January 2014
The Mission Angels
Nihon: Part I
By Marc Alley
At this very moment, "I Wanna Be Sedated", sung by the Ramones is playing in my mind. It is the fifth day of vacation and I have been sedated, enervated and satiated by too much food, long walks on the beach, fun times with kids mine and theirs, and at least 8 hours of Disney's California Adventure. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. I'm clearly aging, and I used to be quite a bit more spry.
Back in 1988, Japan hit me like a ton of bricks... in an unexpected way. For some reason it had never crossed my mind. I had always wanted to go on my mission to Australia. I don't know why, it was just different. Maybe I had listened to one too many Midnight Oil songs.
In those days, we actually filled out a piece of paper, with all of the necessary medical stamps, bishops and stake president interviews and then mailed it in. I remember it taking at least 4-5 months to get it. With trembling fingers, I read, "You have been called to serve in in the Tokyo North Mission". It was quite shocking, and as I mentally plumbed the depths for those I knew within my relatively small network who knew anything about Japan, I came back with only one name. Uncle Lynn Alley. I was in trouble. Looking back on it, I approached my mission wrong-headed, but natural to a typical 18-year old.
Lynn's contribution to my mission consisted of several self-recorded tapes which he entitled, "Nihongo corner", in which he would announce the Title, play a disharmonious, minor tune from a windup music box. They were actually pretty entertaining, but I think he petered out after three. My favorite one included a lesson on the Nakigoe or crying voice of animals. He taught the concept that animals in Japan "cry" and don't "say" as they do in English. According to Lynn, I had basically traveled to Narnia and would be speaking with animals all the time, while being pursued by the White Witch. I learned that dogs don’t bark but naku wan wan. Pigs cry bu bu. Roosters cry Ko ke ko ko! Doves cry as well, but I don’t really want to get into explaining to my parents how there was a really famous artist in the eighties named Prince, who made this movie…. oh well, we will just stop there.
I saved much of the money in a 3-month Elko sojourn removing asbestos with other Navajos at a youth prison in the desert. No this isn't the latest plot from a Coen Brothers film... you can't make this stuff up. This story has been described in other Christmas stories, but I digress.
I was a bit worried that I wouldn't cut the mustard in the mission field, but the MTC gave me a great start. Leaving your family in that whitewashed cinderblock room as you walk through a hidden exit wasn't too hard for me, and was quite appropriate to me, absorbed into the MTC womb/matrix, representing the world left behind. Some families just couldn’t bear for their son to not have their favorite pizza or cake, and those days they allowed families to drop it off at the front desk, then a slot, then the USPS, and then nothing. There’s always one guy who figures out how to get his girlfriend UPS’d to him and ruins it for everyone. One of my angels was a danish adopted Aunt Maria who made me the most delicious butter, almond and sugar cake and mailed it to me. I even had it with me entering the mission home, but I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut about how good it was and some evil mission homer ate it.
Separating home life from mission life is harder for some then others, and its a tough switch when you’re brand new at the MTC… you have to switch gears fast, going from girl cruising to japanese and gospel learning. Sometimes, while living at the MTC for three months, I'd wish that the many pretty sister missionaries would have been left behind, as I would often get distracted by a pretty face while eating my Captain Crunch, somewhat a first for me. I got over it though, and I was able to focus in my "district". I roomed with three other missionaries in a small orange dorm room which held two bunk beds. The most memorable characters in the group were Kim Orton, whose father was a Professor at BYU Hawaii and whose mother was 1st Generation Japanese, and a very affable David Chamberlain, whose father was a former member of a the Provo Jet Set, a former church film actor and former owner of a Mormon Nanny Service Company.
We would spend at least 4-5 hours a day studying Japanese, but it seemed very pleasant and seemed to go by fast. I particularly loved the Tango bang game which resembled the basketball shootout game Dynamite. Class members would study a list of about about 30 words, and we would try to quickly memorize them. The district class members would then form two standing lines of about 3-4 each, with competitors heading the line and facing each other. The teacher would look at us expectantly, and then yell out one of the words we'd just memorized in English. The first missionary to yell back the correct equivalent in Japanese and then a shouted bang! with the accompanying pistol shaped fist would "kill" the competitor who would have to rotate to the back of the line as it continued. I would usually do pretty well, grinning in satisfaction as district members would mope with hanging head to the back of the line as I shot them down. But my smiling would quickly vanish as I faced down the dreaded champion of TangoBang, Kim Orton. Kim was light years ahead of all of us and absorbed Japanese like a sponge.
When I first met him, I thought him a bit of a simpleton, with his Pidgin English, fart jokes and spot on Bruce Lee impressions. He was somewhat short, but an incredibly lean and muscular surfer, who spent every night blasting his calf muscles on two-by-four stands on which he would slowly lower the back of heel to the floor a full 12 inches from the part he'd perch on. Kim basically described Hawaii as a paradise in which virtually every bikini clad girl was Mormon and surfed every day, including his girlfriend. Having grown up eating Bentos and hearing Japanese from his mom, Kim was way ahead of the curve, and he quickly became a favorite of mine, prized for his schoolboy humor, self-effacing comments and amazing Japanese.
David Chamberlain was his total opposite, with blond hair, about six foot three with a shuffling gait and quick smile. But David was an incredibly loyal friend. While we never shared the same mission field, David went out of his way to meet me countless times in Japan, even though his brother and sister lived far away in another prefecture teaching Japanese. One evening, David waited for me for six hours, sleeping in the bed of his pickup in anticipation of my arrival.
In many ways, David's character symbolized the best parts of Japan, a nation of strangers whose courtesy and loyalty were easily forgotten by a naive and spoiled 19-year old missionary.
While I don't wish to fully describe it due to its sacred nature, I had a monumental spiritual experience as I took on the challenge of Enos, praying all night not for forgiveness, but to know that I am a son of God. Even now, I cannot remember why this was so important to me, but maybe it is because of this experience I have persisted in a testimony that we were all with each other in the premortal life and God's children. That night, after at least 4 hours of prayer I received an incredible manifestation of God's love and presence through the Holy Ghost. It is this experience that I have fallen back all my life whenever I have been tempted to challenge any aspect of my faith or testimony, and have become part of a group of millions who cannot deny its existence because of this formative event.
I will always remember how strange it was to fall asleep on a wide-bodied Boeing 747 and wake up in another country. Narita airport just smelled different. Upon arrival to the mission home to meet President Kiyabu, another native Hawaiian, I remember my first dendo, walking the streets around the mission home, speaking to the frozen faces of the hundreds who were unfortunate enough to live so close to the mission home and had probably been approached by missionaries a hundred times.
The very curbs that we rode by were more blocky, and narrowly secured the keystone blocks that held the secondary water from Tokyo kitchen sinks. In the distance, I could see the familiar blaze of a 7-11, but upon entering, it held a unappetizing, grey soup of floating Oden, with shelves of iced coffee instead of mounds of Nacho blister packs and Slurpees. Could I of just woken up on the wrong side of Japantown, Los Angeles? My mind could not comprehend the thousand differences, and nothing seemed remotely familiar to me. The sights, scents and sounds were completely alien and totally exotic Eastern.
The language was a challenge, to say the least. While seemingly ahead back at the MTC, I really was challenged in one of my first areas, Kita Senju, a somewhat cheaper version of Tokyo than Shinjuku, where the Mission Home was located. 4 missionaries in a very tight 500 square foot apartment was somehow not bothersome to me as a 19 year old. I found Kita Senju to be very endearing. From the fish-hawking mobile vendors who would play a bouncing, bubbly song that loosely translated into, “ Cu-ute fish, CUTE little fish, they are so delicious that you must buy them now!” to the public Sento bath right across the street, this place was “cheap” in a cozy, yes even cute, way.
click and another fourth until your entire horizon would be lit up by this massive complex that took up almost the entire ku or at least seemed like it.
On the way to the church everyday, where we would meet our appointments with investigators, we would pass by the same group of rowdy 9 year old boys who would greet me with the same sentence ever day, “Oi tomodachinko!”. I could never figure out what they meant. And I didn’t want to bring it up to my companion who always laughed and smiled at them, so clearly he understood. I knew that Oi was some sort of familiar/rude greeting like, “Hey!” and that tomodachi meant friend. What was the meaning of the weirdchinko on the end? This puzzled me for a full month until I finally got the courage to ask Sister Tanaka, a 50 year old, but still striking wife of a doctor, who was not a member. She and her daughter who were converts, and the literal soul of the ward. They were very kind to the missionaries and seemed constantly concerned about the poor quality of food we would eat or drink and the ridiculous items we continued to bring from home. “You’d best be taking better care of yourselves, I’m so worried about what your mothers will say when you return home. And that’s not really the best way to show our hospitality, is it?”
While eating one of Sister Tanaka’s famous lunches right after church in the communal area, I asked her what tomodachinko meant, adding that some local boys yelled this at us on a daily basis, so I knew that it must be pretty significant. Luckily, she was in between bites, and Sister Tanaka was from the old school, practically royalty being the wife of a doctor. She screwed up her face as if it would burst, barely containing polite ho hos that were emanating from her mouth, turning into full on ha has, one hand covering her mouth in feminine politeness. She was barely holding it together, and I’d never seen her laugh so hard.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she stammered, in between giggles, “Well you know, it’s really amusing, and really more of a … you know, a little boys … um… a combination of friend and a little boys private thing”. I was a little embarrassed, but just kept grinning like an idiot. I vowed to somehow turn this little joke into a way to ensnare other unsuspecting greenhorns like myself. You were completely clueless about the language, so there was no way to avoid these little pitfalls. I remember, in my first area, being constantly asked by street contacts and investigators, Nenrei nan desu ka? Turning to my companion, having no idea what Nenrei meant, he simply translated, “What is your age?”. On other occasions, another older man would ask, O-ikutsu? or Nan nen? and then I would turn, dumbfounded, to my senior companion who invariably would translate, “How old are you?”. How come no one ever used the phrase we learned in the MTC, nan sai desu ka?
I remember asking all around Tokyo where Mcdonald’s was, since I had saved a couple of bucks for a cheeseburger. Mcdonald’s wa doko desu ka? would come out of my mouth, and everyone would look at me in wonderment, and then shake their heads. No one could understand me, but I knew I had the phrase right. After about the tenth time, one kindly man figured it out. Ahhhh! Makudonarudo! Kono chikaku in arun daro. I just could not pronounce the Japanese version of the word for Mcdonald’s, Makudonarudo. I practiced for about a month until I finally got it, and I swear that it really helped me pronounce my verb conjugations better after that.
Well the story is far from over, but we had better wrap up part I and I’ll continue this next year, and maybe the year after.
