Summer vacation for school kids is a lot shorter in Japan than the U.S. Kids are still in school, and will be until the end of the week. Then, finally, summer vacation starts -- the kids get 5 or 6 weeks off.

To help the kids celebrate, and do a little outreach, our church is having a "Kids' Fair" for grade schoolers on Saturday. Bible stories, games, crafts and food. Like a one day VBS. We've done this in the past, attracting 20 or so kids. But we're hoping for a lot more this year. Not only is our Sunday School back up, which should help, but we've conquered a new PR avenue this year.

Japanese neighborhoods are organized around the local Shinto shrine. Every house is registered to a specific shrine, and every community has a Neighborhood Association -- a civic group that, also, is connected to the shrine. The civic groups are very active, organizing neighborhood clean up days, getting public notices out to all the homes, collecting dues, collecting gifts for approved charities, etc., etc. They also have bulletin boards scattered through the community, with official notices for the citizens. All very civic in nature in the minds of most folk, though quite colored by being associated with the Shinto shrine if you look at it objectively.

The bulletin boards would be a great place to advertise the "Kids' Fair" -- except that they are for civic announcements, not religious. We haven't been allowed to use them in the past. Well, our young pastor's wife decided it was time to try again, and went armed with fliers to the local officials. "We want to advertise our Kids' Fair on the community bulletin boards." "You can't, that's a church function -- religious, not civic." "But, the shrine advertises their festivals on the bulletin boards. That's the same, right?" "..." "Right?" "But the shrine priest doesn't like it when other religions advertise." "But these are community bulletin boards, and our church is part of the community." "..." "Right?" "Okay, you can put them up but if anyone complains we'll have to take them down."

A week later, they're still up. Pray the bulletins turn out to be effective advertising and that lots of kids come! Aileen and I will both be involved in the Fair.