The Little Things That Make it Home

It’s the little things here in Japan that are slowly starting to make this place feel like home. Small things that one often takes for granted can help to make a place feel like home instead of “that place I’m currently sleeping in” (I refrain from using the word house when referring to Japan). My apartment finally has some groceries on the shelves, towels around the kitchen, things hanging in my bedroom, pictures of friends, and a coffee-ish table filled with my collection of notes and mail since I’ve been here…starting to look like someone actually lives here. I’m also becoming acclimated into my neighborhood more. I know exactly how much a Red Bull costs, found the local ATM, picked up my alien registration card, I have my nightly running route, have a membership to the local grocery store and my favorite local vegetable stand; trivial items but you’d be surprised at how much they can make a difference in a foreign land. This neighborhood is finally starting to feel like home. After a long day of school or a day at church I often think to myself how nice is will be to be ‘home’, and now my home is Adachi-ku. It strikes me as odd to think that I’ve only been here for a month, but at the same time how much I’ve already started to adjust to my new life in Japan, and how much of the language I really have learned.

The weather is finally starting to turn to autumn which makes me excited and anxious at the same time. Fall is often reminiscent of pumpkin carvings, football, Halloween, hot apple cider, and watching the beautiful trees turn colors, (whether it is in the Ozarks or outside Huegli Hall). I’m excited to see what Tokyo looks like with autumn leaves turning bright colors. This weekend I have a retreat in Nagano, and the next weekend I also have a retreat in a more remote area of Tokyo so hopefully I’ll be able to take pictures of the beautiful trees which I’m hoping will have turned by then!



Before arriving in Japan I was expecting to miss out on Halloween completely since that is an American Holiday…or so I thought. Halloween decorations are everywhere in Tokyo! My church this past Sunday even had a Halloween themed Sunday School for the kids. The teachers and Pastor dressed up in costumes and hid around the church while the kids tried to find them. Once they found them they had to solve a puzzle or recite the Lord’s Prayer or something else they had learned from Children’s Service in order to get their candy. It was really entertaining to watch, and made me think that maybe our traditions aren’t so unique after all. Sunday really made me stop and think that I have more in common with the people of Japan than I thought and am constantly being reminding of that on a daily basis.





That is all for now. I’ll be sure to write after the J3 retreat this weekend and share that experience with you!

The Formation of New Relationships

To continue with the last entry I’m going to continue to talk about relationships. I may have given off the impression that I haven’t made any new relationships while I’ve been in Japan. On the contrary, I’ve actually made quite a few friends here, most of them being other missionaries, but relationships none the less. The missionary community within Tokyo that I’ve been introduced to consists of ELCA missionaries as well as Missouri Synod missionaries. Our language classes consist of Doug, Sue, myself and one VYM (The Missouri Synod equivalent of J3’s) named Peter. He is new to Japan as well and has the same time line we do. So it has been fun having class with him, he is fresh out of college like myself as well, which makes it nice to begin to have a new peer group. Within the VYM program there are many other missionaries that we see around the school, teaching there, taking classes, or working in their office. They are very sweet people within this program who have been very generous, and gracious in helping to get us acclimated. I met a lot of other VYMs when I participated in the Discover Tokyo Day, and met a lot of great new friends who I will be spending more and more time with in Tokyo since I will continue to be placed here once I begin teaching in April.

At the Hongo Student Center (where eventually I believe I will be placed) I have met the two J3’s in Tokyo, Matt Linden and Charity Hall, and another missionary Eric and his wife Christy. The people who work at Hongo have also been very friendly and made me feel included already in their ministry. I try to go to Hongo on Friday nights for Bible Study and English Coffee hour. It’s a great way to meet people as well as begin to understand the responsibilities that I will be carrying out in April when I take over a position there. In addition to their Friday night activities they also have English worship on Sunday nights, which I will be going to tomorrow, and it is going to be the Holden Evening Prayer service, MY FAVORITE, so I’m excited about that. So Hongo has served to be a very instrumental place in meeting other missionaries as well as meeting people from the community who are learning English.

We have also all been assigned to specific Lutheran Churches around Tokyo. My church has a young female pastor, Pastor Maho, who is great and has been very inviting and welcoming in my limited interaction with her thus far. There is also a young Japanese/Chinese woman there named March who has been serving as my interpreter during the service as well as in conversations. She also has two daughters, Umi who is 1 month, and Ami who is 2. I get to play with her kids during the service which is great because I absolutely love children, and I find it a blessing that I’m going to be able to watch Umi grow up while I’m living in Tokyo…kinda cool. March and I have exchanged e-mails several times since we last met Sunday, and she has been very gracious and friendly and I am excited about that new friendship as well. Everyone at that church has been more than welcoming and I can already tell it is going to be a great place to worship and I am excited about attending church there again tomorrow.

We have also been invited and have gone to several other worship services around Tokyo, dinners, and lectures where we have met many people. Everyone who knows a little English tried to practice with us as we try to practice the little Japanese we know. Although the language barrier may be difficult at times, it is slowly becoming easier to over come. It is amazing how once you start learning a new language doors just start opening for you. I hope this entry puts some people’s minds at ease, that although it is difficult to sustain and maintain new relationships in a new land, these relationships have also been a blessing. I look forward to making more friends every week I’m here, and working on the relationships I have already made.

A Perfect Night by Candlelight

Since I have taken residence in Japan I have been struggling with being disconnected from people. With the exception of a few friends, I feel as though I’ve been cut off from everyone and thrown into a land where relationships are prohibited by an ever pervasive language barrier. I understand that with time this barrier will slowly dissipate, but for the moment it is a bit daunting. These severed relationships not only stem from moving away from Rogers, Arkansas but also from leaving my last home, Valparaiso University. I never realized how nourished my spiritual life was there or how strong my relationships were until they were not physically present everyday.

With all that being stated; last night we visited the Lutheran Seminary here in Tokyo for an evening prayer service. I asked various questions about what the service would entail. Would it be in English? Who would be there? How long would it last? Then someone told me in was the Holden Evening Prayer service, “do you know it?” they asked. I almost had tears in my eyes when I replied yes. Something I once took for granted has come to mean more to me than I can verbalize. This prayer service has been my weekly routine for the past four years. At Valparaiso every Sunday night at 10 pm we have our Candlelight service, which is the Holden Evening Prayer. This service is something myself and my sorority sisters, close friends, classmates, teachers, and a large portion of campus would attend. This service became tradition throughout college, something that has been fulfilling for me spiritually, something that connected us as a campus and something to begin our week. As I participated and sang loudly last night (for the first time in Japan the hymns were in English!) I closed my eyes and felt those connections. The hundreds of friends I left behind in Valpo going through the same service, the same songs, the same… We might not have had candles, and granted the music was done on a harp instead of a piano…but it was the same. I could feel the tears swelling up as I realized that although I may be 7,000 miles away from home I am still connected. The similarities in some experiences I’ve had here and my experiences at home sometimes even surprise me.

To all my Valparaiso kin, know that next time you are at Candlelight service, I very well may be participating in the same service thousands of miles away. Whenever we feel as though we are separated from everything and everyone we know and love, take a breath and realize it’s all the same…just a different location. This really has put some situations in perspective for me; it was just what I needed. No matter how disconnected I may feel from someone or my “homeland” God gives me those reminders…you are still home.

My New Home in Tokyo

This blog entry is way over due, my apologies for taking so long to update! It feels as though these past two weeks have just flown by. To begin with my trip here: My dad, two brothers, and grandparents dropped me off at O’Hare airport on Sunday morning. The day started off to a good start when I wasn’t charged for my over weight luggage, which is a good thing because it was WAY over weight. This meant I was off to a good start. I then wandered around the airport, since it is my favorite place, and met up with Doug and Sue. We boarded the plane and I had a seat open next to me which was really nice. I was able to stretch out on the flight and get slightly more comfortable, I think the man next to me enjoyed the extra space as well. The flight was just around 13 hours…so not much longer than my drive from Rogers to Valparaiso. The flight was really smooth and the movies kept me occupied. We landed at Narita and waited in many long lines to get through immigration, customs, for our luggage, and then another line I’m not quite sure what we did. I was FINALLY greeted at an airport with a sign, something I’ve also wanted to happen! We met our hosts and were picked up and taken to Tokyo. Some of our luggage had to be shipped to us because between the four of us we had probably 13 suitcases. We then traveled by van to our new homes in Adachi-ku. We unloaded in our apartments and tried to get settled in. We then went down the street for dinner and received some more information, and schedules for the following weeks.
The apartment is what you would generally expect for an apartment in Tokyo. It is small but manageable; after all it is just me. This apartment will be my home until March at which point I will move to another part of Tokyo before I start teaching. We spent the next few days trying to get settled, setting up bank accounts, applying for alien registration, buying cell phones, getting commuter passes for the train, meeting people at the Japanese Evangelical Lutheran Church headquarters as well as the Japanese Evangelical Lutheran Association. Cindy, the J3 coordinator, has been MORE than helpful with making sure we knew what we were doing, where we were going and making sure we were well taken care of. I cannot imagine trying to do any of this without her. We also started language school last week, we have begun by learning Hiragana and Katakana, I’m glad I started studying those this summer it put me a leg up and I feel I was better able to catch on. We have also begun learning different beginning phrases and greetings; everything in Japan is so formal! But overall class is going well, we meet 4 times a week for 3 hours. I hope that I will begin to pick it up quicker because not being able to communicate has probably been my biggest problem. I’m so used to being able to communicate with those around me, I forgot how much of a language barrier there really is. Not as many people speak English as I would have imagined…I think I ran into more people who spoke English while I was in China.
My adjustments and first impressions…. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting when I moved to Tokyo…I guess I was kind of expecting it to be like China, and it is not, at all. That is not a bad thing; I think I was just basing my expectations on the only other Asia country I’ve visited…which I think is normal. I really am enjoying Japan thus far. Tokyo is a VERY large city and I have much to see, weekends are spent traveling around whether it’s the next train station over or exploring aquariums in far off areas of Tokyo. I’m still trying to adjust to the cost of living over here; it is very expensive, once again nothing like China. Other than that I would like to think I’m adjusting well. Jet lag has been a bit of a problem and I often wake up at 4 am, but thanks to Skype I can always find someone to talk with for hours until I actually start my day. As the days go by it is becoming easier to sleep in, but I still find myself waking up in the middle of the night and trying to force myself back to bed. I could keep typing about my experiences but I will try to save something for next time, and hopefully I will start posting on a more regular basis.