Sidenotes

but the whole sky is blue from horizon to horizon - bright, clear, punctuated by cool breezes. I love summer. I wish it wouldn't end...not yet...

So many little things I've been wanting to share, small things, details in between the normal routine that makes up my life in Japan.

Do you want to hear? Have a seat.

* I've had a permanent retainer (little wire) on the back of my bottom front teeth ever since I had braces my first year of college. Well, I was eating a carrot two weeks ago, and part of the bonding came off. Uh, oh...a visit to the Japanese dentist. It looked like any clean-scrubbed American dentist's office, except that the dental assistants wore pale blue uniform dresses and there were these amazing cutting-edge video cameras attached to each chair.

The dentist, who spoke English (and heard me when I asked Kathy to make sure he was careful and PAINLESS), put this skinny thing about the size of a ball-point pen in my mouth, and all of a sudden he beamed pictures of different parts of my mouth and teeth to the video screen so I could see it.

Amazing! (And they do this to everybody?!) He took one look at the permanent retainer, kind of shook his head like, "I can't believe these primitive Americans still do this," and told me it definitely needed to come out. What about my teeth going back all crooked? It's been long enough, he said. Let's just take it off. So he did. We had requested a cleaning, so he did - those teeth. Only those teeth. When it was done, I couldn't believe the change - beautiful, white, clean, straight, bottom teeth with NO wire. "What about the other teeth?" I asked Kathy. Kathy asked the pale blue uniformed dental assistant. The pale blue uniformed dental assistant said something long and polite in Japanese which basically meant "no." "I guess they're only going to do those," Kathy said with a shrug. So now I have six clean, wire-free teeth, and I got to see them on a video screen the size of a Pop-Tart. Pretty cool.

* The leaves are starting to change here already. Sad, but true... Some of the big green trees are turning splotchy yellow and brown (not very pretty yet). The Japanese walnuts are patchy red and green, and the Japanese maples turn deep purple. There is a kind of tree I see every day that has beautiful clusters of bright orange-red berries, round like peas.

* My skin allergies have been getting worse and worse since I've been in Japan, itching and turning red and bleeding when I scratch them. So I finally gave up and went to ANOTHER medical office, this time with my bouncy young Japanese teacher. Everyone was quiet and solemn in the dermatologist's office (except us). They stared at me because I was a foreigner, but they stared at Ichihara-sensei even more because 1) she was with a foreigner and 2) she did not fold her hands in her lap and look off into nowhere. She actually made a joke to the receptionist and GOT UP OUT OF HER CHAIR to look at a child walking past the window. When the receptionist called me back, we went together so she could translate. He took one look at my horrible blotchy red legs and told me I had really, really dry skin. In English. He didn't even look at Ichihara-sensei. "Do you think it might be...?" she was suggesting. "No." He said. People are very protective of their English. So when the bill came for the visit and medicine, I almost fell over - it was only about $30. Ichihara-sensei and others had told me to expect at least $100, maybe $150, for any kind of specialist like that, and it had gotten so bad I finally said, well, who cares, and went. But $30??!! Either the dermatologist was REALLY nice to me, or God was blessing me, or both. I think both. I've been using the medicine every day like he said, for about a week and a half now, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how much better everything is! It's like I have new skin.

* I don't think cars in Japan have mufflers. They must be banned.

* I spent Saturday in the SUN and on the WATER about three hours away from here, whitewater-rafting with seven other people. It was soooo much fun! We made fun of each other from our respective cars, our raft guide was Nepalese, we got to float around in VERY cold water in dry suits, and several of us got soaking wet faces (thanks, Athos and Georgi!). The river was perfect, surrounded by mountains and trees just starting to change color. Our Nepalese guide even gave us permission to splash the other rafts around us with our paddles, which we did enthusiastically. On the way back we stopped at a Japanese hot springs to thaw out and watch the sunset. The moon was completely full and bright. What a beautiful day...

* I have a new bed! It seems more and more like I might be allergic to tatami, the grass mat flooring inside traditional Japanese houses (and my apartment). It's only in one closed-off room for formal events, but I'd been sleeping in there on the floor because the old futon bed I had was lumpy and uncomfortable. So when we started thinking the tatami fibers in my sheets and in the room might be aggravating my dry skin (I'm VERY allergic to grass), I needed to get out of there. Back to the old futon bed. Back to my back hurting. What to do? Well, we took the old futon bed apart and are going to give it a one-way ticket to the landfill. And in its place is a brand new little single bed, pine frame, just put together yesterday. It's up off the floor (since my doctor last year said I was having allergies to dust - is there anything I'm not allergic to??!). Today I put clean sheets on it, washed in special non-allergenic detergent, and can't wait to get in it tonight. A clean bed and clean sheets - one of the best things on earth!

* Make absolutely SURE the automatic doors are ALL THE WAY OPEN before you go through.

* They're putting sweaters out in stores now. I put my sandals in the cabinet for next year just this evening. It'll probably be too cold to wear them from now on.

* It's too much trouble to cook eggplants. Ken from the seniors' class gave me a whole bunch of them, but I would have had to buy so many special ingredients to make anything palatable. Any suggestions? I think it's too late for these (I mean REALLY too late - I won't go into details) but maybe next time. Most Japanese like eggplants. Or better yet, give me your address and I'll send you mine.

It's almost nine in the evening, so I should go... Thanks for listening! Ask me about the armadillos sometime when I have more time.

Even more pictures!

Fondue at Athos' apartment with friends, just before watching fireworks from his balcony - man, that was sooooooooo good...


Heidi in black and white...


Yumiko eating a kiwi during our lunch together - she says I'm a "vegetable missionary" since I always try to get her to eat fruit and veggies. Is it working...?


My friend Maki, a staunch Buddhist, and I with her friend's guitar (wish I could say I KNEW how to play!!)


A cookout at the end of the ESS club semester.


Notice the older lady, Shinobu - I really, really like her. She lives nearby. Please pray I will get to know her better!


Kumiko, the girl I REALLY want to get to know better, and Shouta, a loyal ESS guy. They are both really quiet, but if you press them, they are SO smart, friendly and fun. Quiet Shouta is the best karaoke singer I've ever heard in my life - who would have guessed??


I stole the glasses of one guy and somebody else's cell phone during the cookout... heh, heh, heh...

A little moment

The eastern sky is brooding again, boiling with thick, heavy clouds in layers of blue and gray so deep they almost look black. But something disrupts the monologue, and sun spills gold from the west in a sudden flash of brilliance, silhouetting bright lime-green trees and gleaming tan houses against an apocalyptic backdrop of midnight violet.

I smell rain.

I pull open the glass, eager for a glimpse of the sun, shining from one mutinous break in the clouds to the west. The sky is playful aqua there, robin's egg blue, and the tips of the clouds shine white, pearl, soft gray.

The moment passes, and shadows descend like a huge, black crow lighting on a tree branch, slowly, softly, resolutely.

The trees turn from lime to deep emerald, and the rows of houses and rooftops begin to turn deep gray, one by one by one, until only a ribbon of pale, distant sky separates dark land from dark clouds.

I strain my eyes to the west.

Somewhere, against distant mountain slopes, the sun is dancing in the pines, lighting clouds in beautiful, dappled peach and eggshell white with misty edges.

A flock of crows flies westward, dodging power lines, calling back and forth with rough, throaty calls.

Perhaps they, too, miss the sun

Coincidence... or not?

I can still hear the drums outside my closed window, hollow and tinny, echoing from the street between whistle blasts. Boom! Boom! Whistle, whistle. Boom! Boom! Marching feet. I slid open the glass to hear better and was sorry I did. I can't see anything from my window, but I can hear the festival processional coming through the big street in front of my apartment, apparently blocking traffic.

A festival wouldn't ordinarily bother someone - unless, of course, you are a Christian in Japan. Japanese festivals are full of Buddhist and Shinto religious symbols, chants and activities. Even if they're couched in the guise of a harmless dance or cultural/historical event, don't be so quick to think all is well. So you've seen "Karate Kid II" - remember the Bon Dance they introduced so innocently? It's a festival and dance inviting the spirits of deceased ancestors back to their native homes so they can be worshipped.

I hear the drums again, coming back up the street.



Two weeks ago, in fact, a lady came to my door asking for money for the local Buddhist temple festival. This may indeed be it.

At any rate, I was unable to sleep last night because of strange noises in the floor above - under - both - I'm not exactly sure. Running feet - back and forth, back and forth, strange music, drum beats that made my floor vibrate - after 10 p.m. in a family apartment!! I turned on my lamp, read my Bible and prayed, and eventually the noises stopped.

Then early this morning my dreams turned from normal to creepy to demonic - a sure sign for me that something is afoot in the spiritual realm.

I am a child of God who is not welcome in Satan's kingdom.

And then, at 2 in the afternoon, a festival marching up my street.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand agains the devil's schemes. FOR OUR STRUGGLE IS NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT AGAINST THE RULERS, AGAINST THE AUTHORITIES, AGAINST THE POWERS OF THIS DARK WORLD AND AGAINST THE SPIRITUAL FORCES OF EVIL IN THE HEAVENLY REALMS. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." - Ephesians 6:10-13.

Friends, our actions are NEVER neutral!

Our lives and the way we live them are always accepting someone and rejecting someone. Some choose to accept God and rejecting Satan; others choose to please people, please the crowd, accept the ways of Satan ("called the prince of this world") and reject God.

There is no such thing as an action with no consequence. Even to choose NOT to believe in anything is a choice, a statement, a coming to one side of a line drawn in the sand.

P.S. - Christ already won, He wins now, and He wins in the end. Not a bad record!

Summer at home

with long cloudy spaces and a few bright days jammed with flowers.

I look out on the trees clumped along the road, waving in the breeze, and I remember summer in my own hometown - before the introduction of college, jobs, faraway cities.

It was just the road and me then - a long, black curve of asphalt lined with Queen Anne's Lace and powder blue chickory blossoms, winding through the countryside, going nowhere important... except past my childhood friend's house, or to the old Tastee-Freez with creamy white ice cream, or over that small hill where I could see the whole line of Blue Ridge Mountains surrounded by green pasture like a wide picture postcard.

If I followed the road long enough I would see my high school, and expressionless cows blooming like black-and-white mushrooms in a green garden, then the old railroad tracks, and then vast stretches of national forest and Appalachia - complete with log cabins - in the general direction of my favorite camp sites. But if I turned off to the right I would see the small, white church where I asked to be baptized (I remember its green shag carpet well); around the bend stands the brown-roofed house on Crawford Drive where I spent ten years of my life.

The blue sky over the mountains, the peach glow of a clear sunset, the sunlight in the grass and heat in the morning, rest in the shade and tomatoes ripening on the vine, a long, winding, lonely country road...

Time stops along such a curve of pavement; white and gold daisies are neither snobs of century or of person. Daisies do not care if you are eight or 80, or even whether you see them. They will bloom quietly along the roadside, where God scatters their seed, summer after summer in forgotten places.

The road stretched out in the other direction eventually runs into a bigger road, and then a bigger one, until it merges with the interstate, from which you can spend two pleasant hours until the big trucks of Richmond try to wrestle you into the shoulder... you will find signs for a Richmond International Airport, a plane that will take you to Newark, N.J. and then on to Tokyo, then a small plane bound for northern Japan, then a bus, and another bus, and finally a quiet street like mine today, intermittently dark and light as big clouds roll by, smelling of ramen and the last of summer grass. The wind smells of fall.

Far from home but full of memories.

But I would be wrong if I thought those summer days in Virginia would stay the same. My friends have grown up and married, moved away. Someone with a pickup truck lives in my old house, and the roses I planted are in disrepair. Someone I've never met pastors the little white church (which recently acquired a steeple), and few of the teachers left at my high school would know or even recognize me.

Even the last vestige of my childhood memories, the old elementary school building which had been there for decades, joined its predecessors in a pile of rubble next to a huge, new, gleaming brick elementary school. The playground, the cafeteria, the gym echoing of squeaky gym shoes - gone.

There are more malls and fewer farms, more strangers and fewer friends.

What job would a girl with an English degree have there?

The likes of small towns were not made for journalism and big plans.

Instead I am here, watching Japan's short, strange summer unfold, sitting as close to the window as possible to soak up every bit of sun even as I work.

This is God's season, God's time.

Jesus gave up a lot more than a summer when He left Nazareth, feeling perhaps a little torn as I do - He gave up His life.

What if He had stayed there, raised a family, lived the good life with his friends?

Where would we be?

Not here, not saved, not living changed lives.

And what if Paul had lingered in Tarsus, or Abram in Haran, or Ruth in Moab?

There are those who God calls to stay in their hometowns and work for Him, and those He calls to leave - some for a short time, some for a lifetime. But we are all called to make ourselves available to His kingdom - no questions asked.

And sometimes that call leaves us feeling a little far away from everything we know, are familiar with, understand, remember.

But the day will come when summer in north Japan will go on without me, and I will get off the interstate at a little no-name exit in the Shenandoah Valley.

I will see new buildings and old ones, strange cars and familiar hillsides. I will drive through the roads I once knew like my own breath and savor the colors of a Virginia summer.

Maybe it will be less spectacular than I remember. Maybe more.

But two things will almost certainly remain unchanged: wild flowers along the roadside, blooming in delicious, delirious obscurity; and Tastee-Freez ice cream, the best in the world. My favorite has raspberry sauce.

Stop in sometime and see for yourself - my treat.