Christmas, Part 1: Christmas in Japan.

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas! Moments of homesickness aside, I had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This is going to turn into a 3-part post, so let me just say now, for those who might be worrying: I am being taken care of very well by everyone at JELA, the JELC, and my church, and I love getting emails, letters, and cards from home. I will reply to you all eventually! It's been very busy lately, and since we're coming up on our last few weeks in Tokyo, it's only going to get busier as we cram in our last activities with people who have become near and dear.

I've received several questions about Christmas in Japan recently. Do they celebrate it here? Are there Christmas decorations around town or in people's houses?

Mosaic Street overhead Christmas
illumination in Shinjuku Station.

The answer to both those questions is both yes and no. Yes, the Japanese are aware of the existence of both Christmas and Christmas Eve as holidays of Christian origin on the 24th and 25th of December, and yes, stores and homes alike deck the halls every year. Countless "Christmas illuminations" go up around mid-November in major tourist spots like Shinjuku, Roppongi, and Ōdaiba. But here are a couple major things about Christmas in Japan you should know:

• Christmas is not a national holiday. Nothing is normally closed or on reduced hours on Christmas, and if it's a weekday it's a regular work day. Caroline and I were able to grab burgers for lunch (surrounded by office workers on their lunch break) and visit a used bookstore on Christmas.


• Christmas is almost entirely secular. According to a church friend, many Japanese believe Christmas celebrates the birth of Santa Claus. (Santa-san, by the way, visits children's houses here, too.) Many people have a Christmas tree in their home, but all the people in my church who have nativity scenes had to buy them in other countries. Christmas decorations are void of anything sacred--you'll only find Santa, reindeer, snowmen, tinsel, Christmas trees, and wreaths. I've heard sacred Christmas music played in many stores and public places, but purely for atmosphere--either with English lyrics or no lyrics at all.


• Christmas Eve is date night. Even at the Christmas Eve service at my church, girls brought their boyfriends. And on the way back home, I had to work my way through crowds of couples holding hands at the train station. Caroline told me the story of a Japanese Christian she met who took Christmas off from work to travel back to Tokyo to be with her family. Her boss understood that the holiday had religious significance to her and her family, but her coworkers thought she was taking time off to just go date.

Christmas Eve line outside KFC.
(Photo courtesy of Cindy, a member of my church.)

There are also a couple of Christmas traditions here that are entirely Japanese in origin: Christmas cake and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Japanese Christmas cake is something I think the United States should totally adopt: it's a sponge cake with whipped cream and a generous amount of strawberries and adorable Christmas-themed plastic decorations--and delicious. And the latter apparently started with a phenomenally successful advertising campaign back in the '70s when KFC began offering bargain-priced chicken and wine on Christmas for the Westerners in Japan missing their traditional Christmas feast. KFC gets so much business on Christmas Eve in Japan that they start taking reservations in early November.

Even with the option of discount fried chicken, it's a little rough on Christians, Western expats, and especially Christian expats around here to see Christmas pass with mostly commercial fanfare and no standard vacation time to be with family. The New Year is a much, much more important holiday: businesses often close for multiple days as people travel to be with families, and the post office is urging everyone to send their New Year's greetings out soon so they can be delivered on New Year's day. People stock up on special New Year's food since stores will be closed for several days, and I'm told shrines will be packed with people waiting for bells to be rung and New Year's fortune to be bestowed on them.

My "Christmas tree."

Churches around here do have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services--the latter tend to be very sparsely attended if they fall on work days--and they also have New Year's services as an alternative to shrine visits. Some couples actually attend church on Christmas Eve because it seems like the romantic thing to do--which does provide a good opportunity for outreach and at least clearing up the confusion about whose birthday we're celebrating. (Japan, the incredible love you're missing out on! It makes me sad.)

So what did I do for Christmas? It's a long story, featuring sermons (preached by yours truly), singing, parties, gifts, The Hobbit, Korean TV shows, and me embarrassing myself in public. Look for "Christmas, Part 2: Christmas Eve," coming soon to a missionary blog near you.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
John 1:10 (NIV)

Shout-outs.

I've received so many wonderful cards, gifts, letters, and other good tidings in the past month that deserve some acknowledgement.

To the children and St. Bertha Circle women of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Florence, South Carolina: Thank you so much for the Thanksgiving greetings! The cards and the artwork and hand turkeys made my day. Thank you all for your support and prayers! Global mission couldn't happen without you all!

Pretty sure these kids are the best.

To my church (and grandparents and mom's friends): Thank you so much for the flood of cards you've sent me, either in the box my mother sent or directly to my apartment. Every single one was beautiful, I nearly cried. In a good way. Thank you also to those who sent me longer letters or small gifts. The (lovely) couple of Christmas ornaments I received are currently hanging around my apartment and have really helped bring the Christmas cheer. As soon as I get time to sit down and work on it, I'm going to string up the cards on some ribbon, too. (Just got a hole punch from my mother in the mail today!) You have always been and still are such a gift to me. I am truly blessed to have grown up in such a wonderful church family.

Christmas card deluge!

To my friends: Thank you for the "quality" "handcrafted" Christmas tree and ornaments that were a tribute to our year in California together. You guys never fail to brighten my day and make me laugh. I miss spending time with you guys, playing Telephone Pictionary and 1000 Blank White Cards, laughing uproariously at Parks and Recreation (Knope 2012!), making makeshift Japanese cuisine, and going on adventures to San Francisco together. We shall have more adventures together in Japan someday soon! I decree it.

My friends are arts-and-crafts masters.
(The cat with the stubby tail is my dearly-missed Ebenezer.)

And, finally, to my mother: Thank you for everything, especially the praying shawl and the the 3-pound Costco jar of peanut butter. The former is lovely and super cozy and the latter is hilarious and will make me many a sandwich in the months to come.

Guess which one is from America.

God's blessings to you all! Your generosity is much appreciated. Merry Christmas!

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
Philippians 4:23 (NIV)

Japanese class.

All the new Japan missionaries have been taking a Japanese class courtesy of the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Association, but since I've already studied it I get individual tutoring twice a week. Every session starts with a reading from Yohane ni Yoru Fukuinsho, the Gospel According to John, in my new copy of the Shin'yaku Seisho, the New Testament.

Cutest New Testament ever?

These are stories I've grown up reading and hearing, but somehow reading and discussing it with my teachers in a different language than English puts everything in a new light. The Wedding at Cana, where Jesus changes water into wine for example--once in high school or college I heard a speaker say "Jesus' first miracle was to keep the party going," and he thus affirmed human fellowship and celebration--and good wine. It was a sentiment I held on to for years. But when I was discussing the story of the Kana de no Konrei with Morikawa-sensei, he explained, in Japanese, how he saw the miracle of the wine--the good wine--as foreshadowing the saving blood Jesus would later shed at the Cross. I'd never made that connection before. And then I noticed that the jars were for ritual purification (kiyome)--more symbolism! The Japanese Bible also takes pronounciations and place names from the original Greek and Hebrew, so some of the names and locations are unrecognizable at first glance--Kaferunaumu is Capernaum, Petoro is Peter. It's a gift. The words are no longer just a chant I've long been desensitized to.

Then after a break, we crack open my brand new Japanese textbook. It's intermediate-level, something I originally thought would be too easy for me. (This was before I was humbled by my rice cooker.) But what I neglected to notice when Morikawa-sensei picked out the book for me at Kinokuniya was that this thing is entirely in Japanese, with no precious glossary or translations to help me, either. After I stumble through a short essay and verbally answer questions about it, we go over grammar points and new expressions. Homework is leftover questions (more when I have a particularly "slow" day) or a weekly essay... which I have the bad habit of starting at 8pm the night before it's due. College all over again.

Essay on Thanksgiving, corrected by
Morikawa-sensei.

Morikawa-sensei and Narabu-sensei have been really great teachers, and I'm grateful to them for taking two hours out of their week to listen to an American girl stumble through the story of the Feeding of the 5,000 and a short essay on world food customs, and then teach her the appropriate use of the "(verb)-to (verb phrase)-yōde (adjective)-naru" construction. Narabu-sensei even prints out pages from guidebooks and gives me suggestions on where to go in Tokyo on my free time along with some insider info. (Did you know the founder of Panasonic donated the giant lantern at Kaminari-Mon ["Thunder Gate"] at Sensō Temple in Asakusa? His name is on the bottom of the lantern.) I really do love being a student... but the last class is this Friday and in a few short months I'll be a teacher myself. I hope I can have half the patience and positivity of my Japanese teachers here in Tokyo.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV)

Food.

It's been just a little more than a month since I arrived in Tokyo and I think I've established something of a routine. Sunday is church, Tuesday and Friday are Japanese class, Wednesday is study hall while the others are in Japanese class (I do one-on-one tutoring), and the rest of the time is... well, maybe I don't have a routine after all. In my free time I've cleaned my apartment, done my homework, cooked one-person meals or gone grocery shopping. I've also discovered cheap (and not so cheap) restaurants around my apartment... and I've eaten at the 24-hour McDonald's down the street more than I'd like to admit.

When I want to save money (and don't want to make the twenty-five-minute trek to the only cheap udon noodle place in the vicinity that I know), I usually subsist on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, Kōn Furēku Shugā Taipu ("Corn Flake Sugar Type," the cheap store-brand equivalent of Frosted Flakes), bananas, hard-boiled eggs, rice, and miso soup (with tofu, if I remember to pick some up!). For dinner, it's either spaghetti or yakisoba, the stir-fried noodles you may recall me raving about in my entry on Hongo Bible Camp.

Ridiculously proud of this.

Yakisoba was the first meal I ever cooked here. Though not nearly as good as what they serve in restaurants (the noodles come prepackaged with a separate seasoning packet--much like instant ramen), it's still easy to make and filling enough to make a decent dinner much cheaper than any restaurant in Tokyo (including the McDonald's!). Throw in a quarter-head of cabbage for 38 yen and you get a cheap serving of vegetables, too! (Well, stir-fried, but that still counts, right?)

To make miso soup you need 22.5 SPOON of miso.

When I finally decided to look for a real recipe (as opposed to the instructions on the back of the package), I discovered that my apartment actually lacks a set of measuring spoons. I needed them to make miso soup, so when I found them at our local (tiny) grocery store, I threw them into my basket without a second thought. Japanese recipes use ōsaji ("big spoon" or tablespoon) and kosaji ("little spoon" or teaspoon), so I figured they wouldn't be too different from what I used in the States.

But then I got home and untied them from the card they were on, I discovered that they were labeled in the most cryptic way possible. The biggest spoon was "15 SPOON," then "5 SPOON," "2.5 SPOON," and "1 SPOON." The back of the package was no help--just a wall of Japanese. It was only after some Googling and deduction that I realized the numbers were milliliter measurements. Did you know a tablespoon is 15 mL? Now I do.

It means "0 hours since the rice was done"
but I still like thinking it's startled.

I had another little victory when I figured out how to use my rice cooker... with a little help. Six years of Japanese language study may have allowed me to be able to articulate the homeless problem in Osaka or talk about the importance of eating together with family at mealtimes, but I still had to Google how to work the thing. (Turns out it's essentially "plug it in and push the giant red button.")

So there's a glimpse of my daily life here. In future entries I'll talk about my Japanese class, my church, lectures I've attended, English classes, and even more reflections on my life in Tokyo. For now, though, I'm gonna soak some rice and make me a PB&J.

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 (NIV)