Tag Archives: Culture

Conference, Norn Irish and rememberance

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This past month has been pretty busy with language school, wedding preparations and so on all taking up time. We also had the OMF All Japan Conference in Jozankei, Hokkaido, last week. I was part of the tech team for the conference and it took a bit of preparation and work while we were there, but everything seemed to go well, except for Tre’s laptop! It was great fun roping Oliver and JP into helping out too! (Thanks guys!) So you’ll forgive me for not updating in a little while!

Japan Field Conference is a time that all of the OMF missionaries in Japan come together and spend four or five days listening to teaching (Patrick Fung, OMF’s General Director), have fun (in the pool and onsen!) and fellowship (over delicious food)!

The field conference actually only happens every 3 years, the years in between have regional conferences instead and we are divided into Hokkaido and East Japan regions.
But this field conference had something special. A team of short ter missionaries came out from Norn Iron to run a kids programme for all the missionary kids! 
The team was mostly made up of people from Helen Lyttle’s church, Bloomfield Presbyterian, but also had 3 other guys, Mark, Roger and Jonny.  Jonny of course being known by aliases such as Silly McSilly, Marvin the Minstrel and now also Buzz McLightyear!

Now that conference is over I have the priviledge of hosting Roger and Jonny in my flat for a few nights before they head back to Tokyo and on home to NI.  Today I took Jonny to Oasa to see the church and meet some of the people.  Then we went to the local university’s festival to sample some local delights and see the Yosakoi Dancers performing.
Tomorrow we will be taking the team to a nearby lake and volcanic area, I am looking forward as I haven’t been to that area before either!

The service today at church is the last part of my post title.  Here in Japan remembering those who have passed away is a major part of culture, and also of Japanese Buddhism.  As in the west such dedicated official rememberance is not part of our culture (we prefer more personal rememberance of Granny and Grandad), and because Christianity doesn’t revere ancestors as Japanese Buddhism and Shinto do, it seems as though we Christians don’t care about our ancestors to many Japanese.  Which is a reflection of culture rather than faith.
So to enable Japanese Christians to faithfully remember their parents and grandparents without compromising their Christian faith, churches often buy an area in a graveyard for interning ashes of members.  Then once a year they have a special service to remember those who have been called to heaven before them.  This service is a very serious affair and is very moving.  Pastor Horita gave a short description of each member who had passed away since the church began (it is a bit over 30 years old) during his message and after the normal service there is a short one at the grave site.

This tradition fills many gaps that a plain western Christianity would leave in many people’s expectations and hopes.  A Japanese Christian’s non-Christian family might expect to have religious ceremonies of rememberance at the temple and this could result in the deceased Christian being worshipped as a god or spirit.  It also shows non-Christian family members that Christians do care about those who have been before.  And finally it is just a touching way to remember grandparents and parents who have passed away and honour their memory!  But it is a bit unusual to be in the service without knowing what is going on!

Garbage, rubbish, ごみ

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In Japan pretty much everything has a method.  A right way to do it.  This is obviously true if you go to the bank, or the city hall and don’t have the right forms or ask for quite the right thing, you will be there for much longer than you might be otherwise.  But it extends into almost all areas of life, from packing away the percussion instruments after band practice (specific instruments go into specific cars, and their own slots in the garage), into Church life as there are routines and rules stuck to rigidly, into school where we learn we have to write characters and letters with the strokes in the right order so that other people can read them…

gomi under netBut a surprising place that rules and methods also extends into is rubbish.  In the UK we have a couple of big old bins that we throw stuff in, maybe separating recyclables under duress, and then putting them out once a week or so and it all gets taken away with few questions being asked…
Here in Japan I have 5 bins in my apartment.  One for “burnable” rubbish, one for paper rubbish, one for plastic rubbish, one for recyclables such as drinks bottles, glass and cans, and one for things that don’t fit into those categories, called “non-burnable” rubbish.  I have a chart from the local city office to tell me what I should put into each bin, how to throw awkward things away etc.
I have to use yellow bags, which cost extra, for burnable and non-burnable rubbish and transparent/translucent bin-bags for the others so that the garbage men can check that there isn’t unsuitable rubbish in a bag it shouldn’t be in.
Once I have all my rubbish in my separate bins and bags I take it out to be taken away on it’s respective day.  Mondays and Thursdays are for burnable rubbish, Tuesdays – recyclables, Wednesdays alternates between non-burnable and paper and Friday is the day to put out plastic rubbish.  When spring comes for real garden rubbish will be added to the Wednesday mix.
When you put it out you have to put it out before 8:45am.  You can’t put it out the night before as crows might eat it and make a mess or it will be lost under the nights snowfall.  You also have to put it under the blue net to keep the crows out.

The bizarre thing to me is that this all works.  People sort their rubbish with utmost care, they don’t put it out the night before even if it isn’t snowing, isn’t edible and there are nets to put over it to keep animals out.  Hardly anyone puts it out after 8:45, even though the collection men are consistently late in coming to pick it up.  But more than all of this, if someone makes a mistake and puts their rubbish out on the wrong day, or puts the wrong rubbish in a bag, or something else that means it isn’t right, the garbage men will stick a big red X sticker on it.  Later the owner comes back, checks and sees if their garbage is there (there are no names on bags to identify people) and takes it home, re-sorts it and puts it out again when it is right.

There is a right way to sort your rubbish, a right way to put it out and a right way to correct your mistakes when you get the first two wrong.

But if that isn’t complicated enough, every area has a different set of rules, so it’s all different at church in Oasa.  Even within the same area the rules can be different, JLC is on a different system because it isn’t a residential building.

But!  If you learn the way to do it, life becomes a lot easier!!

Football, Flutes and Formalities

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I realised I haven’t really been posting much about Japan recently…  I mean I’m living here, spending a lot of my time studying and learning Japanese, talking to Japanese people, learning about Japanese culture… And I haven’t written anything about it since my David Mitchell video link…  It was a great video though!

So today I am going to talk about something Japanese!  Japanese love hierarchy.  Well I don’t know if they love it, but they certainly stick to it!  Recently in my Japanese classes I have moved on from basic hierarchical language that surmounts to every day politeness when talking to people to specific language that is designed to illustrate to all around your deference of position to another person.  This is a well known feature of Japanese (I think) but it really is a point of great interest and insight to Japanese society…
The two types of polite language I have been studying in a bit more depth are honourific, the other is humble.  Honourific language is used when speaking to someone who is on a higher plane than yourself about them, what they are doing and so on.  Basically it is used to give honour to someone else.  Humble language on the other hand is used when talking to someone on a higher plane than you about yourself, basically humbing yourself and things about you.
In reality this kind of stuff isn’t used by everyday folks in everyday life at home and on the street.  It is used in places where obvious deference is deemed important, places like the work place where you use this kind of language when talking to your boss, or when talking to a customer, or someone from another company to show your respect and deference to them, thats not the only case, but an easy one to understand I think!

I think thats enough talking about language study really…  If you are learning Japanese you know what I mean and I am sure you feel my pain… If not you will probably lose interest should I go into any more detail!  So lets leave it there and move on to the other interesting observation re hierarchy.

Recently I joined a windband with Alaric, another OMFer from the UK here in Sapporo.  On my first day people were asking the normal questions: Who are you? What do you do?  How old are you?  Where are you from? and so on.  If you are, like me, a spritely young thing you won’t find anything overly wrong with that, but if you are a bit older you might wonder why people are asking how old you are all the time…  But that is one of the most common questions I have been asked since coming to Japan (And, might I add, the response is almost always surprise at how young I am!).

The reason?  Well it is quite simple, if you are older then you move up the hierarchy, if you are younger then you move down.  As a little 20-something I am a good bit down the hierarchy from the other tenor sax player in her 30s (36 to be precise, and she had no qualms in informing me).  Ultimately it probably doesn’t actually make that much difference to how I am treated or expected to act at something like windband, particularly with me being a foreigner and also apparently looking deceptively old to Japanese eyes (probably the beard).  But it lets everyone know where everyone stands and so everyone knows how to act when appropriate situations arise…

The football pitch is a different story however.  I have been going to Futsal (basically 5-a-side rebranded by Brazillians…) most Fridays with some guys.  We go to the hall, pull a number from a hat and all of the groups play in their teams on a rotation, each game is 5 minutes long, or first to two goals and the winner stays on to play the next team…  A draw means both teams go off and the next two are on.  All kinds of people show up to play, from junior high school kids (15 year olds) through high school, university, young workers through to a few 20 and 3o-something missionaries.  The quality of the football is very high (til we are up to play!) and everyone has a good time. 
You might already have guessed how this related to hierarchy…  While waiting for our turn to come around (we do a lot of that) and watching the games as they go past, it doesn’t take long to see that the players often play differently with the different teams, older players will happily be more boisterous and less considerate when playing against younger players and should a throw in or other set piece be disputed, deference is usually, and quickly, shown to the older player.

Now this isn’t really age discrimintation, it is pretty much just the way society works, it is how our society in the west used to work (another great David Mitchell video could go in here), and kind of, to a much, much lesser extent, still does…

Let it "snow"

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You’ll notice the picture on the right (or here if it is no longer a recent pic) is a snowy christmas scene…  But it’s not quite right, there is something not quite normal about it…  The snow isn’t snow at all, but instead is a sort of foamy, soapy snow-substitute that makes your eyes sting and needs to be washed off in the handy portable shower when you are done playing in it (if you are a child, or wish you were a child…).

This is Singapore, less than 2 degrees north of the equator.  Yet when you go into Starbucks you find Toffee Nut Lattes, “Christmas Blend” coffee like at home, Santa Claus wears heavy red winter clothing in the humid, 30+ degree weather, there is an attempt at an evergreen Christmas tree (all the trees are evergreen around here, there is no autumn!) and all kinds of other things that are Christmas-y.

But why are they Christmas-y?  In the UK (or US, or wherever in the Northern Hemisphere) they are Christmas-y because it is the middle of winter and that is the season in which Christmas falls.  The only green trees around are evergreens, Santa needs to keep warm because he’s going to be braving a mid-winters night to get all the kids their gifts (or coal!)…  We put nutmeg and cinnamon into stuff because it is warming, sweet heavy toffee-nut lattes are wonderfully warming on a winter’s afternoon…  Snow falls (sometimes!) and is cold and crisp and doesn’t even make your eyes sting!

But here in Singapore it isn’t mid-winter.  It’s as warm as ever and sticky to boot!  Why make trees that look like evergreens, why not use local trees?  Why not have Christmas Ice Cream, or something that is suitable to the season in which it falls instead of winter warmers?  Why not put Santa in a t-shirt and shorts (aside from the fright kids will get from a fat old man not wearing enough…)?  Why not forget the snow and just make your own Christmas traditions and festivities based on the festival and the context it is being celebrated in?

This is the aim of contextualisation, when we as missionaries take the gospel to another culture.  When we attempt to bring it to a new place or develop it in an existing stronghold we must be careful not to simply transplant our traditions and practices into the new culture.  To do so would mean that Christianity would remain a western import, something that is foreign and strange, unsuited to the culture and society into which it is being brought.  Sure the society may adopt these traditions and practise them, but their initial contextual meaning will be lost in a society without the initial context.  Much like our Christmas-y things being based around the context of winter, here in Singapore that context is lost and so the reason behind having snow, or having an evergreen tree, or soothing and warming coffee is lost.  It is simply being done because that is how it is done.  How can they even hope to be guided through these meaningless, contextless paraphernalia to the meaning behind the traditions?

Of course I haven’t even touched on the more basic issue of commercialisation at Christmas.  We see it in the west and it has obviously had a huge effect in the east, certainly in Singapore.

Anyways… it won’t be long now til I am in Hokkaido where Christmas will see plenty of real snow…!