Thoughts about Japan

Well, after posting a lot of photos and remembering different experiences and friendships, I feel very thankful for all the friends God has blessed with me over the past five years. In August 2001, I had just arrived in Sendai, Japan and started a journey of learning to love and understand the people of Japan. I cannot imagine what my life would be like now if I hadn't spent those two years in Japan. It was truly a life-altering experience. I've been back in the U.S. for about three years now. The first two years were difficult with the tremendous pain of re-adjustment and reverse culture shock. Making Japanese friends here in the States has been the biggest help in learning to readjust to life in the U.S. They understood what I had experienced and I could understand their frustrations and confusion about understanding and interpreting American culture. Some differences in culture we could laugh at and both found equally bewilidering, such as the tendency of Americans to blow their noses very loudly, the huge portions of food at restaurants, and the overall terrible customer service here. In addition, my own self-study of Japanese culture through conversations and reading books has left me with a sense of wonder that our cultures are so totally and completely different. Also, language study seems less formidable to me than it used to. About two years ago, I found a wonderful Japanese teacher who has helped me immensely in speaking and writing Japanese. God has grown my love and passion for the Japanese language, and it has become a real joy to study it. That is 100% God's work in me, because when I lived in Japan, I was not a very disciplined student and really hated learning kanji (a form of written Japanese using Chinese characters). Right now I am working very hard to improve my reading ability in Japanese which is very poor, I think. To read a newspaper, one needs to know about 1,850 Chinese characters, and at the most, I know about 500-600 characters. I have a long way to go. I am also attempting to read as much as I can about Japanese history - very interesting!
I love the people of Japan, and I believe God Himself has given me this love for the Japanese people. It warms my heart to think of God loving the Japanese people through someone as flawed, weak, naturally selfish, and messed up as myself. It is a joy to meet Japanese people and learn about their lives and to tell them about the God of the Universe who is a compassionate, loving, forgiving, merciful Savior. It is the desire of my heart to spend the rest of my life minstering to these lovely people in some form, whether in the U.S. or in Japan.