Coming to Japan was a real step of faith. We are not on the payroll or associated with any missionary society. We do have a couple of income sources from assets in Australia and some income from book sales of our 4 published works. However, we had no jobs to come to here and the Australia Dollar at the time had plummeted against the Yen, meaning that we only wanted to transfer a little at a time to Japan. That made us learn to live on very little. The first month we were busy settling in, from December we started “James English Class”, we ran a month long advertising campaign. After a month and a half we had one student! A note to anyone coming to Japan and starting there own English School, it's hard to get people out of their houses in winter! At the end of January another missionary (who we had only met once prior) suddenly and unexpectedly decided to return to Australia handing us over 12 students. We now have about 25 students that either come to our house or the community centre (where we hire a room twice a week).
In March “James English Class” began a contract to teach English to employees of a company that is based near the Hankyu Sone station. This happens on the second Saturday of the month. Ritsuko, I and one more teacher who we employ casually for the class make the trip from Kyoto to Sone which is near Itami in Osaka-fu. In the morning we all teach beginners classes, in the afternoon I have an advanced class with the International Sales team, which is a chance to put my MBA skills to good use.
While we still have not got anywhere near the level of income we had in Australia (maybe 1/5), we're starting to reach the stage we're we are getting enough to live on and maybe a bit left over to buy and process some film! However, I realise now just how much I wasted money in Australia, these past 6 months in Japan taught meet a lot about what's really necessary, it's also helped in increase my faith.