We're Home

Just to let everyone know, we made it home today. After a very short night of sleep before departure and a long day of traveling, everyone is in bed now except me.  One of our bags didn't make it but should be delivered shortly, after which I will be going to bed too.  We will update this post with more information about our last days in Japan in the next day or two. - Terence

A Sunday Blessing

This Sunday we had a wonderful experience at church.  The church at Nishi Kunitachi is not a big church.  There are usually about 6 people from 4 families who come.  Over these past few weeks we have been inviting some of the children from the preschool who don't usually come to church to a children's program.  We have been working on a short musical, half in English and half in Japanese. Several families with elementary and preschool aged children have been coming and having a lot of fun playing and learning together.  We were very happy too when some of the families would stay for the service after the children's program.  We also encouraged the children to invite friends and family to the program, which we had this Sunday. 

What a wonderful surprise we had when we discovered we had set up too few chairs for the service.  In all we had about 30 adults and 15 children at church yesterday.  The children had a great service, and Christy ended with a short message.  After the service a large group of us (over 3o people), including some of the new families, went to a large park for a picnic lunch and a chance to enjoy the beautiful spring weather. It was such a sight to see a big group of us traveling by train to one stop and transfering to another stop and then getting to the large park. There were several strollers and a number of Americans. I now understand why when Japanese people travel they usually go on an organized tour. Getting everyone on the train together was a bit of a challenge. But the result was well worth it.

This was our last Sunday with the church, and it was a wonderful ending to our time here in Japan.

Willem's Journal 2-28-09

Today we were home most of the day, but then around dinner we met Sela and Reo near Sanrio Puroland and we ate at a Korean restaurant.  Sela and Reo's mom is from Arizona and their dad is from Japan, so Sela and Reo can speak pretty good English.  After we ate there we went outside and daddy, Xavier and their dad both went home in their car.  Then, while we were walking to the Mister Donuts near Sanrio Puroland, Reo was teaching me how you do a top with a string.  The string basically spins it.  After we ate our donuts we played outside while thier mom (whose name was Holly) and our mom chatted.  After that we rode the train to Wakabadai station.  Then Tai, Mommy and I rode the bus home while they walked home.  Once we got home we went to bed.

Fast Fact: Koreans eat spicy food.

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.

Mmmm Mmmm Good

One thing we were looking forward to when we knew we were coming back to Japan was all the delicious food.  But I have to admit, there are some Japanese foods that we are not such big fans of, and here are a few of them.  Enjoy:

The first one that comes to mind as almost universally detested by non-Japanese is natto. Natto is fermented soy beans (I'd say rancid).  They are stinky, brown and gooey.  When you pick them up with your chopsticks they trail strings like melted mozzarella.  They are most commonly eaten at breakfast with a little soy sauce and spicy mustard.  It is not uncommon to see kids at the preschools with little threads around their mouths (and a nasty smell on their breath) as a hint of what they had for breakfast.  Terence actually will eat natto, but it has the distinction of being one of the first foods we've found that Willem does not like (although some of the following have since fallen into that category).

Tororo (or as we like to call it, Tengu snot) - Tororo is a grated mountain yam.  A few weeks ago we visited Mt. Takao, a popular nature area near here.  Tororo is a specialty, and especially during the winter it features in many of the dishes.  Takao is also famous for long nosed goblins called tengu, so when we were served a dish of Tororo at the restaurant, we lovingly renamed it.

Eel guts and tiny squid - Last weekend we stayed at a traditional Japanese inn in Narita while visiting friends from our first time in Japan.  These inns serve kaiseki ryori, a traditional meal of many small dishes of different things.  One dish we got included two tiny (as in about 1 1/2 inches long) simmered squids and some eel guts on a stick.  This second one was especially appealing as on our walk through Narita to the inn we stopped by an eel restaurant to watch two workers preparing live eels at a table outside. 

Continuing in the vein of small seafood, a very popular item, especially with kids at the preschools, is shirasu, tiny, tiny little fish (perhaps 1/4 inch long, not much more than a white thread with two black eyespots).  The preschool kids like them mixed into their rice.  The boys' breakfast at the inn included a dish with just the fish topped with what appeared to be soy sauce.

Now realize that these are just a couple of things we find hard to swallow (literally) here in Japan.  A majority of the food here is great.  For example, even the most mediocre sushi from a convenience store here is as good or better that what we can get back home.  

Aunts and Uncles in Japan

One of the great things about being back in Japan is reconnecting with the missionary staff.  Even though most of the missionaries in Japan are Special Assignment Missionaries, that in no way means that they are short term. Even the Bartons, who are career missionaries here started out on a two year SAM assignment.  The Bartons and 3 other SAMS who are here now, were here back when Christy was in Japan the first time (1992) even before she met Terence. They were Christy's extended family the first time she came, fresh out of college and new to life abroad. Mike Wagner, especially, is like a big brother to her. Christy has many fond memories of holidays and missionary staff meetings at the Barton's house with everyone. We also spent our first Christmas as a married couple visiting the other missionaries around Japan.

When our boys were born and we came back for our second term with an infant in tow, these same missionaries became surrogate aunts and uncles to Willem, Tai and now Xavier, too. 

We have enjoyed getting together with them now a couple of times since we've arrived.  This past week Bernie and Cheryl Barton and Zonia Mitchell were able to come over for dinner on Valentines Day.  We had fun talking together.  It was almost as if there wasn't a gap of six years since last time we had been in Japan.  

After dinner we all did something uniquely Japanese.  Though it is something that the missionary staff always enjoys, we must remind ourselves that it sounds so odd to North American ears.  Down the hill from our apartment is a brand new multi-level complex that is basically a bunch of public baths.  Now before anyone gets too concerned, they are segregated by gender.  As someone noted in an local English language magazine, she has seen more naked people in a short time in Japan than she has seen in North America in her entire life.  So Terence, Bernie and the boys went together to the men's bath to strip down and hang out with a fair number of other men enjoying water of varying temperatures and locations, both inside and outside.  Christy and Cheryl did the same in the women's baths.  (Zonia offered to watch Xavier for us because as the sign said, "The person attaching a diaper cannot enter the bath").  

It sounds like it would be a very awkward situation, but once you get past your own issues you realize that no one really pays attention to the fact that you are naked.

This was the boy's first experience in a Japanese public bath.  They loved it, and started counting down the days to the next opportunity we would have.  They don't know it, but we missed an opportunity a few weeks ago when the missionaries got together to celebrate Bernie's birthday with dinner and, of course, a bath.

The Little Things - Good and Bad

This entry will be little glimpses of our life here in Japan.

Little things that are challenging:

1. Our little kitchen (that one is from Terence). Total kitchen space - counter, sink, stove, convection oven, cabinets above and below all in about an 8 foot strip.

2. The child with one hand in her mouth and one hand in her pants as you approach to shake hands. This one was from Willem. "I was going to shake the one not in her mouth until the other one went in her pants." (For some reason, perhaps in order to manage the total lack of privacy, there seem to be short times when Japanese people forget they are in public places - this is also seen on the trains when adult men decided it is time to clean out their nasal passages.) 

3. Body odor on the train - sharing a train car with 50 other people returning home from a long day of work. Our boys have experienced Tokyo trains during rush hour.

4. Waiting days for your clothes to dry. After they come out of our washing machine (the same one we used 8 years ago - and it wasn't new then) they get hung on an assortment of racks out on the balcony and on hangers from the curtain rods. When it is rainy and cold it can take days for them to dry.

5. The lack of insulation - hauling your heater from room to room and squeegeeing over two cups of condensation off the windows some mornings.

Little things we love about Japan:

1. The bath - plug it in, push a button and it fills the tub and heats the water to the temperature and depth of your choosing. Then, even hours later you can bathe with water up to your neck that is still at the temperature that you chose.

2. The man on the train that not only gave up his seat at rush hour for sleeping Xavier and Christy, but also watched out for Willem and Tai who were by a door and at risk of getting swept off the train. He even got off at our transfer stop with the boys to make sure they stayed on the platform and didn't get separated from us in the crowd. 

3. Getting hot and cold drinks from machines whenever you want.

4. Watching Evergreen Kids Choir sing original gospel songs and their own version of "O Happy Day" - Evergreen Choir is the ministry of one of the Preschool Directors and is made up of a group of 60 Japanese elementary and junior high kids. 

5. Excellent public parks and community centers - where you 

can play dress-up in an old farm house, make cool crafts and projects from wood, jump on giant bouncy clouds, climb on a series of stone and mosaic dragons and, best of all make, as much noise as you want without worrying about neighbors.

6. Being given a cup of hot green tea, coffee or British tea as you come in to work

There are many more little things that we like about Japan but we will save those for another time.