Summer in Japan

This year, the summer is pretty short.. even though we're only at the end of August, the weather has cooled down a lot. Thank God for that!

I have to say that summer is the worst time to be in Japan. It was only after 4 years that I have come to (quite) accept it.. I remember dreading it so much whenever summer was around the corner.. I would arrange my schedule as such that I won't be in Japan for as long as possible during summer time. Even though I grew up and spent the first 21 years of my life in a tropical country, summer in Japan is still a hard time for me. The heat and humidity is no way comparable to Indonesia, my motherland.

And on top of that, there's always this loud noise from scarry looking insects, named Cicada (Japanese call it "Semi"). I guess they look scarry to me because they're big and they have big eyes and they're big..big..big.... and they make loud, loud noise.. with their wings and their voice
Here is what Mr Wiki says about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada


I have managed to capture their "songs" during my walk to my Japanese school one day (it was a hard take, cause I was trying not to get too close, but at the same time I wanted to take a good shot of it):



They look like Kamen rider, the hero in Japanese kids movie that I watched when I was little. I suppose the author must have been captivated so much by this creature that it inspired him/her to create Kamen rider.. my eyes go bigger as I thought about this..

Anyway, now that summer is nearly over, I'm looking forward to the beautiful autumn in Japan. Hopefully I'd be able to do a bit of travelling this autumn and capture the nature beauty of this land and share them here.

For Better or Worse

This summer I went to 3 weddings of good friends of mine in 3 successive weekends. It was such a record that I told many people about it and received different responses. One friend asked whether my wallet is okay, because going to a wedding is expensive in Japan :) Then my boss claims that wedding virus must be around and I should try to get a vaccine by meeting a drunken crazy guy he knows :))) Then Mrs R, our pastor's wife upon hearing this asked me a question that caught me pretty much by surprise.. your friends are getting married, are you okay? Wow! Now that was an honest, right to the point, no non-sense kinda question.. I guess I have passed through that struggling period of my life and learnt to trust in God's grace and provision, so I could say yes to her.

But let me just put on what she told me that day which I find wise and true. Here are her quotes as I remember them..
"I don't understand why many single people are not happy because they're not married. And they think that they will only be happy after they're married. That is soo wrong. If you're not happy now, you won't be happy then. Being married means you have an extra person to take care of, more laundries to do and losing some freedom along the way. We can achieve so many other things with our free time while we are still single." Amen to that.

Let me just close this issue with wonderful quotes I found in 'I Kissed Dating Goodbye', a rather controversial book by Joshua Harris.

The Fine Print of Dream by Ann Landers

I have leveled with the girls - from Anchorage to Amarillo
I tell them that all marriages are happy
It's the living together afterwards that's tough
I tell them that a good marriage is not a gift
It's an achievement
That marriage is not for kids. It takes guts and maturity
It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls
I tell them that marriage is tested daily by the ability to compromise
Its survival can depend on being smart enough to know what's worth fighting about
Or making an issue of or even mentioning
Marriage is giving - and more important, it's forgiving
And it is almost always the wife who must do these things
Then, as if that were not enough, she must be willing to forget what she forgave
Often that is the hardest part
Oh, I have leveled all right
If they don't get my message, Buster,
It's because they don't want to get it
Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals
Because nobody wants to read the small print in dreams

.. and here goes the part for the guys..

A Woman's Question
A poem by Lena Lathrop

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life-
And a woman's wonderful love

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win
With the reckless dash of a boy

You have written my lesson of duty out
Manlike, you have questioned me
Now stand at the bars of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee
You require your mutton shall always be hot
Yours socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul

You require a cook for your mutton and beef
I require a far greater thing
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts-
I look for a man and a king

A king for the beautiful realm called Home
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as He did on the first
And say: "It is very good"

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheek one day
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride

I require all things that are grand and true
All things that a man should be
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me

If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way

Watashino Nihongo no Kurasu

Being an illogical person that I am, a contrast to the logical me at work, I have finally decided early this year that I am gonna join the Japanese Lesson Summer Intensive Course for the first time in my 4 years here. The sole reason is at that time I was deciding that this is gonna be my last year in Japan. I was ready to pack up and go back to Oz just to be near my family. So, since I'm leaving, I figured that I should try and learn a bit of Japanese. Of course, this doesn't make sense at all, but that's what girls do sometimes :)

The class runs for about 2 1/2 weeks from 28th July till 12th Aug. The title 'Intensive' no doubt fits the reality.. every day from Monday to Saturday 9am till 12pm we gotta be in the class. If we attend 80% of the classes, we will be awarded a certificate.

For that brief period of time, I felt like I was in a sort of training camp. Every morning rushing off to school under the heat of unmerciful Japanese summer, pushing the brain to work intensely for 3 hours(!) and then trying to get a quick bite before rushing off to work, again pushing the same brain to run. After that, I still have homeworks to do (not that I do all of them of course, but the thought of having homeworks to do is a burden in itself) and then at the same time my social life was in full gear too with 3 weddings happening in a row and in one of them I was the bridesmaid and organizer for the after-church-service-party. Plus there were things happening at the bible study group that I was helping. How I managed to get through all these intact still remains a mystery till today.

Anyway, one of the few joys I have from this intense time of study was that I got to be in a nice class with many funny people around. There were so many laughters in the classroom and that really helped me going through the classes. Also I like to see my class as a United Nations class, considering that we have around 20+ people from differing countries:
Australia (guess who)
Cambodia
China
Egypt
Germany
India
Indonesia
Italy
Laos
South Africa
Taiwan
USA
Vietnam

It is such a rare and precious opportunity to have a contact and study together with so many people from different nations and backgrounds. I really treasure this.

And finally Tuesday 12th Aug arrived.. the long awaited day.. I have managed to skip only 2 classes, one for my friend's wedding and another one for being nice to myself and granting myself a one day break. In theory, that should qualify me to get a certificate. But when they distributed the paper with a list of names who will get the cert, I couldn't find mine on it. I scanned and scanned, and literally read every name but my name is still not there. This can't be happening.. it was like a nightmare coming true.. after all the efforts I put in and the hard times I went through, I gotta have at least the cert to reward myself because I did it! Not that I wanna show the cert around.. that would be a totally useless thing to do since people know how little Japanese I could speak and thus I don't need the cert to tell them that I should know, but I don't.

So there I sat in the mid of the closing ceremony (yes, they have ceremony for that!) trying to find an elegant way to ask my teacher afterwards about my missing name without embarassing myself too much (knowing that I'm not quite a good student actually :p). So I started with a question.. if I don't do all (most?) of the homeworks, does that disqualify me from getting a cert. The answer is no. Without further thinking (somehow I could see the light at the end of the tunnel), I confidently proclaimed that there must have been some mistake because my name is not on the list. And then comes joker question.. have you been coming late? My goodness! I should have seen that coming! Well, apparently.. this is a fact that wasn't mentioned anywhere, if I come in late twice, it would be considered as one time absence. I felt that it's unfair that such important fact is never mentioned before, but I don't wanna pursue this issue too much. I don't think I deserve that cert anyway since I haven't been doing the homeworks much and been coming late quite a lot. The hardest part is the disappointment I felt for not getting something that I've been expecting so surely to get and also the thought of having to wait for another year before I would be able to give myself a chance again. One year!! Oh well, I guess now I have a good reason to stay back in the country where God has brought me in from the beginning.