Japan | Called East

You don’t “just” buy flowers in Japan.

Posted on March 23, 2021 2 Comments

Last week Aven and I went to a flower shop to buy some flowers for a Japanese friend who had a birthday. It was our first time in a Japanese flower shop and after looking around for 5 minutes or so, we picked a bunch of flowers we thought looked pretty and went to the […]

Disaster and the love of God

Posted on April 26, 2019 2 Comments

(Please note these are my own cultural observations. I do not dare to think that I have come anywhere close to fully understanding the depth and complexity of Japanese thinking and culture) Japan is a land of natural disasters. Tsunamis, typhoons, mudslides, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions attack without mercy just about every year and […]

Speeches!

Posted on March 19, 2019 3 Comments

As part of our Japanese learning course, we are occasionally required to do practical tasks like speeches, oral tests, sharing our testimony etc. As I am able I will try to put these up on our blog. My speech is basically about the day I got diarrhoea at school, unfortunately, the phone used to record […]

Grammar and Theology

Posted on October 20, 2018 Leave a Comment

One of my favourite places in the world is the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Taking a safari drive through Kruger is an amazing experience and those who have some knowledge for spotting animals will tell you that the trick is to DRIVE SLOW. It’s much easier to see through the trees and bush […]

3 Months In…is AJ getting culture shock????

Posted on August 15, 2018 6 Comments

Its been 3 months since we arrived in Sapporo Japan to start our journey into long term missions. I feel we have adjusted well overall but I would be wrong to say that it’s always been easy. I wanted to share what has been the hardest aspect to deal with during this transition phase but […]

Purification and Wa 和 ‘Harmony’

Posted on April 8, 2018 Leave a Comment

(This is an excerpt from my Masters thesis on a Contextualized Theology of Purification in and for the Japanese) Promoting harmony is a key idea in Japanese culture and observable in many areas of their social life. (i) The concept of uchi to soto 内と外 ‘inside and outside’[1]. (ii) Shinto festivals and its focus on community […]