Another unexpectedly unusual week

It's Friday and I have to say that this has been an odd week. Looking ahead to June last week, I didn't clock this week as being especially unusual, but it has ended up that way. Here's a few bits and pieces:

Music practice

As I mentioned last week, I'm playing the piano for worship at church this Sunday and also at conference next Friday. Hence, practise was needed. On Tuesday I took three trains across Tokyo to meet with others from our mission to practice for an hour...and then took three back again. Three hours of travel! Because it is such a distance, I usually try to combine such a journey with at least one other thing. This time I managed to snag a friend/colleague for lunch. Precious quiet moments in a tiny Tokyo cafe.

Piano: I've been playing since I was 
four...it's like another "first language".

I also spent an hour and a half practising at school yesterday (the easiest piano for me to access). David found a practise room and I had a great time. It took me back many years to my childhood and teenage years when I spent at least an hour a day practising and three hours a week at my teacher's studio, many times playing the piano in one of her two practice rooms. As I've eased back into playing these last few weeks, I've realised that playing the piano (and reading music) is like a first language to me. I still find it very easy to sight read (i.e. play from written notes without first hearing a piece)...much easier than trying to play chords (what guitarists use). And to extend the metaphor...much easier than trying to operate in Japanese.

Being stretched

This week I've had few stretching experiences.

On Wednesday I took seven trains (after six the day before). My day only contained two main things: I took three trains to met a colleague from one of my teams for a catch-up about work and how he's doing. Then I caught another three trains to meet another colleague who is moving back to Australia. She's newer in Japan and needed a hand with driving a larger vehicle to shift some of her furniture to another new family who live about 45 minutes away. My job was driving! Usually it's David who does things like this, but he wasn't available when they were, so I volunteered. The vehicle was a HiAce, a little bigger than our 8-seater vans that we've owned most of our years in Tokyo. But I managed. Between us we also managed to hire it from a Japanese company. This is no small thing when you struggle with Japanese . . . it wasn't pretty, but we did it. And I didn't damage the vehicle in any way, so that was a relief! 

The van we hired to do the moving. 

When we were done, I took one more train to get home. In contrast to the day before I never left western Tokyo, just took a big train circuit, and never more than about 15 km from our house.

Then yesterday I had my annual Japanese medical. It's pretty much funded by the government. It was not very comprehensive, but they did a urine and took some blood and asked me if I had any concerns. The doctor, nurse, and I danced around in two languages, but, I think managed the basics. I really struggle with starving blood test. Breakfast is mandatory for me to have decent brain function and going without my mid-morning coffee is a double blow to my capacity. Then, having to speak Japanese on top of that . . . it's definitely not pretty. I haven't yet managed to explain to a medical professional how difficult I find it to function in my (very second) language without breakfast or coffee.

My big mistake, yesterday, however, was trying to be efficient. I also needed more asthma meds, so I thought combining that with my medical would be a smart move . . . and it was, until I got to the pharmacy next to the doctor. What I should have done was go and have my coffee and then come back, but I didn't. The pharmacy didn't have enough in stock to fill my prescription. This has happened every time I've been recently, so I shouldn't have been surprised. But this time it seems there were greater difficulties that I don't understand . . . the lady appointed to deal with me spoke loud and fast, but didn't seem to have all the information that she needed. Our interactions (entirely in Japanese) were punctuated with something like "chotto matte kudasai" (please excuse me) followed by her rushing back to talk to someone else (the pharmacist?). 

This back and forth went on for some time. 

I was sitting like a blob on the waiting seats, with a pretty massive headache and brain fog so thick that thinking was hard. 

Eventually she agreed that they could sell me two then and they would mail me the rest of the script later. I had to throw more complications into the conversation as I explained that I was going to be in Sapporo from Monday for five days, then back here for four days, then in Australia (I didn't mention Singapore) from the week after for five weeks!

I think we sorted it out, but now I look back, I'm not sure why it was so hard. Brain fog and headache contributed, for sure, but I'm hoping that it wasn't contagious and that she didn't also have compromised brain function!

The "medical" actually only took around 30 minutes, but the end result was that I pretty much was incapacitated for the whole morning. It was only after lunch that I started to be able to do anything much of value. And then I had a piano practice and staff family dinner at school . . . so yesterday I didn't feel like I got much of value done!

End of year feel

At both school (where David works) and OMF JHQ (our mission's national base) I found an "end of year" vibe. Certainly at school, where the school year ended this week, that was the case. I wasn't ready for it at JHQ. It's not the end of the year there, but with our national conference next week, there is a lot of "get this done before conference". And there are cross-overs between the two organisations. One key leader in OMF Japan has kids at the school, so they are heading off straight after conference on a short home assignment, and so she's been handing over jobs to people to take care of during the months she'll be away. Also so there was an edge of tired frantic-ness (overwrought?) there that I wasn't expecting.

Additionally, in both places there are people leaving after serving in each place for a long time. So there's an edge of sadness to it all as well.

Ah, I'd better stop writing here and get back to the things I need to get done "before conference".

Fluency and a sense of home are harder to get than you think

Whenever I'm in Australia I struggle to communicate to people that we're not completely fluent in Japanese. And the longer we're in Japan, the more people assume our fluency is a given, so it becomes a throw-away line that I struggle to ignore. It usually runs like this:

"I guess you're fluent at Japanese..."

"Ah, no, I wish I was, though."

And the awkwardness only gets worse as I seek to find a way to move on from this in a conversation.

Now that our boys are older, fluency is also assumed of them. We spoke at a church on Sunday and I've lost track of how many conversations I had explaining that our boys aren't fluent in Japanese, nor do any of them see themselves moving there as adults. The angst for me is that I wish I could say that we were all fluent in Japanese. But the truth is that it's a complex, rich language that is very difficult for most foreigners. I don't know any missionaries who didn't grow up there who would admit to being fluent.

Along with this assumption of fluency seems to come the assumption that we slide in and out of each culture with ease. The same person who says something like this will often also ask "How's it feel to be home?" I'm afraid that as our comfort in living in Japanese culture has increased, the more we feel not-so-much like either place (Japan or Australia) are actually "home". Yep, I feel like I write about this topic a lot (e.g. here in 2014), perhaps I sound terribly repetitious? But it's an ongoing battle to help people to understand us, and of course many of you—the readers of this blog—aren't the people who will be asking us questions like this.

I try to patiently explain to people who ask—I rarely bring this topic up myself!—that there's much we're comfortable with about life in Japan (including that I can get by in much of daily life with the language I have). But also point out that there's lots that we don't manage with ease, for example, dealing with the subtleties of a new medical diagnosis (and new specialist terms) and negotiating our way through complex bureaucratic procedures or websites. 

At the same time there's stuff about Australia that we really love, like the climate, how easy communication is, that we can sit through a sermon or read the fine print without straining our brains too hard. And things that we don't feel so comfortable with: like the lack of settledness that our work here involves, the assumption people can make that as educated professionals we are homeowners, and answering questions like I've mentioned above.

I feel like I'm whinging, though. Thankfulness is the antidote to that! So, here are some things I'm thankful for today:

I'm also thankful for this little plant.
Last week I went out and "splurged"
on a new pot plant, something that
helps me feel more "at home" here.

• A good nights sleep, and a bed, and house, and food, and oxygen and so many things.
• An income
• People who love me
• The ability and opportunity to write and reflect
• Good health
• A calling
• Hope and a future, and a God who loves me and has the power to secure my good.

Which of course brings me back to the right place–the Bible. And this verse:

"'For I know the plans I have for you,'” declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).

And back to the theme of another blog post that is in draft stage: trusting God! But I'll leave that to another day.

Being flexible

Here is an edited post I wrote in 2009. It is still relevant (though I no longer go to Curves):

The other night at Curves one of the trainers was giving out slips of paper detailing some changes during the next month in opening times. Just a simple slip of white paper, covered in black type, all in Japanese. 

They are very kind to me at the gym and knowing my reading isn't so good, so she attempted to convey to me verbally the essence of the message, to be sure that I understood it. She then apologised for any inconvenience, but I replied trying to say that my schedule is a bit flexible. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the word for "flexible". So I did what any foreigner with some Japanese knowledge will do, and I Japanized the English word and said I was "furekishiburu".


To understand this you have to know that Japanese is a syllabic language. That means that they don't construct words with single letters like in English, they construct words with syllables. This works fine, it really does, until they try to import foreign words. Just like when we try to read Welsh words which have not enough vowels, the Japanese panic a little when they see two consonants together. Then they insert vowels in the middle and on the end in most cases.

So McDonalds becomes an unwieldy Macudonarudo. An easier example would be "beetle" becomes "beetoru". They also have only five vowel sounds and some English consonants don't have an equivalent (for example "r" and "l" come out the same). However, once you put a word through this filter, they can actually pronounce it and remember it. 

Many, many English (and other language) words appear in Japanese and make foreigners' lives easier. They are even so kind as to use a different alphabet to distinguish between Japanese words and foreign-originated words. The problem comes when you cannot remember which words have been adopted and which have not. Occasionally you get a surprise when you use the Japanese word and they come out with an English-type equivalent. 

That's a long explanation, I'm sorry. I guess this story is not so easy to understand, after all! Anyway, they didn't know furekishiburu. 

After some explanation and gestures, they figured out what I meant and someone immediately said, "ahh, furekishiburu taimu". Can you translate? Yes - "flexible time". They had a phrase including the word, but not the adjective itself! Ah, the fun time we have living in a non-English speaking country. It sure makes you furekishiburu!

Shopping for eye drops wasn't that simple

I still struggle to buy things in a Japanese shop that I don't buy regularly and aren't obvious. For example, eye drops. They aren't something I buy often, but I needed to this week. My eyes tend towards dryness, I'm not sure that it is an allergy thing, but I've been struggling with gritty eyes recently (not helped by a teary prayer meeting for our field director and his family each morning).

Isn't the bottle curious!

I used to have two bottles of eye drops in various places, but could find neither, so decided to try buying some more. Those bottles were bought in Australia and with help in Japan, so doing it on my own here was new. I "swanned"* around in a drug store for a while looking for the eye drop section, primarily using pictures as my guide. My method in an unfamiliar store or looking for an unfamiliar product is to generally scan to find the right "section" and then zoom in with what reading skills I can muster (aided by my trusty phone).

Eventually after no success I thought to look up and found a sectional sign with the character for eye on it:　目　(should have thought of that before). Then I looked in more detail. As I suspected there were a lot of choices, but not a lot to help me choose between them. I ended up looking more closely at something that wasn't too expensive. I googled the brand-name and learnt a bit about the company's American products (which didn't correspond that well to what I could see in front of me). The English words on the product, testimonies, didn't seem too bad:

"Wow, what a feeling!" "Strong yet soft, the indescribable sensation is truly long lasting." "The sensation spreads through my brain – I feel wide awake. My eyes are purified and refreshed." It's "ROHTO Z!". Feel it!

So I bought it. When I tried it later at home I was completely unprepared for the product being more than just saline, it had stuff in it that made it impossible to open my eyes for what felt like about a minute. After a while, though, I can say that my eyes did feel somewhat refreshed. Not sure if my brain was awakened, though.

I got my husband, with his superior-to-me reading skills, to check over the instruction page and he wasn't able to add much to what I already knew (that there was more than just saline in this and that it was supposed to awaken your eyes).

A bit more searching since tells me that it has a tiny amount of weak antihistamine, vitamin B6, something that looks like an amino acid, tetrahydrozoline which relieves redness, and zinc sulfate.

Life in this country means you have to let a lot of things slide—not understanding everything going on around you is normal, but you learn to make do and not be so bothered by all the details.

*This word is in my Australian dictionary, but not in dictionary.com, so I suspect it isn't an American usage. I use it to mean to move about in a casual way.

The "mozzie park" and other nicknames

My little grocery store: Big A. I love this.
I can be in and out in under 15/20 minutes
with half-a-week's perishables in my bags.

I remember when our boys were little we would use names for places that made sense to them. We ended up with some creative names like: The Tyre Park (a park in Sapporo with lots of tyres) and Aunty Georgia's Big House (the OMF guest home in Tokyo, run, at the time, by "Aunty" Georgia). I'm pretty sure that's a common thing across most young families. For example, "We're going to Grandma's house"


I have noted, though, that this tendency gets extended much longer in expat families. When you transplant to another country you have to learn a whole lot of new proper nouns. 

So when we first came to Japan, living in Sapporo we did most of our shopping at:

• Ralse Mart—groceries
• Ito's (Itoyokado)—a smallish department store
• Homac—hardware/homeware/cleaning products and even pet
• Shimamura—clothes
• Tokai (craft heart)—a craft store on my walking route to language school, actually didn't shop there a lot because I didn't have time to be crafty, but I used to stop by for a couple of minutes peace on a bad "school" day.

There was the "Import store" called "Kyaroto" as far as I can recall. That's as far as I got with remembering it's name.

I never did learn the proper name of the "Tyre Park", but it was within walking distance of our apartment too and a frequent destination for our very energetic toddler (eldest son). 

When we moved down to Tokyo we had new shops and parks to learn the names of. Now we shopped at:

This is Hanamasa, a wonderful local find
as it has meat in portions larger than 150g.
It took a long time to find out where it was,
though, a word-of-mouth affair. Six years
after moving to Tokyo, and 18 months after
moving to our current location.
See this blogpost written at the time of discovery.

• Big A—small grocery store that has the basic perishables at a good price (milk, fruit, veggies, OJ, yoghurt)
• D2—department store (but actually pronounced "Deitsu" I think)
• Marufuji—bigger grocery store that we went to for more specialist 
• Shimamura—yes, actually a store that transferred over from Hokkaido
• Costco
• Ito—yes, another store that carried over
• Shop 99 (now called Lawson 100)—almost everything is 100 yen, and we used to buy milk and OJ there

The parks we frequented were:

• "Aeroplane park" aka Kuukoo-koen
• "Tunnel park" aka Koganei-koen
• "Bouncy hill park" aka Shinrin-koen (a long way, so only once or twice a year)
• "Mozzie park". I never learned the name of this one. It was on the way to our eldest son's school and in summer infested with mosquitoes.

Now that I have more freedom during the day (everyone is at school, when we first moved down I had a 3 month old, 2 year old, and 6 year old) and now live closer to more shops, I've extended my repertoire of shops to include most of the above plus:

• Hanamasa—bulk meat store, plus other bits and pieces
• Gyoumu Supa—cheap meat, plus other cheap imported grocery items not easily available elsewhere
• Daiso—100 yen shop that you now find in Australia too
• Uniqlo—clothes shop also found in Australia

Then there's been two new shopping centres/malls built:

• Qurune (medium sized and many very useful shops)
• Aeon (quite large)

And restaurants too, for example:

• Bashamichi
• Saizaria
• Stamina Taro

But returning to my opening paragraphs, you can see how it would take some learning of some of these names. Yes, I still sometimes mess them up.

We still have our own nicknames to help, like, "the all-you-can-eat bread restaurant at Aeon" and "the restaurant where they had that big fish, all-you-can-eat. Remember? We took Nanna and Grandad there." And "the import shop at Aeon" or "the 100 yen shop at the station."

Learning new proper nouns of places takes time and reduces you to elementary-level at times. "Oh, we're going to the restaurant across the road from the post office." "Have you tried the grocery store across the river from the bakery, at the bottom of THE hill?"

Of course it doesn't help that most Japanese roads don't have names, so addresses don't help. But I guess if there were road names, that would be one more thing to learn!

Living life like this is humbling. I think that is another characteristic of the ladies I talked about yesterday. We've all been significantly humbled as we've come to live in a land where the language spoken isn't the one we speak best. When you've been humbled like that, it changes you forever, but it also binds you quickly to others who have had the same experience.

Today's language mayhem

The person who came up with this translation "ship shortage",
might have been having a mayhem of a day too.  This was
the reason given for our flight back to Tokyo being
cancelled last June.

This morning I was head-down-tail-up trying to get all the articles for the next magazine issue finalised before going away again tomorrow.

Finalising an article means making sure every detail is taken care of before I hand the articles over to the designers: from the obvious mistakes the proofreader might pick up, to checking on communications with authors about details they are concerned about, to images I've received from authors or a myriad of other small matters that can become big matters if not dealt with at this point.

This is not my favourite part of editing. I prefer content editing where one is looking at bigger picture issues.

So in order to do this end of editing for the magazine I need to work myself into a certain focus. The sort of focus that doesn't allow me to quickly jump in and out.

This afternoon I had my semi-regular language exchange meeting. A time when I get together with two Japanese friends and we try to talk in Japanese and English, helping each other learn. 

Unfortunately I did not allow myself sufficient transition time. I jumped almost straight from editing onto the train and into chatting. My "Japanese brain" simply didn't snap into gear. Especially as they wanted to hear about our son's wrestling! And that is something that I almost never talk about in Japanese, so my vocab is pretty limited. Not to mention that they had a lot of questions about specifics that are challenging to explain, even in English.

So I went from thinking about a sentence like this:

US authors may object to “maths” being used in place of “math” in their writing, just as Commonwealth-background authors might protest about “cilantro” replacing “coriander” (the leaf, used in cooking) in something they’ve written. 

To trying to figure out how to explain "pinning" in Japanese (not knowing the word for shoulder blade and forgetting what verb I could use for "holding someone down").

Thankfully my language exchange partners are very forgiving and don't mind if we end up doing more English than Japanese. It is I who tends to beat myself up.

So we ended up talking about all sorts of things in a mixed-up way. Not the best for language exchange, but still fun.

Something that struck me later as I walked home, was the number of times I talked about "the feeling" of a word. Words like "seedy" and "balmy". Even talking about a "white elephant" and how it isn't just something that is useless, but it carries the feeling of an encumbrance.

The "feeling" of a word is very important. It's something that you only get when you are becoming familiar with a language. For example, when you put  the word I've used in the title of this blog post: "mayhem" into the thesaurus, you come up with words that are similar, but not necessarily quite the same. For example, "violence" and "destruction".

Similarly in Japanese. I only can think of poor examples, but I learned the word for energetic or lively: "nigiyaka" when I was at language school and applied it to my son, but was immediately corrected. "That is only used for events or situations, not people," I was told. The word "gambatte" is a Japanese word that isn't easily translated, but means something like "do your best" or "try as hard as you can". The feeling of the word is one of encouragement, with an edge of stoicism to it. Something you don't easily get with those English translations I've given.

So anyway, I've learned that I have good days and bad in Japanese. Probably I would have more good days if my job required me to work more often in Japanese. But I've learned to accept that sometimes I'll feel like I'm flying through and other times it is more like a less-than-graceful trek through a bog.

Confusion about spelling Japanese names

Nothing to do with the blog post, except
that this is what we're seeing around the
place at present. Autumn colours are in
full "bloom".

It amazed me the other day to witness an email exchange between two translators who were trying to figure out how a Japanese name was pronounced. 

The translators had the name written in the usual complicated characters (kanji or sometimes called "Chinese characters"). But all kanji can be pronounced at least two ways, if not more. As a result when you sign in on a waiting list at a restaurant or at a doctor, you're always asked for the phonetic spelling of your name in one of Japan's two "alphabets", otherwise it could be very embarrassing for those who are reading out your name.

For example these names:

齊藤 or 齋藤 or 斉藤 They all say "Saitō".

 東海林 can be read "Tōkairin" or "Shōji".


So whenever you fill out a form here there is room for the kanji of your name as well as your phonetic spelling. As foreigners, we don't have kanji, but we do have two spellings of our name: we have our usual way with Roman letters, but also in Japanese phonetic alphabet.

My name is:

Wendy Marshall
マーシャル　ウエンデー　(pronounced "Maasharu Uendi") Yes, last name goes first. 

So in some situations I also write my name twice. For example, once in Roman letters to match my health insurance card and a second time so that the Japanese person reading it knows how to pronounce my name with minimal difficulty (not saying that there aren't some Japanese people who could easily pronounce my name from Roman letters).

However back to the email exchange I witnessed. These translators eventually called the church concerned to check the spelling of the name in the article so that they could render it correctly in Roman letters.

Amazing and not terribly efficient!

Celebrate the small achievements

I've had periods of discouragement recently. There's no point in pretending otherwise. I felt so discouraged at one time early last week that I even wondered if I should pack up and go back to Australia. (Believe me, that is rare these days and takes a high level of discouragement, because the sheer immensity of that move would be overwhelming and I'd catch a tonne of flack from the rest of the family). 

Distill it back to the origin and it was culture stress. This article describes it very well as well as recommending ways to do something about it: http://www.missionarycare.com/culture-stress

My old nemesis of my failure to do a good job with language learning was at the very bottom of it all and I just felt useless.

I girded my loins, however, and pushed myself out of my comfort zone. Result: the situation that was particularly niggling me improved and I felt better. 

Now the situation last week was deeper and more complicated than shopping for chicken mince. But I feel as though I should celebrate a small victory here in relation to that after posting this a few weeks ago. 

Yesterday I located the meat counter at a store I rarely visit (Ito Yokado) and asked for chicken mince (US=ground chicken, 日本語＝とりのひきにく or tori no hikiniku). It reminded me of the struggle I had learning to buy stamps here! But in the end it turned out to be very simple, as long as I remembered the right phrase (so I feel a bit of fool even celebrating this here, but sometimes a fool needs to step up and admit it so that other people don't feel such fools). And it was super cheap! 1kg for just ￥480 or just over AU$5. Wow. The boys loved the rissoles I made last time, I think I'll try that again. But for sure I'll be doing this on a regular basis and branching out into other recipes too.

Saying no in Japanese

It's hard to say no clearly in Japanese without offending. I still remember a Dutch mum in a playground when she was still new in the country who was incensed that her son was being (mildly) teased by some other kids. She demanded I tell her how to say no to them. It was hard to give her a good answer, I was only a couple of years ahead of her. Now I would say "Da-mei, with your forearms crossed in front of your chest."

This post explains some of the ways to say no in Japanese.

I commonly come across this problem at the grocery store when they offer me a bag and I have my own or if they try to get me to sign up for a store points card.

 I often use yoroshi desu in these cases. Which, I'm pretty sure means "I'm okay thanks", please correct my Japanese if you know better. Of course you can use it in a positive sense too, in that "Is this okay?" So there is still potential for confusion, but it usually works. 

Japanese is probably the most difficult language

I know that this kind of thing can be the source of discouragement or pride for someone, but in a small way it is an encouragement for me. Many times I feel a failure because I've not managed to become competent in this language. God has graciously given me other roles that don't need Japanese competency, but I still live here and wish every day that more Japanese language would stick in my head.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) says Japanese is the most difficult of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. FSI is where the US trains their diplomats as well as other professionals who are engaged in foreign affairs. 

The rule for life in Japan

An American friend here is going for his Japanese licence this week. He asked for advice on Facebook this morning from others who've done the same. 

It is well known here that going for your licence as a foreigner is difficult and often people retake the practical test several times before they are passed. I'm very thankful I'm an Australian. Australia has a reciprocal agreement with Japan and we just had paperwork and red tape to get through in order to get our Japanese licences, not tests.

What interested me most was one of the comments giving advice:

John and I both passed the first time.  For the written...always choose the answer that best represents 'NOT annoying other drivers'!  True story.

That four-word rule covers life in Japan in general. You try not to annoy other people. 

The difficulty is, though, what annoys an Australian is different to what annoys a Japanese person. For example, talking loudly in a train annoys Japanese people, but is acceptable in Australia. Sniffing loudly is frowned upon in Australia, but seems to be preferred in Japan to blowing ones nose. The difficult thing is that most often Japanese people won't tell you if you're annoying them!

I've always said that one of the biggest mental cross-cultural challenges I had when moving to Tokyo was feeling as though I was jama. This Japanese word means obstacle, nuisance, or hinderance. For me I initially always felt as though I was in "someone's road" in Tokyo. I couldn't park my car anywhere, when I stopped to consider what to buy in the grocery store I was blocking someone, when I couldn't immediately understand someone, I was a nuisance. Insightfully, when you enter someone else's home you say, "Ojama shimasu", which is a polite expression meaning, "Excuse me for disturbing (or interrupting) you."

Disturbing others is considered a significant no-no in Japan.

I reflected with another foreign friend other day about how Japanese love rules (that's how they know whether they are annoying other people). If a situation has no rules they feel uneasy. We foreigners don't know all the rules, being foreigners! So we have to compensate with a lot of observation. Generally speaking if we've not seen someone do something, then probably it isn't good to do it. For example, eating on the train, or while walking. Though these are unwritten rules that we know about, you can tell they're rules because you don't generally see people doing them, so it's best to avoid doing them. Although admittedly they're both more common now than they were 15 years ago when we arrived.

Observation is vital when it comes to communication too, a lot of times I'm not understanding many words, but I've figured out what is most likely in the situation and along with body language and perhaps some key words, I guesstimate about what's been said or what's expected. I suspect I sometimes look like I understand way more than I actually do.

I think that life in Japan has made me more observant as well as much more aware of where I am in relation to other people (both physically and in terms of how my actions affect others). 

So, when you next come to Japan, just remember: do your best not to annoy other people. 

Deaf ministry in Japan

It was good to hear of a little-known need today at church. The Japan Deaf Evangel Mission sent a representative to speak at our church this morning. They pointed out that there are 400 deaf languages in the world and none of them have the whole Bible, only one (in the US) has the whole New Testament. 

I didn't realise that people who have been deaf all their lives often struggle to read because written language is very dependent on knowing what words sound like. Hence the need for a deaf Bible.

Here is a video explanation:

This video points out that until recently we haven't had the technology to produce and widely distribute deaf bibles, which are obviously visual. These days that is much easier.

I was struck again at how the deaf have a language and cultural barrier between them and hearing people, even when they have the same nationality, something I realised when we watched The Hammer, a movie about a deaf wrestler. 

We were operating in three languages during the presentation this morning: spoken Japanese, Japanese sign language, and some English as well (the video was in English with Japanese subtitles). Being independent as a deaf person must be a real challenge. Being independent without good written and spoken Japanese is a problem for us foreigners, imagine living that your whole life! 

The reason they came to speak to us is that they are seriously lacking in funds, it takes a lot of hours to translate accurately and produce these videos, and hence funds are needed to pay for salaries. So difficult! Especially when the Christian population of Japan is under 1%, that's not a large number of people from whom to gain support. The deaf population of Japan is about 300,000 people.

Food for thought. This is what they have on their website (link at the top of this post):

How You Can= Help

Pray for us. Get the news through our mailings and join in prayer.

Become a Member. Anyone who contributes any amount to ViBi becomes a member for the rest of that fiscal year (until March).

Join the 1000/1000 Program. We're looking for 1,000 people to support us 1,000 yen/month, so we can sell our tapes for 1,000 yen each. To date, we have 746= committments.

Be a "Library Partner." Request that our Bible translation tapes be placed in your local Deaf Chapter video library, or your local community library.

Join (or Start) a Translation Team. You don't have to move to Tokyo. We'll help you learn where you are.

Shopping adventure in Japan

When our boys were younger we got a lot of attention when we were out with them: "Kawaiiiii" (cute) was the cry. Understandably we don't get that any more. Two of them are bigger than me and the other is close behind them. No longer cute, but still worthy of a few polite Japanese stares. Unlike other cultures where people might flock to us, or stroke our

At times we really do feel a bit like aliens
in Japan.

hair, Japanese people are much more subtle.

We rarely go to the shops as a group these days. If we go with one of the guys, it is usually one adult and one or two boys. Today we all ended up at a small local shopping centre. That in itself wouldn't usually get too much attention (it was busy). But today we had one boy whose glasses were about to break. He also needed an eye test for new lenses. But it ended up being a strange situation. I've never had an eye test in Japan, nor accompanied anyone doing so. So I asked for David's linguistic assistance. I'm glad I did, but the whole thing didn't go in a textbook manner.

In my brilliance I also invited our other two boys along because they each had shopping needs that had been put on the back burner recently. One needed new sneakers. I suggested the other boy also come along and see if he could find another pair of shorts in the hopes that spring will arrive soon, and stay. 

Being able to get them to a shop has never been easy, but it is increasingly becoming difficult with two of them not getting home till nearly dinner time many school nights as they train at school for interschool sports competitions.

So we had them all out. The optometrist, shoe store, and clothing store are all very close at this particular shopping centre. Our goal, as usual, was to do this as fast as possible. So my idea was that while the optometrist was working, we could get the other two boys sorted. 

Except that I also wanted to be at the optometrist and see if I could familiarise myself with the language associated with that speciality. Trying to be in two places at the one time didn't work very well and it quickly got worse. At the shoe store every time our son identified a pair he liked the look of and I looked for something in the right size in the piled boxes underneath the display, a worker came over and said something to me that sounded like a polite "Please don't do that" (I was having a fuzzy-brain Japanese day today that didn't help"). I was frustrated. Japanese shopkeepers are usually more helpful than that.

So I slipped across the way to see how David was doing and ask if he could help. They were just looking at frames while they waited for the exam room to be free. I figured picking out frames wasn't beyond my Japanese ability, so I suggested David go and assist our youngest with his shoe shopping. Meanwhile I'd asked our eldest to go over to the clothes store and see if he could locate some acceptable shorts. He came back quickly and said he'd found none! So he stayed and helped me at the optometrist.

Before David returned the exam room became vacant and we were ushered in there. I'm thinking, How bad can this be?

It started fairly well, but soon we were interpreting. Or trying our best to interpret. We were guessing from our previous experiences of optometry and from what we understood. It turns out we were understanding fairly well, but there was that element of doubt that doesn't engender confidence in the native-speaker service provider. I was especially hesitant because glasses are pretty important. They're expensive and if you get it wrong,  and there are consequences beyond the fiscal.

Eventually I sent our eldest son to see if he could fetch his dad, who came and said, "We've got some, you just need to pay for them." So we switched spots. In the shoe store the attendant was digging a bit deeper, trying to use easier Japanese or even fetch up some English. She told me we shouldn't throw these in the washing machine. She also mentioned spray deodorant and something about a waterproofing spray. I'm not sure, but I guess she was probably trying to sell me extra stuff in a roundabout Japanese way. She also tried to sell me some socks and something else . . . but I managed to get away with just shoes.

We touched base at the optometrist and they were fine (reassuring us that we'd be on track), so I took the other two boys to the clothes store to see if my shopping-eye could discern any shorts. It turns out that I did find a whole rack of shorts and even got him to try two pairs on. They left the store as fast as possible (going back to the optometrist), leaving me to buy the suitable shorts. When I got back to the optometrist I found two of the four guys sipping green tea and all the boys were looking at a game on the shop's iPad. Apparently kept by the shop to entertain kids while they waited.

So I shot downstairs to find a small snack to help us get home (it was nearly lunch time and we had a 3 ½-4 ½ km ride home, depending on the route we took).

I returned to the optometrist's shop one more time and found they'd finished. As we straggled off two of the employees lined up and bowed, saying, "Thank you". I didn't look, but I suspect that they watched us for a short while as we walked. I'm certain they don't often have a family of five foreigners in their store.

While we no longer get impassioned "kawaii" exclamations, we still generate attention. It's something you get used to and learn to largely ignore. After all, we still have to get things like this done, even if it is in an ungainly, foreign-like way.

Studless tyres

It snowed on Sunday night and early Monday morning. If it hadn't have been a student-free workday for the teachers it would have been a snow day at school because getting around in the usual fashion wasn't easy. Tokyo quickly gets choked up when it snows.

Front of our house after I shovelled with the help of a
neighbour across the road. Before we started the snow
covered the green and white lines. The puddle that was left
in the gutter was a couple of centimetres deep. No gutter
sweeping possible!

Monday turned out pretty miserable weather-wise because as the day warmed up the snow turned to rain and everything got mushy. Anyone outside was dressed for snow and rain. Three of my guys went to shovel at CAJ and came home soaked. Shovelling wet snow is no fun either, it is very heavy.

This morning I discovered a pillowcase that fell off the
line yesterday. The snow melted and froze onto it.

But the rain didn't melt everything before the sun went down so what was left froze overnight. So we're still dealing with ice on roads in shady spots (like out the front of our house). 

I walked to the station yesterday morning and it was natsukashi (nostalgic) walking on crunchy ice. We spent our first four winters in Japan in Hokkaido, the queen of snowy conditions. I think it holds the record for the snowiest city in the world.

Some small delivery vehicles and vans had chains on yesterday for negotiating the little roads that haven't had sun. I reminds me of this photo I took a while back of a tyre display at a highway stop. The left tyre has chains, I presume one of the middle tyres is "studless".

This word I first encountered as a language student learning the alphabet primarily used for foreign words (katakana). It is a very useful alphabet because many of the foreign words come from English. My teacher had me doing reading practise and I came across this word: スタッドレスタイヤ（sutaddoresu taiya).  My teacher indicated it was an English word, but in the end he had to explain that it is a snow tyre with a winter tread, without the old-style studs that ripped up roads. I explained that it wasn't an English word where I came from. 

Here I posted about some other English words that have been "Japanized".

Can you say "um" in more than one language?

This one caught me by surprise at language school. During a class my teacher told me if I could say "eeto" instead of "um" I'd sound much more Japanese. And, of course, she was right. You can also say "aaaah" or "air-". Now they've become so natural that I even sometimes say these things when speaking in Engliah.

Other words that creep into my native language are exclamations like "ahre?" and "e?" (Short sound). 

I just Googled "Japanese interjections" and got a great page: http://lang-8.com/168601/journals/947474/ I'm surprised at how many I use or know the gist of. 

So, how many languages can you say "um" in?