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