We're here!

Yay, we are finally here! I wish we could have updated sooner and said this, but thank you so much for all of your prayers during our trip! It was completely smooth - all flights were on time, all of our luggage made it unharmed - a huge answer to prayer! We did not get to sit together on our 13 hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo (Trent sat right behind me), which seemed like it was going to be terrible, but I ended up sitting between two American ladies who chatted with me through many long hours and Trent sat between two Japanese men who stayed completely silent the whole flight and let him sleep. I guess it was a blessing in disguise :)

Our flight arrived around 3:30pm here in Tokyo, but to our bodies it was 1:30 in the morning (the time difference is 14 hours)! Our supervisor met us to take us to our new apartment. When we finally got here, it was such a relief! It is so cute! We live in a more traditional area in West Tokyo called Koganei, and so our apartment is Japanese in style, not Western. In some ways that is strange, but it is also really cool, and we love it! (Pictures to come, promise!) After the drive, unloading our luggage, and a quick meal at a little restaurant around the corner.. we pretty much collapsed into bed. And somehow we managed to sleep over 8 hours, we only woke up once! That was another huge blessing!

The next day (Thursday) we woke up really early to a very bright sun shining into our apartment. We remembered that we now live in the Land of the Rising Sun :) I worked really hard to unpack everything in the morning so that we would start to feel at home quickly. Then we decided to be brave and explore our neighborhood a little. We found a McDonalds, KFC, and 7-11 all within a half-mile! After wandering around for awhile we somehow managed to get some lunch for ourselves from a couple of little shops on our street. Trent got the chance to use one of the few things we can already say in Japanese: numbers! Then that afternoon our supervisor came to explain to us all of the many confusing gadgets in our apartment. First of all check out the way we change the temperature of our water in the shower:

Yes that’s right – we have an electric shower. It talks to us. We have no idea what the lady is saying or what half of the buttons do, but it’s awesome. Another amazing thing is that our toilet has a cord! It plugs in to warm the seat. Crazy! And speaking of crazy.. I have never heard of anything crazier than the way these people deal with their garbage! Here are our trashcans:

Yes, trash canS, we have 4! We have to buy different kinds of fancy trash bags to go in fancy trash cans which each hold different things. It is recycling to the extreme. We have to figure out what trash is burnable, not burnable, certain types of bottles go in one place, cans and other bottles in other places. And here’s the real kicker.. we have to CLEAN our trash before we throw it away! Cans, bottles, milk cartons, meat packaging – it all has to be washed before it can be put out. AND we have an elaborate trash schedule to tell us what is picked up when and where! See:

We have been told to take this very seriously because they will actually check our trash before they take it, and if it is wrong they will bring it back to us! So needless to say we have a lot to learn about living in Tokyo!

That night we went to our first team meeting and met everyone. They were all great and we’re looking forward to getting to know them more in the next few weeks!

So far we’ve been doing really well despite jet lag and initial culture shock. Please continue to pray for us as we adjust. Also we will be going to formally introduce ourselves to our 3 neighbors this weekend (which is kind of a big deal here). We don’t know if they speak English at all, so it has the potential to be a little awkward. Please pray for us as we make our first impressions on these people! We could be the only Christians they ever know.

Thank you so much for praying for us! We love you and are so thankful for you! Many more stories and pictures to come…