It would seem that everyone has their own way of making decisions.  Some people proactively weigh all their options and determine the best solution, while others passively sit back and let fate take its course.  Having been in Japan for over a year now, I have had the interesting opportunity to witness how the Japanese settle matters of their own.

I have found what seems to possibly be a country-wide way of deciding relatively trivial, group-related matters, and I must say I was a bit surprised at first.  Do you remember the childhood game you would play just for fun – Rock, Paper, Scissors?  Well, did you know that half-way around the world, grown men and women play this game to determine the outcome of various situations?  Yes, they do!  And they seem to love it too!

Now, mind you, they only play this when deciding simple and unimportant matters – bigger issues like who to marry, where to live, what job to look for, they probably decide in the same way anyone else would.  However, small things, such as who goes first in a game, who gets first choice of a particular item, etc. seem to get decided using Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Here in Japan it is known by a different name – Janken, which to me sounds like John Ken.  It is played the same way as in America, but the Japanese have a little mantra they like to say while throwing their hands in the circle.  It is played fast and somehow (maybe from years of experience) once all the hands have been “thrown in”, everyone seems to know immediately who has won, lost, or needs a redo.  Cries of joy and disappointment can be heard as everyone resigns themselves to what fate has decided.

One of our first times witnessing such an event (and at times it certainly is an event) was last year during one of our craft classes.  The group was getting ready to choose what kind of material they wanted for their craft and all the materials were laid on the table.  Of course, because we were the foreigners, they had us pick our material first, and then afterward commenced with their Janken routine.  Being that there were a number of women (the youngest of whom was probably in her late 50’s) the game lasted several minutes and finally each woman was granted her turn to pick her material.  While it was such an astonishing sight to see a group of elderly Japanese women Janken for something, it seemed like a perfectly natural process to them.

Janken is often used in kids’ games as all the kids have to throw their hands in against the leader and that often determines if they’ve won a particular game.  I’ve heard one missionary say that when he attends a pastors’ meeting, they do Janken when it is time to decide who will pray with whom.  I guess it can get quite intense and complex as over and over again they throw in their hands to try to figure out who will pair up!  Can you imagine your pastor doing this?

As Colby and I have speculated on this practice, we’ve come to realize that a significant reason why the Japanese make decisions in this way is likely because they feel it is better to let fate decide.  If the teacher of the craft class were to choose who got to pick their material first, it might offend the others and might not be fair.  Better to let a game decide who will go first because then no one is responsible for the outcome.  Decision making, which can sometimes be a touchy thing, becomes safe and even fun when done in this non-threatening way.  What an interesting way of looking at making decisions!

Please pray for us as we continue to adjust to living in the Japanese culture.  Pray that we would continually try to understand and adapt to the Japanese thought process.

This past Saturday was quite an adventure… for my stomach. No – Theresa and I didn’t try some new Japanese food or get sick off the sushi we are so fond of. I have had occasional bouts of indigestion and, although it is easily treated on an as needed basis with stomach medication, my doctor in America recommended that some time in the future I have an endoscope examination (that’s the camera on the end of a long tube that they stick down into your stomach).  I didn’t have time to get it done before we came to Japan and have been putting it off for a while until we got more language under our belts. With having passed the level 3 test and having some recent heartburn, I finally decided to make an appointment. We talked with some Japanese friends here and they recommended a doctor that they had used.

When I called for an appointment, they were able to get me in quite quickly, but unfortunately, the appointment was at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. So much for my day to sleep in. After talking with the doctor for a few minutes, we were taken into a room where I was given some medicine to drink and then had to lay down while the nurse put a tube coated with a local anesthetic into my nose. After a few minutes the doctor came in and off we went.

I will save you all the unpleasant details (unpleasant being the optimal word) but suffice it to say, they had it set up so there was a big monitor just inches from my face with a feed of what the doctor was seeing on the camera. It was a great review of Japanese anatomy words as the doctor paused at each interesting junction to play tour guide and snap a few photos with the camera.

Thankfully, Theresa was there to play translator for some of the more complicated instructions as it would have been rather hard to use my dictionary in that position. After hunting around for a while and taking a few samples, he proclaimed that he didn’t see any obvious problems and then removed the device. (It’s still making my stomach turn just writing about it.) I was given a bluish-green liquid about the viscosity of honey to drink to stop the bleeding from some of the scrapings he had done and was given a supply of more of my stomach medicine and sent on my way. The whole thing was over in around 45 minutes – fairly efficient for what is supposed to be a socialized medicine system.

The more pleasant part of the morning (as far as my stomach was concerned) followed as Theresa and I went to check out a large shopping mall in the next town over that a number of people had told us about. One of the reasons they directed us there was that the mall had a large international food store. Although the prices were a little higher than usual, it was nice to see familiar snacks – the most important of which was Theresa’s coveted salt and vinegar chips and a block of Colby cheese! After picking up a few things for ourselves and some gifts for our language helpers, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed home.

Praise the Lord for our continued good health. Pray that we will continue to have health and strength as we learn Japanese and connect with people.

Just this past Sunday, Valentine’s Day, it made a year that Colby and I have been in Japan.  Because we arrived on February 14th last year, Colby likes to tell people that he gave me a trip to Japan for Valentine’s Day.  If you think of it that way, then we’re still enjoying our 2009 Valentine present!  (By the way for you ladies out there, don’t worry, he still got me something for Valentine’s Day this year – flowers!)

This past year has had the usual ups and downs of a missionary’s first term and then some I think.  In looking back, there are a few that stick out to me.

Last February we got settled into the house, began with our language tutor, and bought our first car here in Japan.  In April, we had a work team from Atlanta come to help with the church and apartment remodeling.  They were a wonderful help and raised a great deal of money that enabled us to have a finished and functioning church and apartment.

The Atlanta Team

Then in May, one of the families we worked with unexpectedly decided to return to America.  Also during this month, we had our first visitor, a college friend of ours, who came to stay with us for a few days.

June saw us back in America for a week for Colby’s sister’s wedding and almost as soon as we returned we moved from the house on the property to our apartment.

The dining room and part of our living room of our apartment after we moved in.

In the fall we started our English classes and got our Japanese driver’s licenses.  A highlight was our annual retreat with the other missionaries and then afterward our trek up to the Tokyo area for the Church Planting conference.  Christmas and New Year’s festivities were our next highlights as we took time off from English classes and Japanese study to spend time together and with the other missionaries.

The Christar Japan missionaries at our annual retreat.

Thus far this year, we have seen our other teammates also return to America, as well as begin our partnership with another family here on the field.  We have had the joy of passing the first of our language tests and have begun with our religious study.

Needless to say, it has been a full year.  Have we grown this past year?  Oh my, yes!  Maybe I will recount some of the ways we have in future blog posts as it would certainly make this one too long.  And the great extent to which we have grown, we have also seen God’s hand and heart over us.

We have appreciated your many prayers for us this past year, thank you!

The long-awaited-for day dawned rainy and a bit chilly this past Monday morning.   After sleeping in a bit to make sure we weren’t too tired that morning, we ate a healthy breakfast of eggs, pineapple, and yogurt – all designed to help stimulate our brain functions to the highest level.  Then, after making sure we had two sharpened pencils, the timer set, and our heads on as straight as possible, we began to take the first of our Japanese language tests.

We started with the kanji and vocabulary section.  For those of you who don’t know, kanji are the Chinese pictorial characters the Japanese use in their writing system.  In this section of the test, we had to identify the correct readings and kanji for various words.  We also had to choose which answer was most similar in meaning to the question.

Next came the grammar section and reading section.  Here, we had to identify the correct particles, verb tenses, forms, etc. to complete various sentences.  At the end, there were two short articles for us to read and answer comprehension questions about.

Lastly, was the listening comprehension section.  This was the part we were most nervous about.  It involved listening to dialogues on a CD and answering various comprehension questions.  Because of some of our prior listening practice, we were afraid that the dialogues would be fast and difficult to follow.

After having completed the test, I am pleased to say that each section was actually much easier than we thought they would be.  We understood both the kanji and grammar parts well, and the listening dialogues were actually a very good speed.  We took our answers to our language tutor’s house the next day where she graded them and we found that we both passed!  It is a wonderful relief and weight off our shoulders to know that this first of many milestones is now behind us.

What is next you ask?  Well, because of preparing for this test so much last week, we actually did enough study to cover last week and this week.  With that in mind, we are going to take a bit of time off the rest of this week so that we can catch up with various things around the apartment.  Next week we will begin with our religious language studies with the help of one of our friends here at the church.  We will focus primarily on that for the next few months until we have gone through that material and then we will continue on with regular Japanese study at an intermediate level.  We are excited for the change of pace and look forward to continuing on in our learning!

Thank you all for your many prayers for us concerning this test.  Praise the Lord with us that we were able to pass it.  Please pray that the grammar concepts and words we worked hard to learn would become second-nature to us in daily conversation.

So we just had our first dentist experience here in Japan this past Friday.  It was both interesting and insightful for us foreigners who are mindful of culture.  First let me say that thankfully no cavities were found and that Colby and my brushing habits need little improvement.

We had been warned by our teammates to try to get an early morning appointment since later appointments mean waiting longer beforehand.  We arrived promptly at ten of nine and were given paperwork to fill out.  Here was the first cultural note: the receptionist handed us a pencil with which to write our information.  A pencil!  In America, it’s always with a black pen that we fill out forms so that years from now the information will still be legible.  Ah well, maybe they’ll just ask us for the information again if it ever becomes hard to read.

Very soon we were both taken to separate rooms for our cleaning.  As I sat down on the chair, the hygienist asked, “Kenshin desuka?”, which I thought sounded an awful lot like “Genkin desuka?”, which would mean, “Are you paying by cash?”.  I happily replied that I was, but then as I sat back in the chair I realized that the question was different than what I thought.  Quickly getting my dictionary, I looked up “kenshin”, which turns out to mean (at least this particular entry in my dictionary) “devotion”.  “That’s odd,” I thought, but I still decided that I had given an appropriate answer because, after all, I do feel very devoted to cleaning my teeth.

Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask her what “kenshin” actually was (because unfortunately, my dictionary is not an exhaustive one), and after she looked in my dictionary herself, we realized that the word she was using wasn’t there.  She giggled and then explained that it meant cleaning.  “Oh, phew,” I thought, “I guess ‘yes’ was correct then!”

She then set out to clean my teeth.  Here came the next two cultural notes: Instead of the paper throw-away bib that American dentists put on their patients, she put a cloth bib on me!  Not at all that I mind, but it seems like it would take them more work to wash them than it would to just throw them away.  Who knows, maybe the paper ones in Japan are too expensive.  Also, in Japanese, store clerks and company employees seem to have set phrases that they use often in various situations.  For example, as the hygienist lowered the chair, she said, “I’m lowering the chair,” and she did the same thing when she raised the chair.  When she started to clean my teeth, she said “I’m going to begin cleaning now.”  Maybe they have these set phrases in America as well, but here it seems like these phrases replace any conversational chatter that American employees sometimes strike up with customers.  At any rate, it’s easy to follow because they are usually short and simple sentences.

In Japan, people usually close their eyes while the dentist cleans their teeth.  Knowing this beforehand, I purposely tried to do so myself, as I am a typical American who likes to know what’s going on.  I could hear the dentist talking to Colby in the next room.  Another cultural thing about the Japanese is that they often say things like “yes,” “uh huh”, and so on to affirm that they are listening.  The dentist must have had his hands in Colby’s mouth while he was talking because Colby’s responses came through the wall sounding all warped and garbled.

Next, the dentist came in to take a look at my teeth.  Thankfully I didn’t need to try to respond when he was peering into my mouth.  He said that it looked like I didn’t have any calculus.  “Calculus?” I thought, wondering if it was an English word he was trying to say.  I quickly tried to look in my dictionary for the word but to no avail.  Then the dentist took my dictionary and started to look for it himself (I love it when the Japanese use our dictionary to find words!).  At last, when he could find it, I heard Colby shout over, “It’s calcified plaque, Theresa.”  The dentist and I both looked at each other as if to say, “Now how did he figure that out?”

All in all, it was a gratifying experience as we found that we were able to go to the Japanese dentist by ourselves.  It was the first time I have ever sat in the dentist’s chair with a dictionary on my lap though!

Praise the Lord that we are continually able to conquer more and more tasks in Japanese.  While we are sad at the Burwell’s departure, pray that it will help continue to push us “out of the nest.”

This past Sunday was both a happy and sad time here at the church.  The church turned 10 years old in January, and this past Sunday held their birthday service.  Like they do every year, they had a giant cake which everyone got to add a candle to.  However, it was also the farewell party for our teammates, the Burwells, as it was their last Sunday with us before they went back to America.  As you can imagine, we had a big crowd and the normal tradition of having everyone share something was reduced to one person from each group represented sharing a little.

Please pray for the church as they continue to adjust to not having a missionary to help them out full-time.  There will be a number of responsibilities that will have to be absorbed by a small number of people. This year, also, will be the end of some grants that have helped to support the church as it has grown.  They continue to trust the Lord for additional growth so the church can cover its own expenses and would appreciate your prayers on their behalf.

The Japanese have a unique and fascinating culture that goes back almost 2000 years. But what is equally as fascinating is the way the Japanese process foreign trends and cultures. Yesterday was a good example.

Since 2004, Chuck & Jan Burwell (our teammates here in Ube) have participated in a gospel musical group that meets here in Ube. The interesting part is the connection the members of the group have to gospel music. All of the people in the group are Japanese. Most are not Christians and a few speak English, but none fluently. They discovered gospel mostly through recordings and videos on the internet and were attracted to the upbeat tempo and all-around energy in the performance. The group is part of a network in the region run by a Japanese woman. They meet every week for practice and perform at various events in the area. Other than the fact that their pronunciation of English songs (around 75% of their repertoire) can sometimes be hard to understand, they are really pretty good. The catch is that, unlike the spontaneous outpouring that gospel music usually is, their performance is largely scripted. They have rehearsed when and how to sway back and forth and do various motions; when to give little God shout-outs and do the occasional rap; and many of the details of the solos that might otherwise be free-form. They watch videos of performances and try to copy as best as they can to the original.

You can see as the choir performs two songs, first in Japanese and then in English.

This particular performance had an interesting second dimension as well. It was held at “Kaze no Mieru Oka – Feliz” which roughly translates “Feliz (the Spanish word for happy): the Hill Where You Can See the Breeze” It is a Spanish-themed wedding spot complete with restaurant and wedding chapel that looks like it was pulled out of the Catalonian hillside. It has a faux alter, stained glass windows, and Latin inscriptions painted on the walls. For a while now, it has been trendy in Japan to have a Christian (i.e. “Western Style”) wedding. Because of the obvious absence of churches, businesses catering to wedding parties complete with elaborate churches have sprung up all over Japan.

The Japanese have two dueling attitudes. On the one hand, they are a very tight cultural group. They have great reverence for their own culture, which they see as unique in the world. But they also have a great openness to foreign cultures and readily adopt elements of them. They generally seem to enjoy traveling overseas and trying foreign foods. The Japanese language uses many words borrowed directly from other languages. It was interesting to learn the words for hair clipper (barikan from French) and sleeping bag (shurafu from German).

Pray for the members of the gospel choir. Over the last few years, they have been exposed to the message of the gospel many times. As Chuck & Jan return to America, one of their greatest burdens is to see many of these people, who have become some of their closest friends, become true followers of Christ. The Burwells’ departure has given them the opportunity to have some good conversations. Pray that as they depart, what the Burwells’ have shared with the choir members will ring in their ears.

At this point, many of the Japanese are headed back to their homes after being away for the New Year’s holiday. (Yes, I said New Years.  In Asia, it’s much more important than Christmas.)  Although we didn’t travel anywhere ourselves, we heard reports of a lot of traffic which was compounded by the freeway being closed on New Year’s Eve due to snow (very light, but the Japanese are very cautious).

Amidst the celebrations, Colby and I had the chance to visit with one of our English student’s family, the Hiraishis.  The owner of a small take out restaurant, Mr. Hiraishi invited us for dinner at his house with his wife and daughter.  We had known that Japanese people like to make a variety of foods for their guests, but we were still taken aback when we arrived.  We were served avocado, oden (various egg, tofu, and fish items simmered in soy sauce) two kinds of sushi, noodle soup with shrimp patties, chicken wings, pizza, and a sweet potato soufflé for dessert.  Thankfully they were all small portions. They even had prepared a second pizza just in case and gave it to us to take home!  Everything was delicious and they were wonderful hosts.  We enjoyed getting to know the Hiraishi family better as we practiced our Japanese and they their English.  A highlight of the evening was when Mr. Hiraishi showed us his heirloom samurai sword that had been in his family since the 1800s. Because it is the real thing capable of causing severe injury, he is actually required to have a permit for it.

We kind of look like pirates, huh?

On Christmas Day we had dinner with our teammates, another missionary family, and the Japanese pastor and his family.  Because whole turkeys and hams are hard to come by in Japan, we decided to have Mexican food for dinner.  Colby and I also celebrated our 5^th Christmas together with our pentannual Lord of the Rings movie marathon.  It made for a long day, but we thoroughly enjoyed our trip to middle earth.

On New Year’s Eve night we gathered with all of the other missionaries for the annual appetizer and BUNKO night.  As it was our first New Year’s Eve on the field, we soon found out exactly what BUNKO is.  Not a game for the strategist – BUNKO is played by quickly and aggressively rolling dice to get the right numbers and patterns. Even though our luck wasn’t the best, Colby and I were amongst those who received prizes for various categories.  Mine for the most losses and Colby’s for winning at “Rock, Paper, Scissors” amongst all the other people who didn’t qualify to compete for a prize in any other category.  It was an interesting game.

All kinds of goodies.

Please pray for us as we adjust from vacation mode back into our normal routine.  Pray that we would start afresh with Japanese study and English classes with renewed energy and purpose.

It has been interesting to sing Christmas songs in Japanese this year.  Because we sing them every year, sometimes Christmas songs can become old hat, and I, for one, don’t often pay attention to their meaning.  This year however, because I don’t know most of the words I’m singing, the words I do know jump out at me and I find myself paying a lot more attention to the meanings of Christmas songs now than before.

One word especially has caught my attention.  Sukui is the Japanese word for help, aid, relief, or salvation, and it happens to be in a number of Christmas songs I have sung.  Now, singing the songs in English, mind you, I probably would never have given this word a second thought, but because it was one of the only words I understood, I spent some time thinking about it.

And in thinking about salvation, I began to realize afresh how this is the entire point of Christmas.  It was for our help, aid, relief, and salvation that Christ came.  So much meaning wrapped up in such a small word.  Truly, the English equivalent is longer, but oftentimes we say it so quickly that maybe we don’t give the extent of its meaning much thought.

And so because of God’s help, aid, relief, and salvation given long ago, Colby and I wish you a wonderful Christmas celebration.

The Lighthouse Ube Christ Church 2009 Christmas Photo

For quite a while now, we have been studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test 3 and we are hoping to be ready to take it toward the end of January.  This test is over approximately 150 grammar forms, 300 pictorial characters, and about 1500 vocabulary words.

Colby and I are feeling that by the end of January we’ll be decently ready, but will have to work quite hard until then to master everything.  We both feel comfortable with the pictorial characters as well as most of the grammar forms.  For Colby, the listening section may be the most difficult, whereas for me, getting all of that vocabulary into my thinking and usage might be most difficult.

It has been interesting studying for this test in comparison with the tests I studied for in school.  Always in school, I would study to get a good grade and then invariably after the test would not remember hardly any of what I studied.  Here, not only is it important that I get a good grade on this test, but even more so I desire to use what I’m learning in conversation.  It has given a whole new meaning to learning.

A funny language story before I close:  At Colby’s Japanese class the other day, they were talking about various transitive and intransitive verb pairs.  The teacher showed a picture of a vase of flowers that had fallen over.  She pointed to the picture and asked Colby what it was in English.  Thinking that she meant the verb, he answered that it was “to topple”.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” she replied, “because, at least in British English, this is called a vase!”

Needless to say, language learning is sometimes funny for both us and the Japanese!

Please pray for Colby and Theresa as they prepare to hopefully take their test at the end of January.  Pray that they would learn the material well not only for the test but also for daily conversation.