Unexpected

Most of this week has been rather uneventful, up until the weekend that is! These days uni has been quite normal, learning bits and pieces here and there, but i guess the place i am getting the most practice in speaking Japanese is at KGK and church. I really do need to start hanging around the Jap people more! Anyways, here's a what's been happening these past two days.

KGK Yamanashi Block Event

As usual, I spent saturday morning at KGK Bible study. Well... I say "as usual" but that was really only my second Bible study haha... but anyways it should be "usually" from now on coz i don't have anything on on the weekends (bar mission for the next month). The Bible study this time was led by Kawakubo sensei (the einstein looking teacher who goes to my church). The Bible study was on Mark 5:25 - 34 (where the woman in the crown who was subject to bleeding for 12 years was healed), and truthfully i didn't get much from the Bible study except for new vocab, which is a plus anyways :) After the Bible study we sat around for a bit talking, and sensei was telling me about how things were in KGK in his days. He was telling me how they used to hold weekly events in KGK like social gatherings and things, but that doesn't seem to happen very much these days. Then he started talking about english conversation classes, and i was thinking that would be an AWESOME idea! So hopefully God will use me to start something of the sort, and invite both Japanese and English speakers to the class - both Christian and non-Christian. Although i would feel quite strange being the only discussion leader...

please pray that something may be worked out :D

Anyways, so from 12:30pm a few of us KGK students left kofu city, and we were given a lift from Nemoto san (who was my first contact in KGK apart from Momoko last year at NTE). It was kinda funny coz she's a very small girl, and she drove a cute little car that could barely go uphill. SHe was also too afraid to use the highway, so we went via smaller streets round the mountains...which turned out to be a lot scarier than she thought. When we were going downhill i was said to her "erh...this kinda reminds me of a rollercoaster" and she was freaked out LOL. That was a bit of a lol moment for all of us :D Apart from the uphill and downhill roads, there were also some very very narrow roads that were 2 way roads, and we had a few near misses with huge trucks...turns out it really may have been better to take the highway haha! She apologised and told us "i'll make sure i practice driving on highways for the future!" Anyways, other than that, the scenery on the way there was amazing :D Unfortunately, i didn't take any photos, but i was able to take some awesome mental snaps :)

So after a one and a half hour drive we arrived at a church in Tsuru, where we were greeted by the other Yamanashi block members (i.e. the other KGK people in our prefecture), some who I hadt he pleasure of meeting in Tokyo a few weeks back at the welcome event for new students in KGK. Not everyone from our prefecture was there, but the total number of attendees was about 10...still it was nice :) We started off with a bit of music, and self introductions, and games. I was happy coz i knew two of the three songs we sang. One of them was "As the deer" and the other was "Kimi ga aisareru tame umareta" which is a Japanese song composed by a Korean girl (i think). It means "You were born to be loved". After introducing ourselves, we played an interesting variation of pictionary, where one team member faces away from the team while they each draw whatever they want (in relation to the topic on the card), and they are given 30 seconds to draw. After thirty seconds the other team member turns around to look at the pictures, and has a short moment to guess from the collection of pictures. In the end both teams got everything, so there wasn't much competition, but some of those kids could DRAW! Awesomeness :D

We then went on to Bible study, which went for quite a while. We flipped through a couple of passages (Psalm 97, Psalm 139, 1 John 4:7-10, Gospel John 3:16-18, 36. **the name John is pronounced "Yohane" in japanese, so when they first said it i was like "say what?"). The theme was "the character of God". I was really encouraged by that Bible study, as i was able to see the faith and knowledge of the people there. It certainly made me feel right at home, as if i was back in Credo again. So basically, it's like Credo but in Japan :D Well, we are really all from IFES anyways! So it was really nice being in that Bible study, as i was able to participate just like i did back home, only the language barrier was a bit of a problem sometimes. I would've liked to contribute a bit more, but i was still able to do my part in encouraging them with related Bible passages (i love my bilingual Bible and iTouch :D). I heard some of the other groups were having some rather more intellectual conversations about theology - but it may be a while before my Jap is good enough to move onto apologetics and theology haha....but hopefully i'll get there eventually!

So after Bible study was dinner. New students didn't have to pay for the event or the dinner, so i got off :D Once again, the hospitality shown by the Japanese people is amazing! The food was also deliciously awesome :) After dinner we took a photo, and then left for another one and a half hour drive. Here's the picture of the group:

The guy to my left is Sousei Nagai, who is one of the staffworkers in KGK that i met at the welcome event. He's heaps friendly and cool :) His name "Sousei" actually means "Genesis" :D I thought that was pretty awesome anyways! He was telling me about a Christian camp a few years back that was held for people from East Asia. There he met some Chinese people (i think) who nicknamed him "So sweet" LOL! And then some others gave him the nickname "So sweat" ROFL! Well, i rofled (not literally...) because the name was funny, but also because it was pretty fob :P Oh yeah, he's one of our contacts for our upcoming mission as well :) He also seems very knowledgeable!

Soon, us Kofu city dwellers left for home in Nemoto san's tiny car, this time we found a safer route to go by :) We chatted for a bit about various things, and for a bit there was some discussion on theology as well. I was just glad to hear them talking about that stuff because i didn't think it would happen very much in Japan. It seems that they aren't very different from us at all :)

All in all it was an awesome (although very hot) day, and i feel really blessed once again that i have been brought here to experience what the church is like here in Japan.

Yamanashi Baptist Church

Yesterday, Hajime sempai (one of the first KGK members i met - the dude that brought us to Tokyo for the welcome event) invited me to his church (which is the church Akihiro Iseki went to. Aki is one of the dudes who went to UTS as an exchange student, and became friends with the Credoites. He will also be joining us for mission :D). This Baptist church was the one Aki introduced me to initially, but Hajime sempai told me that it would probably be better for me to go to my current church because there are more youngsters there (lol...he's not that much older than me). Well, anyways today i decided to go check out his church as well, and once again, i was blown away by the friendliness and hospitality of the people there. In general, the older people of Japan are much friendlier than the youngsters, so it felt like a very warm church. Apart from two toddlers, i was the youngest there :P Everyone else apart from Hajime sempai was middle aged or above! From the moment i stepped into the doors i was being warmly greeted by the others one by one. It was a great pleasure to meet so many friendly people :)

So the reason Hajime invited me to his church today was because today was the first day for the new pastor (Mokuyama Michio san). It was certainly a great encouragement hearing his testimony, and also his wife's testimony. He told us about how he was a non-Christian until his uni years when he was brought to church by a friend (i think this was in one of his 6 years in America). He told us the story of how the pastor of that church worked hard to bring him to Christ. Over a very long period of time, the Pastor persisted in sharing the Gospel with him, and in seeing his persistence and passion, Mokuyama san began to slowly feel a change in his heart. After a long period time, the Pastor approached him again and asked him whether or not he believed, and at that moment, he said "yes i do". the strange thing for him was, he didn't know what it was. He just felt like he believed all of a sudden. He told us that it just happened "some way or other". Although at that point he didn't know exactly what he believed, the persistence of that Pastor seemed to be a strong influence on his change of heart. From then he began to study God's word more, and he began to grow in faith more and more. He became convinced that the Bible was 100% true, and he eventually got into ministry and spent some time on mission. Today was his first day ever as a Pastor.

After his testimony, his wife got up to tell hers. She grew up in a completely non-Christian area where there were absolutely no churches for miles and miles. I missed a bit of what she said so i wasn't sure whether or not her parents were Christians, but i know that she told us that she didn't believe at all for a very long time because of the life she lived. She didn't ever see much happiness and she saw a lot of suffering, especially during the time of WWII. She told herself that she would study hard to become a wonderful nurse, and that she never wanted to have anything to do with religion of any sort. I'm not sure if she became one in the end though, because there was a time when she eventually came to know Christ. I think it was when she was still a student or something, some of her friends invited her to a Christian gathering, and it was there that for the first time ever she experienced the warmth of a Christian environment. She was saying that she never experienced such warmth before, and it felt like although her heart was darkened in the past, that this experience was the beginning of her change of heart. As she began to spend more time with these people she began to know the love of Christ, and it affected her so deeply that she came to accept Christ into her heart truly. She cried as she told us this part of her testimony - that the love of Christ was so deep that He would die on the cross for those who rejected Him, and that He would offer salvation to the world despite the fact that the world despised Him.

Although the church is small and full of older people, and although it was only my first day, i felt like i was right at home. At lunchtime we all sat around, and like one big family we shared a meal together and chatted (the food was awesome :D And once again, because it was my first time, i didn't have to pay!). A few of the people got up to express their joy at finally receiving a Pastor at the church (they've been pastorless for a while now i think!), and a very Spiritually strong Pastor at that. The Pastor himself got up after a while to address us, and he told us that he thought we didn't need to dress so formally at church. Some of the older people were wearing suits and stuff, so he told them (although he was wearing a suit himself) that they needn't be so formal. He said to us that as we slowly come to know each other more and as we grow as a family, there is absolutely no need for such formalities. Some of the other members were also saying that although the Pastor and his wife are well known for their strong spirituality, that the church should not see them as superhumans, but instead see them as members of the church just like everyone else - as flawed human beings. So they encouraged us to take our part in encouraging the Pastor and his wife as well, and to support them as much as we could. This i think, is definitely how a church should look like.

During lunch i had a little talk with the pastor about his missionary experiences and his time in america. So i made the comment that america has a huge proportion of Christians in comparison to Japan. Then he said something very interesting, and i thought it was a very good and true observation. He said that although there appear to be many Christians in america, there is probably a very small number of people who truly believe and live out their lives as Christians. I agreed with him on that. Then he told me that in Japan he has seen that the people who call themselves Christians actually truly believe. And although there is a very small number of Christians in Japan, their faith is quite strong because they are a minority and so they hold onto that faith. So the church in Japan is quite strong, but still it is very hard to do mission in Japan because of the group culture. Still most the Christians in Japan (and most that i've met) have grown up in Christian families, but because of the group culture in Japan, those that are raised in Christian families do tend to become Christians eventually even if they don't early on in life.

The pastor also told me something very interesting that he saw during his mission work in Japan. There was a missionary team from America - 5 westerners and 5 Japanese people doing streetside evangelism around Shibuya. He said that the most effective work was done by one of the pairs in the group - one American and one Japanese. The American preached on the streets...in ENGLISH. That caught a lot of people's attention, and then for those that didn't understand, the Japanese guy was there to translate. Because the American guy was there, lots of people were interested. People were nowhere near as interested when there was just an ordinary Japanese guy preaching on the streets. From the work of that pair (i mean the work of the Holy Spirit through that pair), in a short time (not sure how long) 7 people came to know the Lord :D Upon hearing this, i am greatly encouraged, seeing that there are indeed some very effective ways to evangelise in this kind of culture :)

These past two days have been a huge huge encouragement i'd say! Something i've been praying for lately has been for me to find out what i can do to help the churches and the Christians here, because lately i've been feeling that i haven't been doing much to encourage the people here and i feel useless. But in these two days i have been able to hear of ways that i can help, and of ways i can encourage the people here. Indeed i feel that God has answered that prayer! So thanks heaps, to those of you who have been praying with me on this :) I'm sure that God has a whole lot in store for me in the future :D

So here are some prayer points!

Praise God for:

- The Christians that i've been able to meet in KGK and at church - for there friendliness, hospitality, encouragement and faith

- For answering my prayers and showing me some of the things i can do here :)

- For His great love :D

- That my language ability has become a little smoother

Please pray:

- That i will continue to grow in maturity in Christ day by day, and that these experiences will enhance my understanding of who He is, and what he would have me do

- That my language ability will develop more and more

- That i may learn more about the culture that i will be doing mission in

Thanks so much once again for those of you who have been praying for me constantly, and for those who have been keeping up with my blog entries (although many of them are very very long!) :D

effortless, joyful hospitality

I wasn't really planning on blogging at this time but i couldn't help but share a bit about today's church party (for new members to the church). At about 3:30pm we left the church, and drove about 40 minutes out towards the mountains. I've gotta say, the area is sooooooooo awesomely nice :D It's a very agriculture based area, and surrounded by beautiful mountains. The air there was amazing as well :) The house was also very big for a Japanese house, and definitely very warm and "homey".

Once again, i couldn't help but notice how amazing the people here are at showing hospitality, and we'd only met each other like once or twice! Once we stepped into their door they wouldn't stop giving us snacks and drinks to eat before the huge bbq dinner. It was also nice having tim tams again :D Although tim tams here cost much more than they do back home :( Anyways the dinner was absolutely amazing! I really really stuffed myself silly coz they just kept bringing out more food. And they didnt start eating until they finished cooking! The steaks were much huger than i thought they would be, and seriously, they were the softest, juiciest, most delicious steaks i've ever had :) I never thought i'd have so much meat here in Japan! They also had these humongous oysters (photos will be below!), and although i'm not a huge fan of oysters, i thought they were quite nice :) No doubt it would have been a very expensive dinner as well...and there were heaps of leftovers so they told us to bring stuff back home (yay! don't have to make lunch tomorrow :D). They seriously made hospitality look so easy, and they did it all so effortlessly and jofully :) Once again, i do think that that is something we all need to learn from!

It wasn't just their hospitality that was heaps encouraging, the dude from church that invited us over (Ishihara san - he's probably in his 60's or 70's) is very very knowledgeable about the Bible and about the worldwide church. To be honest i thought that people in this area would be very closed off to the rest of the world, and i thought that their Biblical knowledge would be very limited. Turns out they are much more open to the worldwide church and seemingly more knowledgeable than a lot of the churches back home. And they are obviously very Bible based, because Ishihara san talked for about an hour about the dangers of becoming non-Bible based. he was talking about how many churches have gone astray, and how they have fallen into the trap of not following the Bible, and he warned us about that kind of thing. I feel that it is really a huge blessing to be here to experience being a part of this church. And despite the language barrier, i feel right at home.

After dinner was dessert, which was also amazingly awesome :) Sorry i didn't take any pictures, but my stomach will remember it :D After dessert we spent some time in prayer, and we were also informed of the upcoming events. There's a retreat coming up in july, but it's really close to exams and after mission (and by then i will be very very behind in work) so i may not be able to go :( Taking a month off for mission was already a rather tedious task, but thankfully the uni let me take that time off :) God is opening up so many doors for me, so i am really really thankful :D

This morning after the service, an old dude from a Gideon church in Japan was telling us a story of the work of that church in Japan, and he was telling us about how he struggled with cancer from decades back (i think, my Jap isn't good enough to translate what he said properly) and how he has worked hard at ministry, and about how God has gotten him through all that (or something along those lines!). It was just really nice to see that the church partners with a heap of other churches in their work (the announcements always have prayer points for other churches in the area as well). It was just heaps encouraging to see how God is at work here in Japan. It is still very very difficult to do mission here i think, but i do feel that God is doing something here. Anyways i've heard some pretty good things about the Nagoya Bible college started by that korean guy (Michael Oh... i think!) in recent years (i think). So, perhaps God will send some kind of revival here in Japan :D That is my prayer! So pray with me please :D

I'm also really looking forward to the upcoming credo mission here :) Please pray for that also! (Along with the team heading for Indo!)

Anyways, here are a few random photos showing a few of the things i've been up to in the last 2 weeks :) Enjoy!

KGK welcome event in Tokyo :)

A pikachu drawn by someone in a previous calligraphy class :D

View from the third floor of our dorms one evening :)

Looks somewhat...holy :P

Stitch costumes we got for Rosy and Ben for their birthdays :D

The awesome, cosy home we had the bbq at :)

The view right outside their house :)

Part of the dinner we had :D

The beautiful steak we had :D

My humongous oyster :)

Megumi is the English teacher i was introduced to in my first week here!

Oh yeah, and it was freezing over there and i didn't have a jacket so they lent me one for the night!

The view at night :) You're meant to be able to see the moon and a single star above it, but this image is scaled down so nah

Anyways, another random recount - i just bought a new bike! :D The bikes that were left for us from last year were pretty horrible and they didn't have gears or anything, so i decided it would be nice to buy a new one. Cost me about 150 bucks, which i thought was reasonable :) Anyways it's gonna be really nice riding around everywhere now! So much easier to go grocery shopping now! On the night of the day i got my bike, after i had a huge dinner i decided i should work off some of what i ate, so i went for a ride down to somewhere i'd never been before. It was really nice :) The streets here go really quiet at night, i barely saw anyone, not even many cars on my short adventure at about 10pm. So the ride down from the dorms was amazing - all downhill, and the road was all mine for most the way :D Of course, the ride back up was really really difficult...if i do that everyday i'll have thunder thighs in no time LOL!

Anyways, prayer points!

Praise God:

- That He has kept me safe thusfar despite my fail biking skills

- That He has blessed me with such an amazing church

- For awesome foood :)

- For great times with fellow brothers and sisters in a foreign land

- That the Australian government has been so generous in helping me with cash!

Please pray:

- That God will allow me to manage my time well so that i can fit in more study, as i have no really been making the most of opportunities to learn more about the language and culture. I have realised how fail my language abilities are, so please pray that i can pick things up quickly :)

- That i may be prepared for the upcoming mission trip (have to write up a testimony, and will probably attempt to do so in Japanese!)

- That i get the chance to use the Japanese two ways to live thingies that Danny Hung sent over (thanks so so much dude :D)

Thanks guys :D Love you all!

A great encouragement :)

Last saturday i had the pleasure of attending a KGK (kirisutosha gakusei kai - Christian Student Fellowship) new students' welcome event in Tokyo with alen, a brother from KGK at my uni, my Jewish friend M, as well as about 150 - 200 Christian students from tokyo and the surrounding area. It was amazing fun and a great encouragement! It reminded me of the conferences we have back in Australia, only it was all done in Japanese - a great time to learn about the language and the culture, as well as a time to experience Christ's love in the church here in Japan (which M was also able to experience). It was certainly a huge encouragement to be able to meet so many friendly people, and it was a pleasure also to meet the staffworkers who will be helping us with our mission here next month (i can't believe there is only a month left until then!!!). I'm really looking forward to working with the churches here next month :D

Oh, and the travel to and from the location cost me about 3500 yen all up, but the organisers decided to subsidise those who had to travel far to get to the location, so i ended up paying 1500 instead :) Awesome stuff!

It was also really nice to meet my host family (from 5 years ago) again. Well i only really met Kaori (who i saw the week before anyway) and her mum again, but it was really nice to see them again and hang out. Kaori's mum, Noriko (who treats me as her own son) is one of the most friendly, loving and generous people i have ever met. The plan was to meet up and have dinner after the KGK event, and so we met up and went to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Noriko ended up paying for the whole dinner, that is, she paid for 7 people including herself, and 3 people were complete strangers to her. Not only that, but she saw that we were still hungry so she brought us downstairs to buy us some gyoza (dumplings) and sat us down for some tea and coffee in Vie De France. That kind of love and hospitality being shown to strangers is certainly something i want to model myself. It's not like this is something i have only just experienced recently though. 5 years back, they were the ones that hosted me. I never thought that i would be provided with a Christian host family, considering there are so few Christians here in Japan, but God has His awesome way of doing things, and ever since that time 5 years ago i've been keeping in contact with my host family, as i am very grateful for all the love and kindness they showed me by opening up their house for me to stay in. I should be the one serving them, and they are still the ones who are constantly showing me love and encouragement instead. I know that if i were to go to Tokyo on my own for a while, they would not for one second hesitate to let me stay again.

It was also very encouraging seeing Kaori again after so long! She's always been a Christian but she had heaps of struggles with faith. However, in more recent times, she has come to experience God's love much more and she has grown from being a shy and rather selfish girl, into a more outgoing, loving and caring sister in Christ. Her mum was explaining to us that Kaori had undergone a huge change and that she was very thankful for it. I'm just really thankful for the great love God has shown to them, and to me for allowing me to meet such an amazing family. Oh yeah, i didn't get to see her dad or her older sister or older brother again, but a little bit of background on them. The son is the only non-Christian in the family, the older sister michiru is a strong Christian, who studied at SMBC in sydney for a bit, and is now married to an Englishman :) She was the one who helped me translate things when i was struggling with the language here 5 years ago. The dad is also very warm and friendly, but is always busy with work unfortunately. They're a great family :D

I'm just really happy to have the chance to experience meeting up with the Christians here and to see how God's love has affected people from different places. Prior to my trip here i didn't know many Japanese Christians, and to be honest i thought that i had more to offer them in terms of encouragement, but now i feel that it's the other way around - i'm the one being encouraged by them! It's been an amazing trip so far, and i really look forward to what God has in store for me in the future :)

Anyways, hope everything is going well over there in Australia! God bless :D

A month away from home already :0

This is a very late blog entry, but here are some of the things i've been up to! :) Sorry, it's another epically long entry... but it's 2 weeks' worth of stuff so yeah!

So the last time i blogged was about 2 weeks ago, when i went hiking with a few others. It feels like ages since then but at the same time it feels like time is really flying. It's already been more than a month! This is THE longest i have ever been away from home on my own! While it has been rather difficult at times, i think i'm getting quite used to living on my own :) I thank God that He has sustained me for this first hectic month, and that He has allowed me to enjoy myself so much. Through Ecclesiastes He has taught me to enjoy the good things that He gives to us, and so i guess in a way i've been able to break out from my asceticism a little :D He allows us to enjoy the things He gives us as we accept them with humility. For all these things He has given, i am truly thankful, and i when i think about it i just feel that i am completely undeserving of all this grace. Why would He give so much to a wretch like me? And it makes me feel horrible when i think about the times when i ignore Him, when He has so graciously given me all these things.

Lessons from the Japanese

Japan might be a very godless place, but Japanese culture too, i think, has something to offer us when we think about how we should be living out our lives. Although a lot of the culture is very superficial and insincere, i do feel that it has a lot to teach us about humility and respect. I read up on a little bit of stuff for the ICS Cultural report, and i came across this article that i found rather intriguing. One thing it taught me was that when we enter into foreign cultures, we have things to offer them, and they have things to offer us. We can both teach each other. There is one universal truth, there cannot be more than one, and although people grasp at the truth in different ways, it does not change the fact that there is one truth. But at the same time, there are bits of the truth that are seen more evidently in different locations, as some people have a better grasp of the truth than others. In traveling the world and meeting new people, it is possible to have a better grasp of how great our God is. He is the God of all nations, and He works in many different ways. So in different cultures, the people can be our "cultural mentors", and although they are strangers, they can teach us a thing or two about the world we live in and our place in it. We just need a humble heart to be able to accept them as our mentors.

Within the first month of my stay in Japan, the Japanese have taught me a little about humility. It isn't something you see as much in western society. We are all taught to be individuals and so our pride often gets the better of us. We feel that we can handle everything on our own and we try to find our own way through life and we live our lives the way we want to. That's the way we are taught - and although it's a great privilege to be able to voice your opinion about things, it also sometimes comes as a burden to be able to express yourself so freely. In a society like Japan, where the group is more important than the individual, i sometimes feel that they have a better grasp of what it means to be a Christian (in some aspects anyway) than we do in western society. Even outside of the church, i feel that the Japanese are quite hospitable. They are taught from when they are young to be humble and polite, respecting your elders and those outside your inner circle. In the church i currently attend, i feel that they are much more welcoming and accommodating than a lot of the churches in Australia. And although the way they carry out their service is very traditional, i feel very welcome here. In fact sometimes i feel that i'm more welcome here than in my own home church. The way they serve here is certainly something we can be learning from. Humility is a trait that is often stressed in the Bible, but so often it is not heeded and we go our own way, and we look down on our brothers and sisters when we should be building them up instead.

According to the group mentality, each individual plays their part in the community, and so one's actions can either be very beneficial or detrimental to the way the society functions as a whole. Doesn't this sound a bit like what the church should be? Each person has their own role to play, and one's actions can be very detrimental. There is one body, and many parts. Those who are immoral in the church should be expelled because they can potentially give the church a bad name. In a similar way, those who are seen as "different" in Japanese society are shunned because they do not contribute to society. This is i guess where the difference is. Christianity respects diversity within the church because we know that everyone has gifts from God that they can use to contribute, and even though some may be weaker than others, they still have a role to play. There is no one that is useless in the church.

Settling in = done :D

So it seems like pretty much all the important stuff is in order, except that i havent been bothered to go out and fix the bike yet...i wonder if it might be more worth it to just buy a new one...

Class

So here's the list of subjects that i'm doing at the moment:

Eizou o tsuujite miru ibunka: Learning foreign culture through images and movies (all in English)

Ibunka Komyunikeishon: Foreign culture communication (All Japanese, this class is really difficult!)

Nihon Jijou: The Japanese Situation / Circumstances (in which we learn about gestures and the reason why the Japanese do certain things)

Japanese Pre-Intermediate class 1A and 1B (reading, writing, grammar, speaking)

Kokugo Hyougen: Japanese expressions (all in Japanese, very difficult even for the Japanese! Of course, the teacher takes it easy on us. It's a really interesting class though. The teacher gives us a test at the beginning then for the rest of the class we go through the answers)

Calligraphy: good fun :D

Revision class: hasn't started yet, just did the level test today actually!

All in all i have about 12 hours each week :) So it's not that hard at all. Also, considering i live so close to uni, i dont spend much time on travel either, and travel is free so that's awesome :) 10-15 minute walk to uni wooh!

NICE Picnic and the Zoo

The photos for this event are up on facebook already, and i think the pictures can tell you much more than my words can! However, there was a guy i talked to that day about religion. He's a Buddhist/Shintoist, and we talked a bit about our different views on things. He was saying that he thought it was a pity that most Japanese people don't have any religion at all. I think that if i wasn't a Christian, i might rather live religiously than as an atheist!

Anyways, the day was good fun :)

Local Art Gallery

After church on Sunday (the last Sunday of April), one of the professors from Yamanashi University (that goes to the church) took a few of us new students to the art gallery (for free yay!! :D) It was nice getting to know the other two girls who went as well! The people at church are so nice :)

Jo's birthday party

Last wednesday was Jo's birthday, so we went to the Izakaya (kinda like a Japanese pub, with heaps of food and usually all you can drink...but this particular Izakaya didn't have all you can drink! Well, that was a good thing for me anyways :) I would've had to pay even if i didn't drink so i was kinda relieved!) Afterwards we rented some movies and some of the others bought drinks to bring back to the dorms. So we watched Watchmen...and if the movie wasn't hard enough to understand already, the drunks didn't make it any easier to understand LOL. I missed most of the dialogue in the movie, so it's as if i didn't watch it at all!

Tokyo Day 1

Woke up at about 3:45 in order to catch the bus headed for shinjuku at 5 :( So we (Victor, Ben and myself) got to shinjuku at about 7, and no shops were open so all we could do was explore a little and get stuff to eat, but that was good fun. It was nice being in shinjuku again after 5 years :) The funny thing is, i remember absolutely nothing about the last time i went!

At 10am i met with my Imouto (little sister) Kaori (my host from my exchange trip in year 11!) - who i hadn't seen for about a year (the last time was when she went to Sydney last year). It was really nice to see her and catch up with her again :) We were able to spend some quality time together, shopping at Kinokuniya and checking out the area. A bit before lunch we met up with Ben and Victor and headed for UniQlo to buy some cheap clothes :) Then lunch, and random wanderings round shinjuku, with Kaori as our guide. Bought a few random things from Donkihote (Don Quixote i think!) and afterwards Ben finally replaced his torn sneakers with some chucks :D The 4 of us went to super cheap Karaoke that arvo (about 200 yen per head per hour including unlimited free non-alcoholic drinks :D CRAZY!!!) for about an hour and a half, then when it hit 5pm we said our goodbyes. Ben wanted to stay at the Karaoke to practice alone (bahahahahaha!) but he wasn't able to coz he would've had to line up to get back in again (yeah it was golden week and the prices were heaps good so it was packed!). So Victor and myself made our way to Shibuya to meet the other Japan ICS students to have dinner at an Izakaya :) It was really nice seeing Alen and Hanna Cho again :D I really missed them both heaps!

After izakaya was another 3 hours of Karaoke (where victor once again displayed his insane karaoke skills!) then we all went our separate ways. This was the annoying part. The place we were going to stay at was near a station called "Akebonobashi", and we (Victor and myself) asked for directions to "Akabonobashi" or something like that... Since it was late, and since the train we caught took us in the wrong direction, we missed the last train to Akebonobashi. What made it worse was that the both of us needed to go to the toilet quite badly... Anyways! So we had to find another way back to the capsule hotel where we were staying. It actually wasn't so bad. We made it in time for the last train to a station called shinjuku-sanchome, which is one stop away from Akebonobashi. SO we caught it there and walked for about 15 minutes to get there. Not bad at all. If only we knew exactly where the hotel was... we ended up spending another 20 or so minutes trying to locate it because the station has like 4 exits... but we found it eventually and were finally able to rest easy after a super long day (4am - 1am the next day). The capsule hotel was nothing like what i thought it would be. A tad expensive but it was fine. I just wanted to sleep!

Tokyo day 2

So the original plan was to go to Akihabara, but Hanna Cho invited us to her church in Yokohama that day, so Alen and myself visited her church. Shinjuku station and Yokohama station are two of the most confusing places i have ever been to :( But it was interesting getting used to catching trains there anyway. Yokohama is quite a nice area - it's a port city, and home to the giant ferris wheel as well as the biggest Chinatown (in the world apart from China methinks :D). If you ever see a giant ferris wheel in anime or dramas, it's probably yokohama :) So we met up with Hanna Cho at Yokohama station, had an early lunch (some ramen place...wasn't so great, and not so cheap either!), then caught the train to Sakuragicho (which is about a station or two away) where her church is.

The church was rather charismatic, and was full of friendly people :) There were probably about 50 people at the service, and there were heaps of foreigners there. The service was bilingual so i was able to understand it. The music was great! They sang a few songs i didn't know, but they also sang Mighty to Save, half in English, half in Japanese :) I've got videos if you wanna check them out! Anyways so it was really interesting seeing how they conducted their service. It's certainly nothing like any other church i've been to, but very welcoming. Since it was golden week and close to children's day, they had an children's item - a little Hawaiian dance :) Cute as!! The sermon was conducted by a guy who had recently finished Bible college somewhere in Japan, and was actually a convert at that church :) The message was based on the passage where Jesus welcomes children and tells us to be like children. He showed us a book entitled "Children's Letters to God. It's a book full of letters that children wrote to God. If i could, i wanna get my hands on that book - it's the cutest thing ever! I might look for it online and buy it :) Anyways, the sermon was full of examples of how children honest children are, and he encouraged us to be like children in the way that we approach God. The word he kept repeating was "sunao" which has no proper English translation, but means something like innocent, honest or guileless (i.e. free of deceit). The way we should approach God is to come before Him, utterly dependent on Him as the one who provides, just as a child relies on their parents naturally. As we grow older we become more dependent on ourselves and we get used to living on our own, so it becomes harder to depend on God. But we need to come before God knowing that we need Him, and that we need His providence. He already knows our hearts, so we should be honest with Him.

After church we decided to explore Sakuragicho a bit, with Hanna Cho as our tour guide :) It was a really really beautiful day in Sakuragicho, and i've got photos if you wanna check that out! Awesome place :)

Anyways, after all that, we made our way back to Shinjuku where we met up with Kasumi and Yumiko. Yumiko only stayed for about half an hour but it was nice seeing her again! When Kasumi came it was the most awkward thing ever. I recognised her so i took a step forward to give her a hug and she stepped away LOL! Awkward turtle much? But anyways, after Yumiko left, Kasumi, Alen and myself went to Kinokuniya to check out some stuff, but bought nothing. Still it was nice catching up with Kasumi! Before that, i hadn't seen her since i hosted her at the end of 2006! I was also meant to meet up with Emi and Nagisa (the girls we hung out with heaps when Dic and myself hosted the Japs in 2006), but neither of them could make it :( Hopefully i'll be able to meet them soon though! After Kasumi left, we waited around for the others to join us for dinner, and Ben got lost in Shinjuku station for a whole hour while we waited (yeah...it's a horrible station and the station staff aren't very helpful!). What made it worse was that Ben's phone battery died :( Anyways, after dinner we said our goodbyes and Ben and I left for home.

All in all, Tokyo was great fun, but also very annoying :P Definitely a memorable experience!

FujiQ, Saiko and Kawaguchiko

After a single day's rest i was off again (i got about 3 hours' sleep that night :( ), this time to FujiQ, the crazy amusement park near mount fuji :) The reason why it's crazy is that it has 3 rollercoasters that held guiness world records at the time they were built! They've been topped now of course, but they're still insane rides. I went on all 3 :D Although i waited 2 and a half hours to 3 hours for each of those they were all well worth it :) (Photos are up on facebook!) The big red one at the front of the park "Eejanaika" was the first we went on. 3 hour wait, and by the end of the wait i was just like "man i get the feeling im gonna be disappointed by this ride". I was wrong. It was the most thrilling ride ever! That and the fujiyama which we went on later. Those two are seriously awesome :D The "Eejanaika" spins you around 14 times so you never know when you will be facing forward or backwards when you're dropping. We probably spent about 2 hours afterwards going on about how crazy the ride was :)

Fujiyama had no spins, but insane drops! The ride felt like it was at least 2 minutes long, and it was high speed the whole time (except the lifting part at the very beginning). I thought i was gonna die. The thing is, they make you feel so awesome when they take you to the top, because the view from the top is amazing. You can see a clear view of mount fuji AND the surrounding suicide forest from up there. Seriously, i wish we could have brought our cameras up to the top of that ride! The other crazy rollercoaster we went on was the "dodonpa" which accelerates from 0 to 172 km/h in less than 2 seconds. Then there is one upwards arc, which almost instantly turns into a 90 degree vertical drop. That was an awesome way to end the day :) The other ride we went on was the tsunami, which was a short log flume ride which takes you up once, then drops you into a pool, and the splash from that thing is amazing! They have an area above the ride for people who just wanna get wet from the splash :) It's called tsunami for a reason :D

Afterwards we had dinner at the park, then left for our accommodation. Since it was Ben's birthday, a few of them got drinks and we spent the night snacking and drinking (well i didn't drink though). I was buggered by the end of the day, so i really enjoyed my sleep there :)

On the second day we decided to go to the healing village or something, which is near Saiko (one of the 5 lakes surrounding mount fuji). We spent a bit of time there checking out the shops and we were able to try out some samurai armour and kimonos! Photos are up on facebook! :D

For the remaining time we decided to go to Kawaguchiko (another one of the 5 lakes around mt fuji) and relax :) I was heaps tired by that time, so it was very refreshing to just sit by the lake on my own and thank God for His awesome creation :)

Back to uni

So Golden Week is now over and the uni week is also over. Tomorrow i'll be heading to Tokyo again for a KGK new students' welcoming party, and Alen's coming as well. So that should be good fun :) Afterwards i plan on meeting up with Kaori again, this time with her family :D I'm really looking forward to it!

Thank God for:

- Keeping me safe in all my travels

- Giving me strength

- His beautiful creation

- His providence

- Allowing me to spend so much time with my new friends

- That all the bank stuff has been sorted

Please pray:

- For safety in Tokyo

- That i may be a good witness and a good encouragement

Thanks guys :D