I’ve never been a Lewis Caroll fan, but every time I visit Japan I’m tempted to think I have either gone ‘through the looking glass’ or spent a little time in ‘Wonderland’. It is so different, so intoxicating and simply such a lovely country to visit.

Our most recent visit certainly lived up to expectations. I met my first fully robotic toilet for example! Musical toilets and warm seats are par for the course for this seasoned Japanese visitor but a toilet that does everything from the lid rising up to meet you as you enter to it slowly closing as you exit was definitely a new adventure.

The robot waiter in a local restaurant was a new experience too, as was the musical tarmac we met when on the road up Mount Fuji. The local dog show will forever remain in my memory. Most of the pampered canines were seated in pushchairs and the majority were wearing clothes. The cutie one wearing ‘Levi jeans’ was probably the most notable.

Japan is so very different then. The complete absence of litter is proof of that, not to mention the unaccompanied children you see commuting to school in the centre of Tokyo at the tender age of six! The more I reflect on that, the greater the contrast I see between our culture and the one you find in the "land of the rising sun”.

Yet for all this the thing that impressed me most was the way people stepped up to help us when they perceived we were in difficulty. We didn’t need to ask anyone; they approached us to find out if we needed assistance. It was done thoughtfully; it was done politely and was obviously birthed out of compassion. On a few occasions it proved invaluable. We would not have strolled along the Philosophers Walk for example if a smiling lady on a bike had not stopped to ask if we were looking for it.

We will soon be entering the Advent season when we can enjoy singing carols and scoff lots of mince pies again. But in the midst of all the festivities we’d be foolish to forget that at the heart of the Christmas story is the amazing claim that the eternal Son of God chose to become a normal human being. As Michael Card says, ‘No fiction as fantastic and wild: A mother made by her own child. The hopeless babe who cried was God Incarnate and man deified’. The apostle John put it this way: ‘The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood’ (Message Translation). He did this to show us how to live in ways that please God, which will inevitably mean creating a different culture. Indeed one well known Christian commentator talks of a ‘Christian counter culture’.

Just as importantly, as we enter the unpredictable, volatile world of ‘MAGA Land’ given Mr Trump’s historic victory, the church need not panic because it knows God is in ultimate control of history - and can look forward to the time when God will wipe every tear from our eyes and create a new world in which there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.