Strawberry Bargains and Bloodshed

Hello and welcome to update #2 covering our second week here in Sapporo! I don’t have tons of time so here is a quick run down of what we’ve done this week. Sunday (6/29) was very busy, starting off with a bike ride to Hokuei church service, lunch with a church member (and lots of Japanese practice!) followed by an English service at the Sapporo International Church. Some highlights: I understood about 30% of the Japanese message (preached by a gaijin though, so much slower and clearer than native Japanese). Good fellowship time after SIC with much laughter, guacamole, and World Cup talk. Monday we had our team devotions, then me, Abi and Tom cycled up to Asabu, a section of the city north of us and after an afternoon of exploring confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is absolutely nothing to do in Asabu, unless you want to enroll in dance classes or get a hair cut (I DID want to enroll in dance classes, but Abi and Tom were having none of it). On our way to Karin’s for a team meeting before ESS we stopped at a market and bought two cartons of strawberries for an unbeatable price of 400 yen after a bit of subtle haggling and sweetalking plus Abi’s alabaster skin. At ESS we learned some Hokkaido dialect, met new students and went out for dinner afterwards, as well as made plans to go to karaoke the following evening. Tuesday we spent most of the day at campus, in hopes of meeting some people while waiting to meet up for karaoke. We tried to kill time by being sporty outside, but that only lasted for about 15 minutes before one of us was in dire need of a first aid kit (Dean) and so we ended up meeting a student by asking her to take us to a medical facility. Moral of the story is: if you need a friend, a blood sacrifice might do the trick. Actually it doesn’t even have to be real blood if you keep a packet of ketchup handy. In any case, Dean was repaired, and we went to karaoke and sang ourselves silly for two hours. Wednesday...was a mournful day for me. Woke up at 5 a.m for the US vs Belgium game… accidentally woke up the whole house when Green scored...and then spent the morning in sorrow, or as Abby would say, with a “brokoro kokoro”. I had to soldier on though, because the rest of the day was spent planning for the international party and bible studies, as well as a team meeting and ESS in the evening. We went out to eat with the students again afterwards and then headed home, and I watched Tim Howard interviews and contributed to the red white and blue tears being shed in the mother country. Thursday we went grocery shopping and errands/planning/siesta-ing before attending the OMF prayer meeting. Friday we were set to serve as volunteer english partners for a girls’ junior high school event, and after a slight mix up about locations arrived slightly late to have a great 45 minutes of chatting with 14 year olds about Powerpuff Girls, Spongebob, and Inuyasha. Have I mentioned how I love interning with OMF? We were given 1000 yen gift cards to a bookshop as thank you gifts so we walked to a huge bookstore by Sapporo station and I bought a JLPT N2 Grammar study book. Hopefully that will give me a leg up in studying for the test in December! We had english bible study in the evening and went to bed early to get plenty of rest for today… Because today was our day off! We went to Shakotan, a lovely seaside city/town/area about 3.5 hours away from Sapporo and did lots of trekking and wading and rock skipping and sweating. Many pictures to come. Last but certainly not least, I recently discovered that my hosts from Ichikawa last year, Fredy and Anuk, are living above us for the next month while they stay in Sapporo as their grandson Florin undergoes a very serious surgery- so I went and had nice long visit catching up this evening. I can’t believe it’s been a year since I last saw them! I will post another update with prayer requests tomorrow, but for now I must sleep or suffer possible death by sleeping at the handle-bars on the way to church. Goodnight and thanks for reading! P.S. look forward to the sequel to my last post about Japanese toilets, titled “Japan and the Porcelain Throne; The Dark Side”, coming soon to this very blog.

The last melon

Apparently I never posted this last update from last year? SHAME anyways, here it is, a year late. So, since this will probably be my last update that I write from Japan...I'll try to make it a good one :)I'll start where I left off, which is last Wednesday. In the morning I left for my 9:30 a.m. Japanese class at the community center. I ended up staying until about 12 because I was practicing with one of my fellow students, Mei. She's from Myanmar, living here with her husband while he gets his PhD in Teeth (he's training to be a dentist). She's also a Muslim. We had an interesting time trying to communicate about our respective faiths in a language neither of us spoke very well...Japanese words that I use to explain to Japanese people what I'm doing here just weren't in her vocabulary- not even the word "kurisuchan". Eventually she understood after I drew a cross and pointed to it again and again while saying 'this religion'. Or at least, I think she understood because today she asked me about what Christians do at Christmas time, so she must have added that into her vocabulary. Woohoo! 10 points to each of us for communication skills! anywho, after that I stopped by my new favorite bakery Luchia to reward myself and grabbed some nom nom delicious cheese breads and a little bun in the shape of a teddy bear head. Totes kawaii. Then I did some work for the Guest Home until about 5. I quickly snarfed down my winnings and got on the train to Shinagawa to meet Philipa for a bible study there. Since a lot of the English speakers didn't show up and it was just Philipa and I who spoke English, we split up so that they could do the reading in Japanese without feeling bad about us not understanding. It ended up being a really great time of mentoring for me. One thing I've appreciated so much since the day I got here is the amount of people willing and ready to invest their time in talking with me and teaching me. Philipa has been such a huge blessing in that way, and in many other ways as well. I will always be thankful for her companionship these past 6 weeks. Buu, I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Thursday I worked on weeding for about 3 hours, taking some breaks to apply toothpaste and more bug spray every time I got too many mosquito bites to survive. Seriously, the mosquitoes here must think my blood is the Nectar of Olympus because they just keep coming at me. Not pleasant. I cannot remember for the life of me what I did on Thursday night, so that will unfortunately remain shrouded in mystery. What is not a mystery however, is that I was extremely tired the next day, so I think it must have been something to do with watching a drama into the late hours....heh heh. Friday was my day off, so me and Philipa went to Ueno to meet up with Rijke (another OMFer who goes to Gospel Church Tokyo) and hit up some museums. Once again I got a sweet student discount so I paid about 3 US dollars for admission to about 5 museums. Kaching! We really came to see the mummy that was on exhibit, the sight of which caused Philipa to have an existential crisis- haha, inside joke. Sorry. Philipa had to leave early, but after can of coffee I was ready to explore the rest of the museums, so Rijke and I stayed on for about 2 more hours. For the rest of the day I got working on stuff that needs to be done for school, forms and such, and figuring finances for my room and board. Turns out things aren't quite as rosey as I thought they were, but I still should be alright, so I'm glad I checked that out. Skyped with Abby just to review plans for her visitation. I think we must have done a good job because she's in Japan now! and she'll be on her way to Tokyo this afternoon. I'm supah pumped. Anyways, I went to bed early(er) to try and recover from my bad self-control the night before. However it was not early enough, since the next morning we had to leave on the 8:45 train to Katsutadai for the Kids Gospel Concert. But it was totally worth it to see a crowd of the cutest kids singing songs about Jesus with big ole dimply smiles. Simply the best. Afterwards everyone ate together AND yet again I met someone whose native language was Spanish. Mariluis is from Peru, 1/4 Japanese and has been living in Japan for 22 years. Her daughter was part of the Kids Gospel Camp, so she came along with her sons to watch. We ended up talking for the rest of the time, and exchanged contact info. I'm hoping I can see her again next time I'm in Japan. I can't believe I've been able to use Spanish to make connections in Japan...it's been so encouraging to know that it was worth all the investment to learn Spanish and that God can use whatever skills I have- whether they're in the 'right' language or not. I can't wait to tell Penny, my Spanish teacher that all the time she spent teaching me over the years has shown its value even in Japan :D After the concert was over, I stayed at the church with the Kids Gospel Team and took a nap on a pile of futons while waiting until it was time to go to the next event of the day...which was a Youth get together at Megumi Chapel! It was super fun- They had worship and an interesting mosquito-themed game, JP did a supah cool hippin and hoppin dance, and they had a special guest singer Migiwa. She did a little concert for us and shared, which was lovely. Afterwards we had dinner together and played Bingo, which I did not win ;_; woe is me. I didn't get home until about 10, and I nearly died in the bathtub because I just about fell asleep in the water. I slept well and good, which is good cause the next day was even busier. I woke up as late as possibly could (8:45 hu hu ;_;) and was out the door at 9:30, this time to Yoyogi park for an International picnic with the JPster. The picnic was great- I met tons of neat people, ate a bunch of food, and basically became a bubble-master. I had to scram at 1:30 to catch the 1:50 train to Usui, which is past Katsutadai- basically on the other side of Tokyo. Hiromi-san from English class invited me to her church and Nanae, her daughter also invited me to their youthgroup, so I wanted to be there by 3:30. It took a little over an hour and half to get there, so I ended up arriving right on time. I met Hiromi's older son Seiko and daughter Yoshie as well as the other youthgroupers- which included 3 sisters who were from America and also were homeschooled :)We played a difficult Mafia-type winking game. I say difficult because apparently as soon as I'm not supposed to be winking all the time, my eyes decide that the only thing they ever want to do is wink. This makes me seem suspicious when truly I am innocent. Anyways, the service started as six, which the dad of the American girls in the youth group translated for me- They're originally from Alabama. Afterwards there was a goodbye meal/celebration for Cana - one of the girls- as she is going to America for college. Hiromi's son Seiko is majoring in Spanish so yet again I was able to use Spanish to communicate instead of struggling with Japanese. YUSS. I'm starting to think Spanish is all I need. Haha just kidding a little bit. He gave me a ride back to the station, and I dozed the whole way back to Ichigawa. I got home at about 9:30 so I played some Candy crush and then hit the hay. Monday morning I finished up some things that needed done for school and did some calculating and such until Ladies Lunch. We talked until around 2:30, after which I did some paper shredding and had tea with Philipa and Jackie. Tuesday was corridor cleaning day- I mopped 3 floors of dusty outdoor corridors! I felt super accomplished and awesome after that so I treated myself to watching some more J-dramas. Haha. After that I did some late night goodie grabbing at Max Value to prepare for Abby's arrival. Wednesday morning I went to Japanese class for the last time. As I mentioned before, my speaking partner Mei is a muslim, and my teacher is kind of just the typical mishmash of Japanese cultural beliefs. We had an interesting discussion about the various holidays we do or not share- like Mei doesn't celebrate Christmas, and how Christmas is a 1 day event in Japan while it takes up most of the year-end in the U.S. I also learned a bunch of Sumo vocab- like the titles of the different ranks and tickets and the current champions. Very interesting class time. Afterwards I cleaned my room for like 3 hours straight. Not even kidding. Granted I was really doing some deep cleaning- scrubbing and the like- but seriously, I have no idea how I get it so dirty every single tweek. I blame it on the gremlins. Anyways, I still had a bunch of time before I had to pick up Abby at Tokyo station, but nothing to do except to blaze my way through 10 levels of candy crush. That's right. Levels 151-161 DEFEATED. You may now be amazed. I left at around 8:30 to be there in time to get Abby at 9:15, except somehow we passed each other and she didn't see the store we were supposed to be meeting at so we didn't find each other until 9:50. We got home pretty late but that didn't stop us from staying up even later to Skype Mom and the Merce. Even though I'm feeling really sad to say goodbye to everyone here, I'm really ready to spend time at home with the fam. Especially because Mercy keeps getting cuter every day and I just want to beeka her cheekas. Anywho, on Thursday we went Asakusa and SHOPPED and we also saw the temple and stuff but mostly we SHOPPED. Let me tell you, the amount of adorable crafty items for sale in Asakusa is dangerous to the wallet. I seriously could have spent several thousand yen here quite easily. However we were going to a particularly fun place the next day which I wanted to save some moolah for....But as for Thursday, we topped it off by going to Saizerias with Philipa and then joining Rosanne to see The Emperor. Top notch movie, an absolute must see. At least in my opinion. Tears warning- I nearly cried twice, but held it back because the last thing I need is to make a blubbering fool of myself in a Japanese theater. We cycled on back and got a good night's rest because on Friday we were headed for the Studio Ghibli Museum! We left at about 11 the next morning to get to Mitaka, stopped at a Mickey D's for iced coffee and to the bus to the museum. We had bought obento and still had a little while until our 2 o'clock time slot, so we sat outside in the museum garden and munched on our lunch while mosquitos munched on us :/ The Museum itself was just absolutely amazing. The design was just so Ghibli style and there were tons of interactive activities. Definitely want to take the Merce there someday. We were able to see the whole Museum and do some shopping within our 2 hour time slot. We even had some BBQ Sweet Corn icecream which was actually not bad at all. Definitely the most unique icecream flavor I've ever had. After Ghibli we went to Harajuku and Window shopped our way up Omotesando which is probably the widest road you will find in Japan. I don't know if that's officially true but in my mind it is so we'll say that it is. After chilling at the rooftop Startbucks (btw great place to hang out if you're looking to kill time in Harajuku) we met Philipa at 6 and began the real business of shopping on Takeshita-dori. When we were all shopped out we ate dindin at slightly expensive but totally worth it American/something-not-Japanese restaurant. Aaaand that's the story of how Hope became broke in under 3 hours. Hahahaha just kidding, I had like $10 left. Which I spent the next day because we went back to Asakusa for 45 minutes. Didn't I say it was bad for the wallet? When we got back from Asakusa it was time for the Chapel of Adoration Kid's Gospel Concert. We were expecting cuteness, and the kids did not disappoint. I think Abby has 2 full songs recorded, so look for those on Facebook. After the concert we were dead tired so we took a siesta until 5:30 when it was time to meet the other OMFers and COAers to go to see the fireworks. It took us a while to get to our spot because WOW so many people! both sides of the river were covered with people on tarps. Way more people than you see out for 4th of July fireworks. Unfortunately there were probably twice as many crickets and crawly things with many legs. I spent half the time being blown away by the spectacular fireworks and the other half defending myself against malignant creatures. But let's take a break from crickets and talk about what I really want to talk about which is |THE FIREWORKS| MAN! THEY WERE SO GOOD! I'm still not over it you see. They were legitimately the BEST fireworks I have ever seen in my whole life. They went on for 75 minutes and I think there was something like 20,000 fireworks. Mind baaalown. On Sunday morning we decided instead of trying to fit in another sight-seeing time we would just make a big tasty breakfast, so we went and bought bacon, eggs, sprinkle cheese and a big ole bottle of milk tea. Definitely th here best breakfast I've had here, and that's saying something. After we were done we headed to Tokyo Station so Abby could catch her Shinkansen. I took to her gate to see her off, and then went to Minipla to meet for my last-day adventures. From the station Philipa and I walked towards the Imperial Palace and spent some time in the Fountain garden which is beeeyootful. Both of us had to restrain ourselves from taking a dip under the waterfall. After that we took a loooooong lovely walk through the park on our way to Ginza. We also walked by the Tokyo Forum, which just so happened to be hosting a big bazaar/market thing that weekend! we bought some super old money there (we're talking like 1700's which is quite impressive to an American like me) We walked to the main shopping street of Ginza, but didn't do any shopping because A) I was broke B) even if I wasn't broke, the kind of stores the have in Ginza would have made me broke in one purchase. Instead we went back towards the station to find a place to eat. And boy did we find the place! Imagine the sketchiest looking restaurant in the backstreets of Bangkok, then place that restaurant under the train tracks in the wealthiest area of Tokyo. That's the Thai restaurant we ate at. I'm so glad we decided to try it though because I don't think I've ever had a better meal. Honestly I'd give it 5 stars even if it looked like a cockroach's bum. From Ginza we took the subway to Roppongi for church and made it there right on time. However I was supes tired and nearly fell asleep during the sermon

First Update from Sapporo

Hello Prayer Partners and Otherwise Invested People, It’s time for a weekly update on what is going on here across the pond! So a quick summary and then some points you can pray for. I arrived late Tuesday night, was picked up by Karin Stoerzinger (our supervisor/host) and we two went out for dinner directly from the airport since I hadn’t eaten for a while. We were able to talk a lot about effective ministry and our expectations, and just get to know each other better since we only met briefly while I was in Sapporo last year. Karin has been in Japan for 22 years so she is an absolute treasure trove of wisdom- we’re really blessed to have her watching over us and mentoring our team. The rest of the team- Abi, Dean, and Tom- had arrived earlier but stayed up to welcome me- generous since they hadn’t slept at all on their flight. As for me, I seem to have hit to sweet spot of sleeping at the exact right moments to side-step jet lag, so I think maybe Jesus loves me or something? haha trick question, Jesus loves everyone. Anyways, we jumped right into our normal schedule on Wednesday, with team devotions and worship in the morning, orientation, and then our first English Speaking Society (ESS) meeting. We had a wonderful time there and met a huge amount of students. Felt very in my element there, so it was a nice way to ease into internship duties. Thursday we took a tour of campus which is BEAUTIFUL and also super huge. It’s like the size of Central Park. We met another one of the ESS students with whom I may be able to set up a language exchange, and then headed to the weekly OMF prayer meeting at the Language Center. Most of the under 2 year olds that I took care of last year are MKs here in Sapporo, so I got to see all my babies walking and talking. Precious. Friday we all slept in, especially me because I stayed up until 3 AM watching the USA vs. Germany game and trying to control my emotions (and volume) which was not easy. Am seriously considering naming my firstborn after Tim Howard because the man is a real life superhero. We had our weekly team meeting with Karin and Alyssa Mattox, another staff on the FMzero team, and then afterwards we had our first english bible study at Karin’s house and met two more students there. Played a fantastic game of Tank and Commander which me and my partner Yuuri won. We now go by the name of Team Champion. Yesterday was our day off and Abi and I went into center city to a garden festival and visited the botanical garden. At this location I accidentally littered into beautiful lotus pond and maybe killed a carp, so we left the scene quickly and discreetly. We found the famous Sapporo Ramen Street which is a tiny underground alley with tons of ramen shops. It kind of looks like you could be murdered there and never be found, but the food was good and cheap so fair trade-off. We also found a pet shop with wall to wall puppies and kittens of the cutest variety- those of you who know Longs and our cute attacks, you will understand me when I say the sounds I made were NOT human… Anyways, in the evening Me, Abi, Karin and Dean went to an onsen to relax and heal our muscles after 5 days of biking everywhere. Accidentally discovered the electric pool, so that was a shocking experience ha ha. Turns out you should read the kanji signs because sometimes they contain pertinent information such as “This onsen will mildly electrocute you”. Cross cultural adventures, am I right? And that sums up the first few days here! We have a lot of prayer requests though, so don’t stop reading yet: 1. Our team leader, Dean, has been struggling with severe insomnia. He’s already gone two nights without any sleep even with two doses of sleeping pills, and only got a few hours the night before. It is taking a toll on his energy levels, so please keep him in your prayers. 2. We are biking an average of 4 miles a day, as that is the primary mode of transportation. It can be extremely exhausting biking quite a bit and then having the energy to engage in activities, so pray that we all have the energy necessary to do our work. Also I’m a weakling. 3. Team relationships- right now we’re all sort of still in the “honeymoon stage” but we are living in the same apartment, spending 24/7 with each other and we are bound to get on each other’s nerves eventually, so pray for that. 4. We have several events coming up that you can pray for: Firstly, we are planning and hosting and International Party for July 8th. Secondly, Abi and I will be hanging out with a group of 60 girls from a Junior High School (9th and 10th graders) on July 4th to help them practice their English and learn a little about our cultures. Thank you for your support everyone!

Late as usual

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I've become extremely behind schedule AGAIN. My apologies. For some reason I just never got around to writing a blog post. Right well, I left off at monday. So sunday evening some friends from Sendai, John and Sarah Grace arrived. I was busy cleaning during the day on monday, but that evening I met up with Philipa, Sarah, John, JP, and some of JP's friends in Shinjuku to go see Fast and Furious to celebrate JP's birthday. Okay, so I've never seen any of the Fast and Furious movies before (in Japan apparently it's called Wild Speed) but maaaaaaaan it was so good. It's a good thing we were taking the train home and not driving that evening because boy oh boy I just wanted to RACE! One thing I want to do this year is have a Fast and Furious marathon. Afterwards John took off to go hang out with some other friends and the rest of us went to a scrumpdiddlyumptious burger place where I got a provolone and avocado cheeseburger. Yeaaaah son. After that me and Philipa and Sarah went back to Philipa's house for slumber party round 1 :) The next morning I had Advanced English class with Alison North in Katsutadai, and Sarah went out to hang with a friend. After our respective morning activities, we had planned to meet up in Asakusa to do some proper touristing. However, we failed to realize that Asakusa does not have one metro station, but rather a maze of little exits that pop up all over the place. After looking for each other for about 1/2 an hour, by the grace of God I spotted her waiting under the giant lantern. phew! We ended up having a great time shopping and looking around and taking a bunch of hilarious pictures putting our faces in cutouts. Asakusa is definitely one of my top favorite places I've been so far. It's absolutely beautiful, and there's tons to do while still maintaining a sort of historical Japanese atmosphere. I totally recommend it. We dressed up in the classic maid dresses and got purikura taken (purikura is a photobooth type thing where you write cutesy stuff on the photos and all that jazz :D) and then went for a suuuuuuper beautiful boat ride down the river. We were diggin icecream, but we just couldn't seem to find the perfect place (truth; the first place we stopped was actually perfect, but we got too ambitious) so we ended up looking for like 30 minutes. It reminded me of that one episode of Jungle Jam when they're looking for the perfect picnic spot :p eventually we settled for a restaurant, and got some pretty delicious parfait type things. Too much effort though....the moral of the story is, be content with the first icecream shop you find :p That night was Sarah's last night in Tokyo, so we made the most of Slumber party round 2- about 34959 rounds of Dutch Blitz and watching cop shows until 2 in the morning :D The next morning Sarah had to go back to Shinjuku to catch her bus, and I was feeling waaay too tired to go to Japanse class, so instead I went back to the guest home and slept a bit. Once I'd rested I got to cleaning for the rest of the day- scrubbing genkans and shoe cupboards :D Also learned how to say 'kitchen cupboard' in swiss german. Apparently it's one of the hardest words to say, but the Abts said I pronounced it quite well :D not to toot my own horn but...'toot'. My neighbors the Sugayas invited me to dinner that night, so I went and ate delicious home-cooked Japanese food made by Yoko-san :) I was able to just talk and get to know them better, and also meet their daughters Yuui and Mei. Thursday was another big cleaning day though I didn't sleep well the night before so we didn't start until the afternoon. That evening I took my dinner (pineapple, udon and *gasp* blueberries!) to the river and ate while the sun went down. I also fed a rotten blueberry to a big fish. Good times. The bike path by the river is going to be one thing I miss a lot. It's so relaxing just to bike along or sit next to the river. Sigh. Anywho, thursday night I slept for like 9 hours, which after being sleep deprived I think it messed with my brain because the next morning I went in the complete opposite direction from the station I was supposed to go to in order to get to Beginner's English class. I didn't even realize I'd gone to the wrong station until after I swiped my card. However thanks to knowing the general direction in which I was headed and some help from a lady on the train, I found another way to get to Katsutadai. Unfortunately it was way more expensive, but I did end up getting there not too late. Beginner's English was as fun as always... I just have a great time with those ladies. Also, some of the women who bring their girls to Mainly Music brought them to class, and they remembered me! That made me so happy :) and I was able to practice Japanese a bunch at lunch (haha I rhymed, O the cleverness of me). The woman who took me back to the station really spoke very little English so we mostly chatted in Japanese :D I got back just in time for Tea at 3, which is becoming one of my favorite times of the week :) we had a most interesting discussion about how Japanese people deal with death, and about all the rotten things we did when we were little. Quite entertaining to hear a bunch of missionaries confess to having been complete goobers in their childhooods. Friday evening I ate dinner with the Abts, a delicious swiss meal called Raclette. We talked and talked and showed each other pictures of our family until quite late, so I slept fairly well that night too. Saturday morning I left for Mainly Music in Katsutadai, this time from the correct station :D I spent quite a bit of time playing 'touchie' (basically Tag with no point except to smack the tall American girl and run away as fast as possible) with a crowd of giggly little 4 year olds. Got more Japanese practice chatting with the moms and kiddos during snack time, so that was a bonus. I think I must have played 100 games of Ultimate Ninja with Isaac, Alison's youngest son. He's just the funniest kid- after every game he would level himself up to "King Isaac level 2" or "Super Ninja level 1". Somehow even when I won I never made it past Queen Ninja level 1. suspicious -_- I got home in the afternoon, and spent the rest of the evening relaxing, studying Japanese, and doing little chores and errands that had been building up. I didn't sleep well again that night, but it was okay because sundays I can sleep in :) The next morning I skyped the fam back in PA for like 2 hours which was super great. I hadn't been able to talk to them for a while so It was nice to see and hear everyone :D After that I watched some of a drama I've been watching to uh, practice Japanese...yeah..practice...until it was time to get ready for church. I got myself to church on my own which I was little proud of :) after church me, Philipa and JP went out to dinner because it was Philipa's birthday. We had a great time celebrating that super neat chica :)On the way back we had a well, *interesting* experience on the train. Let's just say it involved open wounds and oozery, and possibly scarred me for life. Yeesh. Back in Ichigawa I wasn't very tired yet so I got an icecream from the conbini and walked around in the night life for a while. Another thing I'm going to miss about Japan is being able to walk around around at night and enjoy it without feeling like I need to be in ninja-mode all the time. I can't tell you how much less stressful it feels compared to being in a big city in America. Sigh. Yesterday I cleaned my whole room top to bottom, which it needed very much, and did some cabinet cleaning and organizing with Anuk. In the evening I biked to a conbini that was a bit far, just to get out and get some exercise, and then I watched some more of my drama. I had a reallllly hard time getting to sleep last night though, so this morning instead of cleaning right after we had our morning coffee, Anuk told me to go back to sleep, which I gladly did and ended up sleeping for nearly 3 hours! I felt much more energetic after, so we got a lot of cleaning done in the afternoon! Then I studied Japanese for about 2 hours until I realized I was slowly shriveling up from lack of food. So I biked to the grocery store to grab some ingredients, oblivious to the rumblings in the sky. However right as I was checking out, the heavens burst forth a deluge so I ended up stranded under the bike port for about 20 minutes. However this was rather pleasant, because my bike was right next to a fellow strandee, and I ended up chatting in Japanese with her until the storm cleared. This is the first person I think I've met on my own accord, so it was really exciting :) We shared some of our food that we had bought, and I told her what I was doing in Japan and where I lived. She hadn't realized there was a church on the main road, so I told her where it was :) I don't know if anything will ever come of it, but if you think of it, pray for Naomi and for opportunities for her to hear the gospel. Anyways, that's what I've been up to for the past week. I'll try to update in a more timely manner :D I'll post the pictures later because right now I'm in the process of recovering some I accidentally deleted

BIC Day!

Unfortunately I am going to give up my dream of staying caught up in order to give this day the post it deserves :/ So bear with me... Anyways, Sunday ended up being one of the best days I've had so far, and you're about to find out why!. I woke up very early because in order to get to the BIC church I had to travel to basically the other side of Tokyo. It took about 1 1/2 hours and I had to change trains 5 times! I was so proud that I made it there, although I missed one of the trains I was supposed to get on by 1 minute, so I ended up being like 10 minutes later than I was hoping. So I met with Nobue in the station and her brother-in-law gave us a ride to the church. We were a bit early so we took that opportunity to meet the pastor, Tojo-sensei, and his wife. Tojo-sensei's parents were the caretakers of a really big and famous shrine, a job he was supposed to take over. When he became a Christian in college, he got a lot of backlash from his family :/ Really cool old guy. We had communion together and also water-less footwashing, a.k.a praying over each other's feet. Such a neat idea! It was during this time that I realized that the two women behind me were speaking in Spanish. After the service ended I decided to go talk to them...we ended up talking for a little over 30 minutes. One of the women is from Chile and has been living in Japan with her husband, son, and daughter for about 5 years, so she can speak a reasonable amount of Japanese. The other woman was from Peru, and spoke very very little Japanese. Both of them were so lovely and prayed for me. I got contact info for both of them so I hope to keep in touch :) The church ate obento together and I was able to talk to a family there who had 5 kids (super unusual, especially in Tokyo) and who are moving to Indiana next year so that the dad can go to seminary. Before leaving I exchanged contact info with a couple of people so I hope to keep in touch :) Here are some pictures from the morning:

Afterwards Nobue and I went to a cafe and talked for a while. I told her about Roxbury and she wants to come someday! That would be so amazing...she knows a lot about the BIC in Pennsylvania and places like Messiah college. Over the course of our conversation we discovered that we both know the Deyhles (the people who started the India table at Roxbury) Except she knew them BEFORE they even went to India! wowza. Talk about connections! Anywho, after that we parted ways and I headed to Roppongi for church round 2. Unfortunately on our way to church it started pouring so we showed up a bit late and rather wet. The good news is, I feel like I'm understanding more of the sermon every week (a.k.a going from like 5% to 7%) We had our usual tea/chatty fun times and then headed home, feeling rather pooped. Philipa ended up talking to a young guy on the train and was able to share what we're doing in Japan and just get to know him. You can pray that God will use little connections like this to plant seeds for people to be receptive to the Gospel in the future. As for some other prayer requests, you can pray that 1. I can get some rest. I've been totally exhausted today due to two nights of slumber parties with a visiting friend (more of that in another post :D) and one night of Insomnia Strikes Back. Really haven't been feeling well and struggling to get through the day 2. That I can get everything I need for college prepared. I'm starting to feel a little stressed about making sure everything is put together before I have to go, so prayers would be appreciated. 3. That many opportunities to build relationships will come in these last couple of weeks that I'm here. Alright, that's all for this post! Hopefully I will get around to posting an up-to-date update by tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

We're halfway there....

I can't believe it's only been 3 weeks...I feel like I've been here for so long, but I know once it's all over it will feel like it was too short. I've been packing my days so full, just trying to get in as many experiences as possible. Monday was my day off, but I ended up doing organizing work that had to be done that day and also some grocery shopping for the guest home. We had ladies lunch as usual, but this time Nobue came and so we made plans to go to the BIC church here in Tokyo together this sunday. After lunch I sort of lazed around for a while, until Philipa invited me over to her house to hang out for a while. We ate num num delicious ramen -which Philipa made even better by adding boiled eggs and seaweed- and watched Coraline. SPOILER ALERT: never ever let your child watch this movie, unless you want them to be sleeping in your bed for the next 5 years. It's a really interesting and well done movie, but it's also quite frightening, even though it's animation. Just warning you. On the bike ride home (about 15 minute) it was raining so I tried to steer my bike with one hand and hold an umbrella with the other. I'd seen countless Japanese cyclers do it, so I thought it must be do-able...word to the wise: do not ever compare your abilities with those of a Japanese cycler. They can do things which us mortal cyclers could and would never dream of e.g. transport their entire family on one bicycle, or bob and weave through a never ending stream of elderly pedestrians. Tuesday was Prayer Day, so all (er, most) of the missionaries in the Tokyo/Kanto area gathered together for a time of fellowship, prayer, and worship together. After lunch Jackie (another short termer who has been staying at the guest house for the past 2 weeks) and I went to the tiny second-hand shop on our street and bought some little doodads, checked out some other shops and then head back to the office to do some paper shredding (woohoo so fun!) We got a lot done, so much so that we accidentally over-heated the paper shredder. Whoops. After that Fumie invited me to go with her to Harajuku to attend an event called Coffee in the Sky, which is basically a place for Christians (Japanese or otherwise) to meet, invite, and hang out with non-christians. We had a really good time and met what seemed like so many people but probably was only like 10. Wednesday morning I went to the community center for my first Japanese class. It's only 100 yen (about $1) and it's 1 on 1 teaching for an hour and a half. Seriously good deal. The lady who was helping me let me pick from a bunch of packets the thing I wanted to learn. I picked the Restaurants, Stores and Services packet, since I've been going to restaurants a TON and I'd like to be able to order by myself without fear of not understanding a question or missing something. The packet was super thorough and helpful, and I also learned a lot of food names and kanji so now I can actually semi-read a large portion of menus! Also my teacher barely spoke ANY English, which I was really thankful for because I was able to practice Japanese just by listening and talking to her. The trouble has been that a lot of people, even if they speak a VERY minimal amount of English, they would rather use that than 'inconvenience' me by speaking Japanese. But if I'm not going to understand what they're saying anyways, I'd rather be 'inconvenienced' and learn some Japanese along the way. Oh well. Wednesday afternoon I went with Fredy and Anuk and Simon North to costco to do some major shopping. It sort of reminded me of the shopping center in Madame Blueberry because they had conveyor belt/ramps to take you and your shopping cart between floors, and also a little eating area which looked really similar. We ate lunch there as well and talked for a while. I got a Bulgogi Bake, which is basically 420 yen's worth of the best thing you could ever eat a.k.a Bulgogi meat with a bit of cheese and onions encased in a fat, steaming hot baguette. Think the Korean version of a philly cheese steak. Heaven. When we got home I went and ordered a certain surprise for a certain sister who is visiting me, and took a 30 minute power nap. Then I cycled on over to the Jeggos' house for scrumptious dinner, play-time with the kiddos, and talk-time with Mike and Liz. I got home at around 10 and worked on my blog post. Thursday I had planned to go on a sort of city-wide prayer walk with Philipa, but she wasn't feeling well again so instead I tagged along with Jackie and Nobue to the Edo-Tokyo History museum. The museum is in Ryougoku, which is known for the Sumo training school/place and so there's a bunch of sumo-themed stuff around. In the restaurant we ate at for lunch there was sumo wrestling ring in the middle! And this time I could actually read the majority of the menu and understand the waitress, thanks to my Japanese lesson :) after that we went to Ikebukuro to what we thought was a cafe, but actually turned out to be a tiny little community center. There was a kids English class being taught there, so we stuck around and talked to the lady on staff and the kid's moms. The woman who was teaching the English class was actually Armenian/Romanian and apparently was the Japan Champion in Karate? Crazy. But she'd been living in Japan for 13 years, so she speak Armenian, Romanian, English, and Japanese all flawlessly. Possibly my new hero. Unfortunately I have no idea what her name is, so I may or may not have met a world class butt-kicker. Anyways after that we went to Starbucks for like 2 hours to kill time and get out of the heat until the bible study we were going to that night would start. At 7 Jackie and I parted ways with Nobue met up with a girl named Shion who took us to bible study at a cafe in Shinjuku. Turns out a couple of people I met at Coffee in the Sky also attend this bible study. Since a lot of them had studied abroad or knew a bit of English and neither Jackie nor I are very adept at Japanese, we did the bible study in 1/2 Japanese 1/2 English. We had some really good discussions and were able to meet more people (it seems like this is becoming a daily occurrence) Afterwards we went out to eat at....you guessed it, Saizerias (This time I'm pretty sure I spelled it right) Me and Jackie and Shion were able to talk more and pray together. It was really encouraging and exciting to hang out with a bunch of young people who are all passionate about Jesus. There is one guy name Tooru who has been coming to the bible study every week for 2 months, but has not decided whether or not he wants to become a Christian yet. You can pray for that and that when (I prefer to say when and not if, because Jesus is the bossman and I'm preeeetty sure Jesus wants Tooru to become a Christian...) he does he will be able to feel supported and well rooted in the community he's become a part of. On to today, I basically cleaned all day. Not even joking. except that we took a little break in the afternoon. After cleaning I biked to the river and stopped to read a little bit of Sophie's World and be bitten by a tiny little centipede. Now I'm putting off cleaning my room, and should stop doing that. Enjoy a couple of pictures from this week! :)

Fantabulous Fun Friday (and Saturday and Sunday)

I'm working on being a better blogger, so as promised here are the deets on the supah dupah sweet weekend! Friday was early wake up day (7:00, you know me) to get to the train station in time that I could make it to Katsutadai for a Beginner's English Class by 9:30. There I met up Alison North who is the missionary who heads up a lot of the ministries I'll be taking part in. She's a really wonderful and awesome lady, I rather admire her a lot :) All of the members of this class are middle-ish aged women, and boy are they a fun group! A large portion of the group all particapate in a gospel choir together, even though not all of them are Christians. Turns out that Gospel music is a super big thing in Japan right now, which is awesome because people are accidentally getting to hear about Jesus all over the place! At the beginning of class Alison asked everyone to go around and introduce themselves and ask me one question about myself (all in English). I was surprised at how well many of them could express themselves, so I guess Japanese standards of a beginner's English class is a bit different than what we have back home :) We read the story of Lazurus and talked about it afterwards, which was so interesting to hear impressions that I never had, having known the story since I was little. After class we all went out to eat at Sezerias (i'm 100% sure I spelled that wrong) which is both wonderfully cheap and wonderfully delicious- double thumbs up! I had a great bonding moment when one of the women brought up Korean dramas- and we promptly spent the next 20 minutes talking about our favorite actors and dramas. I won much standing when I shared that I had the same birthday as Lee Minho, let me tell you. All in all it was just about the funnest thing ever. I got back to Ichikawa at about 3:00 in the afternoon, just in time for tea in the office with a great crowd of wonderful OMFers. BIC peeps, are you ready for something exciting? because it's really exciting...... okay here it goes. One of the people at tea happened to ask what church denomination I came from, so I replied "brethren in christ...it's kind of small..." And suddenly I heard a voice from across the rooms say "Hey, I'm BIC too!". Turns out Nobue, one of the missionaries from Japan homeside (missionaries going out from Japan to other places) grew up in one of the 7 church plants the BIC has in Japan. It was such a blessing to see the fruit of the BIC 's work in Japan, and to have a connection with someone with a similar background! I was excited, to say the least, and I get to talk to her again today and on Tuesday too! It's almost like randomly meeting a relative you didn't know you had :) Friday was also Fumie's birthday, so that evening Philipa, Fumie and I all went to the cinema to see After Earth. It was pretty good (I mean it's Will Smith, y'know)and I got an 800 yen discount for being a student. They also were selling jelly belly beans by the gram so i ate my 500 yen dose of the magical fruit :D After the movie we went to the arcade and got our pictures taken in those little photo booths that make your eyes all big and you can decorate the pictures and stuff. Let me just say that we were lookin tres kawaii in those pics mmmhm.c Saturday I woke up early again to catch the train to Katsutadai, this time for Mainly Music, which is a mom/dad/grandparent-and-kid together musicy/dancey time. I had so much fun playing with all the kids and talking with the moms (some of the women from the beginner's English class were there with their kids) Also Alison's youngest son Isaac was there being such helpful and goofy little guy. He's such a ham! But a real good egg. When I got home from that I passed out for about an hour and a half, because that night I was invited to attend Only English, which is a discussion group led by the Jeggos, an English missionary couple in Ichikawa. Between dinner, discussion, and fellowship I ended up staying there for 3 and 1/2 hours! time flies when you're having fun. They have three children, Timothy who is 1, Daniel who is 3, and Hannah who is 6. Darlingest dears in the whole world. Really really lovely children. Sunday morning I skyped with Cassie, and then headed to Roppongi in the afternoon for Tokyo Gospel Church. After church a couple people decided to go out to eat so I went along. We went to Sezarias (noticing a pattern?) where I actually purposefully ordered something with squid in it. However it was in doria, which is basically cheese sauce + rice so you couldn't really tell that it was squid. I've become a really huge fan of doria so I quite enjoyed my meal. I only took a few photos, and the last one is really a photo of a photo, but I hope you enjoy them anyways :)