On Christianity
Recently I've started to get back in the habit of reading the Bible daily, something I've not done since 9th grade. I'm still struggling with the same issues that I've been struggling with (somewhat on and off) since high school but I figured I wasn't helping anything by completely cutting myself off from the Bible.
Being ever conscious of time management, I decided to combine my devotions with my language studies and bought a Japanese Bible. I figure I'm familiar enough with the Bible (or at least the Gospels) to be able to skip over words I don't know and still be able to understand what is going on. And so far this has worked fairly well. Occasionally I have to skip over whole sentences, but I really enjoy the satisfaction I get from arriving at the end of a page filled with Japanese characters and thinking to myself “I understood that, more or less.”
In fact in a lot of ways I think reading the Bible in Japanese is actually better for my studies. Like many people raised in the Church I'm so familiar with the Bible that sometimes it is hard for me to concentrate when reading familiar passages. Struggling through the Japanese forces me to pay attention to every word.
(Although at times I do wonder if it is worth all the strain on my eyes. Japanese can be a difficult language to read because of all the characters to recognize and decipher, and this is especially true in the small print of a Bible. )
I'm also intending to start attending Church again. This is a bit more of an effort than it was in America as the nearest Church is over an hour away. I've only attended twice over the 3 years I've been here, the last time being over a year ago now.
The Church service is all in Japanese, which is in theory good for my studies, although, as with school assemblies conducted entirely in Japanese, I tend to just give up and tune out after a while. But the people at this Church are all very friendly. And there is a freshness and realness to this Church that I think is partly a result of the fact that Christianity is rare in Japan, and these people attend Church not because of custom or habit or to maintain social standing, but purely because of choice.
Unfortunately the past couple weeks I haven't managed to get myself down to church. Again, the long commute is a bit of a discouraging factor. Last week I was intending on going, but I ended up being out with my friends until 4 that morning. This week also arrangements with friends prevented me from going. But hopefully next week. I do intend to try and start attending regularly.
Of course at this stage, the fact that I’m only going to be here for another 6 months somewhat overshadows everything I do. I'm not going to be able to integrate myself in this Church as thoroughly as if I would have started attending this time a year ago. So to a certain extent it's an opportunity lost, but better to start attending now than not at all.