JohnstonJournal.com | The official website of Jeff & Nozomi Johnston

The Japanese love to learn English!

There are many, many English classes all over the country. That's why I wasn't surprised when Mrs. T was very excited when I told her that I would do an English class for the kids over the summer. I meant to do a few classes in August, but with "Obon" week coming up, and with CAJ starting on the 25th, we could only come up with 1 day for all to enjoy. (Obon, pronounced /oh-bone/ is a time when many Japanese travel back to their parents' home. It has simply become a couple of days of vacation for many, but there are some who still use this time for welcoming back the spirits of their dead ancestors, and then sending them back afterward.)

I made some flyers to promote the English Party and asked Mrs. T to invite some of her friends. I love putting her in charge of recruiting, because within a week, she had 26 children and 15 adults lined up to come!! . . .

Of Bugs And Men

"Mr. Bug-Man" was one of the first men that Jeff talked to when we moved into this neighborhood. We started calling him Mr. Bugman because when the kids and I first met him, he had a Japanese beetle in a cage, and was telling us all about how he breeds them, what they eat, when they sleep, etc. All this information, he researched himself. Last September -- a month after we moved in, he even helped Zack find a bug for a school project. At that time, we told him that once our furniture shipment arrived and we got settled in our home, we would love to have them over to our house.

Well, 11 months and several invitations later, we were finally able to get our schedules together, and Mr. and Mrs. Bugman (actually Mr. & Mrs. H.) came over for lunch! . . .

Donut Ministry

Enjoying time with Miss Donut

When we were talking about eating donuts for Jesus over this past year, we weren't kidding! Well, okay, so we enjoy the donuts and go to Mister Donut because we like it, but it was also because we like A.Y. (initials), one of the workers there. She has always been very pleasant to us, and served us with a smile, and was great at seeing when we needed our coffee refills. So each time we went there, we'd talk to her more and more. Some of you remember the free pink mug we got after collecting 150 points. Well, 6 free mugs later, we decided it was time to invite A.Y. over to our house for lunch:)

Our complete MisDo Mug Collection from Mister Donut

We were thrilled when she agreed. . .

Now readers can leave comments on JohnstonJournal.com articles

JohnstonJournal.com has added a new feature enabling readers to comment on individual blog posts.  This has been a common feature on most blogs for years now -- and several of you have asked us why we have been so slow to add it to our site.

The simple answer is that spam is such a problem on the internet, and well, we just wanted to avoid having to administrate another area; plus we were afraid of some offensive stuff from spammers appearing on our site.  The more complicated answer is that the content management system software we run on our site (Joomla!) came out with the stable version of the software earlier this year.  It was in "beta" before that.  The comment component was a little buggy, and we wanted to wait until a more stable version came out before installing it on our site.

However, as with anyone who blogs, you get to the point where you begin to ask yourself:

"Is anyone out there even reading this blog?"

Comments are one way for the community to respond to things they're reading on our site.  It fosters interaction.  In our case, it helps people feel more connected to this shared ministry, and really does help encourage us to know that people do read our blog.

Ultimately, the balance of pros and cons shifted in favor of the pros.

So I installed and configured a new comment component for this site. Some of you are probably saying, "FINALLY!"  (For those people, you can even go back and write comments on past articles if you really feel like you missed out.)

I am still testing this component, so please let me know what you think -- whether good or bad -- about this comment feature.  And feel free to let us know if you have any other suggestions for improving the site.