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| View of Tsuchiura, neighboring city |
Yes, I realize it has been more than a year since my last blog post. I'm sorry....that's totally my bad. :P
Since I am in Japan this summer, several people have asked me if I would be updating my blog occasionally. Answer? Yes! This post will be a little bit of a synopsis of the trip so far, and I'll try and include a bunch of pictures. Hopefully later I will have more time to post about thoughts and observations, etc. But it's nearly midnight and I am determined to get this finished! So here goes.
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| Shinto shrine at Tsuchiura's "Turtle Castle" |
Tsukuba is quite the city. It is a little Pullman-ish, to tell the truth! The city was planned and built only 30 to 40 years ago for the purpose of becoming a science university and research city. So here it is, in the middle of the rice paddies, a 200,000 resident research city. It's beautiful, and green, and modern, and intelligent, and a weird clashing of Japanese traditions and those of the 7-8% foreign population (pretty much a record high for any city here). They have these awesome signs in the city center declaring "Rural? Urban? No, Rurban!" and "Tsukuba: Take a walk, meet a PhD". Yes, it's pretty much true on both counts.
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| And I have! |
What am I doing here? Wow, so many things! My main goal is campus ministry at the University of Tsukuba. The Chi Alpha group is about 7 or 8 students meeting weekly for a Bible study that goes through the Book of Hope. Part of their outreach strategy is to advertise it as free English practice, since apparently it is uncommon to be able to talk with native speakers at no cost. A lot of those that attend are actually graduate students from Africa! I was here by myself for about 10 days before being joined by four students from Evangel University ( the big A/G college in Missouri). We're going to be working together to do outreach on campus, plus a lot of miscellaneous projects around the church. The Evangel team seems awesome - and it is really nice to have some partners in this venture, and peers to talk to about what is going on in Japan. Learning about other people's hearts for this country has been so cool. I love seeing the passion that the foreigners here have for the lost. Really, it's uniting us together on this crazy mission. I have no doubt that fruit is going to come. There's a revival ready in this place!
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| The central plaza for Univ of Tsukuba |
The church is awesome! It's the coolest slice of multicultural and multi-denominational Kingdom that I've seen. There are Christians from the US, UK, Philippines, Kenya, Eritrea, Nigeria, Cameroon, Japan, India.... all here in Tsukuba for one reason or another, all learning what community looks like. It's really impressive, actually. We don't see this much diversity in the US churches. And we rarely see this much diversity as far as church backgrounds, either.
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| Walked to this cool rose garden for some post-church fellowship! |
Speaking of the language, I'm sooo grateful for all of my Japanese friends who have taught me vocabulary. Minna wa sugoi! Arigatou gozaimasu!!! I have used almost every word I know already, in the short time I have been here. Every little piece is helpful. And I am learning to understand a lot more spoken Japanese, even if I can't really reply. But I can register key markers, like if things are questions and what kind of question, what tense the verb is in, and some subject/topics. I've had a few conversations already in "Japan-glish", where we are both using the words that we know and nodding in agreement at the things we sort of understand. Being able to read hiragana has been amazing. Working on katakana, and it's coming much faster here than it was in the US. Pretty much for survival since very few signs are in English. I really enjoy going out by myself though, because I'm forced to try out the things I do know. And it's payed off! At the very least, people can usually understand what I need, even if I cannot understand what they say as a reply. For example, I successfully asked a group of girls for directions on campus, and they didn't bat an eye at my question. But I only got about 20% of the directions they gave before I was totally lost in the vocab.
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| The students from Indonesia at the university undergraduate club "matsuri"! Basically a food festival where each club has a booth. :) |
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| Chi Alpha members playing Ticket to Ride at our first social event |
Random things about Japan that I am finding confusing, hard, or weird include: the way you dispose of trash, driving and walking on the left side of the road, reading almost anything, and talking with or asking questions to store workers (I had to play charades to explain needing anti-itch hydrocortizone cream. It was not the easiest conversation).
Random things about Japan that I am finding fascinating and awesome: vending machines everywhere! I'm eating "mystery food" almost every day because I can't read the label. And I am constantly pleasantly surprised. Things are delicious. And healthy. Vegetables and fruits are all different sizes than we see in the US. The carrots (ninnjin) are massive and the watermelon (suika) are tiny! The "bowing" culture is new to me but kind of fun to figure out. Paying in yen is also legit. And taking the bus!
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| I love the grocery store!! |
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| My first vending machine purchase |
I guess that's pretty much the basic overview. I'll do my best to write more next week that's a little more in depth with stuff. Thanks to everyone who is praying and encouraging me and the team! Excited for the weeks ahead! :)
* Relentless, Hillsong
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| Sunset over my new "backyard" <3 <3 <3 |
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