Yesterday as I was arriving at school, I noticed a few pairs of people hovering round by the roads near the entrance. It's the season when students take high school examinations so maybe I thought it was something to do with that- maybe some last attempt by high schools to encourage students to apply. But when I got into school and asked who the strange people were outside, someone told me that they were Christians.
As you can imagine, there aren't many Christians here. Japanese people just aren't religious. I think it's one of their best qualities. When babies are born, they are taken to Shinto shrines. When one marries, it's common for them to have a white wedding at a "Christian church" (I say with marks because often it is little more than a hall and the vicar is little more than some white guy donning the clothes and doing the gig for a bit of pocket money). Funerals are usually done in the Buddhist way.
The university that I studied at in Japan was actually a Christian university. Despite being a Christian country, we do not have religious universities in England, so it was interesting for me going there. However, most of the students were not Christian. The people who went to Church often were a small group of girls who seemed to always wear frilly dresses of the "lolita" fashion.
Students are required to go a certain amount of times a year but I forget how many.
In bigger cities you'll see foreigners advertising Christianity on the streets. In Nagoya there is a nice man who is always on stilts in the summer, juggling and blowing balloons and telling people about God. To me this is harmless. Most people will go see him, take whatever he is giving and then go. If they are interested then they will ask him more.
There has been mixed feelings about these Christians standing outside our school gates.. but my feeling is that it isn't a good thing.
On the one hand, students don't study religion at school, so they aren't going to come across Christianity. I can imagine how people would want to give kids literature and let them know it exists. However, by standing outside a school and bugging children as they enter is not the way to go about it. Especially in exam season.
Sadly for the Christians, for all their hard work in the cold morning light, I think they had little impact on my kids. A few of them showed me their leaflets (there were about 10 different kinds) and told me how they hated Christians. As a Christian myself I found that a little sad..
They cut out pictures of Jesus on the cross and stuck them on walls and stuff too. When I got home the little boy who lives next door was shredding his leaflets up into his bike basket.
So, I think sadly the Christians' work was all a waste. Maybe they'll learn. Maybe they'll come back. We'll have to wait and see.
Hope you liked the photos, Erik!
