Spring finally found its way… If you were wondering, yes, life has continued after Tokyo. Just as busy as ever, of course. School is back in swing, this time with new teachers and new students. I have three new teachers at my school: Kyoto sensei (vice principle) whom I know by the same name as the last one…and that is: Kyoto sensei. At least that one’s easy. There’s also a new “office” lady (we all have the same office except the principle, so, is it technically the same name? I don’t know…) named Hayashii sensei. She’s a petite little thing with a genuine smile that wrinkles her eyes into tiny slots when she smiles. There’s also a new science teacher, Nakamura sensei, who replaced the one teacher here that spoke English. I found out last week, however, that she is actually the mother of one of the students that has been coming to the high school Bible study. I ate lunch with her today, and she is very kind. In a non-task-oriented way. I could tell that she’s a mother and knows how to connect with people on a sincere level. She told me her daughter Sakiko really enjoys “learning the Bible.” God is good. Really. I was so worried about that science teacher leaving. He orchestrates everything in our lives, though. Which brings me to high school Bible study itself. We’ve started up again, and in the past month or so, we’ve been giving some background on the life and death of Jesus so that on Easter we could watch The Passion. Since Easter was the first Sunday that high school was back in session (a new school year for them, too), we also expected to have some new 10th graders join us for the video-viewing. Well, “some” we did have. In fact, about 25 people crammed themselves into Carrie and Jeni’s living room last Sunday for this event. It was wall-to-wall packed in there. We were very excited…until we put the movie in and (drum roll please) it didn’t work. Well it worked. But, it didn’t have subtitles. At all. No English. No Japanese. Our only option if we wanted to watch that movie was to watch it in Aramaic. What is so puzzling about this situation is that the movie itself was made with subtitles. There’s no such thing (as far as I know) as this movie made without subtitles. We were stumped (and so were the 20 kids who so kindly offered to help us by playing with the remote for a half hour). I’ll admit it, I was disappointed – in fact, nearly devastated. I just couldn’t understand how if Christ had the power to rise from the dead, how he couldn’t make a movie pop up its subtitles. But those titles, despite our efforts, refused to make themselves seen, so we were forced to pop in the less-thrilling, slightly “old” Jesus film (Kate and I both had it in Japanese). I was not happy about this, but I plopped myself down, trying, honestly, to stifle tears, as we resigned ourselves to movie-viewing fate. The outcome, though, was actually quite surprising. Yes, the kids were playing with their cell phones the whole time. Yeah, they were talking. But as Kate and I discussed afterwards, it seems as if these seeming acts of boredom were really more of a security blanket than anything else. In fact, most of the kids were pretty glued to the TV. Especially at the end. After the film, someone explains (as far as I could tell…it was, as I said, in Japanese) the salvation message. I’m so thankful that these kids got to hear it. Please pray for them as they come into a new knowledge of the savior of the world. If they are to choose His Way, their decisions will be far from easy to make. Pray for strength and courage for these kids. In a mostly-Buddhist nation, they must reject much of their heritage in order to identify themselves with Christ. In other “kid” news, spring has definitely arrived at school. The new 1 nen sei kids are a blast (only 15 of them). Special favorites already are: Yuma, Ryo, and Shunpei. Yuma is the younger brother of a favorite 9th grade student, and his infectious, jolly spirit just makes me want to squeeze him every time I see him. Ryo is also quite charismatic, and LOUD. He expresses every emotion with all his heart – and voice, and makes me want to chuckle all the time at lunch. Shunpei is the class leader, and does everything he can to please you. He does his best in class, and treats everyone with the utmost respect including, as I’ve heard (though I’ve not experienced it yet), telling his female teachers that they’re “lovely.” They are certainly precious. However, “precious” can turn into “crazy” when lunch time rolls around. Since spring is in the air, during lunch break, lately the kids have taken it upon themselves to act as nutso as possible. The wonderful thing about Segawa is that, since there are so few kids (68 this year), the students (well, the boys, anyway) of different grades often play together. Not a common occurrence for any other school that I know of. Last week they decided to play “hide and seek.” Since there are several buildings “on campus,” it can actually be a pretty fun game, as I found out. I wandered into the gym (a separate building from the classrooms) on Tuesday, to check out what some of the students were up to. One 8th grade boy was playing piano, some girls were trying their hands at badminton, and I saw some boys duck quickly behind the stage, concealing themselves from their immanent predator. I watched their heads pop up, then back behind the stage, grinning all the time. After a while, though, I stopped seeing the heads pop up, and I started to hear squeals coming from behind the stage. I looked over, curious to see what was happening, and beheld an 8th grader emerging, carrying a pair of shoes (his own were still on his feet). He left the gym, donning an ornery grin. A few minutes later, he returned, placed the shoes in the middle of the gym, and went back behind the stage. Soon more squeals were heard, and this time, the 8th grader returned with a jacket, inside out, with a shirt (the kind the kids wear under all their other clothes), wrapped up inside. This made my eyes widen a little, especially after a few more boys emerged from behind the stage, wearing the same devious smile. By that time, it was time to go back to class, so as they were leaving, the boys looked at each other as if to say, “well, what should we do?” and all dropped the clothing articles in the middle of the gym, heading back to their classes. By this time the gym was almost empty, but I had an inkling that there was still a body somewhere back behind that stage. It turns out I was right. A few seconds later, one of my favorite 9th grade boys (the 8th grader’s senior) peeped only his head out. Then, cautiously, with a sheepish look on his face, he picked up a sitting mat that lay near him, placed it across his chest, and slowly stood up, exposing his uncovered, scrawny arms as he inched forward toward the pile of clothing in the middle of the gym. Poor kid. I couldn’t hold it. I burst out laughing. This was no consolation to him, but definitely made him blush and smile as he screamed “I don’t understand!” flopping back down on the pillow, trying to cover his naked chest. I kept on laughing, and didn’t know whether to retrieve his clothes for him or let him make the half-naked trek across the gym to get them. Fortunately, his scheming friends returned and carried his clothes to him. But not without scads of snickering. That story, involving my favorite goofy boys, gives some perspective on something that happened at dinner Friday night. We finally were able to eat with family (the Makis) again for the first time since spring break. Since we don’t eat with them often, we usually end up celebrating at least one birthday during this time. This time we celebrated several birthdays in the group, including Encho sensei’s himself. We were teasing him about what his most memorable birthday was, when he told us that he would show us his “cutest” birthday (he was what he described as “the cutest baby in the world”), and receded into the bowels of his house (the upper part of the English school) to retrieve some photographs of his younger years. I had to agree with him – he was the cutest baby in the world. Ooos and Aaaahs escaped from my delighted (all-female) teammates as he passed around the pictures. When they had all circled the table, though, from the head of the table, he addressed the group again. This time in a different tone. “This picture is a little bit sad,” he said. “It was taken in 1945. A few months before the atomic bombs were dropped.” I wasn’t sure exactly what he was referring to in the picture, so I was a little surprised to see, when the photo came to me, a group of small boys in military dress, arranged in formation. “This was when I was in 7th grade,” He announced. “All boys at that time were trained in school to be in the military. Every student would enter either the army, the air force, or the navy in junior high school.” “Active duty?” Cristy asked. “Yes,” he replied. I found him right away amidst the slew of uniformed boys. His kind eyes haven’t changed over the years. But his face has. In the picture, he had no wrinkles. No age spots. No reseeding hairline. Except for the emotionless expression required for formal photographs, he showed no signs of maturity at all. Just a look of young, boyish innocence and, maybe, a trace of fear. Holding the yellowing picture in my hands, my mind began putting it all into perspective. Seventh grade. That’s the same as my new first-year students in junior high school. The same as Yuma; the same as Ryo; the same as Shunpei…two years younger than Kazuma – my favorite scrawny half-naked hide-and-seek player. These were the kids known as “the enemy.” These were the boys required to give their lives – in loyalty to their country, to their superiors – in kamikaze missions. I see that loyalty today. In a different context, of course, but I began to understand a little. These kids weren’t fighting because they hated the people they were fighting against. They were fighting because they were told to. Because they were loyal. Because they had to. They had no choice. Passing the picture on and glancing at Encho sensei’s smile-wrinkled face, I was struck with the irony that this man so often reminds me of my fun-loving, God-fearing grandfather. My grandfather who fought in the same war. On the other side. It makes you think…