Living the international lifestyle….

Posted on January 29, 2012 by John

We are an international family!
I am from Northern Ireland, Emily is from Japan, and Anna is straddling both. International sounds fun and exciting, and quite often it is! It’s fun to see how Emily and I see things in different ways, it will be fun to see how Anna grows up to see the world and what we can learn from her. But with all of the benefits that we gain from being multi-cultural, there are also some difficult things.

Right now Anna’s application for her second passport is in Hong Kong, hopefully being processed and approved. This is for her British passport, she already has her Japanese one. Tomorrow we go to Sapporo to get a re-entry permit for me so that I can leave Japan and return again (provided we can return before my current visa expires). Then February will be spent sorting out and applying for Emily’s visa for the UK so that we can enter the country as a family in May. It’s a fairly arduous affair that needs us to prove our marriage isn’t a sham, that we have somewhere to live in the UK and that we will be able to support ourselves while we are there.

These are all things we tend to take for granted as we (well most of us) grow up in our passport countries. We pay our taxes and get healthcare, the promise of benefits should we need them, the right to live and work in the country we call home. But now as an international family, while we have these rights, we don’t all have them in the same places. For the time being, wherever we go, at least one of us will need special permission to be there, more permission to work there and it won’t be something guaranteed indefinitely.

Recently I have been working on a message from Philippians 3:17-21 and as I work on it, I have never been more thankful that we can claim our citizenship of heaven, somewhere that we can all be openly accepted and leave the paperwork behind.

Coming up…

Posted on December 30, 2011 by John

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…

Television commercials and the Tohoku earthquake

Posted on March 29, 2011 by John

The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami have not had a significant affect on life in Hokkaido. To me, in some ways watching the TV footage and hearing from others who are going to help feels like it is happening in another country. There have been stories of gasoline shortages, food not arriving, people panic buying goods and worrying about radiation levels, water being cut off, electricity rolling blackouts and all kinds of other things going on in Japan, but in Hokkaido, at least in Ebetsu City, there has been nothing like this. One supermarket had a sign telling us we could only buy 20kg of rice per person and one pack of toilet paper, but we don’t need that much at one time! For most people, life has returned, even continued, as normal here in Hokkaido.

We ourselves are, of course, praying for the people in Tohoku, giving money where we can and helping out others directly involved in helping where we are able. But our church position has meant not being able to go with the team of OMFers who just got back from Iwate prefecture to help clean up and provide food for people in the area. The church pastor of 33 years has just finished and a new pastor is coming today, we are the “link” between the two in terms of filling in and helping the new pastor get up and running.

One affect it did have was on entertainment and media, for about a week after the earthquake, regular TV shows were put on hold and every channel was showing 24 hour news coverage of what was going on. In itself this was a noble effort in keeping people up to date of the dangers that could be coming their way, of government messages regarding safety and “life-lines” (electricity, water etc). But after a few days Hokkaido it meant brisk business for local video rental shops. For some people it has meant feelings of anxiety and concern did not subside and even people relatively unaffected by the earthquake have been considerably disturbed by the continue flow of media.

I hope this post doesn’t seem too flippant, I don’t mean to take anything away from the disaster that has occurred in Tohoku and Kanto, many people are suffering greatly, mourning family members, neighbours, friends who have been swept away. Many people have lost their livelihoods and homes, wondering how to build for the future.

Really the truth is I want to blog about a TV commercial… Since the earthquake, understandably, companies don’t want to be associated with the images of suffering and destruction that have been on TV, and so have pulled their commercials. The result is the Advertising Council of Japan have been given a LOT of airtime for their commercials, including this particularly irritating one about why you should use everyday greetings to make friends (the message isn’t irritating, the constant playing over and over of the same tune grates a bit though). The ads are beginning to return, but aside from news reports in the regular slots, the ever present AC ads are one of the few every day things that reminds me of the disaster that happened just a few short weeks ago.

But it also means the run of a particular favourite of mine was cut short. It’s a commercial for a product to keep pollen out of your nose called Ion Block. Last year it featured a few pollen grains dancing along singing “At last! We’ve arrived at the Nose!!” only to be taken out by Ion Block at the last minute and told not to come back again. This year it is back with “This year too, we’ve arrived at the Nose!” and another devastating tackle, and Ion Block is joined by his mentholated “cool” friend.

English anyone?

Posted on October 16, 2010 by John

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!!

Conference, Norn Irish and rememberance

Posted on June 27, 2010 by John

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…

Posted on April 7, 2010 by John

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…

Garbage, rubbish, ごみ

Posted on March 22, 2010 by John

In Japan pretty much everything has a method. A right way to do it. This is obviously true if you go to the bank, or the city hall and don’t have the right forms or ask for quite the right thing, you will be there for much longer than you might be otherwise. But it extends into almost all areas of life, from packing away the percussion instruments after band practice (specific instruments go into specific cars, and their own slots in the garage), into Church life as there are routines and rules stuck to rigidly, into school where we learn we have to write characters and letters with the strokes in the right order so that other people can read them…

But a surprising place that rules and methods also extends into is rubbish. In the UK we have a couple of big old bins that we throw stuff in, maybe separating recyclables under duress, and then putting them out once a week or so and it all gets taken away with few questions being asked…
Here in Japan I have 5 bins in my apartment. One for “burnable” rubbish, one for paper rubbish, one for plastic rubbish, one for recyclables such as drinks bottles, glass and cans, and one for things that don’t fit into those categories, called “non-burnable” rubbish. I have a chart from the local city office to tell me what I should put into each bin, how to throw awkward things away etc.
I have to use yellow bags, which cost extra, for burnable and non-burnable rubbish and transparent/translucent bin-bags for the others so that the garbage men can check that there isn’t unsuitable rubbish in a bag it shouldn’t be in.
Once I have all my rubbish in my separate bins and bags I take it out to be taken away on it’s respective day. Mondays and Thursdays are for burnable rubbish, Tuesdays – recyclables, Wednesdays alternates between non-burnable and paper and Friday is the day to put out plastic rubbish. When spring comes for real garden rubbish will be added to the Wednesday mix.
When you put it out you have to put it out before 8:45am. You can’t put it out the night before as crows might eat it and make a mess or it will be lost under the nights snowfall. You also have to put it under the blue net to keep the crows out.

The bizarre thing to me is that this all works. People sort their rubbish with utmost care, they don’t put it out the night before even if it isn’t snowing, isn’t edible and there are nets to put over it to keep animals out. Hardly anyone puts it out after 8:45, even though the collection men are consistently late in coming to pick it up. But more than all of this, if someone makes a mistake and puts their rubbish out on the wrong day, or puts the wrong rubbish in a bag, or something else that means it isn’t right, the garbage men will stick a big red X sticker on it. Later the owner comes back, checks and sees if their garbage is there (there are no names on bags to identify people) and takes it home, re-sorts it and puts it out again when it is right.

There is a right way to sort your rubbish, a right way to put it out and a right way to correct your mistakes when you get the first two wrong.

But if that isn’t complicated enough, every area has a different set of rules, so it’s all different at church in Oasa. Even within the same area the rules can be different, JLC is on a different system because it isn’t a residential building.

But! If you learn the way to do it, life becomes a lot easier!!

Google.cn

Posted on January 16, 2010 by John

I am sure you have seen about Google’s row with China in the news recently. Basically “someone” in China was attacking Google’s services (primarily gmail) in an apparent attempt to get information about civil rights protesters. Google’s response was a bit disconnected in my view…

Back in 2006 Google made a For-China version of it’s site called Google.cn (.cn being the TLD for China), Now it had a chinese language version of it’s service for sometime, but it was being blocked by the Great Firewall to avoid people finding things on the internet that might not agree with the governments official take on national and world events, or even worse, might make them look bad. So, in order for Google to have a workable presence in China, they have to censor their results in a fashion that pleases the Chinese authorities, and so they decided to do that through google.cn. This move brought a lot of flack their way from free-speech activists and other people who don’t like how China works.

So basically, as I understand it google.cn is the site that gived the filtered results and the rest of google doesn’t. Google doesn’t seem to offer its other services through google.cn and presumably they aren’t part of the agreement with the Chinese government like search is. But by using proxies and routing connections through other countries, clever folk can access Gmail and it offers pretty secure (SSL) and pretty anonymous (no name etc required) email based outside China, a good thing for folk who might be trying not to get noticed or found protesting against their government.

But the disjointedness to me is between Google’s findings (that “someone” was attacking their services from China) and their response (to remove filtering from their in-China search). Why does removing the filtering balance out the attacks? And surely Google must be aware that China will just ask them to leave or just block google.cn… Perhaps Google is planning to remove themselves from the Chinese market and simply wants to make a big noise about doing so, while squarely pointing out the attacks made by ”someone”… And I think good for Google. They are a corporation, not a government agency, and they can withdraw from China if the fancy takes them. If other corporations followed suit, China might think twice about it’s policies on censorship which in turn would mean it would have to think twice about abusing people’s civil rights as there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide.

But the truth is that out here in East Asia Google isn’t the same big deal it is in the ‘western world’. Here in Japan no-one talks about Googling things, not many people use gmail, harldy anyone is on picasaweb, Blogger isn’t the blogging site of choice, Android has still to make any real appearance, YouTube is used a bit, but isn’t as clear a winner… The big internet mogul in Japan, and in most of East Asia, is Yahoo! In Japan Yahoo! provides search, online auctions and shopping, maps, news and weather, online TV, financial information, entertainment news, games and more. On top of that it is one of the largest internet service providers in the country, it is in cahoots with my mobile phone company, Softbank, and my future parent’s in law even use Yahoo! as their telephone provider for their home. the most common email address out here is @yahoo.co.jp. Google is even advertising on TV to try and up it’s market share here, I never saw a Google advert in the UK, they didn’t need them. If this is anything to go by China won’t worry about google leaving, there will be some other company that everyone uses. If Google left Japan, most people probably wouln’t notice anything other than improved efficiency at the office because there is no YouTube.

So yeah, that’s my take on the whole thing… Perhaps a well intentioned, if frustrated, move by Google, but will it have any of the effects people are talking about?

But! Be aware I am no expert on China or Chinese politics, quite the opposite, but my mission agency’s background is in China, originally being the China Inland Mission before being kicked out and deciding to serve the rest of East Asia (including Japan! ) and so there is still a lot of interest in and prayer for China within the organisation… So the story is of a little bit of interest to me, but this rant is the extent of my reporting ability on the subject!

Bloooooddd…… I'll get it!!

Posted on January 11, 2010 by John

Emily and I went to give blood today! Emily had never given blood before and I hadn’t in Japan either. It was pretty daunting to go through all of the questions on the computer screen checking if I was ok to give. There were lists of diseases that, had I had them in the past 6 months, would have meant I couldn’t give. Then lists that if I had at all would mean I couldn’t. These were pretty hard to understand, but made easier by the fact I haven’t had any diseases in a long time… Maybe since chicken pox as a kid!
Then came some lifestyle questions, questions about going to the dentists (which I did on Saturday, but the lady said it was fine as he just poked about and said everything was fine), questions about tatoos and piercings, and then the clincher…
It wanted to know if I had ever lived overseas. Of course I have, so I clicked 「はい」 (yes) and chose Europe from the list that followed.
The next question took me a little by surprise, althought I had been forewarned that I probably wouldn’t be able to give blood.
Had I stayed for more than one night in the UK between 1980 and 1996?
Well yes, of course I have. 「はい」 again.
Then the system asked me a bunch more questions and the lady printed out a sheet, before pointing to a massive poster on the wall saying that people who had stayed for more than one night in the UK between 1980 and 1996 you can’t give blood… I hadn’t noticed the poster, it really was massive, but in my defence there were loads of massive posters and it takes ages for me to try and read them! The reason given is the old favourite BSE, I hadn’t even thought about that whole episode since the foot and mouth outbreak made us remember it. But just in case I am a mad cow (ok, it’s really CJD in people…) they don’t want my blood.

So Emily gave blood on her own, and went all woozy in the middle of it. I think she has a bit of a blood phobia, she broke out into a sweat at the sight of it and took a little while to recover. We had planned she wouldn’t look at them doing it and maybe that would be ok, but the distraction she found was the next bed over which, of course, had someone lying in it giving blood! So that didn’t help so much! But all credit to Emily, she continued and gave her quotia!

Afterwards the lady at the desk kindly informed me that soon they will be revising the limit on people who have been to the UK so that those who have been for upto 30 days will be able to give blood, I explained that I had spent 14 of the 16 forbidden years living there. Interestingly it is specifically the UK, if I had been born and raised 75 miles south on the same island, i.e. in the Republic of Ireland, I’d be certified BSE-free for giving blood in Japan!
I guess I will just have to keep my blood all to myself!

P.S. Extra bonus points to anyone who can tell me where the post title comes from!

Avatar 3D

Posted on January 4, 2010 by John

Last week Emily and I went to see Avatar in 3D at the local cinema here. The movie was pretty good and in 3D it was awesome! If you are going to see it and you can, definately see it in 3D.
The story was better than I thought and might even be good for church groups as there are plenty of themes that could be drawn out, even if it is a bit animistic overall. The feeling of a utopian world over a broken sinful one, the idea of living in communion with God rather than trying to glorify ourselves for our own greedy pleasure, the renewal of body and mind that Jake went through entering into the eutopia through the god-like “Eiwa” (excuse the spelling, just took a guess!)
Plus the action was great and it was good fun to watch.

The 3D was especially interesting to me though as I studied stereoscopic technology when I was at uni for my final year degree project.
The technology the cinema we went to was the same shutter glasses tech that we used at uni, it means wearing a bigger set of glasses, but it’s an easy install for the cinema as there is no need to polarise the on screen image, as long as their projector is up to it. If 3D takes off the way some people think it will this will probably be the most common way to retro fit prebuilt cinemas to display it… If you understand what I mean you’re doing well

But yeah, the sensation was just as it was when I was at university, and it was pretty good there. The drawback still comes for me in focus, in 2D my eyes can tell how far away the screen is and know how to focus(ish) to watch, plus I’ve had plenty of practice. But in 3D the image looks closer or further and my eyes want to focus that way, but the screen is the same distance and so focus doesn’t change, I think this is what tires my eyes. It was a bit of a talking point when I we studying 5 years ago and still seems to be.
But actually as I relaxed into the movie and forgot to take special notice of the 3D it became easier, though my eyes were still tired by the end, but that might be because it was a late show that went on to almost 1am!
Emily enjoyed it, but the glasses were a little awkward over her regular glasses and she felt a bit motion sick during the longer action scene in the middle…

But definately see it in 3D if you can!
I hear it’s doing well at the box office too, perhaps on it’s way to becoming a record breaker!

Flat3D

continues…

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