Category Archives: OMF

Coming up…

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It has just become the last day of 2011 here in Japan, in 24 hours it will be a whole new year. This past year has seen a lot of new things for Emily and I: a trip to Okinawa, a new pastor at the church we work at, the birth of our beautiful daughter Anna… We have had a lot of challenges and new things to learn, a lot of things to give thanks for, and others to continue to pray towards.

These past years have been years marked with change for us, 2008 I came to Japan, 2009 Emily moved up to Hokkaido and we got engaged, in 2010 we married and moved to Oasa, then in 2011 we welcomed little Anna into our family. 2012 looks like it will continue the trend as we prepare to head back to the UK in the spring time (with a estimated date of 1st of May).  Our return to the UK has a few purposes, first of all Emily can spend some time learning about and experiencing the culture that has influenced and shaped my development, also she will be able to study English and gain some experience in using it in day to day life! We hope to return to Japan with OMF in the future and English is a requirement as it is OMF’s internal language. We also need time to process Emily’s entry into OMF and hopefully gain a permanent residence visa for her to ease transition back and forth in the future.

But we hope it will also be a time of personal development for us. Emily will experience life and faith in another culture and I learn to be patient with her and help her as she has with me here in Japan! We hope that God will provide a place for me to work that will help me to develop for future ministry in Japan as well as provide for our family while we are in the UK. Whether that is towards the IT skills side, or more focussed on traditional ministry (or both?!) is to be seen. We also will be spending a lot of time sharing about Japan and the work God has for us to do here. We will both need to learn to trust Him to provide anew as we step into the next stage of our journey.

As we move forward into 2012 we are just at the beginning of this, we are beginning to become active in gathering the documents we will need for Emily’s visa application, thinking about timings as some of those may overlap with original documents needed for Anna’s UK passport application, and for my re-entry permit to Japan… We will need to get used to the seemingly endless streamers of red tape if we are to survive the coming years!

Maybe 2013 will be a little more settled…

English anyone?

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It’s not really a big secret that I didn’t really want to teach English when I came to Japan.  I told myself English teaching was really not helping to sever the damaging link between Christianity and the “west”, that it wasn’t a viable reproducible way for Japanese churches to work, that I wasn’t qualified to teach English and couldn’t really deliver on the promise of improving your English that English classes or lessons automatically bring with them…

But really, as I shared at JLC a while ago, my problem was partly that I am not an English teacher.   The reason people want me to teach English is simply because I can speak it (apparently!) and I was born in an English speaking country, and I look like I was born in an English speaking country.
But a bigger part was just pride – I didn’t like that the most valuable thing a lot of people recognised in me was something so coincidental.  There are millions of people born in English speaking countries and any one of them could do English classes as well as I could, if not considerably better.  And what about the years I spent at school and university, learning how to program, develop software, work with databases, troubleshoot IT issues etc…  Isn’t that something not everyone can do?  Shouldn’t I do that while someone who knows how to teach English teaches it?

But the fact is the English is not the most important part.  I am a foreigner in Japan, I stick out and am noticed everyone assumes that foreigners speak English.  So that is what they come and look for when they see me.  I’m not wearing a sign that says “Bachelor of Engineering” or “Master of Divinity” or even “Tries to play the saxophone”, but I am wearing a face that says, or at least people assume it says “I speak English!”  And so that is what I can use.

So, in the spirit of swallowing my pride and using the tools that God has given to me, we (Emily and I) are running a kid’s English “club” (I still am reluctant to make the “class” promise that says you can learn anything from me!) and helping mums and kids from the church meet other mums and kids in the area, going to the English Speakers Group at the local university as a kind of living example of how to pronounce things (like towel, or eight… ha!) and inviting them to our apartment for pizza, or taking them to the Hokkaido Centre for one of FM Zero’s international nights

But basically what I have found is that there is no reason not to use the English card where it is appropriate.  It isn’t taking away from other opportunities, I can still speak Japanese with the people I meet when we aren’t studying, I am really enjoying my weekly IT time and cleaning up the office systems here, and also thinking about some exciting ideas with our RD about how to use IT to help smaller churches without pastors to worship each Sunday.

About the only thing that I am dreading at the moment is JLPT N2 in December, and the practice in November!!

Graduation, wedding, celebration, honeymoon….

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A lot has happened since I last wrote something of any length on here…

In July I graduated from OMF’s Japanese Language Centre!  This means I have finished their course and they need space for new people…  Well not exactly, I also wanted, if possible, to graduate before I got married so all the aspects of new life could start together.  I am not sure if this was a good idea or not though!!  But it has all worked out well so far!  Technically then I have been working at Oasa Church and doing IT work for OMF since my graduation, but things have been so turbulent with moving apartment, getting married and so on that it is all only really settling down now!

That’s right!  I’ve moved apartment!  Now I am out in Oasa rather than in Sapporo City itself.  Oasa town falls within Ebetsu City, which is the next city to the east of Sapporo.  It is a bit more country side than where I was before, which was much more semi-suburban city-ish!  But it seems like a nice place to live, we are very close to the church we will work at (as opposed to taking two trains and an hour like before) and a fellow missionary who has gone on a 7 month-or-so home assignment has lent us their car for the winter, so it is all pretty convenient!  at least at the moment!

You probably noticed the other bit of news in the paragraphs above there.  Emily and I finally got married on the 21st of August 2010!  We had the ceremony in Sapporo Fukuinkan church in Sapporo city, it was a great day with a lot of friends and family to share it with!
Then we went down to Ibaraki on the 22nd and had a good old (Japanese style) barbecue with those of Emily’s family and friends there who couldn’t make it up to Sapporo.
Then we headed for Northern Ireland where we had another great night with everyone in First Antrim on Friday the 27th!  It was great to be home and see everyone again!!

After the do in First we finally got some time to ourselves and went up to stay in Portstewart on the north coast!  Not the most exotic place to go you might think, but for me it was very relaxing and a great way to spend a few days and for Emily it was a pretty out of the normal holiday (half way around the world from her home!).  And it is hard to beat the north coast really!!

We left Northern Ireland, spent a evening and a night in Dublin and flew back to Japan, got back on Saturday at 10pm Japan time…!  Time to sort out the flat and get everything organised.  Lots of legal bumph to get addresses and names changed and all that kind of stuff to do as well!

So that’s a bit of a summary, spurred on by 5am jetlag wide awakeness!  Once we get the apartment sorted out and all the stuff done we need to get past this week, hopefully there will be some photos and more info for those who are interested!

Conference, Norn Irish and rememberance

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This past month has been pretty busy with language school, wedding preparations and so on all taking up time. We also had the OMF All Japan Conference in Jozankei, Hokkaido, last week. I was part of the tech team for the conference and it took a bit of preparation and work while we were there, but everything seemed to go well, except for Tre’s laptop! It was great fun roping Oliver and JP into helping out too! (Thanks guys!) So you’ll forgive me for not updating in a little while!

Japan Field Conference is a time that all of the OMF missionaries in Japan come together and spend four or five days listening to teaching (Patrick Fung, OMF’s General Director), have fun (in the pool and onsen!) and fellowship (over delicious food)!

The field conference actually only happens every 3 years, the years in between have regional conferences instead and we are divided into Hokkaido and East Japan regions.
But this field conference had something special. A team of short ter missionaries came out from Norn Iron to run a kids programme for all the missionary kids! 
The team was mostly made up of people from Helen Lyttle’s church, Bloomfield Presbyterian, but also had 3 other guys, Mark, Roger and Jonny.  Jonny of course being known by aliases such as Silly McSilly, Marvin the Minstrel and now also Buzz McLightyear!

Now that conference is over I have the priviledge of hosting Roger and Jonny in my flat for a few nights before they head back to Tokyo and on home to NI.  Today I took Jonny to Oasa to see the church and meet some of the people.  Then we went to the local university’s festival to sample some local delights and see the Yosakoi Dancers performing.
Tomorrow we will be taking the team to a nearby lake and volcanic area, I am looking forward as I haven’t been to that area before either!

The service today at church is the last part of my post title.  Here in Japan remembering those who have passed away is a major part of culture, and also of Japanese Buddhism.  As in the west such dedicated official rememberance is not part of our culture (we prefer more personal rememberance of Granny and Grandad), and because Christianity doesn’t revere ancestors as Japanese Buddhism and Shinto do, it seems as though we Christians don’t care about our ancestors to many Japanese.  Which is a reflection of culture rather than faith.
So to enable Japanese Christians to faithfully remember their parents and grandparents without compromising their Christian faith, churches often buy an area in a graveyard for interning ashes of members.  Then once a year they have a special service to remember those who have been called to heaven before them.  This service is a very serious affair and is very moving.  Pastor Horita gave a short description of each member who had passed away since the church began (it is a bit over 30 years old) during his message and after the normal service there is a short one at the grave site.

This tradition fills many gaps that a plain western Christianity would leave in many people’s expectations and hopes.  A Japanese Christian’s non-Christian family might expect to have religious ceremonies of rememberance at the temple and this could result in the deceased Christian being worshipped as a god or spirit.  It also shows non-Christian family members that Christians do care about those who have been before.  And finally it is just a touching way to remember grandparents and parents who have passed away and honour their memory!  But it is a bit unusual to be in the service without knowing what is going on!

Back in Japan…

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The title might be a surprise to those who thought I had never left Japan, and rightly so because I haven’t really!

But this week I am on a “centre visit” to the Kanto area.  The purpose is to see what OMF is doing in Kanto, meet missioanries and learn some stuff!  So far I have had the opportunity to see some different ministries, meeting with missionaries who are church planting in an urban area, which the Japanese pastor’s wife ironically called the country-side as they are from an even more urban area! But I didn’t see anything green until yesterday when we went out to see an almost sub-sub-urban area church plant.  I have got to see some house church work, some international work, tonight I am going to tag along to a businessmen’s group…  So it is pretty busy, but very interesting and a lot of food for thought…

However, everytime I leave Sapporo and come down to Honshu I feel like I am going back to Japan.  Perhaps it is that my first impression of Japan was Kanto, landing at Narita Airport and staying at the Ichikawa guesthome (the lounge still smells the same as I sit here typing).  Perhaps it is Sapporo’s relative newness, wide streets, squared out planning and block addressing that feels less “Japanese”…  But regardless, when I go back to Aomori, or come down to Ichikawa, or visit Emily’s family in Ibaraki, I feel like I am in Japan.  Narrow streets, houses right out to the edges, people even act more “Japanese” down here.  In the city there are the big lights and extremely busy places, in the country there are square rice paddies to distant hills and mist topped mountains…  Just as you would imagine Japan to look.  So it always feels like I am in Japan here, but up in Hokkaido it feels a bit less Japanese…

Winter sports!

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As you know, living in northern Japan has the perk of being able to go skiing and snowboarding without having to fly somewhere, so I won’t go on about it again!

On Saturday a bunch of students from the OMF language centre hit the slopes at Teine with all our gear and our resident snowboarding instructor!  JP and Nora came to Japan from Germany with OMF and JP shared his testimony at a Olympic themed night for students last week telling us how he came to faith after breaking his back and missing out becoming a professional snowboarder.

It was a great day and thanks to JP for teaching us what we really should be doing!

Snowboarding 2010

Football, Flutes and Formalities

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I realised I haven’t really been posting much about Japan recently…  I mean I’m living here, spending a lot of my time studying and learning Japanese, talking to Japanese people, learning about Japanese culture… And I haven’t written anything about it since my David Mitchell video link…  It was a great video though!

So today I am going to talk about something Japanese!  Japanese love hierarchy.  Well I don’t know if they love it, but they certainly stick to it!  Recently in my Japanese classes I have moved on from basic hierarchical language that surmounts to every day politeness when talking to people to specific language that is designed to illustrate to all around your deference of position to another person.  This is a well known feature of Japanese (I think) but it really is a point of great interest and insight to Japanese society…
The two types of polite language I have been studying in a bit more depth are honourific, the other is humble.  Honourific language is used when speaking to someone who is on a higher plane than yourself about them, what they are doing and so on.  Basically it is used to give honour to someone else.  Humble language on the other hand is used when talking to someone on a higher plane than you about yourself, basically humbing yourself and things about you.
In reality this kind of stuff isn’t used by everyday folks in everyday life at home and on the street.  It is used in places where obvious deference is deemed important, places like the work place where you use this kind of language when talking to your boss, or when talking to a customer, or someone from another company to show your respect and deference to them, thats not the only case, but an easy one to understand I think!

I think thats enough talking about language study really…  If you are learning Japanese you know what I mean and I am sure you feel my pain… If not you will probably lose interest should I go into any more detail!  So lets leave it there and move on to the other interesting observation re hierarchy.

Recently I joined a windband with Alaric, another OMFer from the UK here in Sapporo.  On my first day people were asking the normal questions: Who are you? What do you do?  How old are you?  Where are you from? and so on.  If you are, like me, a spritely young thing you won’t find anything overly wrong with that, but if you are a bit older you might wonder why people are asking how old you are all the time…  But that is one of the most common questions I have been asked since coming to Japan (And, might I add, the response is almost always surprise at how young I am!).

The reason?  Well it is quite simple, if you are older then you move up the hierarchy, if you are younger then you move down.  As a little 20-something I am a good bit down the hierarchy from the other tenor sax player in her 30s (36 to be precise, and she had no qualms in informing me).  Ultimately it probably doesn’t actually make that much difference to how I am treated or expected to act at something like windband, particularly with me being a foreigner and also apparently looking deceptively old to Japanese eyes (probably the beard).  But it lets everyone know where everyone stands and so everyone knows how to act when appropriate situations arise…

The football pitch is a different story however.  I have been going to Futsal (basically 5-a-side rebranded by Brazillians…) most Fridays with some guys.  We go to the hall, pull a number from a hat and all of the groups play in their teams on a rotation, each game is 5 minutes long, or first to two goals and the winner stays on to play the next team…  A draw means both teams go off and the next two are on.  All kinds of people show up to play, from junior high school kids (15 year olds) through high school, university, young workers through to a few 20 and 3o-something missionaries.  The quality of the football is very high (til we are up to play!) and everyone has a good time. 
You might already have guessed how this related to hierarchy…  While waiting for our turn to come around (we do a lot of that) and watching the games as they go past, it doesn’t take long to see that the players often play differently with the different teams, older players will happily be more boisterous and less considerate when playing against younger players and should a throw in or other set piece be disputed, deference is usually, and quickly, shown to the older player.

Now this isn’t really age discrimintation, it is pretty much just the way society works, it is how our society in the west used to work (another great David Mitchell video could go in here), and kind of, to a much, much lesser extent, still does…

New teachers and more…

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I have got new teachers!  JLC switches the teachers and students around occasionally so that we get experience of different Japanese speakers, and also, probably, to give the teachers a bit more variation.  So Classes are a little more exciting at the moment as I get to know my new teachers and am able to reuse all my conversation material with a new person!

This week also will hopefully see me joining the Japanese media circus!  I am getting tv…  Until now I have simply used a monitor with my laptop to watch DVDs etc and used my ipod with some speakers for music etc.  But I have ordered a Digibox (as I already have a screen and speakers…) from Amazon and hopefully it will arrive sometime this week.  Digital TV in Japan is a bit of a pain as they have decided to shun the rest of the world and, bizarrely along with Brazil, have chosen a different form of digital broadcasting.  This means that when I return to NI for PC’s Do, I sadly won’t be able to just bring back my media pc parts and use them.  Hence my ordering a box.

I will let you know how it goes!

Landed, luggage and language!

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I am in Sapporo!

I arrived here on Tuesday and luggage came too.  My big box from the UK hasn’t got here yet, it is taking it’s time through customs with a complication or two…  But DHL is keeping me up to date and I hope it will be here next week!
I have moved into my new apartment.  It’s great!  Actually larger than I expected and really nice…  I will post pictures sometime soon I promise!

I also spent some time today talking to Miriam Davis, the language co-ordinator here.  We were discussing the syllabus and how things work for me in terms of language study.  I was also introducted to Saito-sensei who will be teaching me Japanese for the next while.  I will start before Christmas with two lessons a day, including some kanji (the chinese characters) and going up to three in the new year…  I am really looking forward to this part now!  I think I will enjoy language study!

While I was on the plane from singapore I saw an episode of Flight of the Conchords and this song made me laugh.  So practise your french with the Conchords!

Japan – Land of the refreshing air!

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It’s nice to need a jumper in November!

I have arrived in Japan!  The plane landed in at around 5pm, I got through immigration and customs, Met Wolfgang Langhans (the Field Director here) and we arrived at Japan HQ at around 7:15pm!  Now one very tasty dinner (with Wolfgang and Dorothea) and a short dander around Ichikawa later and it’s almost time for bed…

It’s great to be back in Japan, the train ride back from the airport already brought back the sounds and smells of Japan!  And some of the sights, even thought it was dark…

Leaving IHQ wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be as it was early so my brain wasn’t working yet!  OC was something I would rather have done without when I was looking forward to it.  But in reflection it was a very useful time, getting to know people who are going to different places, getting to know OMF as an international organisation (getting to know the bit inbetween the homeside and fieldside) and getting to kow the people who are working at international HQ

Tomorrow Emiri and her parents are coming!  Emiri is in Ibaraki at a friend’s wedding and she is going to come to morning worship at the Chapel of Adoration here tomorrow! They are going to arrive here quite early and so I will leave it at that and head to bed!