Here are the three main ones for this year.

Saturday, December 14, 2002
This was the day I went to the Christmas party at one of the schools where I work. This is the one I’m quitting. One of the teachers likes to turn the music up really loud, every year, so to talk to the person next to you, you had to shout your head off. There was a lot of food everywhere and I was really hungry before I went in, but I suddenly had absolutely no appetite. I did get to spend time with some of my students and met/saw some interesting people. Everybody was eating and drinking a lot. Nobody got drunk, but everyone was … “merry.”

• An Australian who is 25% English, 25% Indian, 25% Dutch, 25% Zulu. He came to Japan to study martial arts and teaches English for a living. He wants to meet with Papa to talk about demonology.
• A young Japanese who just came back from Scotland and spoke with an extremely thick Scottish accent. It was totally bizzarre. He was back in Japan to work for 2 years, then planned to head back to Scotland to get an MBA and settle down there. He asked me for his my phone number, but didn’t get it.
• A nice American English teacher with his Japanese wife who spoke perfect English. He will be taking over 2 of my classes. I was very relieved they would be in good hands. I liked those 2 classes very much.
• An English teacher from Seattle named Elijah. From his conversation with the 25% guy, it was obvious he didn’t believe in God. I wanted to ask him how he got his name, but didn’t get to. I mean, that’s not a common name in secular circles, is it?
• Another English teacher looking for a job. He somehow showed up at the party complaining loudly that my boss would not give him an interview, then proceeded to eat and drink a lot, trying to pick up girls the entire time. All the other teachers were disgusted, but somehow nobody kicked him out.

I went home with my brains whirring with a slight headache and teetering on the brink of vowing to myself there was absolutely no way I was going to go to a secular school.

Saturday, December 21, 2002
My church had its annual Christmas service/Christmas party. On this day, church members invite friends and relatives to hear the Gospel and the true meaning of Christmas. This year, we had comparatively few visitors compared to the last couple years because the weather was pretty bad all day, at least by Tokyo standards: sleet and a bit of snow. Still there were more than 60 non-Christians who attended the service. Papa gave a short sermon (about 15 minutes, as opposed to the 60-80 minutes on Sundays) and all the Sunday School classes sang songs and recited the Bible. Afterwards, everyone sat around talking and eating the goodies the church mothers stayed up the night before making.

I invited all my students and their families to the party, passing out 65 invitations and inviting about 100 people. A lot of them were going to come, but only 12 showed up. The others cancelled because of the weather.

Everyone who came seemed to be quite happy to come and listen. Naturally, they are more open to hearing about Christ around Christmastime than at other times of the year. I had a chance to talk to them a bit afterwards about the Gospel, but no matter what they are told, people seem to tend to treat it as a “Christmas story” that doesn’t pertain to the rest of the year.

All in all, though, it was very blessed and I hope God will work in the hearts of those who came that day.

Tuesday, December 24, 2002
Tomorrow, I’ll be having the party for my private students, about three-fourths church kids, one-fourth non-Christian kids. This year, some of the older church kids in the advanced class prepared short stories in English and Japanese to read to the rest of the kids who are a lot younger, mostly ages 5 to 8.

The Kanno sisters, Mikuni (10) and Miwaza (12) are writing about the Creation and the Fall, Shou (13) about the Birth of Christ, and Kento (13) about the Cross and the Resurrection. They will read the stories in English and Japanese, alternating one sentence at a time.

Before each class or class gathering, we always sing the Lord’s Prayer, recite the 10 Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:6-21, “King James” Version), and sing the Apostle’s Creed. I hope and pray these words will strengthen the faith of the children who believe, and the seeds of the Gospel sown in the hearts of the little children who do not yet believe will be gathered sometime in the future.

Here’s one paragraph I enjoyed so much I had to read it outloud at the table last night. It’s from Robert Alter’s book, The Art of Biblical Narrative.

Parataxis, we should recall,* means placing the main elements of a statement in a sequence of simple parallels, connected by “and,” while hypotaxis arranges statements in subordinate and main clauses, specifying the relations between them with subordinate conjunctions like “when,” “because,” “although.” Thus, the sentence “Joseph was brought down to Egypt and Potiphar bought him” is paratactic. The same facts would be conveyed hypotactically as follows: “When Joseph was brought down to Egypt, Potiphar bought him.” (My example is actually an abbreviated version of Genesis 38:1. The first version is the way the original reads, the second version, the way some modern translations, avoiding parataxis, render it.”)

* We should?! Don’t you just love it when people write like this?

A while ago, I found some of the writing I did when I was younger and I realized nearly all my writing was paratactic. LOL. I guess most kids’ writing is. But I wonder how many kids would write “And he answered and said….” in a story, though. LOL.

Ben went to the hospital yesterday and had his cast removed. His wrist still hurts and he can’t move it very much, but it seems to be healing OK. Thank you for your prayers.

Eowyn If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer. In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Yep, that’s me. LOL.

Here are the literal translations of the Japanese names of some of the kids at my church. (Implied meanings are in brackets.)

Covenant (2 boys with this name)
Daughter of Truth and Logic
Faith (2 boys with this name)
Fruit
Fruit of Fountain
Fruit of Glory
Fruit of Light
Fruit of the Covenant
Fruit of the Vine
Fruit of Truth
General [in God's army]
Historical Fact
Image (from Genesis 1:27)
Joy
Judgement
Life
Life of Faith
Light (2 boys with this name)
Lit Path (from Psalm 119:105)
Man of Righteousness
Mercy
Offering/Sacrifice
Order (as in “orderly”)
Peace
Pioneer
Plentiful
Righteous Peaceful Joy
Righteousness
Song of Hope
Song of Mercy
Sower
Straight
The Handiwork of God
The Kingdom of God (2 with this name, 1 boy, 1 girl)
The Name of God
Truth
Walk [with God]
Wisdom (2 with this name, 1 boy, 1 girl)
Witness
Word [of God]

There is also a super-lively and beautiful 5-year-old girl with a Greek name, “Kyrie.”

Miwaza now has 3 new penpals. She is very, very excited!! Thank you very much for your prompt and kind responses. May God bless these girls as they communicate with each other.

Just 10 years ago, when I was their age, I still had to wait at least 2 weeks for a response from my cousins and penpals: 1 week for my letters to arrive over there, and 1 week for their responses to get back to me … if they wrote and sent them out on the same day my letter arrived. I wonder what great things are in store for children 10 or 20 years from now.

1. Which blogger have you known longest online? The first two bloggers I “met” online were KataJohn and The Penguin With Beautiful Feet.

2. Which blogger have you known longest IRL? Berek. I’ve known him since he was born, almost 19 years ago. He’s the only blogger I know IRL.

3. Which blogger have you spent the most time with IRL? Berek.

4. Which blogger would you most like to meet IRL (that you haven’t met IRL)? Besides the ones that I’m going to meet at the conference? If I had to choose, I wish I could spend some time with Cheryl, Joel & Laurel, Gideon and his family, those crazy bloggers in California, and I wish I could hear some of John’s sermons IRL.

You know, it’s really hard to choose some and leave all the others out. All the bloggers I have on my blogroll are people I’d like to meet.

5. Which blogger do you think has the best blog design? Detailed answers below.

6. Which blogger do you like most to argue with? Joshua, but we argue via IM, not blogs. I used to argue with Steinar a L O T but by e-mail (a few hundred e-mails). I haven’t argued with any bloggers … yet. Probably the bloggers I disagree with most theologically are The Dane, Gideon, and WaynO, but I’ll leave the debating for when we have a few extra centuries in heaven to just sit around and talk. And even then, I’d rather watch them get ripped to shreds by others than do the ripping myself.

7. Which blogger makes you laugh the most? The Dane.

8. Which blogger intimidates you the most? I used to find Joel’s the most intimidating, though after a few IM sessions, I realized it was just his blog, not Joel himself. His blog has become a lot more interesting after Claire was born.

9. Which blogger do you most wish would post more often? KataJohn.

10. Which blogger do you most wish would get a comment system? I would have said Emily, but not only did she go and get one, she got the best one. Good girl!!

… up to 40 percent of Japanese men have paid for sex at least once.

“I can’t think about marriage or kids because I’m not a good woman. The future is only dreams,” Hitomi said. “What would you do if you were me?”

OK, so I “never really argue back,” that’s true. I don’t like to fight, and I’m always too tired to. Or should I be honest and say I’m too lazy to. If I did argue, I wonder how much longer The Dane would be able to keep his hair.

Speaking of disagreeing about matters of faith, I noticed that I forgot to add in the church notes down there that the pastor welcomed everyone in the room to receive communion, baptized or not. He said baptism didn’t matter, as long as we “had Jesus in our hearts.”