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Celebrating 20 Years Married

In June of 2003 Ruth and I said “I do” to one another in marriage and a new family began! Last year we realized that our 20 years anniversary was coming up, and we wanted to do something special — something out of the ordinary. Something that we’d long remember and was worthy of the 20th anniversary. Every other year for our anniversary, we’d normally celebrate by going out to dinner somewhere, but this time we knew what we wanted to do: a big trip with no kids!

We began to look into an Alaskan cruise, and the options got us excited. We’ve both dreamed of doing a cruise (neither one of us have done them) and Alaska isn’t so far from us here in Japan. But the prices of going on a cruise, especially the airfare from Japan, was crazy high! So much so, we soon thought of another option — what if we explored more of Asia? The result was one of the most unforgettable trips we’ve ever done — and at half the price it would have cost us to do an Alaskan cruise, this was a great way to do it!

Now while this doesn’t directly have to do with life in Japan, it does have everything to do with how you vacation internationally when you live in Japan! In fact this one trip really opened our eyes to all the exciting possibilities of living in Japan, not just within the country but also because of what is relatively close to Japan and yet a world away.

We’re so thankful we could celebrate in such a memorable way. How important it is to celebrate the big milestones in life and not minimize the importance of the people closest to you, that God has given you. In fact the celebration also made us look forward to getting back to the kids, and we had a special reunion when the trip was all said and done.

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12-Story Uniqlo

Uniqlo is an international Japanese clothing brand that can be found in just about every decent-sized urban center throughout Japan (and some outside of Japan). While these stores have good clothing for the whole family at a decent price, they are not the mega-stores many countries have come to known and love. However there does stand an exception — a 12-story exception in the form of Ginza’s Uniqlo store. Recently Ruth and I went to this store for the first time to see what, if anything, makes it stand out not just from other stores, but from other Uniqlos. What we found was interesting, to say the least.

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Our Coffee Shop

I love coffee shops. It’s not just because I love coffee, which I do. I think it’s because one place can do so much. A good coffee shop is not just about a cup of coffee, but it’s about community, warmth, interaction, ambiance, music — in short, it’s about a warm and inviting environment.

That’s why, over 5 years ago, we started a new endeavor as the Paz team: to open a local coffee shop. The undertaking was epic, because although we had a lot of experience drinking coffee and going to coffee shops, we had no experience running a coffee shop, let alone figuring out setting up a business in Japan where the laws, customs and language are so different.

Fast forward 5 years. Now we’ve survived COVID and the coffee shop has been well established in the community. It is all those things we love about a good coffee shop and more. The more is the fact that the coffee shop is also the place where our Paz Church has its Sunday services. Our Paz Coffee Shop is about so much more than a good cup of coffee and a nice environment — it’s a life-giving environment.

So when the opportunity came to make a commercial for Paz Coffee Shop, I knew we wanted our first official commercial to be special and unique. So I enlisted the help of my friend Geordie, an actual filmmaker with a very different set of skills and we went to work.

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Lives

Japan’s Sports Day

We’ve lived in Japan since 2014 and have had kids in the Japanese school system ever since. There are certain things that define the Japanese school system (lots of study, clubs, kanji and school lunches to name a few), but of all those things the Sports Day is certainly on the list.

Sports day has taken different forms over the years, especially effected by corona and the subsequent steps taken to continue the sports days, like only having one class at a time compete. Another thing that was done was to limit the parents who came — sometimes to one parent per child or even only the parents of the oldest kids! Fortunately this year things are getting more back to normal, which means we were able to see all of our kids compete in two different sports days.

While we’ve been to many sports days, this was the first junior-high sports day to witness. Many things are similar, and yet so many things were leveled up. Months of preparation goes into any sports day, including tryouts for some of the special track events. While everyone participates in the sports day, not everyone competes in the same events (as seen in the videos). But points are scored and the competition is fierce!

Joshua and Sarah’s sports day took the auspicious title not of sports day but of olympics and the whole school was divided equally into two teams, white and red. Olympics was a great new title for it, as the sports day is full of pageantry, competition, dances and so much more. Like commentators from their booth, we could watch the whole sports day take place from our nearby apartment. Not only that, but this was cousin Izzy’s first sports day in elementary school.

A question we often receive is “How does sports day compare to sports days in America?” Since Ruth grew up in Brazil, and I grew up in a small private school (home school!), neither one of us know. So what do you think? If you’ve done sports days in America, are they similar?

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Real Life in Japan

We do videos and posts about all kinds of things, but at the heart of Life in Japan is documenting what is happening as our family grows up here in Japan. And although you get a highly edited and polished version of our lives in Japan each week, I try to do my best to really show the challenges and benefits of living here. These aren’t always the easiest videos to make because, let’s face it — it’s our lives! But in the midst of that, there’s something in there that’s very special to share and I hope is encouraging to you as well.