For the last week, Akihiro's parents' company had some Chinese guests here for some business issues. This is who Yo, Mo, and O are. The Chinese man (Yo-san) brought his wife and 9 year old daughter, his business partner, and an interpreter with him from Shanghai to consider buying some property. We took them to the north island to go fishing for a few days. We had fun catching squid and eating them both raw and cooked that night for supper. I think I had blogged on squid spaghetti last year about this time. The Chinese girl could speak pretty good English, so we got along good. She reminded me a lot of my neice, Laura. Her father was a Chinese version of one of the song leaders in Tremont church (perhaps some of you can guess--tall, deep voice, a bit rudy complexion)--it was almost uncanny! The mother and daughter seemed pretty bored with all of the business talk, so we decided (Akihiro and I) to take them to the aquarium on Monday. It rained (and has been raining for the past 5 days, it seems), but we still had fun. She taught me a little bit of Chinese and we became friends. She stays at a boarding school where she never wears her own clothes--even has uniforms for pajamas! She said the food is good and she really likes pizza--that surprised me. She only sees her parents on the weekends. I also had the sort of weird expereince of having my Japanese translated by the Chinese translator to my Chinese "uncle" as Yo-san insisted we call him. We will probably be visiting Shanghai in the next month or two to do further business with them and they can't wait to show us Shanghai and feed us the "best Chinese food". They also have business in Hong Kong and want us to visit there to. We'll see. Before I got married, I liked to travel, but I had no idea that God had China and Chinese friends on the agenda!
When we were at the north island there was one day that we spent with another business man and his wife and their young daughter (Japanese).. It was my first experience to spend a whole day speaking basically only Japanese to these people. They were very patient with me and we had a nice time. We did a big maze, rode 5 small bikes that were hooked together, and ate really good sushi.
Speaking of speaking Japanese, I also had a chance at teaching Sunday school last Sunday. Toru-san wasn't there and Akihiro encouraged me to give it a try. The two boys were patient with me and encouraged me to try to read the Bible story (Sa-moo-eh-ul "Samuel"). I could read it, but I couldn't understand it all. The kindergartener read better than me, but somehow I felt fairly satisfied with my accomplishment. We played some Bible games and got along pretty good. I can "get by" ok, but want to learn more verbs and grammar, so will probably start classes again near our home soon as I am nearing the end of the cleaning out things at the old house.
This week Judy Bauer and her cousin Elaine Young will be visiting Japan and we will keep them at our home for two evenings. It's still much easier to have English speaking guests!