The Brave, Little Ninja Teaches in Japan: Part 1

3/21/23

In this post, I give a summary of my first two school trimesters in Japan.

It’s been about seven months since I arrived in Japan, and it’s been a whirlwind. I realized very quickly that as a full-time, first-year teacher that I would have extremely little time to blog. To be honest, I have little time for anything outside of school, but I still feel like I’m making a difference in these kids’ lives. And most importantly, I’m being obedient to what God has called me to do.

As for exploring Tokyo, I recently was able to host my good friends Hannah and Kylie from One Mission Society (OMS) for 2 days in my tiny apartment and then explore Tokyo a bit with them. They are the same two missionaries who are in charge of the Renew program that provides training for churches and their staff. They came to Tokyo with the new Asia Pacific regional directors of OMS so they could get acquainted with the OMS compound and missionaries in Japan.

We went around Asakusa, which is basically the tourist place where you can buy all the souvenirs you want. There was a huge cherry blossom tree in front of the temple that stands at the entrance to the shopping street, and we took all of the good tourist photos under it.

After that, we explored one of the neighborhoods of Tokyo called Shibuya. It’s a fancy, upscale shopping area where all the young people hang out. I hadn’t really explored much of it before, so it was nice to look around.

I went with them to the OMS compound, which is about an hour from where I live by subway. I think it’s still technically in the greater Tokyo area, but it’s definitely outside of the busy city center. It was nice to see a different part of Tokyo that had a much more suburb-y feeling to it.

Because I honestly haven’t done a whole lot of anything outside of school, how about I just take you through a typical day?

• Unspeakable hour – I wake up and walk about 10 minutes to school. This is totally of my own freewill as I want to get to school early so that I can print things and make sure that everything is ready for the day.
• 8:10 – The teachers have a quick teachers’ meeting at about 8:10 so that we can make sure that we’re all on the same page for any special announcements.
• 8:15 – Homeroom is 15 minutes, and this is when I can make sure my students know about any announcements or remind them of anything. If there’s extra time after announcements, I have the students practice the Bible verse that they learned during chapel.
• 8:30 – The order of the classes is different depending on the day of the week, but there are always 4 45-minute classes before lunch with a 10-minute break between each class.
• 12:00 – Lunch time! The students get 1 hour for lunch, and I’ll typically go across the street to a convenience store to buy my lunch.
• 1:00 – The number of classes after lunch differs by grade and by day of the week. My students being the oldest in the school have 3/5 days that have 2 classes after lunch and the remaining 2/5 days have just 1 class after lunch.
• 1:45/2:40 – When school is finished, depending on the day of the week I either monitor the students who are waiting for their parents to come pick them up, tutor a student who needs extra help, or teach an after school book club.
• 4:00 – Again, depending on the day of the week, I either have a staff meeting, a prayer meeting with the teachers, or time to grade papers/prep for the next day.
• 5:30 – I leave the school.
• 5:40 – I have dinner either with some of the teachers or at my apartment.
• 7:00 – I do more lesson planning.
• 8:00 – I call my family.
• 9:00 – I go to sleep.

Saturdays mostly consist of lesson planning. I also have a weekly call with my language exchange friend in South Korea, and I call more family in the States.

Sundays, I have more calls with people in the States before I eat lunch and go to church in the afternoon. When I get back from church, I finish lesson planning, eat dinner, and go to sleep.

Speaking of church, I’ve started regularly attending an international church here that was started by a Hawaiian denomination and pastored by a Samoan. The service is completely bilingual. The pastor preaches in English and his Japanese wife translates it into Japanese on stage with him. When we do worship songs, we do some verses/choruses in English and then switch to Japanese on the next. The English lyrics have Japanese translation beneath them, and the Japanese lyrics have the phonetic pronunciations of the Japanese words underneath so that everyone can sing no matter what language they are more comfortable in. The congregation is mostly Japanese, but it has a good number of foreigners as well as Japanese people who speak English for one reason or another.

I can’t say that I knew hardly anything about Hawaii or Samoa before attending this church, but it’s another cultural experience that I’ve been grateful to learn more about.

So there you have it. My life for the past 7 months. It’s not exactly glamorous, but there’s never a dull moment when you’re working with kids, that’s for sure.

I’m learning a lot, and just as I predicted, I’ve been making many mistakes. However, I’ve been trying to be teachable and learn quickly throughout it. While rigorous this lifestyle has been, God has protected my health the whole time thankfully.

I think my favorite thing is teaching the students about God. Some of the students grew up in Christian households, but some of them are hearing about Jesus for the first time in our school. It’s such a privilege to be able to tell them about Jesus, and I’m always challenged and amazed by their questions. Before my first day, I wondered if the students would be bored in Bible class, but amazingly, it’s the class that they are most engaged in. They have such a thirst for knowledge about God, and everyday I’m blessed to help them understand just who Jesus is and how much they are loved.

As far as prayer requests go, please as always pray for my family in the States that God will continue to care for them while I am far away. Please pray for my students and the other teachers including our wonderful principal that God continues to protect them. Please also pray that I continue to keep learning quickly so that I can be the best teacher I can be as fast as possible.

I’m not sure when I’ll be able to blog again. The only reason I’m able to now is because this is spring break. It could very well be that you won’t get another update from me until the summer, but we’ll see.

Thank you for reading and praying.