Sasaki Takuya

We started hosting a Japanese student through a program at the Alamo Community College. There are about 80 students here for a 3-week English intensive. We have a 25 year old young man named Sasaki Takuya. He said to call him Takuya (ta-coo-YAH). He is very pleasant and loves American television. He watches more American television in Japan than I do in the states. He knows all the popular shows but they seem to be a season or so behind Japan. Perhaps they only release them after the shows air here. In any case, he can correct me on the characters of several TV series such as Grey's Anatomy (which I only watch sporadically). He has not seen House and says medical shows are difficult to watch in Japanese because of all the jargon. He really enjoyed Mexican food, loves Italian food and pretty much all things American.
I was very surprised that he did not know the word 'Gospel'. We were browsing his Japanese-English electronic dictionary. The Japanese characters were on the left and the English word on the right. I saw the word 'Gospel' and asked him to click on the Japanese for it. He had never heard the word even pronounced in Japanese! He clicked it several more times so he could understand the Japanese pronunciation. The definition in Japanese was not exactly what I expected either. It translated something like a 'great undertaking.' I explained to him it meant 'Good News.' The story of Jesus.