{"id":35955,"date":"2014-08-21T09:46:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T13:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=35955"},"modified":"2014-08-21T09:46:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T13:46:21","slug":"announcing-jetwit-anecdotal-article-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2014\/08\/21\/announcing-jetwit-anecdotal-article-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcing JETwit Anecdotal Article Series!"},"content":{"rendered":"

JETwit Anecdotal Article Series<\/a> is new feature by\u00a0Jayme Tsutsuse<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Kyoto<\/a>-fu, 2013-2014). Jayme\u00a0is a JETwit Job Manager and organizer of Cross-Cultural Kansai<\/a>. She’s starting a new chapter in NYC and\u00a0excited to explore new career opportunities.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Hi everyone!<\/p>\n

Here at JETwit, we love it when JETs share stories of their experiences in Japan. That’s why we’re bringing back the Anecdotal Article Series! This is your chance to\u00a0<\/span>share your experiences as a JET participant with the whole JETAA community.<\/p>\n

Each month, a new topic will be announced. If the topic sparks a particular memory for you, just fill out our quick Google Form! Stories can be anything related to the monthly topic about your time in Japan as JET.<\/p>\n

For our first month, we would like to bring back the topic that has inspired the revival of the Anecdotal Articles, religion. Enjoy the anecdotal stories below compiled by JETwit Founder, Steven Horowitz, for the Spring 2006 issue of the JETAANY Newsletter, then jump over to our Google Form to share a story of your own!<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

HOLY JET PROGRAM!
\nStories of Religion from Our Days as JETs<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was in Osaka in the mid-1980s while a student at Kansai\u00a0Gaidai<\/span>, I was living with a Japanese family.\u00a0 It was spring and Passover season arrived. My parents sent over a Passover Survival Kit, complete with matzah.\u00a0 The father of this family had nominally converted to Christianity while a young man and had a Japanese-English Bible in the house. Using the Bible as a guide and my then-rudimentary Japanese, I held a makeshift seder one night in our home.\u00a0 We then went to bed and I awoke the next morning to find that Takashi, the father, had eaten the entire remaining box of matzah.\u00a0 I wrote a letter to my parents recounting this story and my father passed it on to the makers of Manischewitz saying they should consider marketing matzah in Japan. Some weeks went by and my father got a letter in return. \u201cDear Mr. Feiler, Thank you very much for your son\u2019s letter.\u00a0 But please leave the marketing to us!\u201d
\n-Bruce Feiler<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was on JET I dated another JET who was going through his own soul searching (for lack of a better word) and we spent a lot of time discussing religion and its meaning. I think he felt even more compelled to do so because to him Japan and the Japanese appeared to have no religion (generally speaking). I wanted him to see that it wasn\u2019t necessarily that there is no religion, but that there is a lack of tradition of organized religion the way it is in other places. I still think that there is faith and a belief in God in Japan. It just manifests itself differently and from a Christian perspective, in a \u201cpagan\u201d way.\u00a0 In any case, this topic about looking into your faith and at these issues brought back the memories and debates that we had in Japan.
\n-Anonymous<\/span><\/p>\n

I was teaching an English class for City Hall employees, and when they learned I was Jewish, they wanted to understand the difference between Christianity and Judaism.\u00a0 I thought about it for a moment and started to explain that, well, Christians believe Jesus was the son of God and Jews don\u2019t.\u00a0 But that seemed kind of like it wasn\u2019t going to really do the trick.\u00a0 Then I thought of saying that Jews like cornbeef on rye with mustard and Christians like turkey on white bread with mayonnaise, but I knew that wouldn\u2019t make much sense either.\u00a0 I somehow stumbled through an explanation, but it subsequently dawned on me that Christians and Jews are pretty similar when viewed from a Japanese perspective, and many the distinctions that always seemed religious to me are more often cultural and contextual.
\n-Steven Horowitz<\/span><\/p>\n

I worked at a kindergarten once a week and we had the daughter of former Mormon missionaries attending the kindergarten.\u00a0 Although they didn\u2019t really have much of a concept of religions such as Mormonism, the staff at the kindergarten really tried hard to be accommodating. The kids would typically drink\u00a0o-cha<\/span>\u00a0with their lunches, but the little girl\u2019s mother let them know that she was not allowed to have anything containing caffeine for religious reasons.\u00a0 A few of the staff were surprised, but the head of the kindergarten grabbed a kettle, put a blue ribbon on it, and used this kettle for water for the little girl and anyone else who wanted it.\u00a0 This may not seem so unusual to us, but in Japan, where conformity is stressed and children are not encouraged to be different and stand out from the others, I was very impressed with the respect my colleagues had for religious beliefs different from their own.
\n-Ilonka Oszvald<\/span><\/p>\n

In Beppu or Oita-City I saw one of the saddest things.\u00a0 A temple had a bunch of statues of\u00a0mizugo<\/span>, or water children.\u00a0Mizugo<\/span>\u00a0means unborn baby and the statues memorialize children who never make it out of the womb, whether because of miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, or who die very young.\u00a0 It is often the Japanese version of abortion counseling.\u00a0\u00a0 People had left toys for the children to play with in the next world, and notebooks where women had written letters to them. One asked, \u201cDo you play with other children?\u201d and \u201cO-kaachama<\/span>\u201d (\u201cMommy\u201d) was a signature I saw.\u00a0 I was in tears.\u00a0 A woman came by with a son about three years old and talked with the priest. She told me her son was ill. Obviously not the flu or mumps.
\n-Mike Harper, CIR, Kagoshima-Ken, 1990-93<\/span><\/p>\n

The closest I ever came to a Japanese religious experience was probably having\u00a0hanami<\/span>\u00a0under thesakura<\/span>! Seriously. Because the Japanese people know every meaning that the sakura have, appreciate their beauty more than I ever knew how to appreciate any tree, and create family and friendship traditions beneath the trees every year. If they had to miss having\u00a0hanami<\/span>\u00a0one year, it may be just as bad as missing Christmas dinner or a Passover seder with your family.
\n-Michelle Andrews<\/span><\/p>\n

My mom, who had recently converted to Orthodox Judaism, came to visit me in Japan during Chanukah while I was a third-year JET.\u00a0 We went to Kyoto together for sightseeing and she forgot her\u00a0chanukkiah<\/span>, so we had to make do with putting some candles in a peanut butter sandwich.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure\u00a0halacha<\/span>\u00a0would frown on that but it made our holidays bright and cheerful.\u00a0 :-)
\n-Rosie DeFremery<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of my job as a CIR was to introduce American culture to Japanese students, and one year an elementary school that I had visited in the past asked me to organize a Halloween event for the third graders.\u00a0 With happy memories of Halloweens past I gladly accepted, and decided to hold a festival like we had had every year at my own elementary school.\u00a0 All the grades would gather in the auditorium and some parents would show up as well.\u00a0 The festival usually took place on Halloween itself and involved trick-or-treating, as well as students coming into school wearing their costumes and then taking the stage in turn to show them off to everyone.\u00a0 Certain prizes were awarded for a handful of kids in each grade for categories such as scariest, funniest, and most creative costumes.<\/p>\n

Figuring that such a simple cultural concept would be easy for the Japanese students to relate to, I shared my idea with the third grade teachers and they loved it.\u00a0 I made a pre-Halloween visit to tell the kids about the history of the holiday and how it was celebrated in the States.\u00a0 I encouraged them to be as creative as possible, for the fun of Halloween was not in how much money you spent or how pretty you looked, but in escaping your own identity to become whoever or whatever you wanted and making your costume believable.<\/p>\n

I eagerly awaited the arrival of the day and made requests for specific Halloween candy to the folks back home in order to make the trick-or-treating portion somewhat close to the real thing.\u00a0 Finally, October 31 rolled around, and as the students crossed the stage clad in their various costumes, I couldn\u2019t help but be impressed by the efforts exerted by their\u00a0okaasan<\/span>s.\u00a0 There were a handful of predictable costumes like Morning Musume and Pikachu, but others were truly unique and had clearly taken time to make.\u00a0 Just when I was about to give myself a big pat on the back for creating such a successful event, a boy crossed the stage in a costume that caused me to do a double take.\u00a0 This couldn\u2019t be what I think it is\u2026<\/p>\n

But it was.\u00a0 This 8-year old had chosen to be Jesus Christ, not him as a carpenter or delivering the loaves and fishes, but on his deathbed!\u00a0 Yes, his Halloween costume depicted the crucifixion, down to the real-looking blood dripping from where his hands were bound by fake nails to the cardboard cross!\u00a0 What was there to say, other than to declare him the hands-down winner for creativity?\u00a0 Clearly, certain traditions, even seemingly innocent ones involving candy and costumes, don\u2019t translate as smoothly as one might think!
\n-Stacy Smith<\/span><\/p>\n

My grandfather passed away during my first year on JET and I found it a very lonely experience not being able to be with my family or find a comfortable religious setting in which I could sort through my feelings.\u00a0 Grandpa was a great lover of nature and we joked that the Sierra Club was actually the religion he and my grandmother followed, so on the day I found out that we lost him, I walked up to my favorite tiny hilltop shrine overlooking the ocean.\u00a0 No one ever went there and it was like my own personal spiritual refuge, so I spent some time there alone staring out to sea and remembering what he meant to me.
\n-Rosie DeFremery<\/span><\/p>\n

I went to Japan with an avid interest in Buddhism mostly gleaned from Kerouac and other Beat writers. I visited two temples for the purpose of prayer \u2014 one Zen recommended by a friend and then the local temple that was located just near my home. At the Zen temple, once we were all situated in a quiet room below the main area of the temple and the time came to meditate with the group of about 20 people I was thinking to myself that I could get used to this kind of religious practice.\u00a0 Quiet, individual, exploratory, and no book to memorize. I didn\u2019t know when the time to start would happen and so I wasn\u2019t sure what to do other than wait painfully in\u00a0zazen<\/span>. All of the sudden the bell rang! I was startled to say the least. I know I also made a loud gasping sound as if my heart stopped because others spoke to me afterwards and they continued to say how \u201csurprised\u201d I was.\u00a0 I am sure those old pros found it quite amusing. I went back only once since that temple wasn\u2019t so convenient and instead I started going to the temple near my home where on most occasions I was the only person there. I was invited inside for dinner afterwards and then I found out that I played basketball with the temple master\u2019s son.\u00a0 He and I became better friends from then and I continued to visit the temple from time to time and was always asked to stay for dinner afterwards. I went to my basketball friend\u2019s wedding also when he married one of the girls in our basketball club.\u00a0 They wanted to see Shaq and Kobe play in L.A. for their honeymoon and they did it.\u00a0 I was raised without going to church, and I don\u2019t think I would ever want to go to church, but I will go to a temple from time to time because I always feel a little more at ease inside.\u00a0 Not sure why, but so it goes, and it suits me fine.
\n-Scott Hiniker, Nagasaki \u201996-\u201998<\/span><\/p>\n

During my stint in Japan, I had the pleasure of attending a wide variety of English and not-so-English Catholic masses. My first one was oddly enough in good old Choshi, my JET hometown.\u00a0 I was pretty amazed (and pleased) to discover shortly after I arrived that not only did Choshi have a church, but a bilingual one at that!\u00a0 The mass was done in both Japanese and English for the benefit of the Filipino community (I think). It was a strange experience (but great for my Japanese) to have things said in both languages right after each other, but it did add to the length of the service.
\n-Kat Barnas<\/span><\/p>\n

In my second year in Fukuoka, a friend of mine from church was diagnosed with cancer.\u00a0 We all expected her to recover, but she passed away suddenly.\u00a0 Her family had a Buddhist funeral ceremony with an open casket.\u00a0 As the ceremony closed, everyone picked flowers from the arrangements that lined the walls and laid them in her casket as they filed past. During her illness she had refused all visitors because did not want anyone to see her while she was ill. The last time I saw Akiko she looked angelic, her face radiant in a sea of flowers.
\n-Brian Hersey<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a Jehovah\u2019s Witness church in my town, which kind of surprised me, and the school in that neighborhood had a fair number of students who were Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses (or yehoba as I think they\u2019re called in Japanese).\u00a0 As a result, every time the school played the national anthem, those students would remain seated.\u00a0 So much for the stereotype of uniformity and non-religiousness in Japan.\u00a0 One day two Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses came to my door \u2013 a middle aged woman and a very young woman.\u00a0 They showed me a book, opened to a page with a colorful picture of the Garden of Eden hosting what appeared to be the most colorful and multi-racial picnic ever.\u00a0 I invoked the \u201cnihongo ga wakarimasen<\/span>\u201d defense, prompting the middle aged woman to give up.\u00a0 But the young woman was beaming at me and exclaimed, \u201cSteven-sensei<\/span>!\u201d\u00a0 My eyes suddenly widened, I recovered and went through an awkward greeting and then we said goodbye. The epilogue is that that evening a Japanese friend was taking me to his home for dinner with his family, and as I related the story of the visit from my Jehovah\u2019s Witness student, I added, \u201cKind of strange, huh?\u201d\u00a0 To which he nodded politely, paused a moment and then said, \u201cMy wife is ayehoba<\/span>.\u201d\u00a0 I never figured out the implication of his statement, whether he was offended or whether he agreed with me and wasn\u2019t particularly thrilled that his wife was a\u00a0yehoba<\/span>.
\n-Steven Horowitz<\/span><\/p>\n

When I was a student in Kobe, I lived with a temporary host family for two weeks.\u00a0 The family had two obsessions: baseball and Buddhism.\u00a0 As rabid Hanshin Tigers fans, not a day went by that there wasn\u2019t a game on TV.\u00a0 And not a night went by that\u00a0okaasan<\/span>\u00a0and her daughter didn\u2019t light some incense and lead her daughter in a chant before the family altar.<\/p>\n

Although I was supposed to be on vacation, I was also dragged to the other two sons\u2019 little league games (twice daily) to sit in the bleachers with all the fanatic mothers in the freezing March air.\u00a0 Then later in the month I was asked to attend a \u201cspecial ceremony\u201d with\u00a0okaasan<\/span>\u00a0and her daughter.\u00a0 Naturally, I was expecting a simple temple service.\u00a0 What I got was a crash course introduction to a cult.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in Osaka, we drove up to a complex where visitors were allowed in only by magnetic swipe card.\u00a0 I was signed in as a guest, and escorted to a room with the family where a dozen of us (mostly women) sat in the excruciating\u00a0seiza<\/span>\u00a0position for nearly an hour while watching a videotaped monk\u2019s chanting.\u00a0 The room was solemn and I\u2019m sure I would have been more caught up in the spirit of things had my legs not felt like they were on fire.\u00a0 While everyone else was reflecting on the Now, I was lost in thought wondering how many more recruits Buddhism would stand to gain through the introduction of chairs.<\/p>\n

After that we were shuttled off to a massive hall that resembled the inside of those churches (studios?) seen on Sunday morning TV, except that there were flowers everywhere, and another huge monitor beaming images of monks walking in slow motion dropping flower petals followed by people crying.\u00a0 Everyone had their heads bowed and eyes closed\u2014everyone except me, since I needed to focus on something in the room to get my mind off the shooting pain my legs were still in.<\/p>\n

After the video ran its course,\u00a0okaasan<\/span>\u00a0escorted us back to the entrance where she made a donation and swiped her card again, telling me something about \u201cpoints\u201d she was accumulating.\u00a0 She then introduced me to one staff member and while I couldn\u2019t make out everything she was saying, he suddenly became very animated and handed me something that looked like an application form.\u00a0 It asked for my name, phone number and address in the U.S.<\/p>\n

There was no way I was going to fill that thing out (I would rather have joined Morning Musume\u2019s fan club), but they both had a look in their eyes that suggested I wasn\u2019t going anywhere until I complied.\u00a0 So in the sloppiest handwriting I could swing, I gave them an address they\u2019d never be able to track me down at.<\/p>\n

As we turned to go (okaasan<\/span>\u00a0said something about a \u201cnew soul\u201d being born), I was stopped abruptly by the staff member.\u00a0 \u201cExcuse me, but where is this \u2018Springfield\u2019 I see here?\u201d, he said.\u00a0 \u201cI was told that you\u2019re from New York.\u201d\u00a0 Uh-oh.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a suburb,\u201d I faked, one foot already out the door.\u00a0 \u201cAh, I see.\u00a0 Thank you very much.\u201d\u00a0 Fortunately, I never heard from the cult again, although I did sit\u00a0seiza<\/span>\u00a0again the following year at a wedding during JET.\u00a0 And my legs are still smarting.
\n-Justin Tedaldi<\/span><\/p>\n

For Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I went to a synagogue in Kobe, the only one in Japan outside of Tokyo.\u00a0 It was a bit awkward and difficult explaining to my supervisor the reason I needed to take off twice from work in a short period (\u201cHow often do Jews have to take off from work?\u201d)\u00a0 And it felt very paradoxical to me that I was traveling several hours to go to a religious service that I always dreaded and tried to avoid back home.\u00a0 But the real problem was that on Yom Kippur there was nowhere to go to just take a break and chill for a while until I went back for the evening service before breaking the fast.\u00a0 My friend and I wandered around downtown Kobe a bit but quickly grew tired, and the only decent solution seemed to be to go to a movie theatre where we could just sit and relax for a few hours.\u00a0 Jurassic Park was showing, and as a result my Yom Kippur in Japan will always be associated with dinosaurs.
\n-Steven Horowitz<\/span><\/p>\n

While I was in Japan last fall for my first visit back since JET I paid a visit to Kiyomizudera in Kyoto to pick up an omamori for my mother, who had loved that temple and felt a spiritual connection with it.\u00a0 I also got a little purple one reading \u201cKatsu<\/span>\u201d (\u201cWin \/ \u201cBe Victorious\u201d) to help me with my next major goals in life (pulling off some tough projects at work, passing the JLPT exam, etc.), and with some divine support I succeeded in all of those goals just a few months later.\u00a0 Thank you\u00a0kami-sama<\/span>!
\n-Rosie DeFremery<\/span><\/p>\n

The first interesting religious thing I saw was a small Catholic church in my town of Yaku-Cho<\/span>\u00a0in Kagoshima Prefecture. An Italian priest who had come to Japan in the early 1950s was living there and researching the life of a Father Giovanni Battista Siddotti, an Italian who landed there around 1709 in the Tokugawa Era. He was eventually taken to Kyoto and executed. One source says he was the last missionary to enter Japan before the country was closed off to foreigners.\u00a0 Every so often I would go out to visit the priest to say hello. For Christmas 1992 I attended his service and a Japanese man who was a Christian brought about eight or 10 Filipina hostesses living on the island to the service as well.\u00a0 The priest told me he did very few marriages but sometimes performed them for the people from that shuuraku (neighborhood).<\/p>\n

One of the town officials, a section chief in the\u00a0yaku-ba<\/span>, was a Pentecostal Christian. He actually spoke in tongues for me and said I was welcome anytime I wanted to come to his church.\u00a0 He and his wife ran the neighborhood kindergarten.\u00a0 He ran the tax section. I wonder if he ever thought about \u201crendering unto Caesar.\u201d\u00a0 I heard that in the the 1950s an American missionary friend of his had brought an oven to the island for baking bread. Apparently before that the people had primarily eaten rice.
\n-Mike Harper, CIR, Kagoshima-Ken, 1990-93<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, it’s your turn! Head on over to the Google Form and tell us about your experience with religion on JET!<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JETwit Anecdotal Article Series is new feature by\u00a0Jayme Tsutsuse\u00a0(Kyoto-fu, 2013-2014). Jayme\u00a0is a JETwit Job Manager and organizer of Cross-Cultural Kansai. She’s starting a new chapter in NYC and\u00a0excited to explore new career opportunities. Hi everyone! Here at JETwit, we love it when JETs share stories of their experiences in Japan. That’s why we’re bringing back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-9lV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35955"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35962,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35955\/revisions\/35962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}