09/12/2007AD Sapporo International Church, Lost, On-Sens

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

Interesting thing I noticed today:

1. The traffic light signals for pedestrians have a funny chirping noise, almost like a bird – and it echoes from one side to the other
2. Also, the pedestrian crossings for busier intersections have different sounding chirps to delineate which crossing is free
3. There are hardly any rubbish bins anywhere – probably an over reaction to the London Bombings (which were done in rubbish bins)

Interesting food I ate today:
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.

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.