Storm Buster Series
Pius Chi-Shing Lee
In 1988, I left Oslo for Tokyo on an early morning departure flight on a cold winter day. It was not a direct flight but had a relatively short overlay in Hong Kong. My destination was a small agricultural town in Aichi Prefecture (愛知縣), Central Japan. The last leg of the journey was by train from Tokyo to Aichi. Our plane approached Haneda Airport, Tokyo, around 8:00 pm local time. The vivid impression of a foreigner newly arrived in the megacity of Tokyo was indelible and resonates to this day. As a young man raised in Hong Kong and educated in North America, I bragged that I had seen aerial nightlights of large cities.
Tokyo was certainly an echelon above all norms. There were lights and artificial illuminations as far as the eye could see when one gazed from the fuselage of an ascending or descending airline. The train ride from Tokyo to Central (中部) Japan was equally memorable to the degree of soul-haunting until today. There were many express trains, each with its specific fare tariff. I could not afford the speedy bullet trains and took a second-tier express train. It was a good 6-7 hour train ride with a few stops before the Aichi Stop. Before leaving metropolitan Tokyo, the express train would speed through the densely built city with what seemed to be an inundation of skyscrapers in elevated rails and tunnels. In one turn, the train was speedily, unswervingly zooming towards an office building on its elevated rail around its third and fourth floors. I could see employees working behind the tall glass building windows. I was scared as if the train was suicidally heading into the building. It turned just in time like a speedy roller coaster, and in my startle, no other passenger was scared but me. My fellow passengers were relaxed and dozed as it was already 11:00 pm. I was the newcomer unapt to the pace of this sunrise land with many wonders.
Sleepy Atsumi Peninsula
I arrived in Aichi more or less on time, and the hotel front office lady greeted me with her sleepy eyes when I checked in very early in the morning. It was a short stay as I should have checked out in a few hours, having booked only one night. The air was crisp, and the roaring wind was loud in this somewhat wind-swept stem of the Atsumi Peninsula (渥美半島). Being an international student in a country without knowing the ordinary people’s language, culture, or general mindset was surreal. I was anxious to meet my research supervisor as he had promised to greet me in the hotel lobby late that day. I only learned about my supervisor through his research papers and fame in meteorology and air pollution control. I fidgeted and was still unconvinced by the fact I was physically in Japan while waiting for my only contact in Japan in the hotel lobby. Punctually, at 10:00 am, my supervisor gently entered the lobby. I had seen his picture online in the university’s faculty introduction, but his in-person, stately manner charmed me further with his handsome smile and assuring voice of a professor.
Atsumi Peninsula (渥美半島) – Cape Irago
By Bariston – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112501340
Wind Swept Aichi Coast
Japan gave me an excellent first impression, and I unconsciously compared that with my experience when I first arrived in Canada, the United States, and Norway. The airport was orderly, people were helpful, and the posted signs and printed directions on brochures were clear. Despite my importune hour of arrival at the hotel in the early morning on a weekday, I was greeted adequately even in a little wind-swept town in a remote location miles away from the nearest major city of Nagoya. All in all, I felt throughout this broad geographical and metropolitical spectrum in Japan, everything seemed functioning perfectly — from an unthinkable gigantic mega-city of Tokyo to a remote wind-swept agricultural town in the sea-ward side of Aichi Prefecture. I had once conceived as a monoethnic and monolingual car-maker monopoly of the world was warm, friendly and welcoming. This first impression was reinforced and confirmed in my 7 years in the country as a Ph.D. student and later as an employee of the Japan Weather Association, a non-profit weather agency serving the public and a civilian liaison for the national weather bureaus.
Pronounced Land-Sea Breeze
Fortunately, I was given a temporary guest room in the university’s foreign scholars’ living quarters. It was reasonably priced and conveniently located inside the university campus. The University was situated on a somewhat elevated plateau tens of meters above the surrounding farmland and livestock husbandry. Near the Pacific coastline, the nighttime land breeze and the day-time sea breeze were religiously punctual and assertive. Whenever there was gorgeous sunshine in the day, the contrast of surface temperatures over land and sea tended to be the most extensive, often resulting in the most vigorous low-level sea-ward jet in the night and land-ward plane in the day. It happened almost every day throughout my on-campus lodging experience of 3 years. The Oyashio Current, a polar current from the Bering Sea, influenced the cool sea water near the Atsumi Peninsula. The exception from the strong winds phenomenon occurred when the sky was under heavy overcast, and thermal inversions and thick clouds suppressed the land-sea lower atmospheric circulation. The mountainous terrain of much of Central Japan also enhanced the mountain-triggered wind flow on both sides of the Main Island. My supervisor kindly walked me to the guest house. We were nearly yelling at one another as the roar of the wind was so thundering that we had to talk above its deafening roar.
Bump into a Foreigner-Friendly Church
There was a six-week gap in my lodging. As I was admitted as a graduate student, I was eligible to move into the foreign student dormitory next to the foreign scholars’ living quarters after a six-week wait was fulfilled. My supervisor was extraordinarily kind and arranged for me to stay free for room and board with two families as an international student — three weeks with a broadcasting company’s top manager and three weeks with a large construction company owner. Both experiences were eye-opening, and I witnessed firsthand the kindness and generosity of a typical Japanese person. The owner of the large construction company had a daughter who was one of the pianists at a local Christian Church. The church was quite a distance — within a bike ride from the University, but it was very foreign-student friendly, and I began attending the church with fellow students who gave me rides.
A Missional Church
Later, I discovered that almost all the Christians in the University attended that same church. All the elders and leadership in the church were fervent and dedicated to campus ministries in our technical university and the only other general university in this agricultural town. I felt that the church well-received college students, including international students. The young adult ministry pastor was an alumnus of our university. The church was practicing kingdom expansion for the Lord Jesus despite the dismal statistics that 99% of the students would leave the town for career opportunities. The church never hesitated to invest in campus ministry, which seemed a losing business, secularly speaking. I remember that on my third Sunday at that vibrant church of about 200 members of many age groups, one of the elders gave me a big envelope with his handwritten testimony. This honourable elder served on the church governance board, and his son was a university student. The testimony was written in Traditional Chinese scripts. He quoted a large biblical segment from the Epistle to the Romans, and at the end of the letter, he sincerely invited me to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. I promptly thanked him and shared with him again — I thought I introduced myself as a follower of Christ three weeks ago.
Land of A Spiritual Wilderness
These honeymoon experiences with the Christian presence in Japan were disillusioned. In the long seven years in Japan as a foreign Christian, the overarching feeling for me was isolation, out-of-touch and obsolescence. In a hierarchically strict society, humanism and feminism did not infiltrate Japanese society as quickly as their counterparts in Europe and Northern America. By humanism and feminism, I meant the overblown distorted philosophy of equity and entitlement that spearheaded defiance against the original orders and roles of all creatures defined in the Christian Bible. Unfortunately, this extra layer of societal protection did not ease the inroads of the many Christian missionaries in Japan. The skepticism against Christianity was tall, and the walls of self-pride and self-righteousness were even taller. Despite the large number of missionary societies that worked in concert with one another by dividing geographical responsibilities, Japan had the world’s most significant number of missionaries per square kilometre; the country had barely one percent of its population call themselves Christians. It was my regular prayer that the Lord Jesus showed mercy to the leaders of Japan by converting them first so that they would convert the entire populace into the faith. The Christian-first evangelistic strategy of the tribal society might work well in Japan.
Strong Believer-Heros
Japan had few Christian churches and few Christians. Christians must have strong faith. All odds shone harmful lights on them. The monoethnic and monocultural society allowed only a few norms of Sunday behaviours, such as sports clubs, hobby circles, and private tutoring on academic or cultural pursuits. Christians must have strong faith in Jesus to survive the relentless social battering of peer pressure. I owed an outstanding debt to two brothers in our campus fellowship who came weekly to my dorm to give me a ride and encouragement to attend church worship and prayer meetings. Only five members were in the fellowship — with a professor and counsellor. We all came from places far away from Aichi, Southern Island Shikoku, Western Island Kyshu, Northern Prefectures in Main Island Honshu, Manila Philippines, and Hong Kong. The brother from Shikoku pledged to study in a seminary as he felt called to be a pastor. His father sternly warned him that his sonship ended when he graduated from the technical university. He would disown him the day his son took a career path that he disapproved of. This brother helped me the most; his name is composed of two Chinese characters: “真理,” which means truth. What a hero of faith who died to his earthly sonship but truly committed to the eternal truth, and the truth set him free to serve the Truth, Life and Way of the world — Jesus.
Author: Pastor (Dr.) Pius Lee is the Director of the Development Division of NYSTM. In 2021, he retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. He was selected as the winner of NOAA’s Administrator’s Award for the Air Pollution Forecasting Research Group in 2020. Pastor Lee and Mrs. Ancy Thuyen-Anh Lee have three sons and one daughter. The couple relocated from the capital, Washington, to New York to take up the post.
Pius Lee. “[Storm Buster series] Home-stay and campus fellowship in Japan” NYSTM Truth Monthly, March 2023.
nystm.org/storm-buster-series-home-stay-and-campus-fellowship-in-japan/