Thankful

I'm just remembering God's goodness to me in such small ways over the past few years.

For example, when I went to Bulstrode (January-March 2006), there was a small sign on my door. It was this funny chicken, hanging off the door. As I use hens to characature myself, it just showed me that God wanted me there - on Candidates Course with WEC, in that room. No-one had put it here for my benefit; only God knew. And the card Laura, my mentor, gave me when I left, said how she'd had a picture of me on a roof or hill overlooking a city in the early morning, and that I could ask God for that city, as Abraham did for the promised land. When I arrived at my 'dorm' here, I used to go up to our roof in the early mornings, overlooking the roofs of Kyoto, to pray there, and it was only after about a month of doing that that I re-read Laura's card to me and realised it was true! These give me courage that God listens to our prayers and communicates with us today. Lately he's been speaking to me through the theatre, through movies, through friends' words cutting through me, through preaching from the Bible. Today Michael Ross-Watson prayed for me (he told me), from Singapore, and I benfitted, hugely. And as people pray for me, and I pray for others, we can only believe that these prayers are heard in the heavens and work.

The Importance of the Floor in Japanese Culture

**The Importance of the Floor in Japanese Culture**

This is the title of the book, or chapter of a book, I’ll probably never write, seeing as I won’t have done the properly authorized academic research on the topic. However, today I write from my thoughts.

Life on the Floor
Each day in Japan, at least in rural areas, people sit on the floor. Traditional Japanese rooms have tatami as their floor covering – this is a reed like structure, which smells nice, and consists of same sized mats taped together, hoovered as often as needed, and changed every 1-5 years. In fact, Japanese ‘mansions’ (how bedsits are referred to in Japan), are measured out in tatami mats, as are rooms of older, larger houses too. A four by four tatami mat sized room is really rather small, just enough size for a desk or bed, whereas a six by eight, or eight by eight, or ten by ten sized room, is really getting on for quite a decent size (for Japanese standards).


As well as sitting on the floor for a large part of everyday activities – breakfast, lunch, dinner, watching TV, playing with the kids, taking a nap, entertaining guests – the floor is also used as a bed frame. In the West, we tend to think of a futon as a low wooden structure (from Ikea often!), with a mattress on top, which often transfers into a sofa. But in Japan a futon has no frame; it is merely a mattress on the floor. That mattress, or ‘futon’, is more like two duvets in feel, rather than the thick springy Western affair. Saying all that, a futon really is fine to sleep on, and comfortable enough.

Japanese dance and the centre of gravity
Western dance frequently relies on the dancer using the air above them in beautiful displays of acrobatics. Ballet, for example, involves the dancer springing up into the air, and being very light footed, if not silent, on return to ground level. Japanese dance appears totally different. The centre of reference for the body is not the air above, but the floor below – and specifically just below the dancers’ feet. Those feet are on display, often stamped loudly, and indeed some stamps in many types of traditional dance (as I saw in Kyoto’s Schijo theatre on Monday), indicate that the scene is changing and a new event is soon to occur. In Western theatre of course this is often signified by a ‘’curtain call’, where the curtains swish to, from top to bottom. The Japanese in contrast prefer the rising sound of the solid sounds of the dancers’ feet on the floor.

The dance itself involves a low centre of gravity; the dancers knees are often bent, getting lower and lower for important scenes.



After writing this paragraph and looking for a relevant picture, here is what I found on the internet:

"The Japanese dance form is different from ballet and other western dances. The big steps and jumps of ballet and other western dances signify the desire to escape this earth - striving to reach the heavens. Japanese dance, however, consists of movements requiring bent knees and a low center of gravity. This emphasis on being close to the ground shows the desire of Japanese dancers to remain in contact with the earth - the constant source of their energy."

When to Avoid the Floor
Last but not least is an important feature in the Japanese mind: cleanliness. Cleanliness of what? Of the floor of course! Bags in the classroom are usually put behind the bottom of the student on the seat, or else hung on hooks from the desks. They are not put on the floor. Likewise on trains, look around, and you’ll frequently see just a few bags on the floor per carriage. One of these probably belongs to a foreigner on the train, and the other two are likely briefcases of tired businessmen who are not going by the rules, (although briefcases only have a very narrow point of contact with the floor, of course, and so are perhaps an exception). Other people, especially women, keep their bags, however large or small, or their laps of on the seat beside them.

Why all this care? Because the floor is for sitting on, for sleeping on, for the kids to crawl around on, for eating very near (using low tables). Even on the train, which is not used for any of these things, the viewpoint of the floor as being a place which needs to be kept clean still carries. Bags are dirty, shoes are dirty: slippers and socks are clean.

Why this article?
It is because I have gradually come to believe some of these things, in fact I live them out - such as taking my slippers off before I enter my matted bedroom - that I have decided to write this article. And it is through writing this article that I hope and believe that others, those living inside Japan and those far away, will come to see a new and holy aspect of Japanese culture.