Cleaning house, Japanese Weddings, and random notes.
Cleaning house, Japanese Weddings, and random notes.
I read an article by a British columnist concerning the state of tidiness of the average British house as a reflection of the state British culture. He made the observation that as sexual relations has been divorced from reproduction, so has cleanliness been divorced from health; or so it seems according to his observations. The tattiness of the average British home he feels reflects the general decline in the family and consequently the larger society. So moved by this stirring indictment, I proceeded to mop and wax the floors as befits my responsibility. When Shannon came home from school I promptly showed her my efforts. She replied, "Oh! This is how it must of looked when the Schmidts lived here!"
Last Sunday we went to the local presbyterian church. The pastor and his wife are very kind and gentle people. Suzuki Sensei also has an personable speaking style. Too bad I can't understand him. But there is an English teacher in the congregation who will give us a handwritten summary of the sermon after the service. This past weekend, I perked up when he began to mention "makudonarudos," MacDonalds. I listened closely trying to figure out what he was saying. After the service my guess was confirmed when I found out that he had said that the church was like MacDonalds. He said that in Moscow recently a MacDonalds was open and many came. There they could get a taste of America, its freedom and its atmosphere. The same is true in Japan. (Even Kochi has a McD.) So it is with the church. The church should be open and accesible to all so that they can get a taste of God and His Kingdom
Odd bits and pieces: Korea bans Japanese pop music, a legacy of ill will still left from the time Korea was a "colony" of Japan (1910-1945). Japanese work more than 200 hours/year more than their American counterparts. Some social critics say that the resulting cases of death by overwork is the modern manifestation of seppuku (ritual suicide): the ultimate sacrifice given by a person in service to his lord. Nearly half of all Japanese farmers and farmworkers are over 60 years old. Only the government can marry people. Clergy have no legal authority to wed people. The cost of the average Tokyo wedding is about $50,000.
The American Wedding is all the vogue right now. That means instead of the traditional blessing given by Shinto or Buddhist priest, Japanese want to attend a ceremony in what passes as a Christian wedding: no kiminos, but instead a wedding gown and a Christian in vestments officiating. This, of course, has no religious meaning but it is stylish. A hotel in Kochi, sensing big yen, has constructed a wedding chapel and has contracted with an American church worker to officiate at about $220 a service with about six services planed each Sunday and holiday. Now here comes the surreal part. The big wedding day is Sunday and hence the American could not attend Sunday morning. This means loss of business for the hotel, so they asked him to think of someone else to officiate on Sunday morning. So he asked me! He said think about it, two services each Sunday (complete in all official vestments and robes) at $220 makes $880/mn for about 15 hours of work. It turns out that I didn't meet the minimum requirements of at least attending bible school, but I think if I had been interested they would have worked something out. Since then I have read that a Baptist group has agreed to supply officiants for some hotels in Tokyo. The argument is made that this is a open opportunity to preach the gospel, during the sermon portion of the ceremony, to people who ordinarily would never had heard. (And of course the money is good.)