It’s 3:50 PM on Thursday, July 29th. This means that it’s currently 1:50 AM on the same day for those of you back in St. Louis. It definitely feels like 1:50 AM to our bodies.
Travel was smooth, aside from a one-hour delay on the tarmac in Detroit. We arrived at Tokyo-Narita Airport around 6:35 PM last night, stumbled through immigration and customs and met Takeshi-san and Chris Risden. We arranged for the luggage that would not fit in the van to be shipped to the church, and then we piled in and began the five-hour drive to Azumino City.
We stopped at a rest-stop/convenience store on the way to the church. We learned a few things here. Firstly, the public restrooms here are so much better than the ones in the United States. The stalls are private, things are clean and well-lit. The bidet is, of course, optional, but hey—don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. The second thing we learned? There’s nothing to fear from gas-station sushi.
Maybe it’s just the mental USD-to-JPY conversion, but food doesn’t seem so expensive here. At least, the cheap food is much tastier than cheap food in the United States.
Today, Jon Junker took us on a tour of Azumino City; we walked all around as Jon expounded on the culture. We visited a few shrines, ate bento lunches from Hotto Motto, visited a museum about Kigenji Iguchi (a famous educator from the Azumino area), stopped at a grocery store and an ATM. The pictures you see on the website are from our wanderings today.
Everywhere there is the sound of water. The rice paddies outside the window undulate in the breeze, their continual bowing an apology or an expression of gratitude. These green waves on a green sea and the rustlings made as the rice plants jostle each other in their lines coupled with the murmur of water in the omnipresent irrigation canals resemble the beach more than the mountains, in the crooks of whose arms we are nestled. The mountains here are fog-wreathed, and one imagines that their heavy breathing in slumber releases wind out into the fields in vast exhalations.
This evening we will eat dinner and prepare for various outreach efforts—a coffee house, our English classes, a “mini-concert” on Saturday—and hopefully we will rest. Soon, perhaps later today, I will take pictures of the church and of the view from the large windows in the sanctuary, though I must say that sanctuary in this setting resonates on various levels.
As I write, the sun is tentatively peeking through a break in the clouds. On this note, I’m signing off for now. We thank you for your thoughts, prayers and support.
Patrick Wilson
