Flat3D

The Move

On Monday past I moved from Ajigasawa to Itayanagi. The Elliots left to go on home assignment for 3 months and I couldn’t stay at Ajigasawa. So I have moved. the new place is interesting, about an hour away from Ajigasawa and slightly less countryside. But still very countryside. I am living in the church with 2 other short termers, David Porter and Kevin Ueta. If you are a long time reader of Flat3D you’d remember kevin from my trip to Canada. He was the guy who I stayed with the second week, so it’s really good to see him again. Maybe there will be photos up sometime soon…

Anyways most of my ministry here is teaching English. We are doing classes three times a week with a total of 5 classes (so far). It’s kind of funny that I wasn’t too keen to go to Sendai because I didn’t want to teach English, but thats life I guess. I get the feeling the Ghents just don’t really know what to do with me.

Anyways, it was kind of sad to leave Aji and see the elliots go, but I will be going back once a week to help with their youth ministry, if it gets off the ground. and living with a coupe of guys is a nice change from living with a family of girls (Except John of course!)

so yeah, just a quick update to let people know where I am!

Lingually lacking

As you might expect, while I am home alone I answer the phone. This sounds unimpressive until I remind you that there are only a small clutch of people who call and speak english, then it all becomes much more impressive.
Well allow me to deflate it once again. Normally the conversation goes like this:

me: “Hai ajigasawa kyoukai desu”
Hello, Ajigasawa Church…

them: “Eriotto-sensei ga imasu ka?”
Is Pastor Elliot there?

me: “sumimasen, Eriotto-santachi wa imasen”
Sorry, the Elliots aren’t here

them: “sumimasen… jaa arigatou gozaimasu”
Oh sorry, thanks.

(dial tone)

And thus not much to worry about. The format is almost always exactly the same. Occasionally someone tries to talk to me, but usually that doesn’t last too long. Usually about as long as it takes for me to get some words in to remind them that I have no idea what they said and I can’t speak much Japanese.

However, I had an interesting call on Wednesday that went something like this:

me: “Hai ajigasawa kyoukai desu”

them: Lots of japanese I don’t understand

me: “uhhhhhh…..”

them: “kyoukai desu ka”

me: “hai”

them: “hai wakarimashita”

(dial tone)

I thought it meant something like this:

me: “Hello, Ajigasawa church”

them: something irrelevant

me: “uhhhhhh…..”

them: “Is that a church”

me: “Yes”

them: “Oh I’ve got it…”

(dial tone)

And assumed someone had dialed the wrong number and taken a moment to realise that I had just said it was a church that they had called and hung up realising that they weren’t going to get anything coherent out of me.

Later that evening we went to Mrs hirasawas for a prayer meeting. However, Masa wasn’t there. This caused mild concern among those who were.
Around 15 minutes after we started Masa came and said something to the effect of “I thought it was at the church, I called earlier and a Japanese person told me that it was at the church!” to the general confusion of all the Elliot household.
Around 5 minutes after that I figured out what was being said and it dawned on me that I was that Japanese person!

The conversation had gone something like this:

me: “Hello, Ajigasawa church”

Masa: Hi, it’s Masa,where is the prayer meeting this evening?

me: “uhhhhhh…..”

Masa: “is it at the church?”

me: “yes”

Masa: “Ok I got it…”

(dial tone)

:blush_tb:

But at least my accent isn’t too bad if I can pass for Japanese on the phone!
:thumbup_tb:

Interesting

Saturday was April Fool’s day and while I saw no fools on Saturday, there seem to be plenty of them around.

Fools of April 2006