I haven’t written a poem since, maaaaaybe January…so this is special…two in one day.  They are both fruit of a church member here in Japan passing away and my observing the Body as they grieve but hope.

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Your Grace is Sufficient
August 17th, 2008

Your grace is sufficient for Your children.
In our deepest grief,
Your grace is enough for us.

Your love overwhelms Your children.
In our greatest despair,
Your love is greater than us.

Your mercy humbles Your children.
In our worst rebellion,
Your mercy, to our knees, it brings us.

Your hope comforts Your children.
In our foggiest future,
Your hope is peace to us.

– Cricket ><> –

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Light in The Father
August 17th, 2008

How beautiful it is when
A child of God goes to meet Him.
When the light has burned brightly,
Drawing many to the Source –
The Father.
When the child’s flame is immersed
In the burning brilliance of,
The Father.
Though other nearby flames
Mourn the loss of their kindred
The hope of future burning,
Of a flame that will never fan out,
It is our comfort and delight.

 – Cricket ><> –

 Two days ago, me, Nakayama-san, Taka and Aki, Noriko, and Johnna went to hear the Shimonoseki Wind Ensemble perform a concert.  It was amazing!  I’m not a huge fan of bands…there’s something delicious about a full orchestra…but this was a really great concert and as the orchestra only performs once a year here…and I missed it already…this was a welcome diversion.  I love going to the symphony and theater back home…I really miss it.  There were so many great concerts planned this current year for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, I was bummed to be out of the country.  But, God allowed me to meet members of the Shimo Wind Ensemble and through our new friendship, they gave me and my friends 8 FREE tickets to the concert.  We were only able to scrounge up 6 people to go, but it was a good group.  The concert started off with several marches, typical of a band.  The second stage was the “karumina bura-na” a classical piece that I have yet to figure out what it is.  The way katakana works sometimes distorts foreign words so much that I can’t tell what it is saying until someone just points it out to me.  I recognized the music though and it was beautiful.  The third stage had a complete change of uniform as all members went to casual clothes and they played through a medley from “Enchanted”, a medley of Eagles songs (Desperado, Hotel California, Take It Easy…etc.), a medley of big band swing dance songs, and for the encore – the theme from Ponyo, Ponyo…a recent Japanese anime movie for kids about some little fish kid in the ocean….the tune is really catchy.

  Yesterday, Johnna and I hopped on the train around 12p and took it to Takibe (1 hour or so north of Shimonoseki).  When it stopped at Ayaragi, Eri joined us and we enjoyed a long train ride through the scenic countryside.  We had to switch at Kogushi and then a couple more stops and much sea-side view before we stopped in Takibe.  We were hungry for lunch, but we didn’t know how to get to the next destination.  We found out a bus would be by in about half an hour, so we ran off to find some food to grab and run.  No restaurants were in sight except for a cozy udon restaurant, but we didn’t have time to stop there.  So we went to a supermarket and got some obento and headed back to the train station. 

  We boarded the bus, which had only one other passenger besides us (an older woman who got off at the next stop), and we ate our obento.  The scenery was really nice, and the almost hour long ride was pretty enjoyable…our own private bus ride.  Meanwhile, we heard that it was raining pretty hard in Shimonoseki, but ahead of us was a beautiful blue sky.  Finally, we got to our destination…the gorgeous Tsunoshima!  The beach and water were wonderful!

 It was much too tempting.  Johnna was wearing a swim-suit, but Eri and I are poor and haven’t bought one.  But, without much resistance, Eri and I plunged on in and it was so much fun!  Took our clothes a long time to dry (I still wasn’t fully dry when I got home a little after 8pm.  It was really fun though, we had a great time.  When we thought we should head up to catch the bus back to the station, we got some kakigori (snowcones…mine was mango…yum!) and then scrambled to find the bus stop.  There were a few more people on the bus going back than when we rode out, but it was pretty nice. 

  We decided to grab some dinner in Takibe before catching the train, so we stopped off the bus a little early of the station and walked to the udon restaurant.  Alas…it was closed!  But we had seen a yakitori shop (yakitori is basically grilled meat on a stick) so we went back to have some dinner…relishing in the glory of fried potato (potato wedges).  We hopped on the train and took off for home.  Eri disembarked at Ayaragi and Johnna and I continued on to Shimonoseki.  The train was kind of crowded – there was an older couple who boarded at Ayaragi and the woman sat next to us and her husband sat across from her on the other side of the train.  At one point, she tried to get his attention, but he was dozing.  She looked at us, started laughing because we noticed it, pointed to him and said, “Ojisan” (grandpa).  Heh.  Then she proceeded to tell us that her child had studied in Wisconsin and had been there when 9/11 happened.  She asked where we were from and so we told her our states…she figured out where Maine was, but we didn’t get to explaining where Ohio was.  When the train stopped, the husband asked if we were going somewhere else, and I told him we were stopping here.  They were so sweet and even though they didn’t know any English really, and I know such little Japanese, they were still willing to have a convo with us. 

Below is a link to more of our pictures from Tsunoshima.  Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=141556&l=0772f&id=500635206

Yesterday, I had tea time with Taka and Nakayama-san.  It’s been interesting here in Japan during August because the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were earlier this month.  Also the Olympics are going on and that has excited the natural rivalry between nations.  I went to Quixote and they were watching the high bar Olympics.  Tanabe-san (Too-Tired-Teacher-Who-Used-To-Be-In-Yakuza (but now we found out he really wasn’t in it)…) said almost immediately as I sat down that America was getting bronze, Japan was taking silver, and China was taking the gold.  Right there, in that little triangle of awards was a whole century of conflict…it was insane. 

I sat with Taka and Nakayama-san in surreality (is this a word? who cares!) discussing the reaction of Japan to losing WWII.  The country was in a panic, and Taka was talking about how this group of kamikaze soldiers received word that American ships were coming to invade Tokyo.  So they gathered these boats that were intended to just be steered into the ships…there were a hundred or so of them…and young men were manning the boats.  They were lined up, and filled with explosives to take out the ships.  But one caught on fire and as they rushed to put the fire out, four of the men realized it wasn’t completely extinguished and told the captain.  The captain disregarded it and called all the kamikaze soldiers together, but the four soldiers ran away, thinking there would be a terrible explosion if that boat continued to burn.  Sure enough, the fire built up again and in a chain reaction exploded all the other boats, killing all the men present…except those four.  Later, they did some research in Washington DC to see if there had really been ships on their way to Tokyo…but there weren’t.  The whole mission was a fool’s errand.

After that we talked about how Kokura (a shopping district maybe 20 minutes by train from here) was one of the initial targets for the bombs, but it was too cloudy, so they redirected it to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki (I think it was Nagasaki).  Crazy!  But there were heavy air raids done both here in Shimonoseki and in Tokyo.  There were so many in Tokyo that I read there were more deaths there than in both atomic bombs dropping.  Nakayama-san was 7 years old, and she was living in Tokyo at the time.  She was on the western side of the city, and most of the bombings happened on the eastern side.  She remembers the sky being a deep red from all the fire and explosions.  She thought it was beautiful, but her mother chastised her, saying, “Those are homes and people burning.”  Another woman at our church was in Shimonoseki at the time of the air raids.  She was close to one of the bombs dropping and she was thrown into the water…some people pulled her out, but she could have died.  Now, she and her husband and their daughters are believers…but had she died, none of that would be true.

It’s amazing.  And did you know that America had imprisonment camps for Japanese-Americans living in the States at this time?  Yeah…nothing like the German concentration camps, but still…people’s lives uprooted and isolated.  Taka said that his wife, (who is 3/4th Japanese) Aki’s grandparents were actually held at one of those camps.  Her mother was born on December 7th, 1941…Attack on Pearl Harbor Day.

Conversely, you have the terrible occurance of “comfort women”…women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military to service the soldiers.  They took these women from any place they occupied: Korea, China, Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, New Guinea.  My friend Mark even mentioned that some Australian women were enslaved, and some Dutch women from prison camps were then forced to work at “comfort stations.” 

In a nutshell…nobody wins in war.  Nobody.

(Makes you really think about Russia and Georgia, and all the other “wars” going on right now.)

I will say, though, that despite the terrible condition of the world and the awfulness of war and the instability of our world…it all points to one thing:  Jesus is coming soon.  And that gives me hope beyond all measure, because only He can establish true and lasting peace.  Take hope in that.