Audience of One

Painting and digging

One of the things I didn’t expect to be doing when I came to Japan was practical work such as digging or painting. I suppose if I’d thought about it, I might have realised it might be a possibility, but I find it very hard to remember what I knew before coming here. I now know that Martin, my boss, enjoys building and construction work (so, since I’ve been here he’s built a sound loft for the main church hall, as well as creating a parking lot from a garden complete with stone wall); I also know that this is a community of farmers, meaning practical work comes naturally to most of them.

Then of course there were my particular skills: with websites and computers (I’ve been programming a content management system for my redesign of the church’s website for the past few weeks) and music (I play in every evening service, and sometimes the morning as well). I didn’t expect to be doing one of the things I was least good at and had very little experience at: digging and painting.

Wednesday I was up a roof for the hottest part of the day painting, hence sunburn. I then spent the next day digging trenches, looking for water pipes, which is not the best of jobs with sunburn. (Must stop complaining, must stop complaining…). I also managed to get insect bites all over my legs, which have somehow not been quelled by my insect-bite-eradicator thingy. Maybe Japanese mosquitoes are more potent than European ones, I don’t know. They were certainly large enough.

What else has happened in the past few days? Well, I took my camera to the parking lot construction to get before/after photos, but forgot to put a memory card in. I cycled to a new store that opened yesterday with Bethany, expecting the entertaining mass crowds she’d described yesterday, only to find no-one, just a female clothing store on its second day of opening. So I cycled home. (Bethany came home later with the news that it actually sold male clothes too, but too late.) I fixed the final Internet Explorer rendering bug in the website, and practised my sermon for the first time (it was too long). I also took part in my first adults English class, which involved (among other things) eating pure sugar, drawing a picture of a duck on a whiteboard, and asking one of the class where she would advise me going on holiday if I wanted to learn how to juggle. (She didn’t know, worse luck.)

Still to do while I’m in Japan: the remaining items of my list, preaching my first sermon, finish the church website, take photos of the family I’m sort-of staying with, and buy some more t-shirts.

Update: I forgot. I also need to finish learning Katakana and buy some kids Japanese books so I can go home and practise.

Currently listening to Badly Drawn Boy – Have You Fed The Fish?

Matthew @ 08:21, July 7, 2006 to Diary | Comments (4)