We went to church this morning and what an awesome experience it was! Knowing that the service was at 10:30 but not knowing how long it would take us to get there, we left home early and arrived about half an hour before the service started which was great because a time of prayer and praise started about 10 minutes after we arrived and, though we didn’t understand a word of it, we enjoyed being there. Hope Church is definitely a place where God is present. We felt it the minute we entered.

The service itself was looong! The first hour was praise and worship and we learned that we could sing in Japanese! The words were projected on the wall in both Japanese characters and the Roman alphabet. As Japanese is an easy language to read and pronounce, we were able to join in even though we had no idea what we were saying. It was wonderful! After the announcements were made and the offering was taken, everyone greeted one another and then settled in for the sermon which also lasted about an hour. Headsets provide English translation of the announcements, the reading of scripture and the sermon. Following the sermon, there was another time of prayer before the service came to a close.

We estimated the congregation to be about 200 to 250 people and we were made to feel very welcome. All ages appeared to be represented except for teenagers and that’s only because the large youth group are presently on a trip to Seattle! People come from a long distance to worship together at Hope. Many bring their lunches and eat together in the fellowship hall/foyer after the service. We didn’t know this but in the future, we’ll join them. As all good Nazarene’s know, breaking bread together is a great way to get to know one another.

Hope Church is found in a very unusual location. It occupies one floor of a five storey building and is sandwiched between a bowling alley above and a pachinko parlour below. Pachinko, a pinball type game, is an extremely popular pastime in Japan and a pachinko parlour is basically a Japanese casino.

Following the service, we headed off by train to Narita. Wouldn’t you know it, it started to rain as soon as we got there! Fortunately, it was a light rain and we had our umbrellas in our daypack. We visited Narita-san Shinsho-ji, a huge Buddhist temple and enjoyed strolling through the beautiful park that surrounds it. Apparently the temple is one of the most visited ones in Japan, second only to those in the Kyoto area. It is dedicated to Fudo Myouou, the god of fire, and one of the buildings houses a huge and rather frightening looking figure, presumably Fudo Myouou himself. I couldn’t help but wonder how such a thing could inspire anyone to worship and was saddened to think that the world is full of people putting their hope in things like that. What a contrast from a morning spent with people who so clearly know and worship a living God!

We finally have our teaching schedules for the new term which begins on Tuesday.  There’s good news and bad.  The good news is that we’re both off on Sundays and will be able to start attending church!  This Sunday we’re going to try Hope Church which was recommended by another teaching couple working for MIL.  When I looked up the church online to find out what time services are held, I discovered that it’s affiliated with something called the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association Church Planting Institute.  Apparently, the pastor is a gaijin (foreigner, like us) but he preaches in Japanese and headsets are provided for English translation.

The bad news concerning our schedules is the fact that we don’t share a second day off as we had hoped we might.  I’m off on Wednesdays and Richard is off on Thursdays.  We are, however, entitled to five “yukyu” days which can be used at almost anytime during the year as either sick days or personal leave days.  Since we’ve made it through our first month of being exposed to foreign viruses and bugs without either of us succumbing to illness of any sort, we’re hopeful that we won’t need to use them as sick days.  At least once or twice during the term we may request each other’s day off as a yukyu day which would give us a two day break together.  That would allow us to take overnight trips and venture a little further afield than we can do on a single day.  At the end of the six month term we can make requests concerning our days off for the second term and at that point, we’ll definitely request common days off for the remainder of our time here.

I’m also disappointed that my new schedule doesn’t include teaching a couple of classes that I’ve had for the past few weeks and enjoyed immensely.  One is a class of eight junior high boys who are full of energy but lots of fun.  Imagine the time I’ve had trying to teach them to make the “th” sound which doesn’t exist in Japanese!  The other is a class of four adults; two retired gentlemen, a recently retired lady and a younger lady.  They are absolutely delightful; definitely my favourite class so far.  Hopefully some of my new classes will be just as much fun.

This is Spring Week at school, a break between terms.  For the past three days we’ve been teaching spring courses which are marketed as “English intensive” programs.  The purpose of these courses is to give regular students, who usually have English class just once a week, a chance to practice their English more intensively and to allow prospective students to see what our teachers and classes are like.  Mine were all children’s classes and it was fun to have the same kids three days in a row.  The next couple of days will be spent doing project work around the schools which consists of everything from organizing teaching resources to repairing books to cleaning.  For some of us, Monday also includes our modeling debut!

We had an awesome day yesterday! Shared days off are like mini holidays as that’s when we get to play tourist and really enjoy the sights and sounds of Japan. We had planned to go into Tokyo to Ueno Park, the city’s biggest park, to view the cherry blossoms on Sunday afternoon but yesterday was so warm and sunny that we decided not to wait. There’s been quite a bit of rain lately and we would have been terribly disappointed if we’d waited until Sunday and the weather hadn’t cooperated.

We set off for Tokyo right after lunch. The trip into the city took longer than it should have because we made the mistake of getting on a local train that stopped at every stop along the way. We won’t do that again!

Once we finally arrived in Tokyo, finding the park was no trouble at all. The Ueno station is literally underneath the park! Ueno is definitely a place we’ll go back to again as it houses the highest concentration of museums and galleries anywhere in Japan. Yesterday we were there for hanami (blossom viewing), however, so we spent a couple of hours simply strolling through the park. After that, while we waited for darkness to fall, we explored Ameya-yokocho Arcade, a lively shopping area of tiny shops and crowded alleyways directly across from the station. We enjoyed supper in one of the tiny restaurants there. Once it was dark, we returned to the park as parts of it are lit up at night during cherry blossom season.  What an amazing sight!

We made our way home via a much quicker train and hadn’t been back in the apartment for an hour when a tremendous thunderstorm blew in and it began to pour rain again!

Here’s a closer look at our mini appliances. Above you can see the stove as well as the fridge with the microwave sitting on top of it and the washing machine beside it. To give you perspective, the fridge is about 44 inches tall, 19 inches wide and 20 inches from front to back. In our family, I’ve always been known as the person who could pack the most into an already full fridge. That’s definitely a valuable skill here! Of course, when you have to carry all the groceries home from the store by hand, it limits the amount of food that you have in the house at any one time!

I brought our little travel iron with us but I haven’t had to use it because, unlike many of the MIL apartments, ours is furnished with an ironing board and iron. I can’t read the instructions on the iron but the brand name is Press Love! Isn’t that cute? It’s also very typical Japanese English.

I really think the vacuum cleaner is our cutest appliance though. It’s so little! Since the apartment is also so small, I can vacuum the whole place in a matter of minutes. The last time I did that I realized that one reason I love this apartment so much is that using all these mini appliances make me feel like a little girl playing house!

It seems odd to be in a non-Christian country where Easter is not celebrated. On the other hand, since its real meaning would be entirely lost and it would simply be the Easter bunny thing, I’m glad it’s ignored here. That’s one of my pet peeves – the way world steals our sacred days and turns them into commercial events. Apparently that’s happened to Christmas here but they haven’t got hold of Easter yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still the girl who thinks that chocolate is an essential food group and I did manage to sneak a one pound Easter bunny into our luggage and bring it all the way from Canada! When the children were young, and even as they got older, hiding chocolate eggs was always a fun part of our Easter celebration but they always knew that that wasn’t really what it was all about.

I’m especially going to miss being in church today and celebrating with my church family. Unfortunately, we’re both working today so we haven’t been able to seek out a church to celebrate with. Hymns have been playing on the computer since we got up, however. Right now I’m listening to “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today”. Now that’s what Easter’s all about!

Happy Easter! He has risen!

Well I’m still working on adding photos so here are a few. The first one is taken from the kotatsu room looking into the kitchen and the second shows the sink, stove, cupboards and counter space – all of it! The door on the right is our entrance from outside.

No description of the apartment would be complete without telling you that I can touch the ceiling in every room. Doors are also much smaller than we are accustomed to. For example, the door separating the tatami room from the kitchen is 5 feet 9 inches tall and less than 23 inches wide! We have lots of friends and family members who would have difficulty squeezing though! Wide sliding doors separate the other rooms, however. These take up no room and when they’re open, the place seems quite spacious.

the tatami room during the daytime

the kotatsu

We absolutely love our little home – all 365 square feet of it! The entire apartment is less than twice the size of our storage room back home in Canada but because of its large windows and the lack of a lot of furniture, it doesn’t feel cramped. The end apartment on the second floor of a two storey walk up, it has 3 rooms – the kitchen, the kotatsu room and the tatami room.

The kitchen has a large sink, a two burner gas stove, a small fridge, a microwave, a toaster oven, a washing machine, a few shelves and cupboards and virtually no counter space. The stove doesn’t have an oven but it has a little grilling drawer that is great for cooking fish or a couple of pork chops.

The kotatsu room is so named because it’s main piece of furniture is the kotatsu, a low heated table that sits on a quilted mat and is surrounded by a cozy futon – a nice place to sit on a chilly morning or evening. This is where we eat our meals. Richard has mastered the art of kneeling at the table but I find it difficult so I’ve acquired a small cushion for sitting on. The computer also lives in the corner of the kotatsu room and our one chair is usually at the computer desk.

Tatami is a floor covering made of tightly woven grass that is every bit as warm and comfortable as carpet. Traditionally, room size is determined by the number of tatami mats. Each mat is approximately 6 feet long and 3 feet wide and ours is a six tatami room. This is our combination livingroom/bedroom. In traditional Japanese style, we sleep on futons on the floor and the bedding is put away during the day. Rather than putting the futon and the foam under-futon away in the big storage cupboard during the day, we fold them up and cover them with a blanket to form a low couch for sitting on. That, along with a small plastic chest of drawers is all the furniture in that room.

The bathroom probably deserves a blog entry all it’s own but for now, it’s actually two separate rooms. One has the toilet with its built in hand washing sink on top of the tank and the other has our mini bathtub with hand held shower and a small sink.

Patio doors open off the end of the kotatsu room onto a tiny balcony designed mainly for hanging laundry. The tatami room also has big sliding windows on the south end as well as a smaller window that juts out on the west wall.

Like most older homes in Japan, ours lacks central heating, isn’t well sealed against the elements and probably doesn’t have much for insulation. It would probably be a bit warmer if it wasn’t an end apartment exposed to the outside world on three sides but I wouldn’t trade it for an inside apartment. I love having the extra window on the end wall. On a very clear morning, we can actually see Mt. Fuji, about 120 km west of here! In addition to a small kerosene heater which we use only when it’s very chilly, we have a built in electic heater/air conditioner in the kotatsu room and a portable electric heater which we keep in the tatami room.

I had hoped to include photos with this blog entry but I’ve forgotten how to do that and it’s been a long day so it will have to wait.

Today was the first day of spring, a national holiday in Japan, but it’s been the most unspringlike day since we arrived!   It’s been raining for over 24 hours and a chilly wind has been blowing all day.  Our first goal for today was to learn how to use our recently received bank cards to access cash at the ATM machines at the bank.  We knew that the instructions would be in Japanese and that we’d probably need assistance, but there’s always a bank employee by the door welcoming and assisting people as they come in so we thought she might be able to help us.  Of course, we hadn’t thought of the fact that, being a national holiday, the bank would be closed!  While the ATM machines were accessible, there was no friendly bank employee to greet and assist us!  Not knowing the language is definitely a handicap at times like this but we’ve found that the people here are extremely helpful so we decided to wait and see if someone would come along who would be willing to help us.  Sure enough, the first person we approached, an older gentleman who spoke not one word of English, was happy to show us what to do and we were soon on our way with cash in hand.

We had hoped to spend the afternoon exploring Narita which is a short train ride east of here and is described in our Lonely Planet guidebook as a pleasant temple town.  For those of you who live in towns like Sedgewick, Narita is a “town” of over 97 000 people!  Anyway, today didn’t seem like the kind of day to spend outdoors wandering and exploring so we spent a few hours in a mall that we often pass on the train.  We were delighted to find a UniQlo store there.  We first encountered UniQlo when we visited Matt and Robin in Osaka three years ago.  It’s the one store we know of in Japan where I can actually find clothes that fit.  Before leaving Canada, I looked everywhere for a pair of navy blue dress pants to add to my school wardrobe but I was unable to find what I was looking for.  Amazingly, I found them today at UniQlo!

Now we’re back home in our snug little apartment with the kerosene heater warming us while the wind howls and the rain lashes the windows.  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll describe the apartment in detail.

Friday was White Day in Japan.  On Valentine’s Day, women buy gifts for men, coworkers as well as husbands, and a month later on March 14th, the men reciprocate.  Cookies and chocolates seem to be popular gifts and the stores definitely gear up with lots of goodies on sale.  I got lucky this year as I spent Valentine’s Day in Canada and White Day here and received gifts from my romantic hubby on both days! 

This coming Thursday, March 20 is a national holiday in Japan – the first day of spring!  Don’t you wish you had a day off work for that?  Actually, our school offers classes that day but it’s a regular day off for Richard and I.  We’ve been celebrating spring ever since we got here though.  We boarded the plane in Edmonton with snow all around and arrived in Japan to find flowers growing and oranges hanging on trees!  Amazing!  Now the plum trees are in bloom and the cherry blossoms will soon follow.  It’s still chilly at night but, with the exception of one very rainy day, we’ve been enjoying lovely daytime weather. 

School is keeping us very busy.  Unlike, Matt & Robin’s Japan experience, ours isn’t exactly teach by number.  There’s quite a lot of lesson planning to do.  It should get much easier after the end of this month.  A new term begins April 1 & we’ll finally have  regular schedules with the same classes every week.  Right now, we’ve only had a bit of that with lots of subbing thrown in.  Unlike at home, when you sub here you have to do the lesson planning & how easy it is or isn’t depends on what the regular teacher’s plans are like.  Some are good but others are definitely not.  Also, at this time of year there are a lot of trial lessons thrown in, short lessons given to prospective students to find out if they’re interested in becoming regular students & if so, what level they’re at. 

In addition to teaching, I’ve also been offered a modeling contract!  Well, a slight exaggeration maybe but I did receive a memo from our teaching coordinator the other day asking me to model for some new advertising flyers that the school is putting together!  Several adults and children have been lined up and and photographer has been hired to come in on March 30 to take some staged shots of us in action.  I’m not sure why I was chosen but the memo says it’s because I’m “cute and photogenic”!  That from the fellow who saw the hideous passport type photos I had to send in in order to get my visa!  No, he’s not trying to hit on me – he just has a crazy sense of humour.

We really hope to have internet at home soon.  We have everything we need including the modem & are just waiting for someone to come and hook it up.  There is so much I want to share!

We’re making progress toward having internet at home and being able to update more regularly. Thursday was a day off for both of us.  We started the day by walking to the nearby recycle store.  Useful items that are no longer wanted are put by the street on a specific day each week so that they can be picked up and resold.  We were able to purchase a very functional but small computer desk for 2000 yen, approximately $20!  Richard carried it home on his shoulders! Next we ventured into Tokyo for the first time to Akihabara, the electric town, an area known for it’s hundreds of electronics shops.  There we found the used monitor we were looking for.  Now the computer is set up and ready to go and we’re waiting for the internet to be connected.  Unfortunately, it will probably take a couple of weeks or perhaps even longer. 

On a completely different note, we woke up just before 2 o’clock this morning because the building was shaking.  Our first earthquake!  Actually, it was just a tremor and didn’t last long.  It wasn’t even slightly scary and we were both asleep again within minutes!

Teaching is going well though the lesson planning still takes awhile.  I’m especially enjoying the adult classes.  I think I’m learning as much from them as they are from me!