Why We Don't Blog Every Day

For some reason I had this idea that life in Japan would be less busy than life in the United States.  What was I thinking? We find that our days and evenings are very full.

Our work here involves teaching 9 preschool classes each week with classes ranging from 8 to 40 students.  We also have 17 elementary school classes we teach each week, and 3 adult classes.  Some weeks we have an additional craft class for the preschoolers.  We travel to 4 different schools to do this. We are also responsible for the message 3 Sundays of the month, and we are leading the children who come to Sunday school, trying to put on an English musical with mostly non-English speaking children.  We also attend special activities at the preschools, from graduation dances to teacher outings to graduation ceremonies.  In addition we have a Bible study in our home every couple of weeks.  Add to all this being parents of three, trying to keep up on homeschooling, and trying to get together with old friends in this area, in Tokyo (1 hr. away where Christy used to go to church) and Chiba (where we used to live, 2 hrs away).  We are also working on organizing some Bible English camps for our final week here and writing curriculum for a children’s program this summer.

And of course while we love Japan, the lifestyle and the culture, we forgot about the time consuming aspects of grocery shopping every couple of days because everything has to be carried up the hill so we can’t stock up, and finding creative ways to get the laundry dried when it won’t stop raining. In addition, because we take buses and trains everywhere, transportation takes more time and planning too.  

In our free time we try to help the boys experience as much of Japan as possible.  They’ve gotten really great at eating with chopsticks (except Xavier, but he still insists on having them at the meal). They are learning some Japanese language and how to play Japanese games, how to do origami, and how to act when 20 preschoolers descend on them as they enter the preschool. They also are discovering ways to not be crushed on the train at rush hour.

We tell you all of this not to complain about our schedule, but to let you know all that we are doing and to explain why we haven’t been better at keeping in touch.