Our Easter celebrations were different yet the same this year. Jesus is still Risen, even all the way over here! Big Sundays in the church year always make me feel closer to Christians all over the world. The Saturday before Palm Sunday our church had its annual Easter party. There seem to be only a few families that are regular attenders in the Japanese side of the church, but for the party the kids from our church's English class were invited, so there were probably about 25 kids in all. I talked to one of the Japanese moms at the party (I was in charge of egg dyeing!) and she said that the Easter eggs and all that Easter entails is very novel to the Japanese people. That makes perfect sense since the majority of their country isn't Christian. We certainly didn't see any signs out in town of any awareness of Easter. So it was good to have the other kids involved. They loved dyeing eggs and hunting for them, doing crafts, and our Pastor did a nice job retelling the good news of Jesus' resurrection.
After our joint service on Easter, we had a potluck. I'd decided to bring a number of dishes, and it wouldn't have felt much like Easter without Mom's Refrigerator Mashed Potatoes. I don't make potatoes much anyway and hadn't looked at the prices here, so I almost changed my mind when the sing underneath the 5 lb. bags said $12.67. What?! The Japanese lady at the cash register even double-checked to see if I still wanted them. . . "Are you sure? Usually they only 9.99." I decided we will just eat real potatoes 3 times while we're here - once every Easter.
