Genie in Japan

Hisashiburii~

That means “it’s been a long time.”

Today we had our weekly staff meeting. Afterwards, we often have “Fun Time,” ranging from bowling, sharing, just having lunch together, or playing a simple game. Today was a movie–Monster’s Inc. in Japanese. Buuut, I had to step out and “work.” I do that a lot. I think I have a sickness, where I can’t sit and relax…and then I get mad when people get to have fun while I labor away. I have a problem. A student asked me what I do for fun. It was a hard question to answer. What do you do for fun?

Yesterday I went to my first Japanese baseball game–the Hanshin Tigers vs. Chiba Lotte Marines. THAT was fun. I think I love Japanese baseball. I wish I could figure out how to post videos, because wow it was so fun. They have a cheer/song for EVERY SINGLE PLAYER. And all of the fans know it. The away team sings and stands and jumps around for the entire inning that their team is at bat.

I love this picture. This is Sunny, one of my teammates, but she’s expressing the passion that Osaka people have for the game. People from the Kansai region are not ordinary Japanese people. They’re like super human. I love it.

Seventh-inning stretch was so awesome. Everyone buys their own long-weird-looking balloon things, gets them ready halfway through the seventh, and then releases them all together. So, so good.

This is like the fan-stand-conductor man. There’s one in every aisle. They’ve got some moves. I wonder how you can qualify to be one.

So cute. They’re wearing Kanemoto jerseys. Apparently, Hanshin fans look up to him as a man of all men, a true blood-brother of the Osaka region.

My lovely Korean teammates and Singaporean tourists behind us trying to figure out the game of baseball–apparently they don’t have it in their country.

Aisuru (beloved) Koshien. The Hanshin Tigers’ home field.

The day before that I invited Ota-san, a cleaning lady at Handai, to come to church for a special concert. A Campus Crusade staff couple has a music ministry. Their duet is called “Treasures in Jars of Clay,” and they both play the acoustic guitar…and wow they have beautiful voices. They travel Japan and Korea, sometimes bringing along their two sons who play the flute, and share their testimony and the Gospel. A lot of people were moved to tears by their music, and a few people accepted Christ that day. They sang a very famous song, roughly translated “You were born to receive love.” Ota-san repeated all day that it’s such a shame Japanese parents don’t say that to their children, to their friends, to their family…

After the concert, Ota-san invited me to her apartment for dinner. She fed me a LOT. Spare ribs, salad, three different kinds of Japanese noodles, a bunch of exotic vegetables, and then when I was going home, she gave me a gift–she had knit two sweaters for me because I was so cold during the winter in Japan. Oh my gosh…I was so overwhelmed…especially when I met her wretched 26-year-old good-for-nothing daughter. Her daughter was so rude. They don’t live together. Her daughter spends all of her money on self-beautification while her elderly mother barely gets one day off a week. Ota-san said she will save up some money and try to come to America to visit me in two years. But until then, she told me to write a lot because she doesn’t use e-mail and also so I can practice writing Japanese.