Poetry Musings - first weeks in Japan

10-22-26

First quiet morning in our Juso house

    pinching myself at this dream-turned-reality

        We're here!

        And this quirky house is perfect for us!

Closer than I realized to LOTS of things!

    Vending machine -- 5 steps out our front door

    Two different konbinis -- 2 minute walk

    Juso train station (with affordable access to nearby cities) -- 3 minutes

    Outdoor (with roof) walking market -- 2 minutes

    Donki (difficult to describe) -- 4 minutes

    Gyomu Super (my fave!) -- 4 minutes

    dozens of restaurants -- within 5 minutes

    Mustard Seed church -- 25 minute walk or 1 stop train ride

And then the house!

    businesses on either side, so less likely to disturb neighbors

    4 floors of charm -- room to spread and roam

    traditional tatami mats room

    4 other bedrooms

    a living area with TV

    a kitchen with lots of counter space and cabinets

    a rice cooker and easy-to-understand microwave

    a little outdoor patio

    lots of "city balconies"

    one fancy bath-room

    three toilet closets

    enough chairs to all sit around the table

    TV in kitchen with a channel with fun Japanese kid shows

And the monthly rental was very affordable

(cue the music) I think I'm gonna like it here!

10-28-26

Our first full week in Osaka

We've had lots of connections with PEOPLE

    We met with other worldschoolers at a park

    Hideko came on Thursday for shopping and cooking

    Sunny and kids came on Saturday to play games and answer questions

    We met lots of people (both Japanese and foreign) at church

    Sachiko and Satomi walked to our house after church

    We met up with Masumi at Itami station to walk around

We've visited lots of PLACES

    We walk down the shotengai near our house every day

    We walk to a grocery store pretty much every day

    We walked to Umeda and shopped at Nintendo, Pokemon, Oasis

    We went to Tennoji Park

    We went to Itami and checked out the huge Aeon mall

    We went to Mustard Seed's 15th anniversary service

We've bought lots of THINGS
    books in Japanese, English, and both

    groceries and treats

    items to supplement our AirBNB

    Pokemon plushies and cards and figures

Soaking in

    all these new

        people, places, and things

10-29-26

I already know

    I want more time here

I thought two months

    seemed like a long time

        and it is

            compared to those from the cruise

              who are already home

    but after one week,

        I'm already sad at the thought of leaving

Perhaps I'm still in the "honeymoon phase"

    of my love for Japan

It's not that everything is easy or glamorous

    but this lifestyle

        of being immersed in the Japanese language and culture

            making connections

            walking down the shotengai every day

            praying as I go

            exploring new places

        and seeing how the "new" becomes "familiar" and "known"

    is where I want to linger

        and I don't know

            if two months is enough

10-31-26

Just because I'm here

    doesn't mean

        I'll automatically

            absorb the language

Sure, I'm surrounded by it,

    but it can be relegated

        to background noise

            even during the sermon portion

                in Japanese

I try to read

    all the hiragana and katakana

        in front of my eyes,

            but there's so much kanji,

                I still can't make sense of it all

Even in speaking and listening,

    I stick with the basic

        "Daijoubu desu" (No thanks/I'm fine)

            when they ask if I want a plastic bag

                (at least I think that's what they're asking)

I may be surrounded,

    but it's not automatic

It takes concentration

    and effort

        over TIME

11-5-26

I'm loving our life here

Some things are very similar to home

    Completing schoolwork lists

    Doing laundry and dishes

    Having people over for dinner

    Plugging in to a church community

    Meeting up with friends at the park

    Shopping for groceries

but with different twists

    school without many books

    laundry without a dryer

    hospitality without an oven

    church without our beloved Sunday School class

    meet-ups without a van (only walking and/or trains)

    groceries every day instead of every week

We take day trips to other cities or other countryside

    and spend some days mostly at home

We've made friends with local Japanese

    and with travelers from around the world

It feels like a parallel dimension

    Things are still happening at home

        but we're in this alternate existence 7,000 miles away

        and I don't fit in here

        but I don't know if I'll fit in at home, either

Worldschooling Friends

    Back home on Thursdays, we regularly join a park meet-up with our "Wild+Free friends."  The moms talk while the kids play for hours.  It's not always the same people every week because there's no requirement to attend, but multi-age kids start to become familiar with each other.  And like-minded homeschooling moms chat about everything from parenting to meals to schooling to interests.

    I had no idea that we would find a similar community and rhythm here in Osaka!  It looks a bit more transient since travelers come in and out more regularly, but in all our past travels, we've never been in a community long enough to really connect with others.

    The founder of the Worldschoolers in Osaka Facebook group is Jodie, who has a condo here and comes regularly with her family.  We met them on the cruise, and Carter and Calvin connected with their two kids around the same age.  Every week, Jodie posts a park meet-up and anyone in the area at the time is welcome to join.  

    The first week, we met at Tennoji Park, which doesn't have a playground but has a big grassy lawn (rare in Japan!) and some tables to play games.  It was Jodie and her family, a man named Ken from Canada with his son, a full-time traveling family from Canada getting ready to move on to Thailand, and a nanny from Australia who took a year off teaching to travel with a family.  And then there's us, the least traveled out of any of them! (and back home, people think we're the most traveled!)

    The second week, we met at Osaka Castle Park, which does have a playground.  This meet-up was larger with nine different families. Jodie and her crew were back and her daughter passed out bracelets she had made.  There were also four other families we had met on the cruise, so the boys got to re-connect with kids they had played with for two weeks at sea. Ken was back, this time with his wife and both sons. I met a woman whose home base is Indianapolis(!) but who has done an 82 day tent-camping-road-trip to Alaska and a cruise from Rome to Barcelona to South Africa to Singapore. She is retired from the airline industry, so she can fly standby for free. There was also a family with a husband from Germany and a wife from New Zealand with two bilingual kiddos who were relocating from his country to her country while taking the scenic route with month-ish long stopovers in Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and next Philippines.  They are continuing their journey soon with limited space, so they had some David Walliams novels to hand out for free.  This was great for us because we hadn't brought any English novels.  For this meet-up, each of the families brought candy to pass out to give the kids a taste of Halloween.  

    And then this week, we met at Tennoji Park again.  Ken (and two sons) were back as well as Becky and her son Jaziah (Calvin's buddy from the cruise).  I also invited Elena, whom I had met at church the first week, with her to daughters Evelyn and Mila.  She is originally from Russia but currently lives in Austin, Texas.  Her story was similar to mine -- "we homeschool, so we had the flexibility, so we decided to come to Japan for two months."  They are on the tail end of their trip, but they had lots of ideas to share from places they've explored in Osaka.  For this meet-up, I brought the 4 younger boys by myself -- my first solo trek with them in Japan (beyond our neighborhood area).  Lucas needed a work and rest day at home; plus, he doesn't enjoy the sit-and-chat-for-hours type of afternoon that I love.  I was proud of myself -- we walked a mile, took a subway line to the park, took a train back in the dark, found a restaurant I'd been wanting to try, and transferred to our home train line. We left at 12:15 and got back home at 8:15. Whew!

    Please be praying for Jodie and her family.  They were planning on coming to our house for the whole afternoon and evening on Monday.  They are on the opposite end of the city, so it takes about an hour and three separate trains to get here. But they made it to our station two minutes from our house, and we were sitting around wondering what was taking so long.  Apparently, Jodie had a bad fall from the slick metal.  She has a prosthetic leg, and she hurt her hip on that side.  They texted that they had to cancel and were taking a taxi home to get what she needed.  Since we'll still be here till mid-December and they'd be here till January, I figured we would just reschedule, but she went for imaging and they found a fracture.  The doctors recommended that she return to America for surgery.  Such a bummer on so many levels!

Ten Things I Miss from America

Ten Things I Miss from America (in no particular order):

• Wal-Mart! 
• Ahh...to have so many choices of so many things in one place

• large quantities 
• (everything is in smaller portions in Japan)

• green! 
• The countryside is more green, but there's very little of it in the city

• libraries 
• as hangout, play spaces with events (not just quiet rooms with books to check out)

• playgrounds 
• (for all the things that Japan does well, playgrounds are not really one of them)

• parks with grass 
• (instead of just a dirt/sand combo)

• ability to read labels and signs without Google translate
• although I was proud of myself for reading in Japanese at a restaurant the option to order a dessert "now" or "later"

• trash cans out and about 
• (you have to carry all your trash home with you here)

• benches 
• (it is often difficult to find a place to sit)

• space
• Japan is very dense with people in the cities, especially on trains

Shopping!

    I will be the first to admit that I am not a shopper, at least when it comes to "girly" shopping of clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc. Being long-legged with big feet, it's never been easy to find things my size. I am more of a thrifter than a big spender.  After de-cluttering our whole house, I am hesitant to add back to the clutter. But I do have one weakness. 

    And it's NOT video game stores. But alas...I am in the 1/7 minority -- everyone else LOVES video games. I do have an appreciation for them. After all, if it weren't for video games, I wouldn't be in Japan right now (it has fueled both the desire and the finances to come). So I nod and smile and browse the merchandise and stand in line (literally 50 people in line at the Pokemon store last time!) and practice my Japanese with the workers and ask about when the Rhythm Heaven keychain will be back in stock.

    It took 43 years before Lucas made it to his first official Nintendo store. For awhile, there was only one in America; it was in downtown Manhattan, and we finally made it there on our Long Island road trip two years ago. And then in the last ten days, we've been to Nintendo stores three different times. One was in Tokyo, one in Osaka last week, and then again in Osaka this week because we were "in the neighborhood" and there was a new Zelda controller that had just released that day. It's kind of crazy to go from being 12 hours away from the nearest Nintendo store to being 1 train stop away.

    Our first attempt at hitting the Osaka Nintendo store was not without complications. It wasn't the first times that Google Maps has led us to a destination, only to have us scratching our heads at which building and where to go in and which floor. The first door we tried at the Lucua building didn't open until 10, so we went up some stairs to try a different entrance. And then we took some stairs and an escalator and walked to another side of the building. This entrance was open, but the elevator was not operational yet. So we took to the escalators. To the 13th floor! I don't think I've ever taken that many escalators in a row before! 

    On the 13th floor were stores for Pokemon, Nintendo, and Capcom, all video-game related. The boys were most interested in Pokemon plushies and figures. Lucas has had a near lifelong love of Nintendo, and his livelihood is in reviewing and writing about Nintendo as the Editor of Nintendo Force magazine. And then Lucas has dipped his toes into book publishing, where he has had two books officially licensed by Capcom. So yes, the 13th floor was geared toward the Thomas family!

    From there, we walked to a nearby store with a limited time pop-up for merchandise for another video game collection called Earthbound. 

So after all of that, it was my turn for my favorite kind of shopping -- books! Also nearby was a Christian bookstore.  There are some countries where Christianity is a persecuted religion, and Christian bookstores would not be possible. In Japan, however, Christianity is allowed but is rare -- less than 1% of the population is Christian. Still, with such a large population, this is still over a million people. I was thrilled to buy some children's books in Japanese, including one of my favorites that I gave to all my bridesmaids -- You Are Special by Max Lucado. I also bought a display with The Lord's Prayer in Japanese as well as some gospel tracts that hopefully I can hand out to strangers or friends.  My favorite purchase, though, is a Japanese storybook Bible in both Japanese and English. I have the English version at home. I'm hoping to improve my Japanese reading with these books, and I was happy to support this Christian bookstore appropriately named Oasis.

    There are also tons of secondhand bookstores in Japan called Book Off, similar to our Half-Price books (my favorite in America). I've already been to three Book Off stores, and I've also found secondhand books at a store in the mall and even down our shotengai near our house. Back home, I always check the Half Price bookstores for Japanese books, and the collection is always minimal (a few books here and there). So to be in a bookstore with thousands of Japanese books -- it's a bit overwhelming! I hope to one day read full mangas and novels in Japanese, but for now, I mostly stick with kids books and bilingual books.