I remember when I first stepped foot, literally speaking, on Amakusa, this rural island in the south of Japan. Like a book that falls open to a memorized page, so my mind always flips back to this first page in order to understand the rest that follows.

     I was standing at the front of the bus aisle, facing the bus driver, who was waiting for me to deposit the 2,600 yen onto the black conveyor belt. Behind me was the life I was bringing to Japan, packed up in two large suitcases, both weighing just under the 70 pound-limit Northwest Airlines requires of all its flying customers. The suitcases had, of course, exceeded the limit just night ago (Or was it two? Time becomes abstract about two-thirds of the way across the Pacific) when I weighed them on my bathroom scale at home in Iowa. But carry-ons were invented for these kinds of dilemmas. The limit is two but then again even the airline attendants don't know what exactly qualifies as a carry-on. I had gotten on with three bags and my violin, all of which now I carried on my body--the violin across my chest, one bag on my back, and the other two on each shoulder.

     In one of them, I had put my wallet, in a "secret place," and I was desperately searching all corners of the bags and my mind for it. Meanwhile, the bus driver watched from the corners of black, suspicious eyes.

     It was August at the time and hot. August heat is intense in many places of the world, but I wonder if anywhere else compares to the August heat in Amakusa. This is the kind of heat that helps you break a life-long chapstick addiction because the stuff doesn't stick to sweating lips. This is the kind of place where, in August, people replace the traditional "Konnichi wa" greeting with "Atsui desu, ne," meaning "It's hot, isn't it."

     But where was I? Oh yes, on the bus in Amakusa in August frantically searching for my wallet. As is bus custom in all countries when a bus reaches a stop, the door was open. Immediately, a wave of sticky, seaweed-stinking wetness had engulfed the air-conditioned atmosphere and all of us sitting or standing in it. It hit me like a dull hammer, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. Where was my wallet? People were starting to stare and to whisper. I unzipped yet another pocket and found nothing. Tried another bag, another pocket. Nothing, nothing. The whispers became accented with voice, fast and frantic, like my fingers.

     I looked up and a drop of sweat dropped from my nose to my left forearm. People were pointing and they looked angry and sweaty and the bus driver was waving his hands, yelling to the people waiting outside and I couldn't understand and it was so hot and I couldn't breathe and I am sinking and--Oh! I suddenly remembered where the secret place was. I spun around to reach the front pocket of the bag on my left shoulder, unknowingly tossing the bag on my right arm into the air, and then, as gravity would have it, onto the gray head of a tiny, wrinkled obaasan (old woman).

     "Sorry! I'm so sorry!" I said and reached down to touch her arm in apology. But my arm was slippery from sweat and the bag slid down, landing this time in her lap. She straightened up and avoided my eyes as I desperately whispered another apology. I grabbed the wallet from the bag, snatched the money from it, and held it out to the bus driver who took one look at it, put his arms out in front of him like an X, and barraged me with more indecipherables. "What's wrong?" I screamed. "Here. This is money! I want to get off this bus!" My English exclamations, just as indecipherable to him, were met with shouts from all directions. The driver dug into his pocket and drew out some coins, thrusting them in front of me. "I have no coins," I whimpered and showed him the inside of my wallet. "Only this bill," and I shook it in front of him. Again arms out in an X.
And then I felt a tap of my left arm. There she was--the obaasan I had hit twice with my luggage--holding out her hand. In it was the money I needed to get off the bus. "What? Is it ok?" I asked, bewildered. She jerked her hand forward, and I took the coins, dropped them on the conveyor belt, and, lugging all of my bags behind me, stepped off the bus and onto the ground of the town that would be my home for the next four years.

     It's been nearly four years since that day, but that experience is like the prologue to a collection of grace stories. And how different than I had expected! I had known what is well known in most Christian circles--that Japan has been unreceptive to Christianity. The number of Christians in Japan barely reaches one percent of its population of 120 million. And from this piece of knowledge, my expectations were born. In my first week here I wrote, after driving through the narrow, twisting, back-alley-like roads in my town, "I am lost in Japan. Japan is a messy map, jumbled and crooked, like a maze," and I wondered, "Where is God in Japan?"

     But now, as I look back on my life here, I realize that God has been everywhere, always, moving through the people that I live among, to touch me and hold me and love me. God is here in Japan in the guise of people and their kindness, their forgiveness, their grace. Praise God for being present in all of Creation!