Date: 9th December 2007AD
Time: 11:30pm
Location: OMF Guest House, Sapporo
Current Mood: Relaxed, content
What happened:
Started off relatively late this morning – slept in till around 8:15am which is quite late. Had a quick breakfast and then Mel, Jay, Steph and I headed to the Shindo Higashi train station to catch the train into Sapporo Central and go to the Sapporo International Church service. We arrived around 5 minutes early and got our bags off and I changed my ski pants for normal pants.
The service was run mostly in Japanese with a translator in a booth translating the sermon on the fly. This was highly interesting as the translator had an Irish accent – so I was in a Japanese Church, with a Korean Pastor, hearing a translation from an Irish person. I feel a joke coming on… I felt quite tired throughout the service but tried to stay awake with the radio transmitters they gave us – which didn’t work all that well because there was quite a bit of static interference, probably caused by having four other receivers in close proximity. Met a guy named Jonathon, who was teaching English and came from New Zealand.
The sermon was on ‘offering’ and was ok. I found it mostly topical and lightly expository. The prayers at the end, however, were intensely passionate and also had a ‘Korean-esque’ flavour, where everyone prayers together. Unusual for a Japanese Church – which we were later told was not a very traditional Japanese church at all.
Lunch was a mapo-tofu combination with an interesting chilli paste which had a very nice kick. I found out later that the since the church had a very Korean influence the chilli was a part of that.
The four of us then went into town to do some shopping. I checked out the BIC Camera store which was ok and also later entered Yodobashi with Jay. I was looking for filters in both and both seemed to have prices similar to those in Australia.
As we entered Yodobashi there was this Monkey mascot parading around. I quickly snapped a photo with Jay and the Monkey, then the sales assistant asked for a photo for the both of us. I hesitantly agreed, not knowing what she wanted us to do (and if we had to pay for the photo), she took the photo, withdrew the SD card, popped it into a nearby printer, and printed a photo for free for us! I later purchased some blank DVD’s to burn photos.
Jay and I then purchased some pastries which were nice, and the four of us got lost on our way back to our station. Eventually we got to the right platform and had a horrible time dealing with a vending machine. I couldn’t get my drink in time, so we hopped onto the train back to our stop. When we got off I got myself a hot chocolate drink which was delicious.
We then got lost on our way home. Took a wrong turn to avoid the blisteringly cold winds, and ended up around 800m too far from the guest home. By this time I was thoroughly exhausted, but we still had an fmZero meeting.
To OMF headquarters were Alex shared some songs from his laptop, Brad led us through some thoughts on evangelism/missions, and we had cheesecake for supper. Brad’s sermonette was ok. It was topical and fell into the traps of most topical sermons. That said, I thought he also insightfully applied some of the passages he used in relation to the role of prayer in evangelism. After the main part was over I had a great chat with Richard and am continuously encouraged that his theology is sound – he mentioned he listened to plenty of Philip Jensen talk when he was a younger Christian.
Richard took us to a local Ramen noodle house, which was excellent. For 800 yen I ordered a ‘spicy ramen’ dish which wasn’t really that spicy. It was, however, rather salty! But delicious and a good value meal.
Richard then took us to a local On-Sen, a public bath area. Separate men’s and women’s baths with hot springs inside and out, a steam room, sauna, this area to walk between the cold and hot waters, and a freezing pond to cool down in. It was an experience and half being around all the guys in our team in our birthday suits. It was also incredibly relaxing and enjoyable, despite the nudity.
Looking forward to:
- Sleeping in tomorrow morning
- Having more time off
- The traffic light signals for pedestrians have a funny chirping noise, almost like a bird – and it echoes from one side to the other
- Also, the pedestrian crossings for busier intersections have different sounding chirps to delineate which crossing is free
- There are hardly any rubbish bins anywhere – probably an over reaction to the London Bombings (which were done in rubbish bins)
For lunch – Mapo Tofu
Dinner – spicy Ramen noodles: these were probably my most interesting noodle experience and thoroughly worth the price (which wasn’t much at all). Very delicious.
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