Prayer. Mosque. Food.
Written by Rahmania Radjadi san (www.rahmaniaradjadi.com)
Japan, a well-developed country, outside the earthquake that commonly happens, Japan has much to offer. The unique and astonishing cultures, the delicious culinary, the challenging Japanese language, huge companies to work, and great ranks universities and schools make Japan be one of the most top countries to live and raise a family.
As We know that Japan is non-Muslim country, but it’s a pretty decent Muslim friendly country. Due to the minority of the numbers of Muslims living in the city, Tokyo has some great offers for Muslims to have a good life.
I have been living in Japan for almost 2 years now, but my husband has been living in Japan for more than 17 years. If you are wondering how is it like to live as a Muslim in Japan, maybe here I could share with you some things that I experienced as we live as a Muslim family in Japan.
#1 Prayer call
As you know, Muslims must pray 5 times a day. In our country, it’s easy to know the prayer call or Adzan as we could hear nearest mosques calling for prayer time. Since now we are living in Japan, we could not hear the prayer call as we are not living near any mosque here in Tokyo. Our solution for this is I installed prayer app either on my smartphone and my laptop, I’m a web designer working from home as I using the laptop all day. Honestly though, I really miss the real live Adzan from mosques which I used to hear 5 times every day in my country.
How about prayer in the office?
We are so grateful that most of Japanese are tolerant with differences of any cultures and religions. My husband’s co-workers are highly tolerant to my husband on prayer time. My husband tells from the start before he joined the company that he is a Muslim and he needs to pray and they understand it. Even better that they provide a space for my husband to pray in the office.
Do you plan to study in Japan?
As I mention earlier that Japan has great ranks world class universities. Of course, you can always have your time to pray as you can manage it by yourself. Finding a place to pray in campuses is not hard at all as long as you can find a place that is clean, not a bathroom, and not a graveyard you are good to pray there. My husband told a trick that he had done when he was on campus, he said that his library campus has a private place that they called “private study place” which is a private small room for you to learn in the library, he mostly done his prayer there.
#2 Mosque
There are mosques in Japan especially in Japan’s big cities and gratefully we can pretty easily go to the nearest one to my house like 30-45 minutes going by train. So for us is not a problem to reach the mosque.
#3 Food
This is one of the “hard ones” comparing when we are living in our country. As we cannot find many halal restaurants that we should come to certain places to eat in halal restaurants. So, hang out on the weekend is sometimes become slightly pain in the butt when it comes to lunch or dinner time because options become a little bit boring that we have to eat the same food again and again because we know that the food is halal to eat or we night have to go with vegan options.
That is why we love cooking at home and bring our own food when we go out. But the good news is Japan is trying its best with halal food. As we observed that now the emergence of halal food is growing.
https://www.halalgourmet.jp/
Conclusion
So if you are Muslim and you are on the plan to live in Japan because you are going to work here or maybe attend school in Japan, you don’t have to worry because you can enjoy the life here with no worries. Next, in the Part 2, I will tell you more things living as a Muslim in Japan.
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