What Do We Do All Day, Anyway?

What do we do on an average day in Japan?

Good question! 

Our first few years here are "re-tooling" years, spent in full-time language study.  Stew and Lissa go to class five days per week, typically 3 hours per day.  They spend another 2-3 hours per day doing homework, reviewing a lesson, or pre-viewing the next day's lesson.  It's an arduous schedule for middle-aged brains.  The mental fatigue hits us around mid-day Thursday, but we press on through Thursday and Friday class. 

Our sensei grades Stew's first essay.

Lissa's first Japanese essay!

                     
We meet three days a week with a sensei (teacher) as we work our way through elementary Japanese, vocabulary, and grammar.  We meet another day with a native speaker to focus on conversational Japanese and listening comprehension.  On the fifth day, we study religious language with a group of our missionary co-workers.  This class meets on the opposite side of Tokyo, which means a two-hour commute, one way.  The 3-hour class nets a full 8-hour day when it's all said and done -- exhausting.  The material is essential to our work here, though, so we don't want to miss out.  Just this month we negotiated a new arrangement, and we no longer have to make that commute.  We are so grateful!  We didn't want to whine too loudly about the travel because the teacher lives near our train stop and he makes that same trip twice per week!

Standing room only during morning rush hour. 

Downtown Tokyo from the Japan Rail train. 

Our sensei is very happy with our progress so far.  It's hard to know how well you are doing learning a new language.  We find ourselves battling against speaking Chinese when we're in the classroom...and when we're out on the street, well, it isn't pretty.  Let's just say that it takes a whole different level of proficiency to "think on your feet" in a new language!  Instead of focusing only on spoken Japanese, though, we are going the extra mile to become literate.  It will be slow progress for sure, but worthwhile.  For one thing, I will figure out how to operate my oven, with its numerous oven/microwave functions and FORTY-EIGHT separate programs for daily use!

Our oven, displaying some patriotic spirit during July.

In gold:  some of the 48 programs.  In white:  oven, microwave, steam, and heretofore "unknown" functions.

The girls are out of school now until late-August.   During their first week off, they attended volleyball camp.  During their second week, they hopped a train with two of their friends to visit an amusement park -- by themselves!  Jenna and Heather spend time each day reviewing Japanese, and Heather is working on some Math review as well.  They spend a lot of time reading.  In fact, just this week we made one final trip to CAJ's library before the school shut down for summer.  Each of them came away with a tidy stack of books for summer reading!

                              

We surprised Heather and Jenna with new bicycles during their last week of school.  They have enjoyed going out to explore our neighborhood on their bikes.  We have discovered several bike trails that go through a local park, plus hilly streets for (careful) biking fun.  One evening we happened upon a baseball game, so we sat there to take in a few innings before moving along.

Jenna in our local park 

   

It's not the Yankees, but it's baseball!

 Summer came gradually, after a six-week long "rainy season."  Now that summer's here, it's gotten pretty hot!  Room a/c units keep the smaller spaces cooled off, but stairwells and other lesser-used areas get mighty warm.  Though we're hot, Tokyo heat, we've discovered, is more bearable than the heat and humidity combo of southern China!

37.5 Celsius = 99.5 degrees F.!!

In our stairwell...

Our beat-the-heat strategy so far involves making friends with the heat -- as in, Stew grilling outdoors as often as possible!  We also discovered a neighborhood pool, so we plan to make regular trips there to cool off.

Steak Strips for Dinner -- YUM.

Bobbing Heads -- Heather and Jenna

All in all, not a bad life.  We are slowly making friends as our Japanese grows by baby steps.  We enjoy friendships with other Japan missionaries, and gather once a month for an English Sunday service since we all attend Japanese churches for weekly worship.  We enjoy hosting other missionaries, particularly the single guys, at our house for Western food and gaming.  We also serve as foster parents for Hassle, a missionary family's kitty.  We affectionately refer to him as "The Old Man" because of his clockwork routine of sleeping and eating!

Hassle, "The Old Man"

Mighty Resilient Girls

I've decided that it's time to brag on Jenna and Heather, our two younger daughters.  These girls have seen more change in the last 12 months than many kids experience during their entire childhood.

Moving Day, Hendersonville, TN

In one short year, these kids have lived on 3 different land masses:  China, the U.S. and Japan.  They attended 3 separate schools, each one distinctively different.  They went from school at home to a public middle school in Tennessee, and now they attend a private international school populated by high-achieving Asian students in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan.

Had I mentioned that during this inaugural semester in Japan, the girls spent the initial four months living in near-Spartan conditions, sleeping and studying on the floor?  Evenings were spent time-sharing on Mom and Dad's laptops, as so much of the day-to-day activity and communication came by way of digital technology.  They entered the school at a time when most students' friendships were already cemented from the previous semester.  They had to hustle to catch up with their fellow students who'd already gotten a six-week head start on Science Fair projects.  To Jenna and Heather's credit, they got theirs done in 3 weeks' time with a minimum of supplies at home!

 

Method of conveyance has evolved from place to place as well.  In China, the girls merely walked down the hall to the living room (occasionally in their pajamas!)  In Tennessee, they walked down the street to catch a neighborhood school bus.  Now in Japan, they commute 45 minutes one way: walking 15 minutes to the train station, then taking a 15-minute train, then walking a final 10 minutes to get to school.  They perform the reverse commute at the end of every day.  Needless to say, with heavy backpacks, these girls get a workout 5 days a week.

They have weathered several bouts of illness, mostly upper respiratory, since arriving in their new host country.  This is pretty typical for families that move overseas and must get acclimated to a new environment replete with unfamiliar pollens, allergens and germs.  Since we had not yet found a family doctor, they had to blaze a new trail into the world of medical treatment.  At Jenna's clinic, the doctor merely performed a visual ear/nose/throat exam followed by an x-ray, and he promptly dispensed antibiotics.  Heather wasn't so lucky; her doctor came from the "old school" (even wore the headpiece with the reflector disk on top!) and he was very fond of poking, probing and aspirating out of Heather's ears, nose and throat!  Eeewwww!

School has presented unique challenges at each location.  In China, school was a challenge because Mom was their primary teacher.  The independent daughter resisted Mom's every attempt to teach and explain new content.  The more dependent of the two relished Mom's involvement so much that she paid scant attention to her online instruction, knowing that Mom would explain things much more clearly when the lesson was over and it was homework time.

School was a challenge in Tennessee because the middle school operated on what seemed to me, ungodly hours.  The girls had to catch a bus at 6:30 a.m., which meant they had to wake up at 5:45!  They adapted well to this ugly schedule by making their lunches the night before, and pre-positioning their backpacks.  That way, all that was needed in the drowsy early-morning hours was to prepare breakfast and get themselves out the door.

At the Christian Academy in Japan, school is a challenge because of the rigor of their coursework.  Heather is writing reports in MLA format -- in the sixth grade!  Jenna has written numerous reports, created several powerpoints, and given multiple oral presentations in one semester.  Jenna also struggled with math because they placed her in Algebra I (second semester) with only a semester of Pre-Algebra under her belt.  She spent much of the semester just trying to stay afloat in math.

Jenna's Middle School "Encapsulation"

The hardship has actually proven beneficial to each of the girls.  In the case of the independent one, she realized that it's probably okay, maybe even desirable, to ask Mom for help on her work.  In the case of the dependent daughter, she gradually took more and more ownership of her learning.  She stayed for an hour after school each day at the school's Learning Resource Center in order to get organized and obtain assistance on her homework.  We expect both girls to get excellent grades when it's all said and done on June 11th.  

Good grades are great, but that’s not all that matters.  We received a very complimentary remark from a teacher who had been observing the girls over the course of the semester.  In this teacher's words, "Jenna and Heather are such a blessing to CAJ.  First of all, they don’t give in to peer pressure.  Secondly, they were able to make friends in the middle of the school year, and their friends were actually the ones that were in need of friends themselves."  What a gift!

Sarah's Mom prayed for 3 yrs. for a friend like Jenna

Heather and Aiah

Another intangible that doesn't show up on the report card is CAJ's Wall of Honor.  Students are singled out during the year for displaying godly character in ways that benefit their fellow students.  The hallways at CAJ are covered with painted handprints, each one bearing a student's name, the year, and the character trait that the student was recognized for.  Heather received recognition midway through the semester for displaying the attribute of Encouragement, and very recently, Jenna was recognized for displaying Courage.

Jenna just graduated from 8th grade this past weekend, which means high school is upon us once again.  It's hard to believe that it’s here so soon, but she's ready.  Heather will begin 7th grade with more confidence in her self-management skills, plus greater familiarity with a routine that involves multiple teachers, multiple classrooms, and increasingly complex schoolwork.

At Jenna's Graduation

We give thanks to God for taking our girls' experiences, challenges and hardships and using them to create resilient, intrepid young ladies.  We know this will serve them well in later years as they're stretched by circumstances, tried by trials, and occasionally ambushed by the unexpected.  Bravo, Jenna and Heather!

Heather in Choir at Jenna's Graduation

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!