07/12/2007AD Engineers, English, Okonomiyaki

Date: 7th December 2007AD
Time: 9:00pm
Location: OMF Guest House, Sapporo
Current Mood: Chilling

What happened:
A somewhat less hectic day today, which was fine by most of us!

We started off with breakfast and devotion. I woke up early to finish some photos and newsletter stuff, which was sent out later that morning. I also had the first of my two noodle bowls for breakfast, which weren’t too bad. Your average 2min noodles, but slightly nicer noodles.

We then headed to the OMF HQ for some orientation stuff. Whilst Jay and Melina went off to do some prep for their Sunagawa trip (an overnight inland teaching excursion), the rest of us sat through a lecture on how to lead a Japanese person through bible study. It was quite insightful and prepared most of us better should we end up leading a bible study with a Japanese person in the future. I felt tired throughout the session and had droopy eyes, unfortunately (and I think I was busted a couple of times!).

Lunch was simple sandwiches and some cupcakes. Brad and I then left with Alaric to Hokkaido University for an English lesson with some Engineering students. This was a fun time teaching and going through basic conversational English with the students. I invited a number of them to the upcoming Australian Dinner and they eagerly agreed to come. I was told later, however, that we should have asked for RSVPs instead to ensure their attendance. Oh well.

Brad and I were dropped off later by Alaric to the guesthouse, where we rested for a short time before Richard came to take us to the JustCo shopping centre. We had dinner at a funky restaurant which was Teppanyaki style. We had Japanese ‘Omelette/Pancakes’ (Okonomiyaki) which we mixed ourselves and cooked ourselves. A very fun experience all around!

We then spent an hour doing some shopping and I got some extra thermal pants to replace the ones I had previously bought from the 100yen store as they were too tight.

Back home now for a restful evening.

Looking forward to:

• Tomorrow is a rather big day, so I’m looking forward to the events one by one. Also looking forward to hitting bed tonight!

Interesting thing I noticed today:

• All prepacked sandwiches have their crust cut off
• Japanese people are the most helpful and polite when it comes to service. I was purchasing a 'Mr Doghnut' and when the guy serving me understood that I couldn't speak Japanese he remained incredibly helpful whilst continuing his service. I never once got the impression that he was condescending at all.
  

Interesting food I ate today:
Dinner tonight – Okonomiyaki – do it yourself Japanese pancake. It was very yummy :) With fish flakes, ginger, BBQ sauce and yummy Japanese mayonnaise.

13/12/07AD - 15/12/07AD Cookies, Moving house, Snow-ball fights, Satsunae Family Christmas

Date: Dec 13-15th 2007AD
Time: n/a
Location: OMF Guest House, Sapporo
Current Mood: n/a
What happened:

The growing sense of fatigue has meant I haven’t written in this journal for the past few days so I have some catchup to do.

The 13th was mostly a rest day for all of us. However the girls spent most of the time in the kitchen baking cookies (which were to be handed out at Hokkaido University with invitations to students to some fmZero events). I was assigned to take care of two young boys that Manuela was looking after – Caleb and Jonathan. They were awfully cute. Caleb wanted me to read him books the whole time.

I then went up stairs and started lunch – ramen noodles, goyaza and miso soup. An hour later it was all ready to go. During lunch we shared our thoughts on the trip so far and prayed a little through some of the things we’ve seen/noticed about the Japanese.

In the afternoon we had the weekly OMF prayer meeting which was an encouraging time. Dinner was from the supermarket – a variety of things. And the evening was topped off with some interesting TV viewing and a ‘Dandy’ – the ‘Dandy’ was a humungous icecream/wafer thing. On TV was a chef competition which culminated in the making of a 1m radius Christmas cake. To say that they were over the top is an understatement! We then attempted to watch ‘Sahara’ but it was dubbed into Japanese…

The 14th was also a bit o a blur. Our team was beginning its split.

Uncle Peter led a short devotion on how God works and will work through our time here. He then left pretty quickly for the airport back home to catch his son’s graduation.

Brad, Jay, Steph and myself helped to shovel snow in the morning, which was an experience in itself. It had snowed relatively significantly during the evening. But during the morning it started to rain softly, which now meant the rest of the day would be slushy.

We prepared to head off to the weekly OMF orientation. Richard dropped me off near the supermarket to pick up lunch for the team, so I had fun picking out through the varieties of food and trudging home through the sludge. I noticed that with sludge your foot slips differently.

After the orientation we had lunch with the part-time regional director, Mike McGinty. It was a valuable time of sharing as he gave us some thoughts about being a missionary in general and being a missionary in Japan.

Brad and I then left shortly afterwards for Alaric’s English class. All were present in the class, which made it more interesting, but was an otherwise ok affair.

Afterwards Brad was dropped off at the guest home and we picked up Steph. Alaric then drove the two of us to the Manders – a missionary couple our church supports. It was an encouraging evening of hearing about their experiences with Japan as well as thoughts on how to share this experience with others. Emily was a bundle of energy as well – hanging off my arm for most of the night.

The 15th was a tiring day.

The morning began as usual, only to realise that I was running pretty late to help Peter and Janet Dalmond with their moving. I scoffed breakfast down and ran out the door, realising I had put on my jeans when snow pants would have been more appropriate.

So Brad and I went off in a van with Janet to the OMF warehouse, located about 30km out of the city. It was pretty hard work. We spent the whole morning lifting and moving. The Dalmonds were moving into an apartment building very close to the Manders. But unlike the Manders, who were on the 2nd floor, the Dalmonds were on the 4th – which meant a lot of walking up and down stairs carrying very heavy boxes.

We finally finished around 1pm. Peter had provided some snacks for us and the Manders had made a few sandwiches. We headed back to the guest house where the girls had also made spaghetti for us! Too much!

Brad and I were pretty tired at this point. However, Richard wanted us to come and play in the snow with some of the teens from the lighthouse youth. We ended up in a snowball fight! Very fun. One of the boys threw a pretty large one at me and I wanted to run and tackle him – but I slipped on the pavement and crashed into the snow.

Richard then dropped us off at a local on-sen, which was a nice time of relaxation. This on-sen was quite different to the one we attended the other night – no towels or shampoos/soap were provided. And we had to pay 100yen for each item we wanted – towels (big and small), lockers for shoes and lockers for clothes. Bah! Then during the bathing someone took Brad’s one and only towel! Haha!

We then joined back with the Satsunae Lighthouse church for their Family Christmas thing. I was done before it even began, so kinda snoozed during the message given by Mike McGinty. The evening was generally ok, shorter than expected, which was good. They had a small supper thing afterwards which had a nice variety of snacks to have, but we ended up eating some of the rest of the spaghetti for dinner.

To bed early because we were so tired!

Looking forward to:
Sleep

Interesting thing I noticed today:

1. Onsens are more popular than I expected: which is kinda weird – even kids seem to enjoy them!

Interesting food I ate today:
Lunch/Dinner – Spaghetti with Japanesemade Italian ingredients. Was interesting, because it was slightly sweeter than expected.