. But every time I was there for a visit, I was delighted with how refreshingly “clean” things were there. Over here, every store that sells printed material sells pornography. It is in every convenience store, at every newsstand, in every supermarket, in every kiosk in every train station. It is not hidden at all, but put on full display. There are vending machines that sell porn videos and magazines. Prostitution is supposedly illegal, but it is everywhere. There are advertisements in the train, in our mailboxes, in telephone booths. It is an unavoidable aspect of living in Tokyo. There is a “bar” near where I work with underage Filipina prostitutes. There are prostitutes from Eastern Europe with their Japanese pimps lined up on the street just a few feet away from our local supermarket. Mothers pass by with their groceries, kids zip by on their bicycles, families stroll by, all of them as if nothing is out of the ordinary. It’s not as if we live in a cheap or seedy section of Tokyo. We are in a nice, quiet residential area. That’s just the way things are. Adultery and prostitution are taken for granted. Almost every time I get on the train, someone is looking at porn. In this country, where right and wrong are determined by what is shameful or not (thus committing a shameful act is not an issue, but being exposed is), porn is not considered the least bit shameful.

The fascination that some Westerners have for Japan has mystified me for years, but if you are one of them, here are some good books to read. If you actually get through all of them, you’re all set. The first three books are big, heavy, scholarly books. The fourth gives an interesting theory about parallels between Shintoism and the Old Testament. The fifth is is an account of Japan written by an American who tried to become Buddhist. The sixth is an amazingly well-researched, factually quite accurate book about Japan written by the usually-almost-disgustingly-silly Dave Barry.

1. The Enigma of Japanese Power (Karel van Wolferen)
2. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (Peter Dale)
3. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (Karl A. Wittfogel)
4. The Japanese and the Jews (Isaiah Ben-Dasan)
5. Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure In Japan (David Chadwick)
6. Dave Barry Does Japan (Dave Barry)

Some of these are only available used so I have linked them to BookFinder instead of Amazon. If you’ve never used BookFinder before, you should read this.

I got a Nikon CoolPix 4300 on Thursday (more info here). It’s not so expensive that I’d feel uncomfortable carrying it around and using it, but not so cheap that I have to sacrifice quality either. It’s juuuuust right. Ben has the CoolPix 995, Uncle Benjamin has the CoolPix 5000, and Uncle Leo has two CoolPix 990s.

WayNeW mentioned (post 12) that we have “known” each other online for a while. I first “saw” him on the RTDISC sometime in the spring of 2000 and we exchanged e-mails for the first time on April 23, 2001 (I keep all my old e-mails, hehe). Wayne and I have bumped into each other here and there on various lists and now we are both stuck in blogdom.

Hmm. Internet friends. I’ve come to know various people online since I got my first connection on October 7, 1997, but internet friendships seem doomed to impermanency. I’ve known Martin and Steinar the longest (over 20% of my life!) and have exchanged hundreds and hundreds of e-mails with them. Most of the correspondence was back when I was still a student with unlimited free time on my hands. We don’t write so much anymore, but we still keep up. I owe them a lot in many ways, among which if it were not for them, I probably would not have understood my apologetics classes very well. <grin>

Christopher — Illinois — October 8, 1997 ~ present
Actually, he’s not exactly an internet friend because he’s my cousin and we’ve been very close friends since babyhood but I’ve exchanged more e-mails with him than with any other friend I have. Hm. I have not been writing to him at all recently … and I don’t think he reads this blog.

Martin — Switzerland — January 28, 1998 ~ present
In the beginning, Martin helped me a lot with my Latin studies, giving me homework and sending back the miserable results with lots of detailed corrections. He was incredible patient. We used to do a whole lot of discussing/debating, some of it very heated, though I think most of the heat was on my part, LOL. Since then, I have met him, his lovely wife Laurence, and their super-baby Tila/Leandre twice when they were here when they were here visiting Laurence’s family (she’s half Japanese).

Steinar — Norway — since March 9, 1998 ~ present
I looked at the beautiful pictures of his arctic adventures (written in Latin) and wrote a short note. He answered. That was the beginning. A lot of discussions/debates ensued. That was the middle. Now, I don’t write anything and feel really bad about it. I wish he would start blogging.

Joshua — Ohio — October 1, 2001 ~ present
We’ve gone at it, hammer and tongs. It’s been edifying, I hope, and great fun. Why is it that all I ever do is fight with my friends? LOL.

I didn’t mention any blog-only friends up there because it’s been less than a year since I’ve started blogging and because I know you guys more through your blogs than through personal correspondence, but it’s been wonderful to meet all of you and finally find a little corner of the internet where I feel like I belong.

When I first started blogging back in March, I never knew there was even such a thing as Reformed blogdom (I started blogging for friends and family I wasn’t writing to as faithfully as I should have been). The first blogger to blog me was Rick (of course!!), on May 14, 2002 and the first blogger I got an e-mail from was John, who welcomed me to blogdom and told me about Sensus Plenior on May 15, 2002 (my birthday!).

OK, Jon, now you can go ahead and steal my identity.

I WANT TO DANCE!! I WANT TO DANCE!!

Why isn’t there any such thing as Reformed dance?

The world of ballet is too corrupt for me to enjoy in good conscience. Flamenco and jazz dancing can be beautiful, but I don’t think that’s what we’ll be dancing in heaven. I’m pretty sure we’ll be dancing there, but what? Traditional European folk dancing? Traditional Asian processional dancing? So meanwhile, the Christians I know walk around like wooden robots and don’t dance … oh, except for Tim, of course, and Rick and Joshua. But I’ve never met them, let alone seen them dance, so I guess they don’t count.

One of the conversation cards had the question, “What is the strangest food you have eaten?” I shouldn’t have asked.

At a French restaurant: raw goat brain
Southeast Asia: raw monkey brain
Common in some parts of China: dog soup with head, teeth, eyeballs, ribs, paws, everything (”It tastes like beef.”)
Common enough Japanese food: pickled locust, raw horse

The concert went very well. OK, so call me a novice, but Mozart’s Requiem is, after all, my favourite choral piece, together with Handel’s Messiah. It was thrilling to sing such powerful words together with so many people. There were well over 200 people all together, plus the orchestra and the soloists.

Eleven of my students attended … or they bought tickets, anyway. I hope that somehow this will give me another chance to witness to them. Most of the people who are singing and listening do so with no thought to the words. They just enjoy the way the music sounds.

A couple of the Germans thought I was Italian. A few of the Japanese thought I was German. For whatever reason, the Korean soloist thought I was American before she even spoke to me. Everyone thinks Mama is Japanese. When people asked, I didn’t bother with the long, complex story of my ancestry and just said we were all American. I mean, all of us are … sort of.

G’night.

Last week, in a private conversation class…. (Student is a Japanese male, late 40s or early 50s.)

Emeth: Who is your favourite Japanese historical character?
Student: Ohh. Uhh. Umm. I have never thought about that before.
Emeth: Oh, really? My favourite Japanese historical character is Oda Nobunaga!!
Student: <laughs> My favourite Americans are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. What about you?
Emeth: <humming and hawing> Hmm. I’m not sure.

As I thought over this later, I was amazed at myself for not being able to answer the question right away. Let’s see. My favourite historical characters are from the Bible (Othniel, Achsah, Jael, David, Daniel, et al., too many to list), classical history (Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hannibal), Europe (John Calvin, Jeanne d’Albret, Catherine the Great), or Asia (Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan). When I was little, I really admired Lewis Wetzel, Simon Kenton, Davy Crockett, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee, but I haven’t read much American history in the last decade and few people in Japan have ever heard of any of them. Papa and James Jordan aren’t in the history books … yet. LOL.

Note: “Favourite historical characters” => “people I like to read about,” not “people I worship blindly.”

I just got back tonight from our rehearsal for the Mozart’s Requiem concert on Thursday, the day after tomorrow. It was so exciting!! We practiced with a full orchestra, soloists, and a chorus group from Germany. They sound incomparably better than our group…. But I guess that’s to be expected. LOL. While singing with them today, I got a sudden, super-strong urge to go to Germany and join a chorus there for a year or so. Not that I’m good enough to join, or that that’s ever going to happen.

Singing in this concert is going to cost me more than $1000 dollars with transportation costs (the places we practice are REALLY far away), chorus membership fees, and (most of all) paycuts for cancelling my classes the last couple months. At first, I couldn’t help but lament about the cost, but it’s been more than worth it. Another teacher at the school, Jeffery Bolton, is putting aside time from writing his dissertation to teach my classes for me. Thank you, Jeff!!

I have a new baby, my fourth in the past 6 years. He’s such a beauty, all black and silver!! How I wish I could have a new one every year!! It took me a while to set things up and get connected, which is one of the main reasons I haven’t been blogging for the past few days. (The other reasons: lots of bookshelves, lots of books, lots of kids, exhaustion, exhaustion, and exhaustion.)

ABIT SA7 motherboard
nVidia GeForce4 MX 460
1.7 GHz Celeron (not PentiumIV like I’d asked)
256 MB DDR RAM (will be 512 soon)
DVD-ROM (AOPEN 16XDVD-ROM/AMH)
CD-RW (Sony CRX100-E 4X/2X/24X)
20 GB HDD
80 GB external HDD (IEEE 1394 and USB ports)
IEEE 1394 (4 ports)
USB (4 ports)

Ken got me the motherboard, memory, and CPU in Singapore. The rest I got in Japan or salvaged from my old computer. Believe it or not, all of this cost less than $500. Not bad, huh?

Last night, I ate my spaghetti with chopsticks. Tonight, I’m eating my curry with chopsticks.