Byouki ni narimashita =.="

Two months before coming to Japan, I developed a phlegmy cough. It was of light to moderate intensity, and remained much the same throughout the whole time. Prior to coming to Japan, it appeared to go away, so I didn't think much of it. However, it's getting close to one month in Japan now, and as of last Friday, my cough got significantly worse. In other words, byouki ni narimashita.

I visited the hospital on campus yesterday afternoon to get a checkup, but the results were enigmatic. My temperature was normal at 36.5oC, the doctor didn't hear anything abnormal using the stethoscope, and the chest x-ray showed no abnormalities either. My three-month-long persistent symptoms, however, definitely say that something is wrong. The doctor could conclude that it isn't a typical cold, flu, or hayfever, but beyond that he could merely speculate. He told me that at my age, the most likely possibilities are either Tb (tuberculosis - I actually studied that for a whole semester in Australia), or sports-induced asthma (He called it 咳喘息). Why the second diagnosis? Well upon arriving here, in my best efforts to remain fit and active, three weeks ago I began jogging every morning. Unfortunately two weeks later, my symptoms aggravated. Of course, there are also other possible explanations to my worsening condition, such as change of diet (or merely not eating enough fruit & veg) or sleeping too late, but again, as of now they are merely possibilities. Truly enigmatic, though.

I've been given a reference to see a cardiologist in a neighbouring city, and I've received permission from my class teacher to be excused from class this Friday to visit. I'll give an update on my cough thing when I learn more. Until then, please don't concern too much for me, as might happen when one mentions they've had the same sickness for three months. That was merely background story to the main reason I published this post, which was to document my first visit to the hospital in Japan, on this scholarship.

These masks are very fashionable during the colder months of Japan.

That's what a foreigner might think, looking at how many people wear them on the streets. Well I get to be fashionable as well for a period of time.

I've already had Christian friends here offering to pray that I'd get better, and I appreciate their concern. Some who read this may also share similar desires, but if you are to pray for me (please do!), you don't need to pray that I might get better. In a nutshell, there are much greater things worth praying for. When we pray for things to be a certain way, we're saying that that other situation is better. We pray for love and patience, because it's better to be so, we pray for peace (both individually and globally) because it's the better way, we pray for Jesus' return because we want to be with Him in heaven, and we pray that everyone might come to know Christ and see His great love for us because that's what we were made for. Praying for better health is certainly wishing that a person's quality of life will improve, but I can't agree that being in a poor state of health is necessarily a bad thing. For one, being sick reminds us that we are physically vulnerable and fragile creatures, limited by time and space. Sickness also serves to make us grateful for good health. And even whilst sick people are commonly disadvantaged in some way against healthy people, it teaches us patience, perseverance, and empathy. For me, my persistent cough has also stood to bring me closer to God over time, in firstly being reminded that He is able to make me well whenever He would like, and that He knows better what is best for me at this given time. Not only that, it also makes me thankful toward God for meeting my greatest need for healing through Christ, for my sin to be forgiven and my relationship with Him restored, as Christ came to Earth to accomplish (Lk 5:31-32). In my sickness, pray not merely that I might get better, but that in my time of weakness, that Christ's strength would be seen and Jesus' name be glorified (2Co 12:9).

On the topic of making God a priority in my life, I have set aside half an hour to one hour each morning for quiet time with God. Each day of the week I base my prayers off a certain theme, from personal to mission to my church, etc., and learn to read the Bible in Japanese a bit at a time. I'm only four chapters into Matthew, and I've already accumulated 108 words (most of them in new kanji) in my list of new Bible vocabulary. I have motivation to keep going, though, because even just comparing my experience of church here on the first Sunday and the second Sunday, through my personal Bible reading the number of words I could understand in the worship songs and the sermon was markedly different. Pray that I'd persevere in the difficulty of learning to read the Bible in a new language, reminded of the reward that I will reap in being able to understand and articulate the gospel in Japanese. I've had many opportunities to have gospel conversations in Japanese over the past three weeks already (praise God!), both with local Japanese people as well as fellow scholarship recipients whose Japanese language ability surpasses mine, but undoubtedly it's still a huge struggle to communicate ideas, when my fellow conversants don't speak English well, so pray that as I gain better Japanese ability, that I'd be able to utilise it in conversation well. じゃ、またね！

Christians at TUFS

Sorry for the delay between my previous post and this one; it's surprising how busy my week has been. To continue where I left off in my last post, we gave (quite numerous) self-introductions (自己紹介) last week in class. Firstly, the basic name-country-areaofstudy. On another occasion, a written version of around 800 characters long in the form of our first writing task. Yet another time, we gave introductions - this time of someone else in the class - and we took turns presenting what we learned about the other person in front of the class as a listening comprehension exercise. We did so many types of self- and others-introductions, that our final teacher last week (five of them take turns teaching us each week) ran out of different methods to introduce ourselves.

If this post was merely me venting about how many times I had to mention I was from Australia last week, it would be about as interesting as sitting through all our class self-introductions (that is, somewhat interesting). However, what makes this post worth writing, is one particular introduction given by another Christian in my class.

I was asked quite early on to introduce myself, and I gave the usual country-subject-family-hobby-etc.; stuff which you'd usually expect first time round. After all, everyone else in the class followed the same pattern - everyone else, except one Ukranian girl. Before she gave her self-introduction, I had no idea she was a Christian (whilst she had no idea that I was also, even after I introduced myself). Her level of Japanese at the time was a long way off from proficient, but even as she struggled to express herself in a language yet foreign to her, she was determined to let the class know that Jesus was the most important person in her life. Not surprisingly, the teacher evaded the topic altogether, choosing not to inquire further about her belief despite asking further questions on everything else she mentioned in her self-introduction. But I was certainly humbled and encouraged at the same time, from realising that it didn't even occur to me to mention my faith when introducing myself for the first time, whilst for her it was such a natural thing to openly voice the value of her faith.

Even though I've been studying Japanese for six years and been a Christian for many more, only last week did I realise that it has not occurred to me even once in that time to mention I was a Christian in a self-introduction. All I've been absorbed in was how to make my speech funny, how to make it unique, what would help people remember me, when all along I neglected to mention what was most important to me! Yes, it's true that it probably never naturally occurred to any (or at least most) of my fellow foreign language learning friends back in Australia to mention their faith either, but I wonder if we should consider that acceptable. Does it reflect our new identity in Christ (2Co 5:17)? Does it reflect the value of our faith (1Pe 1:7)? Do others see a person changed by the knowledge of Jesus Christ (2Pe 1:3)? I was so absorbed in figuring out what made me stand out that I overlooked my most basic characteristic - my identity in Christ. Thanks be to God for first answering my prayers made in Australia to bring Christians into my life. When I prayed that, I did not expect to meet another Christian in a class of 8 people, but it goes to show that God indeed looks after His people (Rom 8:28).

The answer to my prayers doesn't end there! Speaking of God exceeding our expectations, the Ukranian girl I met in my class was one out of many Christians I subsequently met. In our Monbukagakusho scholarship cohort of less than 60 people, so far I've met (aside from the Ukranian girl) two Christians from Bulgaria, two from Thailand, two from Singapore, and one (so far) from Korea. That's over 10%, in comparison to Japan's national Christian population of less than 1%! Praise God!

With the number of Christians on the campus I'll be studying at this year, we could plant our own local church. But praise again goes to God, because we don't need to - there are already two churches in our locale - Tama Church, in the photo below, named after our suburb, and Fuchu Calvary Gospel church. I've attended the former for the past two Sundays, and in that time I've learned that they teach reformed Protestant theology; in other words, the church service style and preaching are just like ALLC - only that it's conducted in Japanese. The latter, however, is an English-speaking church, which I found out about from the two Singaporean Christians who attended it on the first Sunday. I've been told by those who have attended their service that their style of service is more "contemporary", though I can't comment beyond that since I haven't been there (which is also why I haven't taken a photo). I'm more than content with regularly attending Tama Church so far though. God is good.

Having said that I've met so many Christians, the only thing I'm certain of is that they have been Christian up until this point. Upon first impression they are all amazingly eager to continue growing in their faith and staying in touch with the Christian community in Japan, for which praise goes to God, but time will tell how this culture shift will affect our Christian faith. Speaking for myself, I've been faced with many temptations already during my time here of a different nature to that which I had to deal with back in Australia which have tested my faith and love for Christ, and I can't say it's been easy. One thing I haven't been mistaken about prior to coming to Japan was that I can't take my faith in Christ for granted here. If it weren't for the prayers of all those back in Australia, and God's grace made effective in my life through all your prayers, I wouldn't last long at all. So thank you to those who have been praying for me, and special thanks to +Jas Lau for this elephant candle, to remind me to never forget, as an elephant never forgets, that there are people praying for me back home, and also to remind me that God has made me a light to shine in the darkness (Php 2:13-16). Thanks also to others who have given me small gifts of memorabilia to remember both my family of God back in Australia, as well as the God who unites and sustain us; I will showcase them over the weeks to come.

Two down, 258 to go…

The end of another week. To be honest I'm not sure I'll be in Japan for a whole 260 weeks, but the length of time remaining in Japan versus time already spent is conveyed nevertheless.

I'm not going to do the day-by-day breakdown that I did in my first week recount, firstly because it would look like mondayclasstuesdayclasswednesdayclassthursdayclassfridayclass, and secondly because it doesn't do justice to the notable events worth mentioning. Boy were there many events this week. I think I'll release them slowly, in more specific, bite-sized chunks over the next few days and weeks.

The first event is the announcement of classes. First thing Monday morning, the results of our assessment test were released in the form of class allocations. The 60 or so people who are studying under the same undergraduate scholarship as I am have been placed into a class somewhere between "A" and "G". Class A is the most advanced, and houses those who are already proficient in Japanese, which happens to include the majority of Korean scholarship recipients. Linguistically, Korean is the closest language to Japanese so they lean to speak it fluently very quickly. Class B to about D consists of people who have some form of Japanese proficiency, to various extents. Class E and below are effectively exposed to usable Japanese for the first time. Each class has around 8 people, which is a good size for personalised learning.

Based on my performance in the assessment test on Friday, the teachers at JLC have allocated me to class C. More or less, everyone in my class has moderate to confident ability in Japanese speaking, reading, writing and listening. Of course, the Japanese background of everyone in the class is different, so I can't make any generalisation. Some people in the class have learned Japanese academically for many years like I have, whilst others in the class have (amazingly) self-taught themselves Japanese over many years through a variety of means, from studying for the JLPT in their own time, to speaking to Japanese people in Final Fantasy MMOs. Everyone in the class ranges from trilingual to tetralingual (notsureifthiswordexists) to varying degrees of fluency, and I feel right at home amongst them. For once in my life, I can speak my English, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese interchangeably in conversation and be considered normal by the group. This isn't limited to just in our class! Virtually everyone under this undergraduate scholarship is trilingual, so it's effectively Big Bang Theory in our residential hall, except in our case it's geekiness of a linguistic kind that we share in common.

Anyway, back to class C, it's been a pretty enjoyable first weeks on the whole. I do admit that I have found the learning content this week to be ridiculously easy, since it's been revision of content equivalent to year 10 Australian high school Japanese, but I acknowledge that the teachers have good reasoning in choosing to begin here, and I'm also aware that I'm not the only one in our class who would like to go a little bit faster (actually, skip a few years ahead). The difference in perspective on education between the (native) Japanese teachers and us "gaijin" (Japanese cultural mini-lesson: gaijin is a term used to refer to non-Japanese people in Japan, connotating ignorance of Japanese customs - which are many, for the record) is that we are happy with an 80% mastery of the basics, whilst they expect 100%. No doubt I was surprised that I got one mark taken off for barely a pencil twitch in an otherwise perfect effort.

To be fair on the others from my class who may be reading this blog post, I empathise with you over the marks you don't reckon you deserve to have lost. I feel the same way. But since the teacher decides what marks we get, our duty is to acknowledge the mistakes she points out and to fix it for next time. To verbalise the diagrammatic metaphor, we are performing maintenance on the foundation upon which the rest of our Japanese language will be built upon, therefore nothing short of flawless will suffice in this earthquake prone country, which is why we need to fill in the chips in our initial foundation built back home.

So that's the Japanese learning component of my first week of semester covered. More to come in future posts :)

To do list

An updated version of last week's to do list.

• Obtain a dorm room (done!)
• Register my existence at the City Municipal Office (done!)
• Open a Japanese bank account (done!)
• Get health insurance (done!)
• Fill out contract for utility bills for my dorm room (done!)
• Get a Japanese SIM card (done!)
• Send out first prayer letter (done!)
• Pay my dormitory rent and security bond (no security bond, monthly automatic payment set up)
• Pay tuition fees (monthly)
• Have my arrival interview with the Associate Professor (hopefully next week)

One down, 259 to go…

If you were wondering what the numbers in the title are referring to, here's a hint: there are 52 weeks in a year :)

So after a chaotic, confusing arrival, I think I've finally gotten into the groove of things, and made a few new friends in the process. Classes begin 8.30am from Monday next week, so this week was to help us get orientated. And boy were there many orientations! Here's what happened this week in retrospect:

Monday.

Left Sydney at 9.15 and arrived in Tokyo at 5pm. Got stuck in the customs line for one hour, and then wandered around for an additional hour waiting to hear from TUFS that never came, and took an hour to reach my dad's place. Will attempt to travel to TUFS tomorrow. Recorded vlog of my dad's place.

Tuesday.

Went to take photos of Sakura blossoms with dad (Just missed peak Hanami season in Japan, but there were still plenty of trees in blossom!)

Successfully reached the TUFS campus with two massive luggage cases in the pouring rain by evening, with assistance from my dad. Recorded vlog of my dorm.

Wednesday.

Orientation session #1: Orientation to everyday life in Japan. This involved learning that over 10,000 earthquakes occur in Japan every year, if you count ones you can't feel. Though I doubt we need to know about ones we would never have felt in the first place, but they certainly succeeded in scaring us over earthquakes. I wonder how many earthquakes we couldn’t feel happened in the time it took to show us the video.

Had my first meal at the university cafeteria over lunch. Forgot to take a photo of my upsize ton-kara ramen >.<! (大盛トン辛ラーメン)

Took an excursion by bus to the Fuchu City Municipal Office to have our existence recorded. Also set up Japanese bank accounts at Japan Post Bank. Now I have an official permanent address in Japan! If you have permission to view my Facebook profile, my mailing address can be found here.

Orientation session #2: Gaining authorisation to use TUFS wifi and computers on campus.

Ate out for dinner at a "Izakaya" to relish our legal age to drink. Also to experiment. It was more valuable as an experience than as a meal. Ordered some dishes we didn't know the name of that didn't meld with our palate. Special mention goes to this frozen squid stuffed with a soy sauce and fish base; the first mouthful caused me to gag. I wasn't the only one.

Thursday.

Orientation session #3: Formal university entrance ceremony. Heard speeches from five important looking Japanese people who could speak English pretty well. That's pretty unusual! One particular message stuck with me - "think global, act local". Very remarkable to hear such a motto in a nation as homologous as Japan! This campus specialising in foreign languages is leading the nation in embracing what I call "global shrinking". TUFS not only acknowledges the increasing adeptness of other countries at harnessing the power of the internet in bringing people around the globe closer, but has turned it into an asset and an advantage in their constant pursuit of remaining global leaders in foreign language education. Respect.

Visited Kichioji (吉祥寺) to buy technological paraphernalia at Yodobashi camera. They were holding some promotion on level 8, which made me feel special. Global shrinkage, local magnification.

Stayed up revising for the placement test tomorrow. Minimal facebooking tonight.

Friday.

Orientation session #4: Orientation to life over the next year at JLC. Got a better idea of how intense the coming year will be. Full time study 8.30am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, with expectations to revise a minimum one hour every night if we don't want to fall behind. It won't be purely Japanese language study though; we will be doing a variety of other subjects from amongst Japanese history, mathematics, science and PE, depending on our field of major.

Assessment test for most of the day. First stage, 80-question multiple choice and short answer test. Next stage, 5-7 minutes interview. From these results, we will be divided into respective classes, in which we will remain for the rest of our time at JLC. All classes will reach a level of Japanese proficiency sufficient for tertiary education (assuming you keep up); the difference between class A and class E will be how polished they are.

Went to eat at a sushi train (回転鮨). Couldn't all fit at one table, so we sat at two. I ate about eight plates; each plate had two pieces of sushi and cost 105 yen (soooooo cheap!!!!).

Went shopping around Fuchu city. Didn't buy much, but it was good hanging out with a bunch of fellow Monbukagakusho scholarship students studying at JLC this year. Learned a new term from a Norwegian friend: "Gaijin bashing". It's where you go around ordered, courteous Tokyo as an ignorant foreigner, walking into deceptively welcoming train ticket barriers, unwittingly cutting the line, and such. We even had a first hand experience walking along the footpath as a massive mob, blocking all bicycles, which was a problem because a good 50 or so bikes passed us. You should have heard us - every time, like seagulls

First prayer letter overdue.

To do list

Looks like I've got a fair few settling in tasks to complete.

Checklist of things to be done

• Obtain a dorm room (done!)
• Register my existence at the City Municipal Office (done!)
• Open a Japanese bank account (done!)

• Get health insurance
• Fill out contract for utility bills for my dorm room

• Get a Japanese SIM card

• Pay my dormitory rent and security bond
• Pay tuition fees
• Have my arrival interview with the Associate Professor
• Send out first prayer letter

Acquire work permit (apparently this will put my scholarship status under jeopardy)

Final destination [vlog #3]

NOW I've reached where I'm supposed to. In the brief few hours I had yesterday between the recording of my vlog and when I slept (at around midnight), I made a few friends, both first years (like me) and upper years, just taking a walk around the place. One particular guy I met had just finished at the language school where I'll be studying at this year, and he was figuring out how to fit a Mac desktop that he found into his luggage case, and carry it to his new campus Saitama University. He gave a few insider's tips as he attempted to shove an oversize desktop computer into his bag.

One such tip, interestingly, was study hard. Apparently he was only granted his second preference of place of study - first being Tokyo University of course. I myself hope I'll be able to give my Japanese studies decent attention, because that was one of my main aims coming here to begin with as I mentioned in my first vlog. Another tip was to make friends with as many people here as early as possible. That's something I've been telling all the first years at UNSW over the past three years to do, and I'm glad he reminded me of the same thing in my time of disorientation. Something tells me we're going to get along well. The people living in my residential building aren't just first years on a scholarship like me - there's also full fee paying international students, and upper years specialising in language and arts subjects, and I won't know who's who till I ask them! His third tip was interesting - it involved finding your way back inside the building without the key card we were issued. Very handy! - who knows, it might save me freezing to death if I ever get back late one night and I happen to forget my key card.

Eventually he (amazingly) fit the baggage he needed to carry all around the seriously huge and heavy mac, and was on his way. Hope he gets there safely. He said he'll be back yet, so it won't be the last time I'll see him; as long as there's free food and parties here, he has a reason to return.

So in light of that, please pray I'll take my studies seriously while I'm here, as an investment into building relationships in Japanese. At the same time, pray I wouldn't let my current limited language ability get in the way of getting to know people and building relationships. In all that, pray that my identity in Christ would shape the way I interact with them, and that Christ would be known among them too.

Touchdown! [vlog #2]

So I've finally arrived! Tired, hungry, and slightly in need of a shower, but so keen. The vlog can speak for itself. Here I'll explain how in the world I ended up at my dad's place.

So I got off the plane at 5pm Japan time, as planned. The plane trip was excellent, and I read everyone's farewell cards in that time, as I hoped to. However, the line at customs was massive, so it took the better part of one hour before I got to my luggage. By that time, the remaining few unclaimed bags from my flight had all been relocated to the information desk - that's how late I was. Anyway, so I got my luggage and exited via the arrivals gate, hoping to nab a picture of the man holding a sign as I promised I would. I envisioned someone with a distinguishing mark from TUFS (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) or JLC (Japanese Language Centre) standing outside the arrivals gate. Unfortunately, that never happened because… there was no one there waiting for me. After having inconspicuously circled around all the other people holding up signs for a full twenty minutes, and one of those people proactively approaching me to ask if I was the person they were waiting for (surprise surprise, I wasn't), I concluded that whoever it was supposed to be, they weren't there. That meant that either something happened on their way to the airport, or that simply no one was coming to pick me up. So I asked at the airport help desk whether they saw anyone waiting for an Australian undergraduate Monbukagakusho scholarship student. My hopes were piqued when they said they recalled someone holding up a flag with TUFS on it earlier that day, but after a bit of inquiring, I found out they had already departed for TUFS - without me. I was very sad. When I rang the number for the TUFS office, what they told me was that they were expecting a Lee Gu from Australia… tomorrow (i.e. today, the day I published this post). Which means, there was definitely no one expecting me today. Which means I had to either figure out my own way of getting to the university (which I wasn't prepared to do with all my luggage) or to seek the help of another, which is where my dad comes in.

By the grace of God I have a dad working in Japan. By no means was it ever an option for me to stay at my dad's place whilst I completed my studies, because to my best knowledge, his house is not near any university campus by any measure. And specifically from TUFS, it takes one and a half hours by public transport, which I wasn't prepared to take every day, particularly since I was effectively given a free dormitory room on campus, since the fees are included in the scholarship money. Having said that, for those who didn't know it before, yes, my dad is living in Japan. He work in the field of IT, and his company assigned him to Japan because he can speak both Japanese and English (and Chinese, but less important for his job description), so it was kind of necessary for him to stay there while he worked. Aside from coming back to Australia for Golden Week (Japan's week-long series of public holidays, explained in a future post) and Christmas, we make do by keeping in touch via Skype.

Anyway, he certainly was expecting a call from me that day, but what we both intended to happen was a heads-up call telling him that I'd arrived at the university safely. Instead, he got a "can I stay at your place for one night?" request. And true to my dad's unceasing commitment to his family, upon my phone call he came directly from his work place for my sake, and arranged for a taxi to take us both back to his place, which was a good hour and a half again from the airport.

The next day, he assisted me with finding my way to the TUFS campus, but not all the way! - in the best interest of myself, he was determined that I do what I came to Japan to do, which was get by independently, after having made sure that I was able to make my way on my own (to a place I was never required to commute to by myself in the first place). He even called me while he was on the train home (it's social taboo to make phone calls on the train in Japan) to check I had arrived by the time I was supposed to.

At the end of the day, it is mutually accepted by us both that I am here independent of my dad's help, to study in university and to take care of myself. Having a family member in Japan is a mere circumstantial benefit, and it played no part in my ultimate decision to accept this scholarship. So as I had intended to do long before this incident, I still intend to have monthly catch ups with dad, to make use of this circumstantial opportunity. I hope this post explained it clearly! Let me know in the comments below if I missed something crucial in this recount.