Team Japan 2003

Oh bother, this is the second to last Sunday! It's almost over. It can't be! I know I really miss home right now, but the second I'm home I'll be missing Japan all over again.

Well this Sunday I shared my testimony in Youth Group. It went well, even though I was having a hard time figuring what to say. Especially since my testimony is nearly identical to Jon and David's. Then Yachio spoke on Jesus and the woman at the well. She directed her message to sharing the Gospel with others. Jesus wasn't afraid about breaking cultural taboos or fearing that they'd ask that one question you don't want asked of you. Rather, He cared and took the risks and shared the Gospel with an outcast of society.

And back down to the second floor, where we had the main service. Joy shared (from the pulpit) a lesson that she has learned in Japan. One of her English students is a Christian and would bring questions about Christianity to her lessons so that she and Joy could talk about them in English. Well, this convicted Joy because she knew the right answers, but didn't feel that she was living that same way. She prayed and chose to write a very difficult letter to a life-long friend to say goodbye because her friend was dragging her down spiritually. Many people in the church expressed that they really appreciated Joy's short testimony.

Sensei was preaching on Martha and Mary. I really didn't make out most of the sermon. Most of the meat of the message must have been lost in the translation, for it really did not make sense.

Then we had a short lunch followed by cleaning! We all split up into teams to help clean the church. The boys went with Mr. Yoshizawa and the other gentleman who's name I cannot remember, and went to clean the outside of the main sanctuary windows. As you can see here it was a very precarious task. We didn't have much room to work with, and the other side of the church had no room to put in a ladder. So, we were unable to do the other side. Jon climbed up and washed while the rest of us stayed at the bottom and managed him. I figured that was a bit much, so I did something remotely important and took pictures of everyone. Here's everyone:

Caroline working in the back bathroom
A few Saoshiro's in the tatami room
Some of the ladies up in the kitchen
One of the college guys up painting the cross
Isaiah and Tomo watching to make sure that the guy painting the cross doesn't fall. Yeah, uh-huh, that's what it looks like to me alright! I see that hand! (All in good fun, of course.)
A few people up on the roof relaxing later
Yachio cleaning in the downstairs kitchen
Yoshie working on one of the front windows

Since it was such a beautiful hot day, I snapped a few pictures of the view of the skyline from the roof. This first shot is a look east from the roof. I remember the building with the triangle from last year. Technically, this view looks towards the center of Tokyo, but you sure can't see it. This second view is the Granduo mall which stands over the JR line station. (Mike, do you know what that pink building in the foreground is? It was under construction last year, right near our favorite vending machines.)

Alright, enough work! Time for play! Not really. Yuki and I went to the Takahashis' for dinner. And so did Tim, and Isaiah, and Jon, and David (they live there though). Then Sensei's parents showed up with one of his nephews and neices. They were nice folks. No English though. We chowed down on some good chicken. And once that was all over and Sensei's parents left, we watched Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Awesome. It was great, and real relaxing. Alas, good times must come to an end, and Yuki and I headed over to the Mortimers.

I get one of the acloves off of the main rooms. Their apartment is nice, but it's small and out of proportion in comparison to me. My elbows can touch opposite walls in the bathroom, no problem. This will be roomy though, for in a few days the Mortimers will be back form the States. Then Yuki will go back to his apartment (where his sister is staying too) and it will just be me, Chirs and Midori, and then Mako, Nono, Sato, and Hidari. Oh, and while they're gone they've been generous to lend me Midori's bike to ride to church.

This bike is built for mothers. It has a front and back basket for small children to ride in. Plus, it has a stuff toy wrapped around the small handlebars in the front basket. Yeah, an American in Japan will look pretty weird on a bike like that. But it is nice for what will be a 30 min walk when the Mortimers will need the bike.

Top of the morning! Our first item of the day is preparation for the Thank You lunch. However, we were missing some yukatas for the play, so we had to stall by starting the lunch with "As The Deer" while the others waited for the costumes for the play.

Here are two shots from the prep time: Caroline and Isaiah

Then the course of events was our Momo-taro skit from "Let's Be Friends" and more telephone charades. Once we were thouroughly worn out by acting, we enjoyed some "American" foods (that means that we had tacos). It was good. Yoshie had us learn names and favorite foods of everyone at our tables.

Things started going a bit long, but they were kind enough to listen to us sing "All In All" in rounds and then Jon straight up shared the Gospel. It was great. But everyone was quite tired.

Between events we just kind of sat around enjoying our jimbes while waiting to go to fireworks. They bought jimbes for Jon, David, and Isaiah. Isaiahs is, um, a little small. But his is green. The rest of us have navy blue ones with slightly different designs.

Then, the fireworks!

Twenty-five of us ended up going. All of us summer workers (except Caroline, who claimed to be tired, but Jessica says that Caroline is sick, so she went home), some of our English students (Ai and Piro), lots of the High school group, and a handful of adults from the church.

I'm not even going to try to explain all of the fireworks, just enjoy the hanabi for yourself:

The crowd to the right
The Crowd to the left
Hanabi
More hanabi
Even more hanabi
You thought that was it, didn't you?
The hanabi just keeps coming
The hanabi lasted for about an hour
They even had special hanabi that was sponsered
Bright hanabi
Some fairly explosive hanabi
The end of the grand finale

It was awesome. We played some Go Fish before hand too, but Yoshizawa kept winning. We had a hot dog on a stick, obviously they don't do corn bread here. It was good, and didn't taste like nasty processed meat. Oh, wait, I haven't even told you were we were! Showa Park. It's a huge place, and is great for picnics and walks and frisbee. You wouldn't believe how huge this place was! Needless to say, I was missing my girlfriend that night. I remembered that one of my students at Chuo said, "I want a gentle boyfriend to watch fireworks with", so I was a little down. But it was still great! I'm always going to remember walking back to the station, it was so wonderful. The crowds were starting to thin out and there were still a few street vendors who were crowded with customers. They even closed off a street to car so that they could get more people to the station quicker. The weather, the atmosphere of the event, and all of the people made it beautiful.

This is my last night at the Saoshiro's, which is rather sad. I got home so late because I had to wait for the second bus, but both were totally packed. I didn't get the chance to spend much time with the Saoshiros. I was hope late every night and left early every morning. They were really nice though. Tomorrow is the one day a week they can eat together as a family, and I'm leaving. Sad times. Well, I am looking forward to the Mortimers, it should be fun, and quiet for a while because it will just be me and Yuki for five days.

I was feeling adventureous again and I decided to try walking through the park by the Saoshiro's today. I was able to snap a few pictures of some nice flowers along the way. It was a nice quiet park, and the entire walk was shaded, which I really didn't deed because it was practically raining today. Anyway, the park goes almost all the way to the station, so I just took the bus from there for three stops to go to Josui.

It seemed that I was a bit early. Joy and Mrs. Satoyama were there waiting. Jessica and Caroline were coming to church with the Hondas, I wasn't worried about them. But Tim, Isaiah, Jon, and Lindsey were taking the bus and Tim was leading. He expressed some concern about remembering what stop to take.

I went up to the corner to flag them down when the Hondas turned the corner and honked, and right behind them was the bus that only Tim and Isaiah were on. Later we found out that Lindsey couldn't get on to the train because it was so packed. There was a thrid suicide on the Chuo Line tracks since we've been here this year. It's unbelievable. Some one ends their life in such a horrible manner, and then people complain about traffic. It's horrid. Oh, and Jon didn't show up because David is too sick with a cold to attend his lesson, so Jon covered for him.

Alright, it's D-day, we've got about an hour and half to make decorations, decorate, and also choose song for background music for our skit. Well, after a frantic rush, we did make it in time. And then they came, about 20 or so of them, mostly boys.

Our schedule was as such (as best as I can remember, now three days later): introductions, songs, games (and here's our winner), more songs, our puppet show, then a short gospel message (here's part of the polite crowd of listeners), and the the ice cream! This time around, we had way too much ice cream. So we had seconds, and after all the kids were done jumping on Isaiah and left, the ladies of the church cooked us a huge lunch. That's a lot of food, people! And, as you can see, we had fun

Oh, and the golden camera award goes to this posed picture of Yuki reading his Bible. He was following the verses used the in the message and a friend of his looked over to see what he was reading and I jumped across the room for the candid photo, but he was too interested in the camera so I had to ask him to pose for the picture. After three tries, I got it.

We got back to Tachikawa just in time for my lesson with Shin. I showed him pictures from our Fuchu adventure and he explained the mikoshi to me. In Shintoism ("Japanese Religion" as he calls it) anything could be a god. So they have all sort of little things that they revere as small gods. Bigger gods get carried around in little mikoshi arks while people shout, "Wasshoi! Wasshoi!" I said that their god must be very small, and he laughed and said he thinks so too. And then we went on to trying to get the pronuciation of "prey", "pray", and "play", which are all very difficult for Japanese people to understand and pronounce. It was one of my more fun lessons.

Then just about nothing was going on. Obviously what we did between lessons wasn't important, because I can't remember.

At 8PM I had my lesson with Yoshio. It's a tough one, because I'm never sure if he even understands me. But we started talking about Disneyland because I came across the picture of Rachel and I and Disneyland. It made for some great conversation. He's been to Tokyo Disneyland thirteen times! His favorite place there is Tomorrowland and he likes Space Mountain. I had him tell that to Tim later, he was stoked!