A Muslim in Japan

Assalamualaikum J

  It has been 3 weeks in Japan and Alhamdulillah I still haven’t experienced any earthquake (not that I’m looking forward to it though). A lot has happened since I first came here, I made friends from all over the globe, I ate Unagi for the first time (hnm it was quite good, but expensive!), I took the wrong train twice haha.

  Japan all in all is amazing but I still have to get used to the weather. Coming from a country with only 2 seasons, (summer and rain) it’s quite hard for me to adjust to the weather here, especially in the morning for Subuh which is 3.30am to 5.00am. I am aware of all my alarms because I set 3 different alarms on 2 types of phones (6 alarms in total). I mean do you see how resolved  I am to wake up for Subuh! But whenever I push the blankets away to get up, the cold just hits me and I’m just so terrified of the cold and I continued sleeping. I know it’s wrong, I  know that you have to fight it, but I just can’t and I am ashamed of it. I will continue this fight and I hope someday my Jihad will be stronger than  Satan’s temptation.

  Being a Muslim here is not easy, however, I think it’s better here than any other country. Before coming here, my biggest concern was about my daily prayers. Class schedules, orientations, field trips, etc may interrupt one of my pillars of faith. So, when I got my period few days before coming to Japan, I was super thankful! I won’t have to pray and it made me easier to focus on the orientation and not have to flick a second thinking of my daily prayers. Nonetheless, period only lasted for a week and after that, I sneaked in a couple of unlocked rooms to complete my prayers.  Never did I know, they actually prepared a prayer room for me! I can’t remember when it was, but I do recall that it was still during the orientation and we all had a break for an hour. I ate my lunch really fast so that I’ll still have time to pray. I took my ablution in the restroom which was really hard because they had no pipe in the cubicle and I had to use the sink. It was not the best way to take your ablution since people kept coming in and out and the restroom were really small so whenever someone wanted to come in they will hit me with the door.

  After the ablution I met with one of the staff and had the guts to ask her permission to use one of the classrooms. It was then, when she finally introduced me to the prayer space!

JANG JANG~!~!~

My own prayer space!

  This is one of the biggest reason why I said that it’s better to be a Muslim here than any other country. It’s because of the people itself! Japanese are very thoughtful and they want you to feel at home. They don’t care about your religion, race or background. All they want is for you to be happy and secured. They were very considerate to take a part from their office just for one Muslim (I think). It’s basically my own personal space, I can eat, sleep, finish my homework here haha! They even went ahead and put a rug so that it’s even cleaner! The room itself is very near to the staffs’ sink so I won’t have to use the restroom again and it had locked doors to make it more private! Table and chair was also provided to put my bags and eat my lunch.

  At the bottom of my heart, I really am thankful for this space and I hope that students who are coming to Japan for the first time will not worry about this because  “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find it, knock and the door will be opened to you” –Matthew 7:7 (I know it’s from the Bible but it fits to what I want to say hehe)