Before and After Photos

With gratitude and relief -- we have "traded up" in our lifestyle.  Thanks be to God!

Dining Room -- before

Dining Room Table, Oven table and Buffet

Our company provided furniture for us to use before our crate arrived, and we really appreciated it, but our place was still pretty utilitarian/empty.

"Spacious" Living Room -- Before

Living Room -- After

Here Jennifer is working on a school project on the floor, as it was the best place to spread out and work before our kitchen table or her desk arrived!  On the right, Stew is studying on our new couch.  It is awesome to have new, more comfortable places to study and work!

Much more comfy study spaces!

Jenna's "Study Area"

Here is how we slept for the first four months; on futon cushions on the floor.  We were grateful for all our friends provided for us, but we are living and sleeping much more comfortably now!

Bunk Beds now fill the room

Girls' Bedroom - Before

Perfect play space!

And, last but not least, the master bedroom redux. 

Our Master "Bed" -- Before

Rental Dresser for Two

Our new bed and dressers fit quite snugly in our room, but they look awesome! 

A view of our new dressers and bed.

Now that's a bed!

Believe it or not, it took three days or so to get used to sleeping in a real bed again!  Our sore and tired bodies weren't accustomed to the luxury of a real mattress.

Darkest Just Before Dawn

A robust sigh of contentment can be heard at the Roberson house these days.  We are on the "other end" of that long wait.  We have slept on beds for nearly 2 weeks.  At last, our house feels more like home. 

Just the same, I am less than honest if I don't tell the full truth.  Put simply:  The end of this wait was not pretty. 

We'd sent out an email to a few close friends, asking them to pray for us to get through the tail end of the seemingly never-ending wait on our household goods.  One of our friends wrote us back and reminded us that "things seem darkest just before the dawn."  He had no idea how prophetic his words would ring in those final days.

I am going to copy portions of a letter that I wrote to one of our leaders a handful of days after our furniture arrived.  It shows you just how dark the day grew here, before the dawn mercifully broke.


 Today is a 180-degree change from the way I spent last Sunday.  What a difference furniture makes.  We went to church this morning, then came home and I spent the afternoon studying Japanese – in a comfortable living room chair, versus a sterile dinette table and chairs.  With surround-sound smooth jazz in the background, versus silence.  Wearing comfortable clothes that seem like new, because I hadn’t seen them in 5 months.  And on, and on.  Did I mention getting up from bed this morning, only after laying in it for an extra 30 minutes, enjoying the luxurious mattress that was supporting me?  With the warmth of my husband next to me, after 4 months of sleeping on separate futons?  J

By contrast, last Sunday when I woke up, I was overcome by an uncanny sense of depression and discouragement.  I fell into extreme doubt that we’d ever see our household goods, in spite of the fact that our container was in port (Yokohama) awaiting customs inspection and subsequent delivery.  The depression was debilitating and was accompanied by a severe flare-up of a physical affliction that I battle.  I recognized this as a probable attack by the enemy, so I cursed Satan and took a double dose of my medication.  The physical symptoms cleared in time, but I remained weepy and emotionally fragile.

I appreciate you listening to me last week while I shared with you about my spiritual struggle with the evil one.  I can’t remember whether you called me on Sunday night or Monday night – did I tell you about what my Japanese tutor shared with me Monday?  She shared two things:  Number one, she felt led to pray for me all weekend long, not knowing why – she just obeyed, and prayed.  Number two:  She often feels exactly how I felt last Sunday, overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness and despair.  She knows that it comes from the evil one, who tries to oppress her because she will not compromise her beliefs.  She was getting very teary-eyed as I related to her what happened to me the previous day – and I thought it may have been because I was still emotionally fragile, getting choked up as I told her what had taken place. 

I spent several days last week in focused reflection and prayer, trying to understand what God was wanting to teach me through that scary episode.  After talking with our tutor, I realized that God gave me a peek into the lives of “stoic desperation” that characterizes the lives of ordinary Japanese.  I thought to myself, how am I to minister to these people if I don’t truly understand their pain/their need/their struggles?  I am not a melancholy person by nature and I am quick to tell somebody to “Chin up, you’ll get through this; God specializes in impossible circumstances and He will get you through….”  There was no “chin up” in that valley I was passing through last week.  It was only through desperate prayer (and rebuking Satan) that I began to climb out.

Thank you for praying for us during this extended “wait” that tried us so.  I am grateful that it’s over.  I have enjoyed feeling “spent” at the end of a day when I washed out my new pots and pans….unpacked boxes and found storage places for stuff…..swept up Styrofoam and factory dust from the floor, after assembling a piece of furniture with Stew.  Our house is one glorious tornado right now and nobody’s complaining.

My valley served as a painful conclusion to several months of deprivation -- and yet God was there.  He didn't waste my trial.  The One who brought joy and relief out of despondency, will keep this feeling of despair fresh in my memory.  The Christian life is never promised as a life free from trial, sorrow and despair.  It comes with the sure promise of a Companion who follows alongside in the depth of despair...ready to lift and carry when the burden becomes too great.  My companion has never been more precious to me than now.

Surrounded by Stuff!

What a difference a week makes.

Since this same time a week ago, a tornado has struck the inside of our house, leaving boxes, wrapping, styrofoam pieces and.....FURNITURE in its wake.   Hallelujah, our ship came in!  While this container's entire journey dragged on through delay after delay, it literally sped through customs in less than 24 hours. On Wednesday, April 24th, we bid "good riddance" to our four month-long Survivor series, and welcomed our long-awaited household goods delivery.

A sight for sore eyes that morning!

Laborer begins taping up our interior.

Our entryway, prepped for furniture delivery.

Our new couch...

Moving in, Japanese style, is a treat to watch.  The movers arrived and their first task was taking broad sheets of cardboard which they taped along all of the walls and corners.  This preliminary step serves to protect the interior of the home as they bring in boxes and maneuver furniture.  These men labored hard for 9 hours that day, unpacking our things and assembling furniture.  By the time they left, they had not only assembled our beds and Stew's desk, they also swept up most of the debris from the floor, and removed all of the empty boxes.  Now that's service! 

There are no words to describe how it feels to sink into a new mattress after months of sleeping on the floor.  I (Lissa) am finding reasons to get to bed EARLY at night now so that I can simply lay there in luxury, allowing the mattress to swallow me whole.  

Have I mentioned that we parents are finally sharing a bed again, instead of sleeping on separate floor cushions?  

Stew's final morning at the dinette table

The yawning cavern that was our living room is now full to the gills with inviting places to sit and relax.  Each of us has staked out our favorite spot.  Lissa camps out with her laptop in her new oversized chair-and-a-half, while Stew situates himself at the end of our leather sofa.  Reading, studying and surfing is all so much more enjoyable while sitting on real living room furniture, instead of at a dinette table.  That dinette table, while adequate, has been retired with a full-sized dining room table and six chairs taking its place.  We have stowed the portable mini-speaker in favor of Pandora smooth jazz over surround-sound.  Ahhhhh.....

Home.  Finally, though it's still a bit surreal, our place FEELS like home.  At last, we feel like we really belong here, instead of living in Tokyo as long-term squatters.  In time, we'll have this mess organized and we'll get back to doing what we enjoy doing most -- opening our home to others.  As a matter of fact, our first overnight guest is due in mid-May, when Stew's brother Gary comes through Japan on business.

Thank goodness, we are back in business too!  Photos will come soon.

A Taste of "Home"

Today, we stumbled upon our first authentic Chinese restaurant.  We'd set out exploring in search of a nice new spot for Sunday lunch, and were walking down a narrow street north of our train station.  To our delight, we found a restaurant with photos of Chinese dishes posted outside its entrance.  More importantly, these Chinese dishes were available for a REASONABLE price.  We'd pooh-pooh'ed most Chinese restaurants up till now because...well...Tokyo rivals as the #1 Most Expensive Place to Live, and we never paid a tab of $60 or more for a meal in China.  Who wanted to pay Japanese prices for Chinese food?  This restaurant seemed to charge much more affordable prices...the food looked pretty good in the photos...and we were hungry.

We entered this small restaurant that contained at most, 10 tables.  The food server greeted us in Japanese and showed us to a table in the back, next to the pass-through window from the rear kitchen.  We wondered how to order the food...how does one translate "Sweet and Sour Pork" into Japanese, anyway?   Heather wanted to know, would they serve her enough rice?  Jenna wondered, would they serve us egg drop soup, and if so, would it measure up to the memory of her favorite Chinese soup?

Stew and I began to inquire of the food server, in our halting, tentative Japanese.  The server answered in some detail, using vocabulary that we are probably still months away from learning.  Sigh.  Stew then asked him in Mandarin, "Do you speak Chinese?"  He replied that yes, he did, and yes, he was from the Chinese mainland.

SCORE.  Stew switched over to Mandarin Chinese, and we began talking about what we wanted to order.  We looked at the pictures on the wall, the helpful "pointy talky" menu that many Japanese restaurants offer to their customers, especially helpful for foreigners like us who can't speak the language well enough yet.  We ordered a few different set meals from the pointy-talky menu, pointing to the picture and asking in Chinese, "Is this the kind of eggplant that is served with chopped pork and brown sauce?"  After becoming reasonably confident that we'd receive the kind of food that we thought the pictures portrayed, we placed our order.

The food server was quite busy with a number of customers, but we talked with him from time to time.  We found out that he had lived in Japan for 6 years, was from northeast China (arguably the source of China's best cuisine), and had once traveled to China's fabled tourist mecca Guilin/Yangshuo, a mere 2 hours from where we lived during our 8 years there.

Customers that were sitting nearby, watched and listened as we talked back and forth with the food server.  We began combining Japanese and Chinese together, asking "Mr. Zhao" (Chinese), "Can I have more water?" (Japanese) and "Our youngest daughter would like a can of the coconut milk" (Chinese) followed by "Thank you very much" (Japanese.)   The 2 cooks in the back began to notice that some white-skinned foreigners were speaking Chinese, talking Chinese cuisine with the food server, and so we began talking directly with the cooks, asking their names, their hometowns, and other informal, friendly Chinese banter.

At this point I became a bit worried; perhaps we were acting a little too animated for the Japanese customers.  After all, they often eat in reverent silence; they switch their cell phones to "silent mode" on buses and trains, and so on.  We found ourselves forgetting Japanese protocol and lapsing into Chinese customs -- chatting informally with the cook staff instead of leaving them alone to prepare our food in peace and serve us.

As we ate our meal, we began quizzing the food server on whether or not his restaurant served this favorite of ours, or that one.  Then he pulled out the Chinese menu and handed it to us.  This was different from the Japanese pointy-talky menu on the wall.  It was a traditional album-type menu, containing a myriad of Chinese dishes inside.   Suddenly we broke out in excitement, "Look!  They've got the cucumbers we like!  Oooo!  The salad made with bean curd skin!"  We ordered 2 more dishes, even though we'd already been served full meal sets, complete with salad, soup and a fruit dessert.

We left the restaurant absolutely stuffed to the gills.  It felt as though you'd returned to your Mama's house and been fed the "comfort food" that you'd been missing for years.  We told them that we'd be back, and NEXT TIME we would order off of the Chinese menu.  Maybe they've even got the "Iron Goddess" Tie Guanyin green tea that we used to drink in China.  Maybe they make dumplings by boiling them, versus pan-frying them in the Japanese tradition.

We just need to make sure that we stick to Japanese rules of politeness and courtesy...and meanwhile, seat ourselves near the kitchen in the back so we can build this budding friendship between us and the cooks!

Still Waiting!

Some of you read Lissa's brief rant on Facebook, stating that our shipment did NOT arrive on March 17th as we had hoped.  Instead, it got a late start at sea, and is headed on a detour to China.  We don't expect to see our household goods until mid- to late-April.  To quote an ancient philosopher-king, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" and that's exactly how we've felt recently.  We are heart-sick, depressed, angry and wishing we could speed time forward to the day that a moving truck appears in front of our house, delivering beds with mattresses, pillows, spring-weather clothing, kitchen implements, stereo systems, computer software, Xbox, and other comforts of home.

It will get here.  We know it will.  And between now and then, we've got some living to do.

Jenna and Heather have been on spring break this past week, which also coincided with "O-Hana-Mi", Sakura (cherry blossom) Viewing season.  For one precious week, trees all over Tokyo exploded in full bloom with pale pink blossoms.  We made a point to get out of our empty house and enjoy the outdoor scenery, and God graced our week with pleasant spring weather and mild temperatures.

Enjoy the photos, and pray for us to persevere during this wait that seems never-ending.

Daylight is Coming

Ten weeks in country.  Admittedly, it seems like it's been much longer than 10 weeks, but we are beginning to see daylight.  We are gradually completing all of the tasks that weigh our minds down in the midst of these early days.  Both Stew and Lissa earned their driver's licenses.  After two months of waiting around, we have reliable internet at home.  We are emerging from winter's cold into a lovely spring season.  

Signs of Spring:  Plum blossoms

All that remains on our get-settled-in-Japan list is "The Shipment" -- our furnishings that are in transit from the U.S.   Awhile back, we were told that our container would hit the port of Yokohama on March 17th.  We've heard nary an update in the meantime, and although we are afraid to get our hopes up...we can't help but hope that by this time next week, we will be swapping out rent-a-futons for wooden-frame beds with brand new mattresses.


To our great relief, Lissa passed the driving test on her second try.  Stew (!) drove her there that day and waited around while she tested.  Twenty people tested that morning and in the end, only two passed, yielding a pass rate of 10%.  Stew grew anxious as he saw one driver after another return to the waiting hall, headed straight for the "Reschedule Test" window instead of the "Convert International License to Japan License" window.   It was a happy day when Lissa found herself in the Ten Percent category, earning her driver's license!  There is something about gaining Internet and drivers' licenses that boosts your morale in a way nothing else can.


From previous experience we know that one of the best ways to ward off the deadly combination of culture-shock and newcomer's blues, is to "get out" and become involved in the community.   Several opportunities presented themselves in these recent weeks, and with our relatively uncluttered schedule, we've taken advantage.

Heather shows off her project.

Jenna fixes her display board at home.

Stew and Lissa served as judges for the middle school's Science Expo at CAJ.  Jenna and Heather each carried out their own science investigations, compiling research reports and constructing display boards.  We toured the Science Fair in our white lab coats, interviewing students and evaluating their projects.   Jenna created her own lava lamp, while Heather magically floated paper clips atop the water's surface.  The girls got started on their projects about a month later than their classmates, and we weren't stocked with all of the supplies we'd normally have at home.  In spite of the less-than-ideal circumstances, the girls did an admirable job with what they had available, and we were proud of their hard work.

Science Fair Judges -- We had a blast!

Stew walks alongside the city councilman

Another opportunity came through a last-minute request from a co-worker.  We attended an afternoon art workshop at a community center, offered to families of Japanese children who suffer Down's syndrome.  This was orchestrated by a city alderman, a fairly new Christian who himself is disabled from cerebral palsy.  He is burdened by the lack of resources and support for families of Down's children, so he organized this event to draw parents and children together for some recreation and encouragement.  

This sweet girl painted at least a dozen pictures!

It's like we've never been separated.

We have also enjoyed several visits with good friends this month.  One was with the Kimura family.  The wife, Kazuyo, comes from our former city in China and was the first friend that Lissa made there in 2004.  We enjoyed a joyful reunion over sushi one night and have stayed in contact ever since, mainly through cell-phone texting.

Heather was only 5 the last time she saw her buddy.

A friend from our Texas days, Randy, came through Tokyo after a brief stay on Okinawa for business.  We took the train to Tokyo's Ginza section to meet up with him one evening, and we visited over coffee.  Most recently, we hosted Bill and Pam Truax, parents of Leslie's fiance, Josiah.  They live on Okinawa, and when Bill got sent to Tokyo for military-diplomatic business, he flew his wife up to Tokyo for a weekend "date."  We are grateful to have friends come through town and call on us!

Our Texas friend, world traveler Randy Walker

Bill and Pam Truax, visiting from Okinawa

The "Necessary Evil" Driving Test

Stew received a Pink Slip two days ago.  No, not the dreaded "you've lost your job" pink slip, but a coveted Sakura pink slip declaring that he passed the notorious Japan driver's license road test.  Stew passed, while I (Lissa) failed.  More on that in a moment.

While we've shivered through February, walking back and forth in 35-mph wind gusts to and from the bus station and the train station...we've eyed the mini-van that sits parked beside our house.  This van is a fairly aged specimen, a non-descript 1998 Toyota Noah mini-van.  But it's ours to use, and since we just finished 8 years of life in China with no vehicle, we have been itching to drive it.

Our "Noah" mini-van, seen from the living room window

Not so fast, however...

Though we went to the AAA in Tennessee last fall and obtained "International Driving Permits" that were good for a year, these became utterly worthless once we landed in Japan.  Instead, we had to apply for a full Japan driver's license, a process that took approximately 6 weeks from initial application to the date of the road test.  Stew and I went online and studied up on the licensing process.  Kind friends took us on 3 separate excursions to the JAF (Japan Auto Federation):  first to submit an application, then to return with a missing document, then back a third time to pay fees and take a written test.  The written test was simple enough; we both passed, so we booked the date for our driving test.

A "forbidden" photo of the driving course

The driving test is the bane of an ex-pat's transition to Japan.   Instructions are given entirely in Japanese.  The cars are outfitted with seeming dozens of rear-view mirrors, all pointing this way and that.  This myriad of mirrors exists for the examiner (versus the driver) whose job it is to catch the driver "out of position" at any point on the driving course:  along the road, through the "crank" of simultaneous 90-degree turns, the narrow S-curve, and through intersections.  Intersections are marked with white solid "stop" lines well before the actual intersection.  In the middle of the intersection lay triangles or other shapes painted on the road, which the driver must proceed past/along/through  in a precise fashion.  Suffice it to say that the driving test involves a laundry list of anal-retentive driving protocol: one enormously intimidating challenge.

Stew and I were the last of 18-20 people to test that day.  We spent the morning in a little booth, watching all of the other drivers attempt the test.  Anticipation built as we watched others make their way through the driving course, and each time one returned to the booth, we craned our necks to see whether that driver earned a "pass" or the more frequent "fail" slip.

Lissa's is on top; Stew's on the bottom.

Yes, I failed.  I made a lane-change rather late and reached a full stop at the intersection, with the front of the car breaking the plane of the white "stop line."  No touch-down for this girl.  In effect, I'd illegally entered the intersection.  I chalk it up to my inexperience of left-side-of-the-road driving, an unfamiliar vehicle, a lack of Japanese language, and paranoia from too many off-set mirrors flashing images across my view.  Stew, on the other hand, "aced" the test and joined a very elite club of Foreigners Who Pass On The First Try.  We guessed that around 35-40% of test-takers that day passed the driving test.  What we didn't know until much later, was that the majority of them were repeating the test for the 3rd or 4th time!

Thanks be to God, we are "mobile" now because one of us passed.  This obviously boosts our morale, giving us the ability to go where we want to, when we want to, without begging rides, paying expensive train fare, or enduring motion sickness-inducing public bus rides.  There was only one remaining hiccup to resolve at the end of the day.

Had we mentioned that it's been cold here?

The van's battery was rather "dead" and in need of recuscitation before we could venture out on a maiden voyage....  Ah well, after 3 months of sitting still in an outdoor parking spot, what could we expect!