An inconvenience rightly considered

It's that time again.
The time when the temperature warms, the humidity rolls in, and all cockroaches worth their salt search for comfy homes inside Japanese houses.
Spiders too are coming out. Both spiders and cockroaches have very short life expectancies in the vicinity of my house but even so, they keep trying to move in.

The war has begun.

Thus far the battles have been four and though we were routed once, we have managed to emerge victorious in the end.
I will here give account of the combat.

Battle #1 - In which the enemy emerges.
I was sitting innocently on the couch reading when suddenly from the shadows I saw a large black cockroach emerge. He seemed to be doing some reconnaissance as he stood quietly near the wall and waved his antennae. Whether or not he was sending messages out to the hive I do not know. But quietly, oh so quietly, I tiptoed toward the door. After acquiring a suitable throwing object (a flip-flop) I moved into position. The enemy did not spot me until the missile was hurtling toward him, but sadly I am a bad sniper and I missed. The cockroach was on the run. Unbeknownst to him I had already closed off all exits so he was left with only one hiding place, underneath a low chair. I could tell that if I relied on my aim this battle could continue all night. It was time for heavier artillery... and reinforcements.
I rolled out the vacuum, and called in my roommate Sara. She bravely took the weapon as I moved into the danger zone ready to flush the enemy from his hiding place.
We took a moment to steel ourselves, then looking at each other we both nodded - we knew what had to be done, even if it cost us our lives. I reached out and moved the chair. The cockroach ran out. He was headed straight for me. He was going to attack. He waved his sword in the air screaming cockroachian obscenities.
With her terrifying battlecry of "WOAH!" Sara swooped in with the vacuum and sucked the cockroach up with a satisfying 'thwoop' sound.
Thus was the enemy conquered.

Battle #2 - In which the enemy tries aerial attack.
Having lost their first attempt to gain a hold in our home, the cockroach council decided to hire mercenary soldiers.
It was evening and our house was quiet. I was reading in the living room, Sara was in the kitchen. Suddenly I heard her say "Ashley.... there's a spider hanging in the doorway." I came out to investigate this new intruder. Gently swaying the middle of the hall doorway was a spider. Clearly he had attempted to parachute onto Sara's head as she passed through the doorway, but the shortness of the doorway coupled with the shortness of Sara must have thrown off his calculations and he missed.
I thought about possible modes of attack. We couldn't hit him with something, because there was nothing to smush him against, only air. Neither of us were about to reach out and crush him with our hands... there are limits to bravery. So, feeling clever I got a book and, opening it to an unimportant page, planned to hold it under him and then slam it shut.
I approached, holding the book...but as I got closer it seemed the swaying creature could sense me. He'd probably be too fast for me if he knew I was coming.
Clearly we needed to re-evaluate our plan. Sara tried to lure him to a flat surface by blowing on him. He was unaffected by her brave attack.
He had blocked off our access to bug killing spray, which was in the laundry room. Using the vacuum again seemed like unnecessary waste of electricity. So I searched the living room closet for an alternative. It came in the form of Febreeze room freshener. We needed the enemy to die... drowning was as good a way as any. I handed Sara our new weapon.
Without ado she Febreezed the heck out of that spider. He landed as a soggy fresh smelling blob on the floor and was promptly flattened by the aforementioned book.
Victory #2. And our house now smelled lovely.

Battle #3 - In which we are routed, but our British ally saves us.
Realizing spiders are no match for our cleaning products the cockroaches next sent in one of their soldiers. This was no mere scout or hired para-spider, this was a big, fat, flying cockroach juggernaut.
We spotted him in our kitchen one evening as we were returning from dinner. He had found himself a good vantage point up in the far corner of our kitchen just above the refrigerator. Sara and I were accompanied by international allies from England and Japan, and so to maintain face we remained calm.
"Oh look, a cockroach" I may have said, letting the enemy know I had spotted him. The cockroach seemed unconcerned and simply waved his antennae in defiance. This time there was no discussion of Febreeze, we knew we had to roll out the big guns right away. I brought in the vacuum cleaner. Our ally from England, Simon, demonstrating extreme bravery volunteered to wield the weapon. He crept close, and then attacked. But the enemy was too fast! It ran down the wall and behind the fridge faster than we could follow. It remained in hiding for the next few minutes as we searched for it. Finally I spotted it, sitting in a corner, biding its time til it could attack. England attacked first. The cockroach ran out from behind the fridge and made a wild break for freedom by taking to the air. I regret to say America retreated very quickly, nearly flying ourselves, and Japan shut herself in the hall. With a cry of "For England and St.George!" Simon swung the vacuum cleaner around and sucked the cockroach up with a crunch.
Victory #3 was followed by a half hour of investigation inside the vacuum cleaner as to whether or not the enemy still lived. He did not.

Battle #4 - In which the enemy pitifully attempts to keep us from leaving home.
Clearly growing desperate now, this fourth attack was quite sloppy. I was about to leave one morning when I noticed a web strung just outside the doorway. What is this, a sneak attack? Did these creatures really think I wouldn't see their spider assassin hanging right in front of me? I was too smart for them. I not only saw him, but quickly lured him away from the center of his web toward the wall. He is now part of the wall.
That is all I will say about him.

And so the battle continues. We are considering posting the heads of our conquered enemies on toothpicks around the house as a warning to any who might try to follow in their footsteps.
But for now, the house is secure.


(note: Some small literary license may have been taken with these stories)

So, I help out with the church websites when I can.
I'm currently trying to make a page on the GCIS website with profiles of all the teachers. We already had professional photographs taken of us all at the beginning of the year, so all I needed was the text. However, I had been having a bit of a difficult time getting each teacher to write their own profile, despite having given an easy-to-copy-and-tweak example I had only received replies from about half.
SO, I decided to write them myself, and make them interesting. And if the teachers didn't like - maybe this would be an incentive to send me a less imaginative one. Here is the e-mail I sent (names changed to avoid well.... something ).
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So... Since none of you have gotten back to me with your teacher profiles for the website, I've taken the liberty of writing profiles for you.

Please read over these and let me know if there are any corrections.
If I don't hear from you within the week, I'll just assume these are ok and put them up :) Thanks!!

Despite his early days as a circus performer, Joe finds that he really enjoys the quieter life of being a missionary and teaching at the school. "It is amazing how similar teaching is to lion-taming" he says, "if you lose control of the class for even a moment, you could easily get devoured"
When not teaching at GCIS, Joe likes to spend his time organizing his bottle-cap collection.

Jane, vice principal of GCIS is a world renowned ventriloquist. Some of her many famous acts include "Maury and I" which stars her grammatically challenged seaturtle puppet named Maury. Speaking of her ability to blend her former occupation with teaching Jane says "teaching is so much more effective when you're able to throw your voice and teach from many angles at once. It really keeps the kids on their toes!"

Sally has been teaching at GCIS for nearly a year now. She came to Japan based on her extreme love for cosplaying as Pikachu. Though there's not too much opportunity to be Pikachu at GCIS, she still finds it enjoyable. She also collects stuffed ferrets which she often brings to class as teaching aids.

Tom hearts ninjas. He hearts them so much, he decided to move to Japan so that he could study to become one. Teaching is actually just a cover for his nightly escapades where he inconspicuously tip-toes around the town dressed in black. Last year he taught English to 5th graders, but this year he has switched to teaching Bible, because it is a much more effective weapon. The students never know what hit them.


I have since received a few replies with less imaginative but more accurate descriptions.
Success!

I've decided to make this more blog-like, and not use it to simply post my prayer newsletter.
I think I said that once before, and nothing came of it. But I mean it this time.
If people want my prayer updates they can e-mail me or check out my missions page at ccob.org.

So, with that in mind, I shall commence to tell you all a story that will only get a short mention in my prayer update since it is of a rather odd nature.

I'm going to hazard a guess that most people outside of Japan are unfamiliar with what an onsen is. Onsen literally means hot spring, but the word implies a hot spring spa. In Japan onsens are (usually) segregated and the bathers stow their clothes in lockers, bathe in a shower area, and then go relax in shallow pools of warm water. People are not allowed to wear clothes of any sort into the pool/tub/shower area. People often go to relax after a hard day or hang out with friends.
For foreigners this can be a rather surprising experience, but for most Japanese people it is totally normal to go hang out naked in soothingly hot shallow pools.
I've been in Japan for a year and a half now, and it's become fairly normal for me as well. It's amazing how easy it is to get used to something if everyone else considers it normal.

Now, why did I tell you that? Because a rather interesting thing happened the last time I was at the onsen and if you don't know exactly what an onsen is, the story is still interesting but much less strange.

Well, I went the other night with my friends Erin and Yuki, and our new friend Sharona. When I first walked into the bathing area I noticed an old woman lying in one of the very shallow pools, her head resting on the edge and her eyes closed. I thought to myself "heh, she looks REALLY relaxed. Like someone threw her there." and walked on past.
A few minutes later I joined Erin in the pool nearby and saw she was watching the old woman with concern. She asked if I thought the woman looked alright. Now, I didn't want to stare. If you think staring is rude in public, just think how strange it is in an onsen. But I looked and saw the woman hadn't moved at all in the past few minutes, but was breathing. So I said "I'm sure she's fine." which in fact, I had no way of being sure, but I didn't want it to be my problem if something was wrong. The back of my brain knew something was wrong, because the woman had been the first thing I'd noticed when I walked in, but I ignored that. The onsen was very crowded that evening and I made the mental excuse of "if something is wrong, someone else will do something about it."
Erin, however, had been a nurse in a nursing home back in the US and could tell that the woman's breathing was labored and she didn't look good. So, being infinitely braver than I, she went over to ask the woman if she was alright. I tried to act casual as mental images of a startled old Japanese woman being woken from her nap by a strange foreigner kneeling next to her asking if she's ok filled my brain.
However. She was in fact, not ok. She was barely conscious and having trouble breathing. Erin came back over and stated loudly (so others would hear and possibly take action) that she was "not ok. " After saying it a couple times several ladies in the same pool leaned over and said (in English!) "she's not ok? She's not napping? Maybe we should go get someone."
In the next few minutes, one lady went to get an attendant and another who spoke very good English followed Erin and I over to the old lady where we held her up out of the water while Erin checked her pulse. She was mumbling a bit, very weakly and we couldn't make out any words.
Meanwhile everyone else went back to ignoring the situation. A minute later an attendant came over, was told to call an ambulance (incidentally the emergency number in Tokyo is 119) and went to do that. The ambulance seemed to take forever to arrive.
In the meantime we lifted the still mostly unresponsive old lady out of the water and kept her sitting up so she could breathe easier. She was foaming at the mouth a bit (not in a raving lunatic kind of way mind) and her hands were kind of purpley due (I'm told) to not getting proper circulation. A couple attendants fluttered rather uselessly (no fault to them, I'd have fluttered uselessly if Erin hadn't told me what to do to help) and tried offering water or towels. Sharona sat nearby praying for the lady. Just as I was beginning to wonder both *when* the ambulance was going to finally arrive, and *what* I would do if a bunch of male paramedics stormed into the crowded onsen, the attendants insisted we move the old lady to the locker room. This was (rather unsafely) done, and a ta-da! privacy screen appeared out of nowhere. It was set up around the old lady who had been laid on the floor. By now she was recovering a bit and speaking, but was disoriented.
The paramedics FINALLY arrived - coming in through a side door I hadn't realized existed. Since a screen was set up, I didn't observe what happened after that, but I know they took the old woman away and apparently she had asked the attendats to tell us thank you (which, later, they did).
We introduced ourselves to the Japanese lady who had been kind enough to translate the instructions Erin had been giving throughout this whole thing, and then since the excitement was over, we went back to "relaxing."

And THAT is my onsen story.

It has made me think about several things.
I realized that need to work on being braver and less selfish. I was totally willing to ignore a situation that might have been (and, it turned out, was) dangerous to a person's health, simply because I didn't want to risk embarrassment in the offchance she was ok. I was more concerned with remaining inconspicuous and unembarrassed than I was with making sure a person was not in danger.
As a Christian I have been directly taught by Jesus that I should love others as myself - this means not putting my own fears before someone else's wellbeing. If this had been the parable of the good samaritan I'd have been the Levite or the priest. Yes, I helped, but only once someone else had taken the first step. Had I been alone, I wouldn't have moved.
As a Christian, I need to realize there is no such thing as "somebody else's problem" when it comes to a person in need. It is very easy to convince ourselves that someone else will deal with it, or even that 'oh I couldn't do anything to help even if I tried.' But that is not an ok attitude for a Christian. We need to step out and risk possibly being embarrassed when there isn't actually anything wrong with the old naked lady in the pool.
This time I was with someone willing to be brave. But next time I might not be - and I'll have to be the brave one. And I will.

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
(Luke 10:36-37)