mission.japan

“Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu,” in case you are wondering, is the Japanese equivalent of, “Happy new year.”

New Year’s Eve, being a Sunday, had a very normal start. Many people return to their respective hometowns at this time of the year, so our lone morning worship service was sparsely populated. Given the date we did not have Praise Night (for the second week in a row, actually, since last week we had the Christmas candlelight services). Thus at 7:00, instead of running slides at the church I found myself with five others in Hara-kun’s apartment to prepare nabe (a traditional Japanese stew) and in general chat while watching the five-hour annual red/white singing competition on NHK. This was followed by a short time of sharing and prayer to start the new year, and then an extended Bible study of sorts by the four who remained until 3:30 (Yukiko, Yamasaki, Hara, and myself).

So I was quite tired at 8:30 today when I woke up to meet Matt and family to go to Kourakuen to see the cranes (a rare sight in Japan) fly. It’s surprising how many people (many with very expensive cameras) show up to see a pair of birds fly around the park for about two minutes. Granted, they are very impressive birds, but like many other things I think it’s popular because the group mentality says that this is something everyone should see, and so everyone does.