Sweet Dropper in Japan, Day 1
July 20, 2009
The Sweet Dropper and his firstborn son are in Japan. . Here are some daily (more or less) updates. I hope we can post photos and video later in the week:
Sunday, July 19: 6:45 am in Yamagata. About to go to breakfast. Saturday busy-visits with Dan Iverson (MTW Japan director) in Chiba. Then on train to central Tokyo and met by 2 men (one Dutch and one Japanese) who are planting a PCJ church with Redeemer network. They’ll have their first worship service today. This plant would be something like Redeemer Manhattan in its potential influence and cosmopolitan feel because of its location in heart of financial, political, and entertainment heart of Japan.
Great Shinkansen train ride to Yamagata in afternoon. Checked into hotel by ourselves. Visit Sat. Night with Kaz and Katie Yaegashi.
Gospel amidst European ruins and Asian renewal
April 25, 2009
Must-read reflections from Peter Jones on hearing a performance of J.S. Bach’s St. John’s Passion in Berlin and hearing a choir in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Siege of Leningrad: then and now
March 3, 2009
Eight years ago this month I had the privilege of lecturing for two weeks in a seminary in St. Petersburg, Russia. St. Petersburg, even under a winter’s worth of snow, is the most breath-taking city I have visited. We had opportunities to visit the art museums (the Hermitage and the Russian Museum), a couple of palaces of tsarist-era nobility (including the one where Rasputin was murdered), the “Catherine” summer palace at Pushkin, the conservatory where Tchiakovsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich studied, and the imposing 19th-century cathedrals. But the place that gripped me most was the State Museum of Defense and the Siege of Leningrad (typical colorless Soviet-era name). This small underground museum documents both the heroism and the suffering of the citizens of Leningrad (its Soviet name) as they held on for almost three years with the Germans at the door. Though much smaller than its original layout, thanks to a Stalin purge of much of the collection, it still has lots of eerie exhibits documenting the 900-day WWII German siege of the city, when people were eating sawdust cakes, or bran fried in motor oil, or pets or each other. A few grim photographs appear in various WWII history books.
Last week I was made aware of a site where photographer Sergei Larenkov has posted digitally superimposed images from the 900-day siege over current photos of the same locations. He has produced eerie and thought-provoking shots, which bring those black-and-white events to life.
More from the translation files
December 1, 2008
My August post about the Beijing restaurant which suffered from a computer translation service error comes back to mind with this sign from Wales:
For those of you whose Welsh is not what it was when you were in school, the translation says, “I’m not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”
Special thanks belong to Derek Thomas, who first blogged this at Ref21. According to the original BBC story, the blunder is not the only time Welsh has been translated incorrectly or put in the wrong place:
• Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an “inflamed bladder”.
• In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading ‘Look Right’ in English read ‘Look Left’ in Welsh.
• In 2006, a shared-faith school in Wrexham removed a sign which translated the Welsh for staff as “wooden stave”.
A cracked kettle in Uganda
November 11, 2008
New on The Sweet Dropper’s blog reader list is A Cracked Kettle. The blog comes from Mike Boyett, who labors for Gospel of Christ in Uganda. I have been very impressed with Mike’s reflections on life in east Africa and on the remarkable growth of the kingdom of God in that part of God’s world. Particularly enlightening are his thoughts on the shifts in local culture due to the invasion of technology (thus the photo of the Masai man who has no electricity in his home, but has a cell phone!), on eating termites, and on how one carries out the Great Commission while his injured leg is propped on a chair.
The intriguing title comes from Gustave Flaubert: “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.”
Good eats in Beijing
August 6, 2008
As one who works from one language to another, I have a special sympathy and extra laugh for the sign purchased by this Beijing restaurateur, who apparently used an internet translation service to obtain an English sign to attract customers while the Olympics are in town.
I hear the “404 File Not Found Chicken” is to die for.
