Monday, February 27, 2006

Yet another battering for my ego.

This past Saturday I gave the message for the Saturday evening service at Osaka International Church. The Saturday evening service is small and is normally held in the office around the table. The service consisted of about ten people. After the service I went with a few of the attendees for a quick bite to eat. Besides myself there were two other Canadians, and two Japanese, one who had been my interpreter for the service, and the other who spoke English but with a thick Japanese accent. Needless to say the conversation was primarily in English.
The Canadian couple had spent their honeymoon traveling in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. We heard some interesting things about Russia and the state of the country there. Our Japanese companion asked lots of questions, with many a big word. We had difficulty understanding him for two reasons, one was his accent (probably due to much study but little practice) and the second was his use of words that were very big. He first wondered if they had seen anyone using hypodermic needles. (He works in the medical profession and had heard WHO reports of that kind of thing.) After listening to stories about organized Russia Mafia and the way they currently run the country he also asked how the constabulary affected the situation. The police I queried for clarification?
Later he asked about the schism between the protestant and catholic churches. We were at a loss for an answer on that one. He also asked if I had been to a Japanese service and wondered how I found the rubric to be. Rubric I asked? Yes, rubric! rubric! he repeated back to me in exasperation. I feel like I need to go back and study English instead of Japanese.

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