Take Me By the Hand and Lead Me

I realized something this afternoon that has caused great reflection in me today. I sit in front of the computer on this very lazy day wishing somebody, anybody would call me. I do alright most days here in the house by myself with Gabe. He has been teething lately, so his behavior has been extra difficult which makes for some very trying days dealing with my near 9 month old son. Some days though, like today, are especially difficult and lonely while Aaron is at work. Skype sits open on my desktop, still and quiet. No one answers their phone. I think "If only there weren't such an extreme time difference, it would be easier to reach people." But the truth is, the time doesn't really make a difference. Because it's hard to come to the realization that the people you think about in the loneliest of times are not thinking about you nearly as much. Not to be critical, it's just that the old saying "Out of sight, out of mind" really does hold true most of the time. And not to say that our little family or each of us individually aren't loved and missed, because I know that's false. But people are just different. I'm still learning that even if you aren't near the top of someone's priority list, that doesn't mean they don't love you. They express love to you in a way that maybe you just don't know how to translate. I was sitting here feeling so very sorry for myself not understanding why the people I love the most are the people who seem to ignore the phone when they see I'm calling, or see an email from me and choose to ignore it because "Oh...I'll reply later. I don't need to talk to this person right now." But do they understand that even if they don't need me, I am desperately needing them? I miss them, I love them, I only need to hear their voice to feel the loneliness go away for a moment. These are the thoughts that go through my mind when the hurt rears its ugly head. But this time I felt this way it was different, because I remembered that there was someone who felt the same way about me. Someone who I ignored when they wanted to talk. Someone who's messages I pushed aside only to assume I would remember to later reply at a time that fit my desire. That person is God. If we were made in God's image, that means everything we have felt that's pure and genuine, God must feel too. My loneliness crept away when I thought on this, and the void became filled with sorrow for my selfishness. God knows our hurt. If we've felt it, he understands it. And if we caused it, he feels it. I imagine all the things I have done to hurt others and how much more have I been a cause for grief in my relationship with my heavenly father. Too often do we see God as not much more than just a stone cold mono-theistic being who is all-knowing, all-seeing, but never-feeling.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me."
Matthew 25:34-40


I don't say these things to preach. But rather to share something churning in my heart as I again attempt to forsake the coveted position of the lonely victim. The hardest endeavor is to let go. Halfway around the world, I am slowly letting go of the other side. Still desiring for and missing for, and sometimes yearning for, but not grieving for. If no one calls me today, I'm going to be alright.

Discoveries of a Morning Stroll

This morning Gabe and I decided to go for an early walk around the park before the rain came in. A typhoon was coming, but I figured we had some time to take advantage of the cool morning. As we left the house around 8:45 am, I see people out walking their dogs, a very typical thing to see on the sidewalks around our apartment. As we round the corner of the intersection we live on, I walk past the nice hair salon and makeup parlor where you always see women sitting at the desk being consulted about their makeup choices. I walk past the contemporary wooden house that always has the big dog tied up in the front yard, not caring about anybody who walks past, just enjoying a nap. I walk past the decrepit, old building that always has a smell of sewage on the east side of the street, so I walk on the west side. As I wait at the one intersection between our apartment and Mogami Park, I often see people staring at this strange-looking foreigner with an awkwardly large stroller as they wait in their cars for the light to turn. But they quickly look away when their eyes meet mine. Old women always smile with a look of adoration when they see me and my infant baby. Much like a look of approval, as if even though I was a foreigner, I was doing exactly what women here were suppose to do. I walk past a group of Junior High girls in their uniforms, a white t-shirt and a pair of blue shorts, as they walk into the parking lot of the old Junior High school right next to the road. They look at me with curiosity as they make their way into the building. As I continue walking past the school, I hear a piano player warming up her fingers on the keys in one of the many rooms on the front side of the school with the windows open. I have arrived at the park. I decide to take the back road into the park so I can walk past the cottage tea house, which is usually boarded up when they are not having a tea ceremony. It's quiet in the park. Only a father and son using a long stick with a string and twig tied to the end as they dip it into the small pond next to the shrine temple. I didn't know what they were doing, they didn't seem to catch anything, but they were very studious of the what was under the surface as they gently dipped the long string into the perfectly still water. The water was very dirty, but a beautiful kind of dirty. There was some kind of blossom or small sort of leaf that had fallen onto the surface of the murky, grimy water and completely covered it. It made the water almost look like black marble. Gabe and I stopped at a bench to take in the scenery, smell the coming rain, and me drink my morning coffee and eat my pastry. Gabe is such a good walking companion. He takes in the scenery and enjoys the experience as much as any adult, he doesn't utter a sound when the wheels of his stroller are turning. We make our way through the temple yard, walking past the shrines and prayers people tie to the ropes outside the buildings. If one were to use their imagination, they could see the remnants of the old castle which used to be here and is now a plethora of small and large buildings which are now used for temples and shrines to the Shinto gods. There are many framed signs and scripts along the paths, I wish I knew what they said. I walk up to the offering box with the large rope for pulling after making an offering and look inside the room. It is beautifully ornate and full of traditional lamps and goldleaf. Only the temple preists are allowed inside. It reminded me of the tabernacle Moses built in the Old Testament. There were the outer courts and rooms and the inner room, and the Holy of Holies. This large ornate room was like the Holy of Holies for the Shinto religion. There were many beautiful things in the room that I don't understand, so I just stand back and admire the craftsmanship. In front of the offering box I see cans of soda and juices, some of the jars opened, so that bugs had gotten in and were floating inside. A foreigner who didn't understand would think this was littering, but it wasn't. These were offerings. This is something I don't understand, why would people offer drinks? But I suppose people give of what they have as they make their ritual prayers to the gods looking for good fortune, even if that includes giving your soda pop. We continue our stroll around the quiant park and walk past the old men fishing in the mote. There are always men fishing there. Sitting with their male friends on the bank, not saying a word, just watching the water. I have walked around the whole park and am now back to the road I was on before. I walk past Hokkuo, the delicious french bakery that sits adjacent to the corner of the park. Across the street, the senior citizens are playing a game of Petanku in the amphitheater yard of the Furo No Sato (Shinjo Cultural Center). I stop to watch a few minutes as I listen to the school band warming up their intruments in the Junior High next door. I pick out the harmonies of a clarinet, a saxophone, a tuba, and a piano. The clarinet was the most beautiful, as they played their scales, it sounded very graceful. Surely I thought, "That must be the young group of girls I walked past earlier." The rain was coming soon, so we started the short journey down the road back home. Old ladies passed me on their bikes, some of them giving kind nods as a way of saying good morning. Men with James Dean haircuts and Ken Watanabe looks get into their cars as they very suavly flick their cigarrettes onto the ground. As I walk back home, I am starting to see for the first time that this little town of Shinjo in fact, is a very pleasant town. Life is very normal here. I realize that these things have become normal for me. I like this feeling of acceptance it gives me. Not that I am accepted here, but that I accept being here. How could I have judged this town so poorly? These were people just living their lives like anyone else. I foresee Gabe and taking more walks as the weather gets cooler and more pleasant. I hope I get this feeling again.

A little Insight in to the Life of a Housewife

I've been seeing alot of articles online about how useless housewives are in the present day. According to many, housewives are portrayed as lazy, tv-watching, free-loading, frumpy women who also happen to be needy because of our never-ending boredom. Classy women wouldn't even be bothered by such nonsense, but maybe I'm not so classy. Since we all know that we are strongly influenced by the media we feed to our face everyday, and ideally we would think for ourselves, unfortunately...we are human beings and therefore more often than not, we listen to everybody else rather than determine of our own accord what is fact or fiction. The only reason I feel compelled to vent these frustrations, is that I know multiple times I myself have been compared to these standards of productivity. So to put my mind at ease about myself and all the other housewives of the world, let me spell it out very clearly what we, or atleast, what I do throughout my day.

I won't lie, much of my day is spent surfing the net, watching a movie, completing some random and non-important task, or even sitting on the couch doing absolutely nothing. But I would also like to elaborate on these things.

While net-surfing, yes I often check my email or read news articles about various things, but I also spend much time looking at other things. You will often catch me on babycenter.com where I am looking up tips on how to feed my 8 month old, or how to relieve a baby's cold, etc. You will also find me digging through recipes on the food network, constantly looking for new meals to try out on my family where we would otherwise be eating the same thing over and over or feeding on low-nutrition processed meals from the frozen food section. Facebook is an addicting thing, but if I didn't do it, our curious family and friends in the U.S. would probably have no idea how things were going for us here in Japan where our family has chosen to live for awhile. Everyday I am reading news articles not only to suffice my own curiosity but so that when my husband gets home from work, we will have something interesting to talk about other than our child or how our day was spent.

And yes, I do watch some movies for my own pleasure when the baby takes a nap, but mostly we watch Baby Einstein and children's movies. I also spend much time on the couch where I let my baby crawl all over me as we have multiple conversations about absolutely nothing. Much of my time throughout the day is sitting on the floor playing with my baby by tickling, or singing, or reading from his books and exploring his toys with him.

In the midst of taking care of the baby and meeting those what I call "Domestic Research Activities", I still find time to clean the house, make the meals, get a shower, and doing something for myself to relieve my sanity. Somehow all these things add up to a full day. So yes, if I were to summarize my day for you I would say I watched movies, played with toys, surfed the net, ate some food, took my shower and what an exhausting day of work it was.

I believe this is a typical schedule for most housewives and though we may not always accomplish all of these things in one day, these are still our assigned duties that do not end at 5 o'clock, Monday through Friday. Our work-day never ends. We are always on-call 24-7 to meet the needs of our family. If it weren't for the housewife, the husband would come home to chaos. I'm not trying to prove to people that I'm Supermom, only that housewives have a much bigger burden than people give us credit for.

If all of us "homely" women-folk had educations, maybe people would look at us differently, like we were doing the noble thing. But myself, not having an education, this job is what I am qualified for and I believe if they made motherhood a competitive field in the workforce there would be more female executives than all the Fortune 500 companies put together. We may not be paying our dues to society by certain standards, but we are paying our dues to our children and meeting their needs in ways that no other would be able to. Nobody can do our job the way we do, we are fabulous and a force to be reckoned with. Our home is our company, and we are running it like the meticulous workings of a dual core processor, fulfilling many tasks at the same time.

So to the men (or women) out there who would ridicule us, while you are out doing your job, remember.....when you get dressed in the morning and put on that clean shirt, or come home and sit on your nice clean toilet seat, or take that relaxing shower and not have to look at the mold, or eat that homemade meal, don't forget who made that possible for you.

Some Things I've Learned

It has been 5 months and 2 weeks since we first arrived in Japan. I am now 21 weeks and 6 days pregnant. Gabe is 8 months and 4 days old. And we are 7 months from the end of Aaron's 1st year contract. Now that stats are out of the way, I'll get on with it.

What things have I learned since coming here? I've learned it's ok not to have tv to watch, a working dryer, dishwasher, or air conditioner where you want it. They sure do make life easier and more comfortable, but we've learned to adjust. We've spent the whole summer sleeping downstairs in the living room because 90 degree heat with 80 percent humidity mixed with the science of heat rising, makes for a very uncomfortable upstairs sleeping experience.

I've learned that cooking things from scratch rather than buying pre-packaged and box meals can be fun and very rewarding. If there were 2 things I would say my husband was proud of me for, it would be for the way I raise our young son and for the meals I cook for him. Surprisingly, he says he eats better here than in the states. Not that we have a vast food selection of things we love to choose from, but it takes more effort here to eat food you enjoy, especially if it's not "nihon ryoori".

I've learned that the family unit is much stronger here than even in the states I think. On days off, families do things together, something that felt like a dying art in the states. I also learned that even though the family unit is strong, marriages are not always. Romance is not something often valued here. Marital intimacy seems like a strange concept. It is not uncommon for families to co-sleep, leaving little room for intimacy between mommy and daddy. It is also very common for the husband to live in a completely different city in some little dormitory to work while mom lives at home with the children and he may come home on weekends to visit. If people thought moms in America were bored, they should see stay at home moms here. People have tried to get me in contact with other women and expect us to be the best of friends simply because they are stay at home moms with nothing to do except take their children to the local community center playroom. I feel so much sympathy for the many women here who are ignored by their husbands or have accepted a traditional lifestyle marriage and family without the emotional support of their husbands. This makes me very grateful to be married to a man who comes home everyday and does his best to support his family not only financially, but emotionally.

I've also learned that our amazonian family is not as bizarre to the Nihonjin as I was afraid we would be. Yes, we will catch people looking at us, but they immediately look away. And we will get the occasional "ooki ne!" as they motion our hugeness with a hand gesture. But people have been even more accepting here than in America where I daily received multiple comments on my height and how short people felt next to me. Surprisingly, I felt more alienated in America than here. Despite the fact that we only see another foreigner every 3-4 months or so. I would say we have been accepted into the community as just another normal citizen of Shinjo. The only difference here is people, and when I say people, I mean the older grannies who worship our blonde-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed baby. They are more than happy to pick up your child or grab his cheeks even not asking for permission. Nihonjin lose all inhibition when they come in contact with a white-skinned, adorable infant. The fact that I'm about a foot to two feet taller than every women here is barely noticed due to the fact that I always have this adorable infant with me. His attractiveness overrides any bizarreness on my part. I happily accept this nice change of social behavior.

Something that may not seem so nice on my part, but I have noticed a trend, is that Japanese homes have a crapload of stuff laying around! Do they ever get rid of anything? Some homes hint of hoarding and clutter. Especially in the kitchen. Why do people here have to have so many different dishes and umpteen thousand colanders. It something I still don't understand even when people have large homes and plenty of room to properly organize. I'm sure they have their reasons, I just don't understand them yet.

I really love our apartment and the way the Japanese have so many gadgets for cleaning and organizing. But something I hate with an ever-growing passion are the drain traps in every sink and shower unit. Gone are the days of simply letting whatever lands in the sink wash down the drain along with your worries and simply using draino every month or so. Here there is a trap that catches EVERYTHING and cleaning it, even daily, can be a rather disgusting ordeal. I could simply remove the trap and have back my days of letting whatever be wash down the drain. But something inside convicts me because that is not their way of life here and who am I to come with my western standards of sink drainage and insist leniency. It is for the same reason I feel obligated to shower before taking a bath, even though I could do it visa versa if I wanted to. It just isn't how they do things here. In America we also walked on our carpet in our shoes never thinking twice about it, because it was normal to do that. Now, the idea of walking around the home in my dirty outside shoes seems almost nightmarish. Thus the carpet that has made a home in our apartment that has lasted several years and several tenants, still looks almost brand new. Go figure. The same with driving on the right side of the car, instead of the left, and in the left lane instead of the right. This has become my norm.

What a strange experience it is to accept a completely different reality and lifestyle than what you've have your whole life.

Hormonal Rantings...

We have been her almost 3 months now and I would be lying if I said this wasn't the most difficult time in my whole life! Have you ever counted on something for so long but when you finally get it you're not really sure anymore if that is what you want? I'm sort of on the fence about Japan. I never saw myself as spending my days locked up in the house in another country. This is of course by my own choice, because I can't find the desire or motivation to really embrace the culture. There are so many rules of engagement here it is impossible to fit in. You never really know if what you say or do might offend somebody and if the people who reach out to befriend really want to be your friend or if they are just being "socially correct" by reaching out to you. I've learned that people here offer you things they don't really want you to take them up on, and it drives me nuts. The hive mentality and the value set on conformity here can be mind-boggling. Oh sure, people will always smile at you here, but you never know if in the back of their mind they are completely offended by you or your very presence. Someone told me before we came here that Japanese see themselves as so unique the they even value themselves genetically? They are a species all their own and they love their homogeneity. I don't know how true this is but this kind of description of Japanese culture can scare the pants off any person who attempts to make a home here. Well, it does feel good to get these things off my chest even if it is alot of negative ranting. But I am slowing learning to breathe. Everyday is a struggle to simply accept this very un-american way of life. I shouldn't make Japanese people sound horrible, because they are very hard-working, caring people. I've met some women who have reached out to me and though I struggle to trust that their friendliness is sincere, I have to take a breath and just jump in.

It is hard not to miss America. The American way of life is a hard thing to let go of. I never realized how good I had it. I feel now that I was so selfish. How much I took for granted simply going to the grocery store and having the ability to buy the foods I love, to be able to drive anywhere and communicate with anybody. Living in such a beautiful city and having so many things to do. And now I live in the sticks in rural Japan, don't have a car(there is nowhere to go anyway), limited in my food selection to things I have to struggle to keep down, and can't communicate with anybody except the few who may speak a little broken English. How do you have a real conversation with someone who can hardly speak your language and whose language you can hardly speak? I also miss my family. It is hard to look at pictures on facebook of your family out making memories and having a great time and everyone is there, except you. People even comment on the pictures things like "What a great looking family you have". And you so desperately want to shout to these un-knowing people, "It's not the whole family! Some of us are missing!". And my kids, what about my kids? They may grow up either not knowing their family outside of mom and dad or depending on their personality, they could be the outsiders at family reunions. The kids who are related by blood only but don't really feel like family because they never got the chance to make memories with rest of the family. The thought of this makes me sad. When everything around you feels so confusing, it is hard not to dream up all the negative outcomes of our choice to uproot our lives and come here. I was crying out to God today asking him "Why?". "Are we just being stupid Lord? Was it really your plan for us to come here or were we just chasing something that was never right for us in the first place?". I felt like he told me "Candace, even if you don't trust anybody else, just trust me." Trust Him, Oh God why does that seem so hard? It is a hard thing to accept that you don't really know what you want until you've found it. I'm still searching and perhaps this is why God is asking me to trust Him. Perhaps he will lead me to a place of finally knowing what I want and having the motivation to go after it. Oh God I hope so.

In the meantime, life will continue on. Aaron will go to work everyday and I will spend my day with the Baby. Watching him grow, playing with him, experiencing the joys and pains of a second pregnancy, waiting for summer to come into bloom. Hopefully along the way it will become easier to accept Japan and this very different way of life. Hopefully I will finally begin to make friends with people I don't feel so pressured by to meet the social norms. Hopefully Aaron and I will find our stride here. I believe these things are possible. And now I patiently wait for the new and unpredictable to happen.

Koller Clan Update!

So We are finally in our apartment in Shinjo which we moved into on Monday.It seems like it would be huge for Japan. It is 2 level with 3 bedrooms and actually very spacious. We are pretty much settled in except we don't have any furniture except futons and some tables a friend gave us. We finally got our tiny washer and dryer working, thank God for clean clothes:) We've been storing our food outside on the porch because it has been so cold here and we don't have the fridge yet. We get our Fridge Sunday and our car on Thursday. So excited for that because we will finally be able to get out of the house and do some exploring! I am very excited to have a nice family size car (a nissan presage), none of this tiny asian car business! Aaron has been taking the train back and forth between Shinjo and Higashine the past week to get to work. He is still mainly observing and will start teaching full time by April 1st. Though he has taught some classes and even went to a very nice home for a private lesson for 2 siblings learning english. He is so glad to be getting paid to have fun with kids. What a great job! We really like the people he works with. There are only 3 other teachers and only 2 of them are full time. Only his boss Ryan is a Christian, but he is forming a relationship with the other teachers and hopes that will lead to deeper conversations in the future. I have been trying to adjust to domestic life here in Japan which is alittle different than the states. People pretty much go to the grocery store every day here to buy the food for that day for lack of space, and for us...lack of refrigerator! But we are a 4 minute walk from the store and only a 20 minute walk from the train station. The ground is covered in snow here and it practically was a blizzard last night! Here we are walking in windy, thick snow all bundled up with our 3 month old to go the grocery store. In the states that would be looked down on, but here it seems pretty normal. Rain nor snow doesn't really stop people from living their life here. I was planning to go to work with Aaron today to observe his teaching, but it is so cold we figured it best not to get gabe out in it. So until we get the car I'm stuck here at the house in Limbo! We appreciate your prayers, email us anytime, we would love to hear from you! it's nice to talk to people from back home!

Candace

Jusco is amazing!

Take a Macy's, Target, Walmart, and Sears and roll them all in one and what do you have? Jusco! Love it! Also highly suggest Japanese ramen shops...muy delicioso! We went to Sendai to look at car a coupe days ago. A Nissan Presage, it is a mix between a mini-van and a station wagon, very nice! So very sad about the circumstances we would be getting the car under. Our friends who have lived here in Sendai for the past couple years who have been waiting for us to move here are being forced back to the states! We were so excited about moving here and having them as friends only to find out that because of visa issues they would be leaving only weeks after we arrived! Ugggh! That's life I guess:( But Aaron started observing English classes at the school he would be teaching at. It is a school called "My Eigo", which in english is "My English School". We watched a kid's class yesterday that had 4 girls in it and it was really fun to watch the teacher Sam. He is this really nice guy from London I think. The school is very quaint and it has only 2 rooms, but it does very well and Ryan and Makki who own it are really wonderful people. They have been gracious enough to let us stay with them until we can get into our apartment. Strangers are so much nicer here than in the states. If you ask a Japanese person to do something, they do it with vigor and if you ask them a question they don't immediately know the answer to, they will immediately find out for you!Life feels very much the same here as any american town except just different enough to keep things exciting. I think I will like it here! I'll be in the apartment in Shinjo on Monday. So looking forward to it, ready to be someplace I can call home!

Our Journey To Japan

We arrived at the airport in Spokane, WA at 10 am on Friday and were in Seattle ready to catch our flight to narita airport by 1:30 pm. With us we brought 7 pieces of checked luggage, 3 carry-ons, 1 stroller system, and 2 more bags. We had alot of stuff. This is the biggest plane I have ever been on in my life. The Boeing 777 has 2 seats on each side and 5 seats in the middle. The lofty 10 hour flight did not feel as long as I thought it would with the 2 hot meals, drinks every hour, our own personal TV with movies to choose from and a very active baby to take care of! Gabe did very well for the first few hours until he realized his sore body was not waking up in his bed. This had been his 5th flight in 2 weeks. He was doing the best he could for a 2 month old! When we finally arrived at Narita Airport, everything felt normal. It felt like a regular airport until we reached immigration and I layed my eyes on the many black heads and suddenly realized I was the minority. We gathered our bags, 2 carts each of us, and made our way to get them delivered and make our train to Tokyo station. We ended up missing our first train by about 10 seconds which in the end almost made us miss our last possible train to Yamagata. The lights of Chiba are just amazing! You don't know condensed until you've been through Tokyo! By the time we got to Tokyo station we were so exhausted and hungry, but there was no time for anything. I had to take it all in as we quickly rushed through the maze of Japanese food stands and people rushing every direction. The Shinkansen is half a mile long and runs at nearly 80 miles and hour. By the time we finally found our car and hauled our luggage inside, we felt the sweltering heat of a car that is over 100 degrees on the inside while it is in the low 40's outside. A Japanese man who was helping me asked me jokingly in his broken english if I enjoyed their Japanese air conditioning, and I had to say I was less than impressed. We were of course concerned about our infant over-heating but Gabe did very well and the car eventually cooled down. After a long and exhausting 3 hour ride we finally made it to Yamagata City! After that was a 40 minute drive through winding streets to Higashine where we would stay with Ryan and Maki until we get settled into our apartment. The End.....or rather the beginning!