Sapporo Snow Festival 2009

You can see some pretty awesome snow sculptures at the festival!  I got to go twice, once during the daytime on Saturday, then again on Tuesday evening with Alex, but a mix up in meeting and communications meant I didn’t meet Alex in the end, but still got to see a few of the sculptures all lit up…  The ice ones look much better by night!

Last Wednesday, a Public Holiday here in Japan, a Singaporean student at the language centre (Wan Jee) arranged for us to go to a Singaporean buffet-banquet at a hotel in Otaru.  It was delicious and we all ate far too much!  I had to leave slightly earlier than the others to prepare to give a speech on Friday morning.  The others went to the Otaru candle light festival in the evening.  My speech went well on Friday, it was all about electrocuting myself when I was little.  We have to do speeches each time we finish a section of the course in front of all of the students and teachers at the centre!

Then just the other day my internet began working!  The NTT (Japanese equivalent of BT) came and put in the line a couple of weeks ago, but it took Biglobe (my provider) a little longer to get it up and running.  The line is an optic fibre link to the exchange which promises a maximum ability of 100Mbps, but in reality it is giving 12-15Mbps downstream and almost as much upstream at the moment…  Which isn’t the 100Mbps, but still isn’t bad for a consistent connection speed.

The final bit of news is I am on Twitter!  If you are on twitter you can follow me at flat3d, I’d love to follow you too…  I’m building up my links (it’s all about the links…)
For those who aren’t or don’t know what it is, it is a bit like facebook’s status updates, but made viable.  In reality it seems to be a bit more like one huge chatroom, with a whole lot of conversations going on at once, the nice thing is it sort of tunes in your friends and tunes out everyone else, so you can follow conversations.  It’s also possible to use it to simply let people know what you are upto, which might sound pretty dull or dim, but I like the idea that I can communicate daily life to folk and friends at home.

The big surprise for me is that it is actually pretty big in Japan.  It seems to be filling (bridging?) a gap between the all out geekiness of IRC (internet chat) and the more mainstream social users of Mixi (sort of Japan’s answer to myspace or facebook…)  At the moment I am much to illiterate to make much use of it in Japanese, but as I learn more hopefully it will be a valuable resource in learning about the tech world/culture in Japan and even help me with studying the language!

I will sometime link it into the site here, a twitter updates jobby or something, but I am not sure the best way to do it yet, or even if it is actually worthwhile…  Some more thought required I guess…

But to go back to the top, 懐かしい (natsukashii) or “nostalgic.” I experienced this very feeling this evening as I was having a jeffries in iTunes and came across Today FM’s Ray D’Arcy show podcast. Now those of a similar ilk to me will remember Ray presenting Den TV on Network 2 (RTE) every afternoon after school, like RTE’s CBBC, featuring young stars such as Zig and Zag and Dustin the Turkey…
Well of course I signed up to see what the guy was up to these days and to my suprise (and delight) I was joining in just after a whole show devoted to Den TV!
If you remember Den TV and all the stuff on it, you might want to head over to Today FM’s pages and check out the episode…

Anyways! Yes it is nearly Christmas!!!
I have been thinking about Christmas quite a bit this year.  I had a Christmas party in October at Steve and Emma’s place, organised by my friends in good ol’ Norn Iron.  Then in Singapore they were lighting up their Christmas decorations – it is hard to believe a month ago I was in 30 degree heat, sweating profusely while soapy, fake snow was blown upwards to sting children’s eyes and make them wonder why people think avalanches are dangerous…  And now it is this week.  This is the Sunday before Christmas.  Traditionally at this hour (6:30pm) I should be practising carols with the band at church and getting ready for the (super heated) service in the church buildings…  School or uni would be over, exams would seem far enough away to be insignificant, many Christmas dinners would have been consumed with the best yet to come, Indiana Jones and James Bond would feature heavily on the week’s TV schedule, the GCD day of Halo 3 would be fast approaching (a 2 year tradition for me, but a good one none the less)…

This year only one of those is true.
School has finished and we are having a party tomorrow…  But for most, Christmas in Japan is pretty much a normal working day, sure there is a commerical hype, but it feels like the same kind of hype that mother’s day or father’s day might get - people trying to make money from products that under normal circumstances would see them sell nothing and lose their lively hood because of their foolishness in buying bulk lots of winter scene greetings cards, small plastic trees and red socks…  But on Thursday in Northern Ireland kids will be up early to see what they got from Santa, mothers will be up putting a turkey in the oven while everyone else will sleep in.  Here everyone will be up early, kids going to school, business men to the office, shop keepers will open their shops as normal…  Banks, post offices, buses, trains, pretty much everything will run as normal!

So it got me to thinking what the big deal was about Christmas?
Christians here celebrate Christmas for the same reasons that Christians at home do - Jesus coming into the world for our sake.  Christmas is like Easter.  It’s about Christ.  Sure there is a slight secular commercial blitz around it, but it really doesn’t seem to attempt to link itself to a meaning of Christmas.  But in the west, it is also about family, goodwill, sharing, giving, receiving, eating, drinking…… etc.  The true meaning kind ofhas competition.  Sure they are all good things…  Many of them even stem from the true meaning, but for too many people they expand and replace it…  Why is that?  And what about me, why is Christmas always such a more prominent event in my mental calendar than Easter?

Well…
Christmas in the UK is much more than simple commercialism for non-Christians.  It is a big festival in winter!  At Christmas time the depressing shortening of days has come to an end and they are going to get lighter from now on!  It is a holiday after such a long spell with no bank holidays or public holidays…  The last time everyone had a weekday off was in August!  And it is a time to let go for a bit and enjoy rich food, warming flavours, heartening traditions, family time, fun with friends, giving and receiving presents even when its not your birthday… etc etc etc…  When I really thought about why I like Christmas so much I realised that it isn’t just as a Christian that I enjoy it.  But I love all of the other aspects as well.  Well most of them!

So what about Japan?
Well in Japan they have another winter festival.  New Year is a huge thing here, people get several days off work (a big deal here!) go home to their families, spend time together.  There is a religious aspect to it, people going to shrines and temples etc.  But I will happily ignore that side and focus on the chance to have fun with friends, eat good food, give and receive etc…

I guess the bottom line is that Christmas is about Jesus, but the rest of the stuff (within reason) isn’t necessarily wrong or bad unless we allow it to push Jesus out of the picture, or we don’t have Him there to start with.  I think for me, being in Japan will mean that it will be easier to keep Jesus at the centre of Christmas…  The paraphernalia can wait til New Years…

It’s turned out kind of like an interview hasn’t it?  hmmm….

I arrived here on Tuesday and luggage came too.  My big box from the UK hasn’t got here yet, it is taking it’s time through customs with a complication or two…  But DHL is keeping me up to date and I hope it will be here next week!
I have moved into my new apartment.  It’s great!  Actually larger than I expected and really nice…  I will post pictures sometime soon I promise!

I also spent some time today talking to Miriam Davis, the language co-ordinator here.  We were discussing the syllabus and how things work for me in terms of language study.  I was also introducted to Saito-sensei who will be teaching me Japanese for the next while.  I will start before Christmas with two lessons a day, including some kanji (the chinese characters) and going up to three in the new year…  I am really looking forward to this part now!  I think I will enjoy language study!

While I was on the plane from singapore I saw an episode of Flight of the Conchords and this song made me laugh.  So practise your french with the Conchords!

I have arrived in Japan!  The plane landed in at around 5pm, I got through immigration and customs, Met Wolfgang Langhans (the Field Director here) and we arrived at Japan HQ at around 7:15pm!  Now one very tasty dinner (with Wolfgang and Dorothea) and a short dander around Ichikawa later and it’s almost time for bed…

It’s great to be back in Japan, the train ride back from the airport already brought back the sounds and smells of Japan!  And some of the sights, even thought it was dark…

Leaving IHQ wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be as it was early so my brain wasn’t working yet!  OC was something I would rather have done without when I was looking forward to it.  But in reflection it was a very useful time, getting to know people who are going to different places, getting to know OMF as an international organisation (getting to know the bit inbetween the homeside and fieldside) and getting to kow the people who are working at international HQ

Tomorrow Emiri and her parents are coming!  Emiri is in Ibaraki at a friend’s wedding and she is going to come to morning worship at the Chapel of Adoration here tomorrow! They are going to arrive here quite early and so I will leave it at that and head to bed!

Last night a group of us headed back to Singapore Zoo for the second half of the experience, the Night Safari!  This is something that I think more zoos should do, but it wouldn’t work so well in Belfast I think (too cold!).  The safari starts at 7pm, you go along and they have paths around the zoo dimly lit and some tours by tram around various areas.  Going to the zoo at night time opens the opportunity to see animals that normally don’t show their face during daylight hours, but only become active, or visible, at night.
Obviously the night safari isn’t really conducive to photographs so much and so the three meagre offerings below:

Night Safari

The real adventure, however, only began as we left the Zoo and began our journey home…  Going to the zoo we had taken a “direct” bus promising a 30 minute journey straight to the gates of the zoo.  After a lot of zig zagging, going in circles and taking out public railings, changing bus and catching a mini-van, the drivers finally got us to the zoo, only 45 minutes later than expected!  Quite unusual for Singapore…
On the return journey we sought to avoid the inconvenience of the direct bus by taking the indirect public bus/MRT (mass rapid transit) route back to IHQ.  The first bus worked well, but we arrived at the MRT station just after the last train had left and so we headed back to the bus stops to plan a route home, some of the elder folk and those laden with sleeping children took taxis back, but the rest of us were much more intrepid and sought to select a bus route to get us home.  With some expert map reading and clever interpretation of timetables, we got on the wrong bus and headed off to somewhere else.
After we realised we were on the wrong bus we didn’t get off…  Not us…  We asked the driver how to get home and he (along with some laughing) kindly told us where we should get off and get another bus back towards the road we are staying on.  We just made it and got that bus (now after midnight, the last bus on the route), and made it back to the vicinity of IHQ, with a shortish walk back home!

The night safari really was great though!

Saturday and Sunday are days off,  spent Saturday at the Zoo with some other guys on the course…

Zoo

The evening was spent at James Bond.  The movie itself was good, as most of you will know!  I had heard that Bond’s usual dry wit didn’t make an appearance, but it reared it’s head quite a few times. It was also my first time to see a movie at a theatre using digital projection, which was nice!  Lovely smooth gradients and transitions in the CGI sequences!

Later today (Sunday) we are heading to Little India for a “cultural experience” no doubt there will be more photos ensuing!

I arrived early on Monday morning, the first of the OCers (OC = Orientation Course) and have been looking around and getting to see a little bit of Singapore as I recover from jetlag and settle in.  The weather is hot and humid, it isn’t as hot as I thought it might be though.  High 20/low 30s most of the time, but it is pretty humid.  This is the rainy season, though there hadn’t been much rain on Monday or Tuesday.  Today is a different story, after a clearish morning there was a burst of thunder and the skies opened!

Singapore itself is interesting, the OMF IHQ seems to be at the swanky end of town, yesterday I headed up to Little India to see an electronics store and stepping off the train felt like stepping into a different country!  The most curious thing is that English is the common language, and signs, labels etc are all in English.  Which almost makes it feel as though it’s somewhere tropical and American, like Guam or Hawaii or somewhere, but the English is all British!  There are all kinds of hints to the colonial past as well…  My only experience of Asia really has been Japan, and so to arrive in Asia, go to a shop and be able to understand everything, be greeted in english and answer seems a bit weird!

So that’s about it really so far, it’s been quite uneventful, but the real stuff starts tomorrow!

The omf web connection is down as they work on a systems upgrade, but I’ll reply to emails etc when it’s back online!

Thanks for the emails though!!!

My experience of small groups at uni was a little more wide ranging than most perhaps.  I was living in Queen’s Elms in first year so I went to Halls Group that year, the next year I helped out leading the group, so I was in it a second year.  At first I went to an English dept small group because I had friends there and they were encouraging me to go along to a small group aside from the halls one…  But I switched over to the Engineering group in the Ashby a little later.  It was through the engineering group that I met Mark who spoke at my commissioning, Budgie who commented on the last post there and a whole bunch of other folk.  But there’s more!  Between second and third year in my degree it was required to take a year of professional experience.  This interupted small group attendance for most, but Ben (Later of SU Presidential fame) lead a small group for those on their year out working.  It was all guys, but we had an awesome year, heightened by the lack of CU attendance and department groups and so on due to work, meeting later than normal and discussing how things were relevant to working life rather than student life was probably one of the most benefitial years I had in small groups…  Then more recently, while I was at Union I attended a small group at my home church, this was very different to the previous groups as people were from all kinds of backgrounds; nurses, drivers, designers, programmer-cum-theologians, missionaries to the Philippines…  And again it was great!

So now I am pining for small groups!  There is a reason for this though…
Irene approached me a while ago asking if I’d be willing to partner up with a small group from Queen’s University, the small groups were going to partner with missionaries and pray for them etc through the year.  So tonight I went and met the group who got (landed with) me!  The group is Steve and Sam’s medical small group (as in medical students) and is part of the CU at Queens.  The meeting tonight was great, there was, of course, a time of bible study, time to spend together and chat (with unpaid for coffee…), time for prayer and all in the kind of relaxed attitude I remember of small groups!  It’s a time when bible study mingles with banter, when fellowship mingles with accountibility, when prayer mingles with honest concern and love for those you are praying with.  It is an excellent small group with great members, pulling together Christians and making it a quality time.  It’s great to have been able to meet them, and it’s great to know they will be partnering with me in prayer as I head off.  Thanks guys!

So yeah, now I’m pining for small group ministry.  I can’t wait to see what God will make me part of out in Japan!