Day 31 The work starts NOW!

Thursday October 1st, 2009

Its officially started. Our time to adjust is over. We are getting started with the work that we came here to do. Don’t get us wrong, adjusting to the new culture, language, and environment has been work. But we didn’t come just to meet the wonderful people of Japan and to feel uncomfortable eating strange food! So, we started off this morning with our first Language class with Obata-san. He has decided to read through the Japanese Bible with us. I guess you could say he is using the LST method on us.

We are reading the book of John first. At our first meeting we started with Obata-san reading the first five verses in Japanese to us. We mark where the words divide (other wise we read run-on words). It’s difficult to read Japanese because they don't put spaces between words or have capital letters. They also have Kanji (the word picture characters) which are extremely difficult for foreigners to learn. So after we get the words straight we take turns reading through the verses that Obata-san just read. Then we go through the vocabulary that we don’t know. So the first five verses, we went through about every word. Obata-san is very patient with us. He did say he was happy that we could read hiragana and katakana (the 2 phoenetic alphabets). That made his job a little easier. Thanks WSU! Thanks Foster Sensei! Obata-san is also quite a Greek scholar so we get a great Bible study in every language class.

SO our first session of going through the first five verses of John took 2 hours. Whew! Lunch time!!