To my email subscribers.

Hello, email subscribers from Heritage! My mother tells me that some of you have tried to comment on my blog posts via email.

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Thanksgiving at Tokyo Lutheran.

I think this is the most I've ever celebrated a single Thanksgiving: on top of the taco lunch at Erik and Tauna's on Thursday, Tokyo Lutheran held a Thanksgiving potluck Saturday evening.

"Ou, zaa rou izu guudu tu mii!"

After Caroline and I deposited our meager contribution of chocolate candies to the wondrous spread of traditional and non-traditional Thanksgiving foods, we sat down, heard Psalm 100 in English and Japanese, and then all sang the "Apple Seed" prayer--which was copied down on a whiteboard along with Japanese phonetic transcription. Always a good time with that one, especially when the leaders draw out the "aaaa" in the last "amen." Which, of course, they did.

Carving the turkey.

It was two hours of delicious food and wonderful company with Japanese and non-Japanese churchgoers alike. Included on the menu were lefse (a Minnesotan Thanksgiving staple that I miss dearly), Kraft macaroni and cheese (naturally the Americans shoveled this onto their plates), some kind of Korean pizza with seafood and onions, varied sushi platters, a big ol' pile of inarizushi (fried tofu pockets of sushi rice), green bean casserole, an adorable turkey cake (baked by Tauna), persimmons, Milk Duds, Andes Mints, and, of course, mashed potatoes and turkey, the latter carved by Tokyo Lutheran's own Pastor Sekino. As Sekino-sensei had no prior experience carving turkey, Erik had to help him a little bit. Good-natured laughter and obligatory "How many Lutheran pastors does it take to carve a turkey?" jokes ensued. (No judgements here! I have no idea how to carve one myself.)

Thanksgiving dinner of champions.

So I can now say that I've eaten turkey, mashed potatoes, and macaroni and cheese with chopsticks. It was actually more fun this way. My family can reasonably expect me to tote a pair of chopsticks to any future Thanksgiving dinners. And possibly some inarizushi. That stuff is straight-up delicious.

After washing dishes, cleaning up the table decorations, distributing leftover sweets (I dumped an entire platter of the chocolates into a purse) and finishing off the last of the wine, we grabbed our coats and said amiable goodbyes while making hasty plans to meet up again. There is indeed much to be thankful for this season in Japan.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Psalm 100:4-5 (NIV)

Hongo Bible Camp.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! On Thursday the other J-3s (yes, Caroline is finally here!) had some tacos with chips and guacamole for lunch courtesy of the new long-term Tokyo missionary couple Erik and Tauna. Good food and good fellowship--it was a lovely afternoon. Also, tonight was a Thanksgiving potluck at Tokyo Lutheran, complete with a turkey (very expensive here!), but more about that in a later entry.

View from the beach next to the resort.

Last weekend was English Bible Camp for Hongo Student Center, an outreach of Hongo Lutheran Church here in Tokyo that offers English classes and an English Bible study for all ages and skill levels as well as an English Coffee Hour. In past years the camp has been held at a retreat canter out in the mountains west of Tokyo, but this year it was held at a sports resort in Chiba, east of Tokyo across the bay. Fittingly, the theme was "God's Love is Like an Ocean."

Ladies' cabin!

It had been raining all Saturday morning, but when we reached the seaside that afternoon the winds made it feel much more like a storm. After eating a delicious fresh seafood lunch (which one of the Japanese camp attendees graciously demonstrated to me how to eat) and arriving at our destination, we were nearly swept off our feet on our way to our cabins. The windows rattled and you could hear the rain pound on the roofs! It was quite exciting, though unfortunately the wind actually slammed the door of the men's cabin into the wall and broke the glass in the door. (Everyone was fine; they just had to move into a room in the "hotel" portion of the resort for the night.)

Despite what the name might suggest, the attendees were all adults (youngest was a college student), though one couple brought their bouncy three-year-old son who kept everyone smiling the whole weekend. He was a big fan of the icebreaker game we played, which if you're familiar with "I Love My Neighbor" (I'm looking at you, attendees of this year's Heritage retreat!) was quite similar, except this one required people to grab partners after every turn. There was lots of gentle tackling and and at one point I actually got picked up off the ground! It was crazy, active, fun, and the perfect way to start getting comfortable with one another.

No regrets about studying this language.

We split up into small groups, read some Scriptures in English, and talked about how huge and incomprehensible God's love is. Hannah, a woman who works as a translator at a missionary organization in Tokyo, put it best: we can't even comprehend how deep and wide God's love is; all we can do is accept it. When we all gathered together again, one of the Hongo English students, an older gentleman, pointed out that the Japanese character for love, 愛, is made up of two characters: 受 (to receive) and 心 (heart). Interesting, ne?

In talking with my group and stumbling through trying to articulate God's love, I found myself stuck right there in the incomprehensibility of it all. My speech started to go into recursion ("it's wonderful because it's so big, because it's so wonderful, because it's so big") and everyone's faces were blank--even the Christians in the group. Oof. It makes me feel a little better that the apostle Paul was also not so great at talking.

After-dinner fellowship. (Photo by Caroline.)

The food and fellowship outside the main sessions were marvelous. Mápó dòufu (Szechuan tofu) and ajifurai (fried mackerel) are my new favorite dishes. After singing and a candlelight service in a squash court (yes, you read that right; this resort was not really designed for Bible retreats), we gathered in the café attached to the resort and talked about everything from our favorite TV shows to our hometowns to recommended sightseeing spots in Tokyo. Good times, good cocktails. Though at one point the windows overlooking the ocean were rattling so hard in the wind that the staff moved us away from the windows to the back of the room lest they shatter right on top of us! (They didn't, thankfully.)

Tokyo Bay from my bunk Sunday morning.

The next morning dawned relatively sunny. We had the opportunity to walk along the seashore and take some pictures before attending our last session where we read some more Bible passages on love. It was a productive and interesting intercultural discussion--the word "love" is used very differently in English and Japanese. In English we say "I love you" all the time to our families and even our friends, but in Japanese... it's very strange for even a couple to say that to each other, even in private. It's something I've known for years, but still can't quite wrap my head around--you're reading the blog of a girl who for years as a child made sure the last thing she said to her parents before going to bed was "I love you" lest one of her parents die during the night. But a lot of communication in Japanese is actually subtext. Translated literally, many set phrases sound quite strange. Otsukaresama deshita, which would be an appropriate phrase to say to someone who has finished their work for the day, literally translated means "You look tired." But in practice it's used much more like "Good work!" I've heard it used to compliment a musician after a performance. There is still much for me to learn about this culture. I'm looking forward to it.

Sunset view from the bus.

The last event of the camp was a barbecue. We shared platters and platters of pork, chicken, squid, scallops, sausage, carrots, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, and finally, yakisoba (stir-fried noodles) before climbing aboard the bus to go back home to Tokyo. Unfortunately, there had been a traffic accident earlier that day and the normally two-hour bus ride took four-and-a-half. We occupied ourselves with conversation, naps, and, later that evening in the back of the bus, a couple of rounds of Mafia. (Some know this game as The Werewolf Game or Witch Hunt.) Rather interesting to play a game that involves accusations of murder with a group of people you just met at a Christian retreat. But it was a good time with much laughter. ("We were just taught that we should love each other!" protested one attendee, after being accused of my murder. He actually didn't do it--it was Luke, the J-3 who's been teaching at Hongo since last year.)

We finally reached Tokyo at 7:30 that night. With waves and "otsukaresama deshita!"s we parted and went home to have a good night's sleep. There was much love and joy in that group; I was a little sad it ended so soon. I wouldn't have minded another day by the sea with them. But I know the love and fellowship of the Body of Christ doesn't end when the retreats do. They're just a nice reminder.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16-19 (NIV)

Settling in.

Life has been so busy lately that it's hard to believe I've only been in Tokyo five days. And I haven't even started my "real work" yet!

They thought of everything!

The flight was good. Ludicrous amounts of in-flight entertainment made the twelve hours go really fast. Morgan and I waited in line for half an hour to get our Japan Resident cards (in the ironically named "Priority Lane"), then we sped through customs and met our contacts from the two Lutheran organizations here in Japan who very kindly bought us refreshments before driving us out to our apartments. They'd already been stocked with groceries and supplies, including such American staples as peanut butter, Snickers, and Frosted Flakes--which, I might add, are quite a bit more expensive here than in the States. And this is just a fraction of the hospitality I've been offered here. More about that in a second.

My name in Japanese... backwards.

The last few days have been a lot of administrative and literal housekeeping. I'm officially registered as a resident of my ward of Tokyo; have my own name stamp (the Japanese equivalent of a signature), bank account, and cell phone; and have successfully washed my first load of laundry without blowing anything up! And my little apartment is a little less cluttered than it used to be, though I still have to keep my clothes in my suitcases since I have no dresser. I've attended two services at a Tokyo church (one in English, one in Japanese), met my supervisors, been treated to countless delicious meals, taken a Japanese language placement test, introduced myself to the board of the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church, and even managed to do a little shopping.

It's been lots of fun--but in some ways unexpectedly tough. I've run full-speed into the language barrier multiple times. When I opened my bank account they found a teller who spoke English and I still messed up my application three or four times, using the Japanese alphabet when I should have used the Roman alphabet and then using lowercase when I should have used uppercase, which required me to cross it all out, correct it, and then stamp all the corrections with my name stamp. Then while doing that I managed to smudge the name stamp that served as my signature so I had to stamp it yet again. Talent.

Thankfully I've been treated with nothing but kindness and patience. Paul, the representative from the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Association who's in charge of getting us acclimated to Tokyo life, has been especially amazing, doing everything from teaching me how to work my washing machine to spotting both Morgan and me the unexpectedly high up-front cost for a cell phone. (I intend to pay him back as soon as I get down to a bank!) I've been greeted with warm smiles and hot tea and pastries by Japanese churchgoers and board members. Even cashiers are accomodating with me when I hand them bills of obnoxiously large denominations or read the wrong number off the cash register display and accidentally shortchange them.

There's a million more things I want to write about my new life in Japan, but I think I need to chew on my experiences a little more. For now, some lessons that I've learned so far:

1. Peppermint tea is excellent for when you forget how spicy Korean instant ramen is but eat it anyway.
2. To get to Tokyu Hands (giant home goods store) or Kinokuniya (giant bookstore), go through the south exit of Shinjuku Station. South. Otherwise you'll be wandering around the station for an hour.
3. For a largely Shintō/Buddhist/secular country, Japan seems to love piping sacred Christmas music (complete with English lyrics) into its shops around this time of year.
4. Japanese church services are conducted much like services back home, except with a lot more bowing and a lot less "greet each other with the peace of Christ" hugs-and-handshakes time. It's just as welcoming and hospitable, though.
5. Japan is really interested in the U.S. election. Really interested. It keeps coming up on the news, and there's a whole shelf of books about Mitt Romney and President Obama in the English-language section of Kinokuniya in Shinjuku. (I've been asked who I think will win the election. I have no idea.)
6. My numerous gaijin (foreigner) failures (like when I think I might have used my name seal incorrectly or take an hour to figure out my hot water boiler because all the instructions are in Japanese) are not end-all be-all. Thank the Lord. I seem to be terrible at giving my anxieties over to him.
7. The words for "to wipe" (拭く) and "clothing" (服) are homophones (fuku). This is fertile soil for terrible and hilarious puns. (Sunday night I caught a TV show featuring some comedians from Kumamoto. Every time I got a joke--which was about three times in the whole half-hour--it was like a miracle.)
8. It really is okay to eat that raw egg on top of your katsudon. Really. The hot rice and pork under it cook it, and eggs are much fresher over here anyway.
9. The Velcro closure on my umbrella will destroy my pantyhose. Oops.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV)

Made it!

Alive and well in my new (tiny) Tokyo apartment, though thoroughly exhausted after my 18 hours on and off planes.

Posts of substance coming soon!