Monday, November 17, 2003
Church hopping
11/17/03
Sunday morning I went to a Japanese church that Rosanne usually goes to. I rode my bicycle to the place the church I go to in the evening meets, parked my bicycle there, and then got picked up by Rosanne. She also picked up Nick and a friend of his named Jeremy. Jeremy is yet another person in Japan via the JET program, but he's not living in Sendai. He came to visit Nick for a few days.
Anyway, this church is fairly close to "The Mall," and seems to be fairly small. Counting children, there were probably only about 20 people there. The pastor is British. He seems to have a fairly good range of Japanese vocabulary, but his pronunciation and his reading speed are worse than mine. I kept wishing that he could speak Japanese that sounded more like Japanese and less like English, but evidently Nick and Jeremy thought that this made him easier to understand. I understood about 70% of the sermon, which was more than I expected, so perhaps Nick and Jeremy are right.
Saturday was a festival called "Shichi-Go-San," which literally means 7-5-3. Children of those ages are dressed in kimonos and taken to the temples for some sort of ceremony on that day. Unfortunately I didn't get to see it due to being so worn out after the Ekiden. I still walk with a bit of a waddle since my muscles are sore, but interestingly enough the muscles I use for riding a bicycle weren't affected at all by this, so thankfully I can still get around fairly well by bicycle. Anyway, the reason I mention 7-5-3 is that Rosanne's church does sort of a child dedication instead. They prayed over the kids, gave them each a present, and then took pictures of them with their parents. Unfortunately for me the kids didn't get dressed up for this.
Sunday afternoon I did homework, dishes, and hard boiled a few more eggs. If I'd gotten back from church about an hour and a half earlier than I did I would have been able to go to a brunch that the Group Mori people were putting on. I head that it was fairly good.
Sunday evening I went to the Sendai English Fellowship again, since I'd told a Japanese woman there that I'd come and take a look at her laptop. She said it was behaving funny and wanted to know if it was a virus or something else. She said something about strange windows popping up and telling her to download software (what made it so strange was that they were in English, and her OS is Japanese). Anyway, she brought the laptop but I didn't get a chance to look at it before she left. I think she said she trashed something and it seemed to be fixed. I hope it is.
Midway through the service Fransisco showed up. He said he wasn't sure where Lars was, but thought that maybe Lars was back at the Int. House playing the piano (Lars plays the piano frequently).
After the service they had doughnuts as snacks, but they disappeared almost immediately. The place to get doughnut's in Sendai, and perhaps even throughout Japan, is a chain called "Mister doughnut." If I remember correctly, it claims to make the world's best doughnuts, but I didn't think the piece I had tasted all that great.
On Monday I met my conversation partner for the first time. He's a freshman from Sendai who thinks he might like to major in Sociology. We're going to try meeting for dinner on Tuesday nights starting next week. Today we ate lunch at a cafeteria I hadn't been to before. This place wasn't much more than a big shack with tables. The menu consisted of various types of curry, which I unfortunately don't like. Curry seems to be a popular dish in Japan.
I went to another presentation in my lab today. I also have no idea what this one was about. After the presentation I asked Yoshizawa-sensei if I would have to give my presentation in Japanese, and thankfully he said that English is fine. Sawada-san later told me that Santos and Kenji (a guy from France) also do their presentations in English.
Sunday morning I went to a Japanese church that Rosanne usually goes to. I rode my bicycle to the place the church I go to in the evening meets, parked my bicycle there, and then got picked up by Rosanne. She also picked up Nick and a friend of his named Jeremy. Jeremy is yet another person in Japan via the JET program, but he's not living in Sendai. He came to visit Nick for a few days.
Anyway, this church is fairly close to "The Mall," and seems to be fairly small. Counting children, there were probably only about 20 people there. The pastor is British. He seems to have a fairly good range of Japanese vocabulary, but his pronunciation and his reading speed are worse than mine. I kept wishing that he could speak Japanese that sounded more like Japanese and less like English, but evidently Nick and Jeremy thought that this made him easier to understand. I understood about 70% of the sermon, which was more than I expected, so perhaps Nick and Jeremy are right.
Saturday was a festival called "Shichi-Go-San," which literally means 7-5-3. Children of those ages are dressed in kimonos and taken to the temples for some sort of ceremony on that day. Unfortunately I didn't get to see it due to being so worn out after the Ekiden. I still walk with a bit of a waddle since my muscles are sore, but interestingly enough the muscles I use for riding a bicycle weren't affected at all by this, so thankfully I can still get around fairly well by bicycle. Anyway, the reason I mention 7-5-3 is that Rosanne's church does sort of a child dedication instead. They prayed over the kids, gave them each a present, and then took pictures of them with their parents. Unfortunately for me the kids didn't get dressed up for this.
Sunday afternoon I did homework, dishes, and hard boiled a few more eggs. If I'd gotten back from church about an hour and a half earlier than I did I would have been able to go to a brunch that the Group Mori people were putting on. I head that it was fairly good.
Sunday evening I went to the Sendai English Fellowship again, since I'd told a Japanese woman there that I'd come and take a look at her laptop. She said it was behaving funny and wanted to know if it was a virus or something else. She said something about strange windows popping up and telling her to download software (what made it so strange was that they were in English, and her OS is Japanese). Anyway, she brought the laptop but I didn't get a chance to look at it before she left. I think she said she trashed something and it seemed to be fixed. I hope it is.
Midway through the service Fransisco showed up. He said he wasn't sure where Lars was, but thought that maybe Lars was back at the Int. House playing the piano (Lars plays the piano frequently).
After the service they had doughnuts as snacks, but they disappeared almost immediately. The place to get doughnut's in Sendai, and perhaps even throughout Japan, is a chain called "Mister doughnut." If I remember correctly, it claims to make the world's best doughnuts, but I didn't think the piece I had tasted all that great.
On Monday I met my conversation partner for the first time. He's a freshman from Sendai who thinks he might like to major in Sociology. We're going to try meeting for dinner on Tuesday nights starting next week. Today we ate lunch at a cafeteria I hadn't been to before. This place wasn't much more than a big shack with tables. The menu consisted of various types of curry, which I unfortunately don't like. Curry seems to be a popular dish in Japan.
I went to another presentation in my lab today. I also have no idea what this one was about. After the presentation I asked Yoshizawa-sensei if I would have to give my presentation in Japanese, and thankfully he said that English is fine. Sawada-san later told me that Santos and Kenji (a guy from France) also do their presentations in English.
Comments:
Post a Comment
