It almost always seems to come in waves. Sometimes I just miss my family.  I think most of the time, I’m pretty content to be where I am, just where God has put us here in Okazaki. I suppose a lot of that comes down to being content… and sometimes my contentment is tried. This last week seems to be one of those weeks. One of those weeks when I just kind of miss America… the food (for some reason Taco bell sounded just amazing), or being able to make certain kinds of foods… but especially my family.

Its hard to be so far away and not get to be a part of those daily happenings. Or watching my niece and nephews grow up. Yet, I’m incredibly grateful for things like Skype, where I can talk face to face with my family. I think about what it must have been like years and years ago when traveling back and forth wasn’t so easy (though its most certainly expensive, even now), and phone calls cost a lot more.  Still, my sister-in-law (Amanda) is getting ready to have a baby, and my older sister (Anna) is expecting this next July… those things especially make me miss home.

So its at points like this that I always remind myself about Jesus talking about us being willing to give up being with our families for Him, for the sake of the gospel. We’ve chosen to do that, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t an ongoing choice, especially when we miss people so much. But God gives me strength. He is truly all I need, and when I rest myself completely in His arms, I am truly content and at home. 

 We finally started up class again on Friday. It was good – not too hard, mostly introductory stuff and picking our electives for the quarter. However… looking at my new vocabulary that I have to learn for this quarter is a bit daunting. There also seems to be more and more unfamiliar Kanji that I’m running into and needing to make the time to look up. I am so incredibly glad for my Japanese Dictionary app on my iphone – its a LIFE SAVER.  I feel like I really don’t want to know what learning Japanese would be like without it.

For the most part I’ve been able to keep up with my 1 page a day Kanji (Those Chinese Characters that we also use here in Japan) writing, but I wonder if its really best, or if there’s another better way. A friend of ours swears by this method called “remembering the Kanji”. It has to do with making up stories to go with the little pictures within the more complex Kanji. I’ve been trying to do that a little bit, but I don’t really feel like its helping very much.

I also feel like I’m really not sure how I am going to be able to keep memorizing more and more vocab and Kanji. I feel as if at some point its just going to start falling out the back of my head.

But then I have to remind myself that I serve a God who can do anything. If He’s brought me here to Japan, then He can help me learn Japanese. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I just have to keep that in mind when I feel as if I am sinking.

Would you please continue to pray for us and our Japanese study? Sometimes its hard to keep on, but we know how much we appreciate being able to study and how necessary it is, but it can be hard.

Would you also pray that we would be able to continue to make new friends and reach out to those around us to share the light of the Gospel?

About two months ago, William asked me to mend his jeans that had a few rips in them. I told him it would be no problem. Here I am fixing them just now. I actually haven’t used my sewing machine since before the earthquake last March. So when I pulled it out today, I was hoping it would work. I turned it on, and everything seemed to be alright, until I tried to sew. The tension in the thread was all off. I like to sew, but honestly, I know nothing about my sewing machine other than how to thread it.   After nearly an hour of trying to mess with the tension and looking things up online, I pretty much gave up. At that point I had plans to go out with my friend Tomoko, so I just left everything as it was… a bit of a mess (actually, when I got home, I had forgotten that I had left even our bedroom a mess, and thought to myself… what on earth did William do? until I remembered it was my fault).

When I got home, I decided I was in a better mood and that I would try again. I also remembered that one of the web sites said that before you start messing with the tension, to change your needle, because it could be bent. I had already started messing with the tension knobs before I read that, and decided it was too late. I was so convinced that it was way too messed up for it to just be a needle issue. Well, when I got home, after messing with it a little and nothing getting better, I finally changed the needle. BINGO. Wow. I could have saved myself so much time and frustration. Now I’m finally mending those pants.

While mending Will’s pants, I was watching a TV show for young people about the appropriate manners to have when visiting someone’s home.  It was interesting, and I understood most of it, but it kind of baffled me that there was a show on manners, for Japanese people.

We finally begin classes again on Friday. Its been a full four weeks since our last class, and William and I are ready to go. We’ve done our best to study on our own, but there’s nothing like class and having a teacher and specific material to learn.  Plus, being in my house, I always manage to find other things that I want to do… And then I end up at the end of the day wondering where all my time went and how I seemed to accomplish so little.

I think the one of the things I have really enjoyed about our long break is the time its provided me to hang out with my Japanese friends and get to know them better. I’ve also finally had my mornings free and so I’ve been in much better contact with our families over Skype.

This morning I also spent about an hour researching information on filing our taxes here in Japan. I’m trying to get a good head start on it so that I’m not hanging at the last moment. We also have income from a lot of different places this year, and so it makes for an interesting time. After talking to a few people over this last week, and looking up some information online as well as getting an appointment to talk with a professional in English in February at the Nagoya International Center.  By the time I have to have it filed, it should be all worked out.

I’ve made several new year’s resolutions that I intend to make into a new way of life…

The first being reading through my bible in a year. I’ve attempted this on several different occasions, but never quite managed. I found a great plan online, and I’ve been able to keep up at least this far. Here’s to the other eleven and a half months ahead of me.

The second is writing a page of Kanji everyday in my notebook. Really, its no small feat, especially because this notebook has narrow lines. I would say it probably takes me a good half hour at least.  I’m also going to try and watch more Japanese movies and television (not as easy as you might think, we seem to get a lot of news and reality type shows on TV, and I don’t really care for TV to begin with)… Here’s to immersion in Japanese, even in my house!

The third is to not eat desserts or sweets. I’m not cutting out all sugar, as I still want to have some in my tea and there’s sugar in a lot of Japanese cooking (just a little most of the time). I’ve decided the only exception to this will be when it is offered to me from someone else and it would be rude for me not to eat it.  Of course, since I’ve decided this, nearly everything sweet related has been nearly JUMPING out at me.  I’ve discovered in my life that if I can just skip the sweets, I don’t crave them (after I get over the initial phase of not having them and my body adjusts) and I feel much better.  So… here’s to a healthier me.

I biked my way over to the home store today to buy a couple of cardboard boxes to send over to my sister Anna. After I went inside and found one of the two boxes I was looking for, I went to my bike to pack everything on. There just happened to be a nice old man who had parked his bike next to mine. I was in his way, so I said excuse me. He said, its okay. Then he started to make small talk. He asked me what I had bought. I showed him my cardboard box, and said that that was it. He proceeded to tell me that I could get them for free at the super market (I got the general gist really – I think I only understood about half of what he was saying). I realized I could have, and I told him I totally forgot. He laughed and then also reminded me I could get boxes at the recycling station where everyone brings their old cardboard boxes too. Oops.

The other day I also had one of those silly moments. I was browsing Amazon.com Japan for a gift, but was kind of having a hard time finding it (its all in Japanese). I ended up seeing a link on the bottom of the page (you know, by where Amazon usually puts suggestions of its own merchandise), and so I clicked it. I found what I was looking for, though it was a little more expensive than I thought it would be. So  I went through the process of trying to figure the page and check out – all in Japanese. Only after I had finished my order and payment, that I realized I was no longer on Amazon’s site. I was on a different one. I have no qualms about it being legit, but once I realized I wasn’t on Amazon, I went back to look for the gift again, but found it about $10 cheaper. I could have tried to call the company to cancel my order, but I felt nervous about actually being able to communicate all of those things in Japanese, and so I didn’t… Perhaps this way its extra special… to me? bleh.