Merry Christmas!

Hello Everyone!

What a merry Christmas it is!! Though I miss my family and friends terribly, I have encountered blessing upon blessing since arriving in Japan. I will try to share some of my experiences with you…

Working backwards, I spent Christmas day with the Parry's, the American family living next door to me. We had a scrumptious feast complete with turkey and all the trimmings. What a heavenly American treat! 

On Christmas Eve, I attended a Japanese Christian church service with Mrs. Seike (Seike-san) and her family. The service was lovely and actually very Western, besides the language, of course. The Hallelujah chorus sounds interesting in Japanese. :)   I was able to understand the sermon because the church provided English translation through head phones. Afterward, I had dinner with Seike-san's family at her house. Seike-san is the one in red. She works in the office at Osaka Christian College and has helped me so much! For dinner we had sushi and pizza with corn, shrimp, onions, and hard-boiled eggs on it. We had such a wonderful time!!

The day before, I went to Kyoto with some students and another teacher from the college. Kyoto is a traditional Japanese city with lots of history. We visited shrines and temples and made Japanese sweets. 

Kodai-ji Temple                   

Shrines are associated with Shintoism, the original Japanese religion, and temples are associated with Buddhism, which came into the country at a later time. Over the centuries, the Japanese have largely syncretized the two religions. Shrines are commonly found within temples. A typical Japanese person goes to a shrine to celebrate and pray for a child who has just been born and will go to a temple when a loved one dies. The Japanese are also a very superstitious people. Below you see little cloths with a fortune written on it. If the person received a bad fortune, she or he would tie the fortune onto a tree or strings in the temple as a way of (hopefully) voiding the unfavorable prediction. 

Look! A real "live" Zen garden!

I don't know how they get all those lines raked out so perfectly!

The bamboo forest was my favorite part about our day. I felt like I was walking through a storybook. :) It was so cool!!!

Beautiful view at Kiyomizu Temple

For all you single people out there, word has it that this shrine, located within Kiyomizu Temple grounds, is the THE place to pray for a boyfriend or girlfriend. Lol ;)

We ended our excursion by making Japanese sweets at a Japanese sweet shop. The two on the right are made to look like flowers. The one on the left is made with black sugar and some sort of bean filling. These sweets are to be eaten with Japanese green tea, which I found is nothing like what we Americans think of when we think green tea. This tea is actually greeen, like peas put in a juicer. The taste is very earthy. I would say it resembles something like putting the wood of a tree into a blender, maybe adding a little water, and drinking it. Hmm. 

I've only been here for two weeks, but I've done so much already! I will put other posts up showing my apartment and other things I've done soon. I hope you all have a marvelous Christmas! I miss you! 

Merry Christmas!

With love,

Beth