Home Tour

Here is the promised home tour! It's not very long because it's not very big. But it's home :)

Our entryway/hallway/laundry room/kitchen/bathroom

Where the hygiene happens

Good thing our shower room is almost as big as the bedroom!

Closet stuffed full

Other half of our closet hanging on the wall because it doesn't fit in closet

My bed/table/couch/personal space

Angle at which our room looks the biggest

Tiny kitchen

Everyone's favorite part of Japanese homes, the cool toilet. Ours has a seat warmer, be jealous.

 

 

 

View from our balcony

Well, that's about it! I hope you enjoyed that comprehensive, albeit brief tour of my home. Visitors are welcome, but we ask that you stagger your visiting hours. Due to health and safety codes we're only able to hold about 3 people at a time...unless you are fine sitting on the toilet or in the bathtub, then the more the merrier!

Prayer Warrior

Found this little guy while the team was prayer walking ICUHS on Wednesday. Glad to see someone 

is always "praying" for this campus and the sister university!

 Speaking of prayer, please keep the "Let's Talk" ministry at ICUHS in your prayers. We have slowly been meeting more students, especially guys actually, but the ministry still needs to regain momentum. Also there have been few girls for Christine and I to build friendships with so that has been a little frustrating. But God is definitely working and I'm excited to continue to be involved in this outreach!

October 8th, National Sports Day

Let's Talk at ICUHS held a sports day this past Monday for students from the high school. We met at a local park and played flag football, ultimate frisbee and other random games. We had about 10 students come and everyone had a lot of fun. There was a contest for the best/biggest sundae, magic tricks, and lots of quality conversation. It was neat to get to know everyone better and see them all so invested in the activities.

Photo credit goes to Christine and Keigo!

Jan ken pon for first pick

Best goal post ever!

Action

Successfully made the coin disappear!

My team's sundae, flying buttresses included

Other team's sundae, complete with skewered marshmallows

All our ICUHS friends!

The whole bunch

 

And yes I did score a touchdown during the flag football game. Thanks to two brilliant plays by Jacob, I am now unofficially known as Tebow II, the running quarterback  :)

Playing Catch-up

Brief update
Things I've learned this past month:

• Words are hard. My team and I are working on learning Japanese and in the midst of that have found that our English is quickly deteriorating. We often catch each other saying painfully ungrammatical things, even making up words or new verb forms. I've also caught myself making more mistakes typing than ever before. I think my fingers are forgetting what the English alphabet looks like on a keyboard. By the end of the year my posts might be mostly monosyllabic, just a heads up.
• 250 square feet of living space is small, but doable. You learn to be really resourceful with what space you do have. Pictures will follow soon, but for example, half my roommate's and my wardrobe is hanging in plain sight on our wall. Suitcases become sculptural pieces in the corner or function as a sort of trunk to store things. It's a little hard when you realize the only furniture you have is your futon serving the function of bed, chair, couch, and table. But I like to think of it as a dorm room with a bathroom and kitchen attached. And actually our shower room is quite large so we can always go there when we need alone time!
• 7-Elevens in Japan are a God-send. Without them my team and I would currently be starving as we have no pots, pans or a rice cooker yet. You can get your average corn dog, but they also have onigiri, noodles, gyoza, really anything your tummy could desire. And whatever foreign phrase they ask too quickly when you pay is to see if you want your food heated up. Yes is usually a safe answer. And talk about convenience. Dinner in under 5 minutes, done.
• The 99 cent store equivalent, Japan's 百円ショップ (Hundred Yen store) is a fun, but dangerous place for poor interns like me to go. It is a little too easy to justify spending just 100 yen on something, especially something you don't really need. But at the same time, it is an amazing place from which to stock an apartment at a cheap price. You can find anything from laundry clips to bentou boxes to tupperwares to dishes and pans. If you came over to visit, pretty much my whole apartment is furnished from here. Maybe not Better Homes and Gardens approved, but it works for our simple needs and tastes.
• I like fall weather a lot better than summer weather in Japan. I would take a cool brisk day anytime over heat and humidity. But then who wouldn't? There's nothing like a walk to campus on a sunny day with the air crisp and the birds singing.
• Ministry is still intimidating and tiring for little introverted me, but God is ever faithful in providing good conversations when I most need them. Japanese students are usually pretty shy in using their English but are also usually quite friendly when you break the ice. We've all met at least half a dozen students in our week and a half of ministry who are interested and excited to hang out with us. Sometimes we just pull the pity card and say we are new and have no friends and they generously take pity on us and let us hang out with them. It's nice having friends.

I think that about sums it up for now. Pictures of the apartment (aka dorm room or small boat maybe) and a ministry update from Waseda to come over the weekend!

Blessings in Him
Quinn


P.S. Check out Ephesians 1: 12-13 from the Message when you get the chance. And enjoy the glorious living we have in Christ!

Blending in

One part of STInt is learning a new culture. We are visitors, outsiders coming in, so it is our job to respect cultural norms and embrace them wholeheartedly! It's both exciting and stressful to learn the idiosyncrasies of another culture. I do have a bit of a head start in Japan because I'm naturally on the quieter side and generally pretty aware of my surroundings. This gives me a little more grace because language is still a huge brick wall in my face (hey, that rhymed!)

Anyways, all that to say my team and I are slowly getting the hang of this Japan thing and finding our place in Japanese society, even to the point of blending in quite literally with our surroundings...

All pictures were taken by my teammate Christine who loves polka dots, Totoro, pens, and things that match. You can check out her blog at http://christineharada.tumblr.com

Nichi-dai, a lesson in faith

Yesterday my team and I prayer-walked Nichi-dai, Nihon University, or 日本大学 for those of you who read Japanese. This is one of the three campuses I will be doing ministry on this year. It is the largest university in Japan, boasting almost 70,000 undergrad students alone.

Albert and I went into the Economics building to explore and pray over it. Now Nichi-dai is interesting because each department has its own building, and the buildings are set throughout Tokyo. We had a little confusion in figuring this out, so I entered our prayer time a little frazzled and discombobulated. The feel in the Economics building was very isolating, with lots of closed doors and small rooms. There were no public areas of gathering so I was not feeling very encouraged about doing ministry there.

I did pray against those feelings and Albert prayed that all the little nooks and rooms we saw would one day house student-led bible studies. How cool that would be!

Leaving the building I definitely had a poor attitude. I was not feeling excited about ministry, and was dreading our first day of sharing. As always, God totally humbled me within minutes.

We met with a past STInter, Ariel, who had done ministry on Nichi-dai's campus in the past. While we were with him we ran into two students with whom he had formed relationships. They were both really excited to see him again and to meet us. After they left he said they were two of his team's best contacts. And we ran into both within the span of half an hour. Coincidence? I think not!

That was God's first reminder that he was in control and I was not trusting him. The second came from our team time sharing about what we had seen. Everyone else had had a much more positive experience, finding really good meeting areas and neat sights around the different campus buildings. And then Ariel told us about an English professor who had invited Ariel's team to come to his English class. Basically it was an open invitation to meet with students and talk with them. And as someone semi-familiar with campus ministry, these invitations are golden opportunities to share the gospel and very hard to come by. The icing on the cake of my lesson in faith was this professor was a graduate of UCLA, MY alma-mater.

I mean, really? I think I get the point now. 

All this brought to mind Hebrews 11, titled "Faith in Action" in the NIV. It shares story upon story of people of faith in the Bible. And "these were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, ⁴⁰ since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect." This verse stood out in particular because it is exactly what I was not doing at Nichi-dai.

I was not believing that God could use me to share his Gospel on this campus because so many obstacles seemed to be standing in my way. I did not believe He was big enough to overcome said obstacles and, by His spirit, transform students' lives forever. I was so fearful of what I was seeing in the present I didn't stop to think about God's promises, his faithfulness time and time again in my own life, to believe his perfect plan could prevail amidst the challenges. 

God really humbled me yesterday. He's going to need to humble me a lot more before this year is up. But I'm excited for those lessons because they mean drawing nearer to his will, gaining a greater compassion for his people, and a greater desire to truly follow after Jesus. 
 

Take me out to the ballgame

I checked something off the ol' bucket list on Wednesday night! My team and I went to a Japanese baseball game, choreographed cheers and warning whistles on foul balls included. It was quite the experience, everything I hoped for and more.

One of my teammates had a friend who was able to get us discounted tickets for the team her company owns. Because of this connection we were instant Rakuten Eagle fans. It worked out in our favor because they ended up winning 14-2. Not too shabby! And seven of the 14 were scored in the first inning. The real fans in the outfield stand when their team is up to bat and have personalized cheers for each player. Needless to say the first inning we were on our feet a very long time.

Following is a small taste of what Japan baseball is like...

We enjoyed trying to learn the cheers, constantly messing up the clapping and inserting fist pumps when there weren't supposed to be any. We amused ourselves by being the only people to yell "Charge" after the typical American cheer "do do da do do do" seemingly inserted as a mild tribute to America's pastime. We also almost caught a couple balls and made it on the big screen. And every time we scored the people around us would give us all high fives! What a night!

Tokyo Dome is home to the Giants, so of course the corner 7-Eleven is dedicated to them! For my NorCal friends :)

Our seats in the outfield

Jacob, Mark, and Christine

Kylan, Albert, Katie, and me

Mom taking pictures of her kids playing catch on the field

Creeper shot I took of the boys sitting in front of us, it was too good not to document!

All I can say now is go Eagles!