Konbanwa

The closest mid week meeting to Kirribilli that I could walk to on a Thursday night happened to be a Japanese language meeting. But for Jehovah’s people language is a relatively small hurdle to get over. I remember a friend recently telling me that the language the branch uses for a group speaking a different language from English has changed from ‘foreign language’ group, to ‘multi-language’ group. The point being, I suppose, that it’s not a matter of ‘us’ and ‘them’ when it comes to English. We all speak one spiritual language, but in different ways. That was to be the case tonight. I had calculated an hour walk to the hall. Finding my way wasn’t a problem thanks to Google maps which showed precisely where I was and where I needed to go. The GPS dot even showed which direction I was facing at any moment.

As I passed by a park I stopped to look at something that looked a bit like a red headed chicken busily kicking leaves around. A lady passing by commented that the bird had been at it for some time and that it was called a bush turkey. She then pointed to a large mound of leaves and debris behind me that was roughly two feet high and four or five feet in diameter, and explained that the turkey will amass a huge pile of debris and then a female will lay its eggs inside of it so that the sun and decaying matter can incubate them. The male even pokes it’s head in from time to time to gauge the temperature of the mound and add or remove debris to regulate it. It was an interesting sight to see.

I saw something else that made me kind of happy: a Woolworths. Actually they are all over, but this was the first one Id seen and I didn’t realize they still existed. I couldn’t go in due to time constraints, but I plan to stop into one in the future and report my findings.

The Kingdom Hall was located in an area called ‘Crows Nest’ on a street filled with businesses. Entry to the building was right off of the sidewalk and up a small flight of steps. The looks from people were a little confused when I walked in, but a nice sister said hello and showed me around and made introductions. Most of the people there only spoke some English as a second language. I spoke precious little Japanese, but we made it work and they were very friendly. (Much more so than the Bondi Beach hall I visited several days later, where I basically drifted in and out unnoticed…) When I said I was from Ohio the one brother laughed. Ohio means ‘good morning’ in Japanese. He said New York is funny too as it means ‘I need a bath’ or something along those lines. The phrase people used when entering the hall that night was konbanwa (good evening). I kept saying ‘komaba’ and the sister that I had befriended gave me a quick lesson on how to pronounce it correctly. There are a different greetings for good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Kon nichiwa is good afternoon

When the book study conductor arrived, the sister pointed him out and I explained which answer I wanted to give and arranged for him to call on me when it was time. He didn’t speak much English either. I had to just keep an eye on him during Bible study and wait for him to give me a significant look, signaling me to answer. There were only about thirty in attendance when the meeting finally started. The friends there sang beautifully. It was very touching to hear the kingdom songs sung in Japanese for the simple reason that I knew we were all singing the same thing. I took a sheepish video of it because I wanted the moment, but didn’t want to distract from the meeting. I didn’t understand much of anything, but I felt very happy to be among family and friends.

A few minutes into the meeting two younger brothers came and sat with me. One was Yuki, who handled the Spiritual Gems part that night. The other was a young English-speaking brother named Michael. I had chosen a sentence to read from the lesson as an answer to one of the questions. I then ran the English through Google Translate and spent a month memorizing the sentence. Michael asked what my answer was going to be and I wrote it down for him. Its good thing I did, because it turns out there were a few wording and grammatical problems. He spent several minutes looking things up and translating and finally wrote a very slightly modified version of the answer which was actually slightly easier to say.

‘Kami no shimo be wa, kami no rieki o daiichi ni suru koto no juyo o rikai suru beki desu.‘

I think it went okay, but more so I think the friends were just happy I tried. However, Michael explained that there was certain way to answer should anyone offer a compliment. If someone complimented the comment, then it was okay to say thank you. If someone complimented my Japanese, then the appropriate thing to do was to play it down and try to deflect the compliment. He said he had made that mistake before, but had learned it was culturally the right thing to do.

After the meeting I spoke with a nice sister named Cha Ami, but she went by Amy. We had a nice conversation even though English was her second language; many smiles, laughs, and hand gestures. An older brother offered to drive me back to the Lodge and I gladly accepted. My first ride on the left side of a car with no steering wheel was odd and being on the opposite side of the road felt even stranger, but we had a pleasant conversation and I fortunately remembered to say arigato and sayonara when he dropped me off.

I’m so glad I went and I hope to visit again if I’m ever back in Sydney. Id like to learn an Eastern language, but I’m torn between Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. Chinese would be most practical because I could help my students better, but I love the sound of Japanese. Korean feels like a nice balance between the two, and well, I do like K pop…