Travelogue #3 Okinawa

Dateline: Okinawa, Japan; September 14, 2010—“Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” It was some years ago that I realized King David was thinking of me when he penned those words. Four times in the 107^th Psalm, we hear those words echoed down through the ages. And each time they follow the reason for that praise.

Verses 17 and 18 say, “Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. Their soul abhors all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death.” With startling regularity I have found myself in this position and my first few hours in Okinawa I found myself once again harkening back to my favorite psalm.

The bus ride from Naha to Nago was pleasant enough. From evening though the waning twilight into the blackness of island night, we traveled on. How often I found myself out in the bush on this verdant island so many years ago, playing war games, missing home, swatting mosquitoes. Sharing a shelter half tent with my platoon sergeant, a Samoan three times my size. But every afternoon we gathered in the CP tent with the company CO, 1stLt. Cohen where he would break out the hotdogs, sodas and ice cream and tell us, “You don’t have to practice being miserable.” He was a great CO, the best I had from then on.

Back on the bus, there was room on the right side of the bus for the luggage but I kept my carry-on between my legs, wanting to sort through it and arrange things. Having left a few very important items back in Tansho, which my team had to bring to me at Harajaku, I wanted to be sure I was all together. The black bag my team brought to me I now placed on the seat next to me. But I had the best seat on the sparsely populated bus so I moved the black bag to my left (I was sitting next to the window) and slid it onto the floor next to the wall. Perhaps someone else would want to sit in the front seat to see the oncoming headlights. Starting to see the ingredients for a disaster?

When we arrived at the bus station in Nago I was the only passenger. Concentrating on counting out 2130 yen and freeing my large bag from the luggage compartment, I resisted the urge to look back at my seat. I had both pieces of luggage so why look? Foolish pride.

I was met and transported to Yayedake, the place of my stay and labors. I have a lovely room with private bath and windows on two sides so I can catch the evening tropical breezes. After a good night’s sleep, I turned to organizing my room and started looking for the black bag. How many times one can look in the same places for the same thing with the same results is only limited by the realization that this is all insanity. Then it dawned on me; the bag was left on the bus. Not only were my Japanese yen in the bag, amounting to about 50 dollars, but I still had 3700 South African Rand and 6519 Chinese Yuan in the bag. I was sick. Psalm 107:19 “Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saves them out of their distresses.” Oh, did I cry unto the Lord. I don’t make deals or offer promises to my God. I confess my weakness, my waywardness and my wretchedness but then claim His goodness, His grace and His great patience. And again and again He hears me.

Dr. Higa’s wife called the bus station and after properly identifying it, the manager said it was indeed in the office. We went down right away and there it was. They wanted me to check the bag in their presence to see if everything was still there. With minor trepidation, I open the bag. There were the yen. I opened the small brown folder and there were the other bills. “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” Again it is confirmed, God is with me, I have no need to worry, even when I make such huge blunders. I offered the man 1000 yen as a reward but he firmly refused it. So good to meet honest people.

Back to Yayedake. The typhoon that somehow skirted the mainland of Japan a couple weeks ago did quite a number on Okinawa. They are still cleaning up the cyclonic flotsam. I suppose it is nature’s way of pruning the trees and thinning the bushes. If so, it did a thorough job this time. It hurts to see all the bunches of bananas shriveling on the ground, clinging to their toppled parent stock. But the air is fresh and clean and it isn’t nearly as hot here as it was back on the mainland of Japan although I am two and a half hours by jet further south. It may be a taste more humid but the breeze make it all bearable. When I run, it takes a couple hours to stop sweating.

We have about 14-16 people attending the lectures, some of them staff, some students. It is the same schedule we followed in Saniku and the students are just as interested. One minor drawback, one I experienced in Ukraine where my late friend and best translator, Bogdan Kruchmar, besides being a brilliant linguist, was a medical doctor. For some inbred reason, if your translator is a medical doctor, you begin a thought and they want to carry it on through biochemistry, gross anatomy and pharmacology, all while you are waiting to tell people it is best to chew their food well, or drinking more water helps cure constipation. I will say a phrase and they will intone a chapter. With Bogdan, I came to terms with his wont…after my sixth or seventh series with him. I am in my struggling phase now with Dr. Higa. He is a great guy and I have known him from former visits. He is a Japanese American living with his Okinawan wife here. Sometimes the subject matter is of such interest to him, he just leans back and listens. It takes some prompting, but he finally turns my cursive into kana, my babbling into intelligible facts.

There is a Japanese word I learned a few years ago reading the November 2005 issue of National Geographic. The word is “ikagai.” Perhaps a loose translation would be “sense of community” or “belonging.” But Sr. Higa, who is Okinawan, told me it is a concept best understood by the people of Okinawa. You see, the Okinawan people are very different from the Japanese people. No, the Okinawans are not, or at least were not, Japanese. Their culture was vastly different from that of the feudal, shogunistic, samurai culture of Japan. They were a peaceful people who treasured life. They have the concept of “nuchi du takara” or, “Life is precious, don’t waste it.” Their northern cousin’s idea of Kamakazi was antithetical to their way of thinking. To an Okinawan, hara-kiri would have been unthinkable. They believed they were to live first; everything else was subordinate to life. “Nankuru nasai,” they would say, expressing the belief that everything would work out and not to worry. With that mindset, they had no weapons and no army.

Okinawans were agrarian people. Yet they traded with all the neighboring countries. They were special friends to the Chinese, currying special favors from them. They did develop the art of karate, not as a Bruce Lee kick ‘em dead offensive measure, but as a form of defense. They also learned to use their reaping instruments defensively. I like the people here; they are my brothers and sisters.

A typhoon, which was headed our way, turned towards Taiwan, but the winds and torrential rains have left reminders of the power of nature. At night the building where I stay actually groans. Deep guttural voices from somewhere beyond the darkness. But it is mercifully cool at night and I have seen but one mosquito my whole time here. Soon I will be back on the mainland. Hopefully autumn has made some inroads.

God bless,

Don

Japan to Okinawa Fall 10-2

Dateline: Tokyo, Japan; September 13, 2010—At first there was a typhoon and then there wasn’t a typhoon, and in between, Mt. Fuji was closed. And the climb that was to happen, did not happen and now I learn the mountain is closed for the season. What a bummer. And I had bought all of the requisite clothing to surmount this, the highest peak in all of Japan at 12,385 feet. So, next year I will try again.

This Monday morning I sit in a Tokyo hotel room conveniently close to Hanada Airport where I will be flying in a few hours to Okinawa. So many memories swarm my mind about Okinawa. It was my first assignment as a newly minted Marine Corps officer. It was 1974 and I was an 0302 infantry officer bound to be a rifle platoon commander in Mike Company, 3^rd Battalion, 4^th Marines. Of all of my memories from that time, the one that haunts me the most is of Private Cheatham. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I first saw him across the aisle on the plane to Okinawa. He was firmly ensconced between two military policemen, a reluctant member of some poor platoon commander’s platoon. Turns out that was me.

Cheatham wasn’t a bad guy at heart, he just didn’t want to be, first, in the Marines, and second, in Okinawa. He had a wife and two sons back on the east coast and would much rather have been there. The 13 months dividing them seemed an unfathomable gulf. Indeed, it did seem hopelessly long. It made all the other branches of the military’s overseas duties of 12 months seem luxuriously short. And those 13 months ravaged many marriages. Fully one half of the staff and officers of my company alone, saw the strain of that separation prove an insurmountable obstacle their marriages. Thirteen months of constant training, totally in a man’s world, only to return home and to a woman who has been on her own for the same amount of time and survived without your help, thank you. So many of us were unprepared to return to the real world. Looking back on that time so many years ago, those 13 months seem but a passing breeze, sweeping in with its elixir of youthful idealism and passing unnoticed in a swirl of years that has cast me upon the shores of my 60’s, wondering where it, and they, all went.

But Cheatham was impatient to get home and embarked on a campaign to involve himself in every malfeasance and misdemeanor he, or his all too helpful buddies, could conceive. No manner of punishment seemed to dent his resolve. He intended to make himself so odious to the Corps that we would be forced to give him his release, discharge him and ship him home on the earliest flight. He took a lot of our time. He was one of the ten percent we spend ninety percent of the time dealing with. Finally he passed the full measure of the system’s patience and was court-martialed and received the prize he had worked so hard to win; a Bad Conduct Discharge, a BCD. Reassigned to a casual company, he was awaiting a port call, or a place on a stateside bound aircraft. He had gained his objective and was happy.

One night he went out to the village of Kin to celebrate. Kinville, as we called it, was a cluster of homes, bars and businesses outside the gates of Camp Hansen. Coming back fully tanked (drunk) the night of August 14, he fell asleep in his bunk. Sometime in the night a “buddy” came in, shook him awake, and offered him some “blues.” Blues were depressants you could buy over the counter and were popular with that segment of men who never felt quite normal unless they were rendered slightly abnormal by chemical processes. Cheatham took a few of the blues and fell back to sleep…on his back. After a while the cheap Orion beer he had swilled began to rebel and the body’s subconscious reflex system caused a spasm, sending the frothy stew back up the esophagus. But being now in a drug-induced stupor, Cheatham could not respond by rolling over and splattering the floor with the foul reward of his celebration. He just lay there.

On the morning of August 15, 1974, as the men of the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, sat on the parade field awaiting trucks to take us to Kin Blue beach to board ships to become the battalion landing team, an officer came to Mike Company asking for someone from first platoon report to the hospital. My platoon sergeant, SSgt. Inouye, the senator’s nephew, was dispatched. His job was to identify the body of a Marine who had aspirated on his own vomit and died in the early morning hours. It was Private Cheatham. He beat us home by many months. But he missed Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong and eventually the evacuation of Phnom Penh and Saigon. And he missed ever seeing his boys and his wife again. That was 36 years ago and today I return to Okinawa. Wish there was more I could have done for Cheatham. I had befriended him but his desire for home outweighed any other consideration.

And thus it is with my work these many years later. So few people understand the blessing God has in store for them. They see only a life of religious drudgery and not the joys of a life beyond the limits of time and space. So they cling to this earth as their only home and are willing to surrender all and anything for it. And at the end, they find they have missed everything for the relative nothing this life has to offer. But we labor on.

Tokyo is an interesting place. I arrived in the city on Friday for an evening meeting followed by teaching Sabbath school the next morning and having a lecture in the afternoon. There followed a lecture and class on public speaking on Sunday. This was all in the Tokyo Central church where also meets the Tokyo International church, a united nations of members from all over the globe. Africans, Filipinos, South Americans, Europeans, Australians, Americans; from all stations, all walks of life, for many reasons, they come to the Harajyuku area to worship with like believers. It is always a blessing. But it is in this Harajyuku area that an even greater diversity is seen out in the public domain. It is a place of Goths and mystics, tourists and transvestites, women dressed in childlike pinafores and men waxed down like Elvis. A large park sprawls though the area and here they come to see and be seen. They play their music so-called, skateboard, blow bubbles, practice trans-space massage, ogle, google (if they have 3G) or juggle. They sleep and eat, preen and parade, and generally enjoy the passing scene. And as night settles over the park and the motley masses head for their favorite watering holes, another class emerges from the streets and alleys.

Tokyo has a large population of denizens of the streets. It seemed every bench had its occupant as I walked through the shadows of gathering night. Some were striking up their gas burners to cook what supper they were able to forage or beg; some were unfolding their neatly bundled possessions, making their concrete beds as comfortable as possible. The heat has been oppressive this summer in Japan and I am sure these social wrecks look forward to the cooler days and nights of autumn. And as I walk amongst them, they either ignore me or scrutinize me from perspectives as narrow as was Cheatham’s, from lives as hopeless as was his. And yet I do pass on.

My plans have changed quite dramatically, and not just in my intentions for Mt. Fuji. On 18 October I was to fly to Beijing and resume my teaching duties at our new school there. But enrollment problems have rendered the third module impractical and so I was released from my China duties. For that I am sorry but I have learned that whenever one door closes, another opens. I thought first of Aenon in Malaysia. It had been a great blessing last year when I lectured there and so I sent a query as to whether they had any special needs. At the same time I sent an email to a friend named James Hartley who heads up a program named LIGHT and conducts training programs all over the world. Perhaps he knew of a need in the Pacific basin that I could fill.

Aenon responded that they were in the middle of a move but could find something for me to do. James, and through him a man in the Philippines, responded they NEEDED a teacher of Daniel and End Time Events in Northern Luzon. These are subjects I love and so I chose the need over the accommodation. I am excited.

In the Philippines the school, way up north, meets and lives in bamboo huts. For an hour each day they turn on the generator to charge the things needing charging. The rest of the time it is mostly primitive. Suits me fine.

There was a problem, however. I had a ticket to Beijing, not Manila. To cancel the Tokyo to Beijing leg would have cost me a penalty. So I decided to fly to Manila from Beijing, which turned out to be cheaper than flying from Tokyo. So, to fly to Manila I will fly from Oita, Japan, to Hanada, take a bus to Narita, fly to Beijing, then to Hong Kong, then on to Manila for a 12 hour bus ride to Laoag, Philippines. To return I will take the bus from Laoag to Manila, fly to Hong Kong and then on to Beijing. From there to Tokyo and then on to Honolulu and finally a short hop to Hilo. It will be so good to stop for a few days.

More in a bit. Getting ready for the flight to Okinawa.

God’s richest blessings,

Don

Orient 1-10

Some of the class of 2012

Dateline: Tansho, Japan; August 29, 2010—It is late August so this must be Japan. How many years it has been eludes me now, but I have been coming to Japan in August for quite some time. Before last year I would make my way from Narita, the main international airport near Tokyo, to Maebashi and then climb to the cool heights of the Akagiyama range. There, amidst the bears and boars, the deer and tanuki, the pheasants and the tiger keelback, I would make my forays from Misawa to Okinawa. But this year the whole operation I work with called Nihon Kinsai Koiki (NKK) has moved down on the plain near Honjyo in the Saitama Prefecture. And down here it is hot. This is the hottest summer since records began to be kept back in the 1870’s. It is nigh unto insufferable.

Jet lag takes its inevitable toll. This time I began my trip in California so I had a few less time zones to traverse but just one hour is enough to send your circadian rhythms catawampus. Research has shown that the day after the time springs forward in those ill-informed countries still doing the daylight savings thing, there are 8% more traffic accidents. And the day after it falls back, meaning one extra hour of sleep, there are 8% fewer accidents. So, I am glad I don’t have to drive here in Japan, but for more reasons than jet lag. I’m sure I have commented on them before, but the common roads in Japan are a nightmare for the initiated. Narrow furrows of concrete cut so closely to shops and homes along the way as to make it hazardous for occupants to leave home. Sometimes utility poles impinge on the white line marking the edge of the road. One great thing about it all is the law that is a person is found to be drinking and driving, the privileges are revoked forever.

September 7, 2010: Got busy there for a while. Our first school was held at Saniku Gakuin College, the former Japanese Missionary College. It is up in the hills past Tokyo in Chiba Prefecture. It was a supper school session. It was phase one which means this was their first gathering. We will meet together twice more in the next two years. We have a week intensive session, give a ton of homework, and then repeat the same thing the following with a few tests thrown in for good measure. It is customarily very hard to interest people in such an endeavor. They have to take time off from their busy lives, travel to a campus that might not offer the amenities they are used to at home, they have to come up with tuition, and they have to sit still and learn all day. But we have had very good success. I would say over the last six or seven years we have had over 50 students. Not all have finished the course, but all have learned to live healthier lives.

One student in particular, was not a Christian. We don’t require that our students be SDA or even Christian, but they are required to attend whatever classes are being taught, and take whatever tests are given. As I was listening to the students introduce themselves, I was impressed that I wasn’t there just to teach about the laws of health and hydrotherapy, but I was to life up Christ. That was the verse that came to me very strongly, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” So that is what I endeavored to do in my morning and evening worships. Frankly, I benefitted by what I was sharing. On the last morning as the students were speaking of what they experienced with the course, this dear woman was tearful and mentioned, besides the blessing she had had at the school, that she was thinking of returning home and having some Bible studies. That makes the whole trip more than worth the effort, time and expense.

Wednesday the 8^th I will travel to Mt. Akagi and visit friends who work there now whom I met at Uchee Pines. Thursday Marty, an Army veteran, and a few others will travel to Mt. Fuji. There is a traditional expression in Japanese, “One would be a fool never to climb Mt Fuji – but also a fool to climb it twice.” Well, this will be my first time and I am thoroughly looking forward to the experience. That is if the typhoon which is making its way in this direction doesn’t get in the way. All the weather sites has it raining and storming Thursday. Bummer! I am fully equipped for the climb and in pretty good shape, so we will see.

On October 18^th I was to fly back to China and teach for another month there but the school will end after the second module and therefore my services will not be needed. What to do? Well, I can go to Aenon in Malaysia. They have told me they can use my services. And I can go to the Philippines where they need a teacher for the book of Daniel and endtime events. I like those subjects. Now, it would cost me a penalty to cancel the Beijing segment so I have decided to go ahead and fly in to China and then fly from there to either Malaysia or the Philippines. It would be much cheaper to fly to the Philippines but then I have no idea what island the school there is on. I like the Philippines but haven’t been there since my Marine Corps days. So, I have a dilemma which I need to solve in a few days. In the Philippines the staff and students are living in bamboo huts and that sort of appeals to me. So, we will see.

Monday I fly to Okinawa so I will bring you up to date about Fuji, Oki and beyond soon.

God bless,

Don