Every sunday at 10, this local channel plays a christian show in Japanese. I normally avoid Christian TV (I am incredibly sick of TBN because my parents watch it all the time and it's so... glitzy, and golden, and white suits and jewelry...) but I started watching this show, and I must say... I've been moved every time I see it. It's subtitled, and after hearing stupid people say that Japan is too hard to bring to Christ, it's good hearing the testimonies of all these people. Every week it's a new personal testimony, and I am very encouraged and my passion to see the nation of Japan reached for God grows.
They have many of the same struggles, and they also have different ones. Japanese culture is greatly different than American culture, even ignoring the language. That's obvious. However there is no unconquerable language, even for someone 40 or 50 I believe, and there is no Culture you can not integrate into if you give it time and effort.
I think that the cultural focus on animation, manga, and games creates a great opportunity to reach them at their culture. CBN (pat robertson) understood that at one time, but I'd heard reports about christians giving up on Japan, calling it impenatrable and saying that a westerner could never understand their culture. That is so incredibly against what God has planned, it's not even funny.
I plan on going to Japan with the Missions organization I was with. I'm probably going next year, but perhaps not... There are a lot of things I need to get straightened out. I plan on going there to make connections
I'm not listening to the naysayers (including one of those trolls who made a comment that really caught me off guard considering I heard it here) I'm excited about going to japan, but this will be short term... See, I still need to go to school for animation and, perhaps, game design. When all of this is over with, I'll probably go back permanently I've got a long road ahead...