Spotting an advert in a newspaper which said: 'Teach in Japan - experience with children vital' during a PGCE primary teaching course in Edinburgh last year, I decided to apply.
To my surprise, I was offered the job teaching English to 3 to 12 year-olds in kindergartens just outside Tokyo. Now it is hard to believe I've been here eight months. God's faithful provision to me in every way has been amazing. I can testify that he 'opens (his) hand' (Psalm 104.28), no matter where we are on earth.
As my thoughts turn towards home, I have one recurring question: 'What will I say when people ask: 'So what is Japan like?' Because if there's one thing that has struck me about this fascinating country, it is that Japan is impossible to sum up neatly! It is a country of incredible contrasts and sometimes startling paradoxes. On the train to work each day I see ladies in full kimonos sitting beside teenagers who flash designer labels from head to toe while grooving away to 'J-pop' on their state-of-the-art mini-disc players.
Affluence
Living so close to Tokyo I am perhaps particularly aware of these types of contrasts. There are certainly many areas where you can still see rural Japan: the way the whole country was until about only 50 years ago, but the fact that the government now buys rice from the farmers at inflated prices to ensure they will stay there, instead of becoming the infamous 'sarariman', or salaried office worker, swapping his farming tools for a suit and briefcase, highlights the transformation Japan has undergone since the Second World War.
Despite the problems the economy is undergoing at the moment, there are still plenty of reminders that this is one of the most affluent nations in the world. I've certainly done well out of neighbour 'gomi' days, where people throw out near-perfect condition CD players, word-processors and TVs!
I have been amazed and encouraged at how open to, and interested in, Christian things the people I've met are here. Although I knew of some OMF churches in the area before I came, I also came knowing that less than 1% of the population are Christians (in Britain 7% are).
My job means that each day of the week I work with a different Japanese girl with whom I team-teach. Quite a few of them have been so interested they have asked to come to church with me, and 'bring their friends too'! I certainly can't remember such requests from back at home.
A sense of occasion
Admittedly, part of the interest stems from the fact that they associate Christianity with 'things Western' to which a enormous amount of status is attached in the eyes of young Japanese, the ability to speak English being sought for the same reasons. The church I go to near Tokyo Bay uses this as a means of evangelism: cheap English lessons with free Bible study thrown in!
I love Japan. It gets under your skin. From the subtle flavours and presentation of the food: bright sushi from a pale wooden board, to watching the way people co-operate in incredibly small, confined spaces. The Japanese ability to create a sense of occasion out of the simplest things is also something which astonishes me. Last month I went with friends to the 'hanami' festival in a Tokyo park. People had turned out in their thousands all because the cherry blossom had come out! It was an amazing experience.
Spiritual bankruptcy
And yet there is no escaping the fact that this country is spiritually bankrupt. Only two people in a thousand attend a church service. This is despite complete freedom to preach the gospel since 1945. The spiritual darkness is manifest in the lack of moral values. On the surface, because Japanese social behaviour is so orderly, and the crime rate one of the lowest in the world, it seems as though Japan is an upright society. But only just below the surface, barely acknowledged by the Japanese themselves, are countless manifestations of immorality, from organised crime on a huge scale in the form of the 'mafia' or 'yakuza', and the constant revelation over six years of scandal and fraud among Japan's business and government leaders, to matter-of-fact reports in national newspapers of sickeningly violent bullying in schools and of teenage girls selling their virginity to businessmen for Y100,000 or £500.
The pressure placed on people to 'succeed' is incredible, and this starts early, as the enrolment of three year-olds for English lessons with our company shows. For Christians this is just one aspect of the cultural and family pressures they face to conform in this group-orientated society; the children of Christian parents may be the only ones in their class at school who don't spend Sunday at 'juko' or cram-school, but with such competition to secure a place at a 'good' school, this often seems vital.
Hunger and a baptism
Signs of spiritual hunger seem few and far between, but they do exist. One is perhaps the rise of cults, such as the infamous AUM cult behind the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995. I have had indirect contact with one of these cults when one of my friends here, an American also working for the company, became half-involved with a group calling themselves the Church of Christ (which turned out to be the same as the Central London Church of Christ).
Amazingly, God used this to awaken more spiritual interest in her: after cutting contact with them, she has since come to know the Lord, and is to be baptised at our church. Cults are becoming more and more popular here, and it is tragic that people who come as far as admitting an emptiness in their lives that workaholism isn't filling, try to fill this void with false teaching. Meanwhile, the church is so thinly spread and workers so few, that people have simply not had the opportunity to be confronted with the truth of Christ.
Pray for Japan. It seems that until people are shaken out of their materialistic self-sufficiency and short-term goals, they will remain apathetic to the gospel. However, drastic changes to the restructuring of Japanese society seem inevitable, particularly as the young people take on more and more Western values. This, coupled with the faltering economy, means it is just conceivable such a shaking may be looming on the horizon, closer than people expect.
