お帰り

[honyararara]

After a day of thinking, I've decided to close this blog as well as my other ones. I made this blog to share my life with friends, but they don’t use tumblr anymore, and I’m not making new friends here because I’m busy with friends in real life. I dunno if I’ll announce when I come back/make a new blog, but it’ll probably be more anonymous. じゃね!

[honyararara]

Your loneliness now is monumentally better than your loneliness with a man in the house who has no intention of loving and serving you like Christ loved the church, no intention of pouring himself out for you and the lives and souls of your children. Just wait.

Matt Chandler

[honyararara]

You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again and lift me up from the depths of the earth. You will restore me to even greater honor and comfort me once again.

Psalms 71:20-21 NLT

[honyararara]

Thank you, Kodama-san.

I should post this while it’s still fresh to me (and some of this information might seem familiar for those who’ve recently helped me cope).

A friend of mine died yesterday. He was 70 years old. A stroke killed him..

He lived in England for 26 years, where he met his Akitan wife, got married, and came back to Japan with no children. But he was like my grandfather, she my grandmother, and I was like their granddaughter. They both told me so.

I met him last Christmas when his wife took him to church because he wasn’t a believer and when he noticed me there, he asked aloud “why is there a middle schooler here at a church full of old people?” and I said, “I”m not a middle schooler. I teach middle schoolers.”

Afterwards, I often saw him ride around on his bicycle throughout town in his big puffy jacket, like a blackened marshmallow pulled by wind over snow. Riding a bike when there’s snow aground is illegal in Akita, but he did it anyway. He didn’t really believe in technology.

I have a story about the last Easter we had too, but I’ll write another time.

His parents were both from Akita but he was born in Hokkaido. He heard many nice things about Akita, especially Akita’s women, but that couldn’t compare to all the nice things he heard about Europe -- the UK in particular. He studied English before WWII seized Japan, set sail on a big steel cruiser on a 6 month journey westward, and landed on England’s shores. He came to work as a concierge for The Savoy Hotel and told me, “I always thought I’d marry a British woman, but alas!”

I asked him to tell me stories about Hokkaido, and he said that one day, we’d take a tour up there together. To his old home. To see his old antiques, many of which were shipped back from Kent. To see the burial sites of his parents and grandmother. When I visited Hakodate, Hokkaido’s southernmost port city, he planned my whole travel itinerary, went to the local community center to scan and print large-text versions of travel guides in black and white, and even woke up at 7am the day of to meet me at the train station and berated me with “You need to come earlier for things like this and not make me worry!!”

He often said things like “happiness is the most important thing” and “seeing is believing.” I liked to argue with him about why I disagreed with both those statements.

“Actually the most important thing is health. Yes, health. We need it, and we can only pray to the gods or to the God that you know that we may have more of it. But I enjoy my wife’s sweets too much!” 

In his small humble Akita “hut,” he built a modest yet elegant sunroom. The walls are covered in striped white and gray-baby-blue. Every wall has at least ten pictures perched in wooden frames, some black and white, some scanned from photos. Her Majesty was posted over the doorway. Matching delicate china with gold rims and fuchsia roses donned the tiers of treats his wife prepared as he taught me how to pour and drink tea The British Way. (If the Tea is already brewed, first pour Milk into the cup and add hot Tea until the contents reach your desired level of Beige). 

He would often play Chopin etudes or recordings of the birds, or the cars passing, or the children playing in a local playground near his home on the CD player, right by the window. Even though he’d barely breathe long enough to let in a moment of silence whenever I visited him, I’d catch the robins twittering in the background of his long monologues, almost as if I was in the English countryside myself.

“I’ve lived in this small modest hut for four years in this Akita, but do you know what? I still feel like a stranger.” “Oh, I’ve only been here for one year but I feel like I’m at home!” “Oh do you? How lucky. You know what? I still have dreams of London. I dream in English!”

“You must go to London. I bet the people at the Grand Savoy still remember me -- I could get you set up veryyy nicely!”

I brought Luke to meet him in March and was given his thumbs up of approval. He said he wanted to come to our wedding and that he’d prepare a long speech about how he became acquainted with Becky-san.

“Becky-san, you found yourself a gentleman, you know.”

I turned 23 on Aug 15th and I thought about visiting him to let him know that I’d become one year older. But I didn’t. Later that night, he went to the hospital. Two days later, he passed away. I never knew regret like this. But the life he would have me live is one abroad where I’m touching the lives of as many people as possible. He’d like me to then settle down in the countryside in my old age after trekking the world. But he also told me that if I wanted to stay where I was, then I need to make sure that’s what I really want.

“We don’t have that much time. Yes, life seems long, but it only gets shorter from here, and time only moves faster. Why, it only seems like yesterday when I thought I saw a young Japanese middle schooler at that Takanosu church, and I thought to myself, ‘say, there is a young Japanese girl here! I wonder why.’ and now look where you are. We have to learn so many things. I’m glad you came to Japan, Becky-san. I’m glad you are here in Akita.”

__

This is the first time I’ve ever dealt with death. All 4 of my grandparents are still alive and none of my friends are of the overtly extreme and risky kind. I have hope in something B told me though, that there’s a hope beyond. That there’s more to this world of death than just forgetting enough of the sting to cope with the day. That there’s more to understanding the life of a person than to just ruminate on the limited memories we have of them. There’s more to life than this.

[honyararara]

To be in the presence of God is to change.

Richard J. Foster

[beckysdeliveryservice]

Please take 1 second out of your time today to search “3.11” on the Yahoo! Japan search engine! By doing so, you’ll help Yahoo! Japan donate 10¥ per search inquiry towards Tohoku disaster relief!

Three years ago, on March 11th, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit North-East Japan. The earthquake triggered a massive tsunami, started fires, destroyed homes and infrastructure; killed, displaced, and orphaned millions of people; its aftershock broke reactors in Fukushima’s Daiichi Powerplant that are continuing to release radioactive waste into the land and Pacific ocean.

Recovery in the Tohoku region matters a lot to me, especially because I now live here in Akita prefecture, which definitely felt the waves in a teeter-tottering way but spared from heavy destruction. Later this year, I plan to volunteer with some ALTs from my prefecture to visit either Iwate, Miyagi, or Fukushima prefecture with organizations that are already doing something. 

Photos from NPR, WorldVision, Columbia University, NHK.

[unapproachablelight]

They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.

Titus 1:16 (via unapproachablelight)