Free day!
Verse of the morning: Deut 30:11-14 - cool... v20: "Cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days."
9:47am JST (5:47pm PST june 27th)
It's so cool we're living in a house on a street in Japan. But I can't forget why I'm here.
This morning I took some more photos around the house and then we all played Hearts to determine who would wear the "thing" that one of us will wear each day. After awhile we pumped up the big exercise ball Laurel brought and played around with it in the upstairs tatami room.
Around 11 or so we walked over to the Kamin store ("shopping and community") up the street and bought some groceries - I also bought a few funny shirts, some Japanese wooden sandals, and some cool bobby pins. We stopped at a small bakery near the exit and purchased copious bread products which were quite enjoyable, if somewhat odd (is there really mayonnaise on everything?). We walked back to the house (about 5 min after we got back it started pouring) and ate our funky-good bread stuffs, and around 1pm started walking (in the rain) over to the church. Halfway there we noticed a lot of rice patties off to the sides of the road and then spotted a tiny green frog on the side of a planter box. A few steps more and we realized the tiny green frogs were everywhere!! Hopping all over the sidewalk, in the street, in the rice patties.... I tried to get some photos but the suckers moved fast!
At the church we were introduced to one of the daycare classes (6-year-olds) who were absolutely adorable and all told us their names in English. We tried to use Ito-sensei's computer to get online but it BSOD'd us, so we hung around for a short while and then went to the nearby karaoke place with Noriko. As we arrived she introduced us to her friend, also named Noriko, who is an English student of hers. We went to the adjacent 7-11 and got a few drinks and scurried back to the karaoke place to hop into our private karaoke booth.
"How do we do it?"
"Well you come up here, and you sing." :)
Among the selections of the evening -
-Moonlight Densetsu - me and Noriko2 ("you know Sailormoon?" "YES!!")
-Cry me a river/Route 66 - Moe
-In my life - Laurel
-Wake me up before you go go - Jeri
-Drive my car - me and Jeri
-Bohemian Rhapsody/Dancing Queen/YMCA/Help/Ob-la-di/YATTA! - all (Noriko2 shouted out the phrases for us)
-My name is Jonas - me
-Buddy Holly - me and Jeri
-Daydream Believer - me and Jeri (Noriko2 went and got a tambourine haha)
-All for one - Laurel and Moe
-some Backstreet Boys song - Laurel and Jeri
-Last Night - Laurel and Moe
-and of course a smattering of Japanese songs by Noriko ;D
Afterward Noriko2 drove us to her big house (the same one Noriko pointed out to Jeri and I while she was driving us around the first day) and we sat upstairs and had tea and met her son Kazuki, a drummer, who was 20 and kinda shy. We talked about Japanese and English and different dialects of both (we gave examples of southern, NY, Canadian, and Scottish accents) and joked around.
After that she dropped us back at our place and we watched some funny Japanese TV... commercials and a game show where a couple had to do things like spring off a trampoline onto a velcro wall and guess what song the other was playing on weird huge plastic buttons that would only make sound if they hit them in the right order :) it was way funnier than it sounds.
Have not been on the internet since we've been here.. no phone access in the house (other than the keitai [cellphone] Ito-sensei provided) and definitly no wireless access that my laptop can pick up. All we have is the dialup at the church so I'm going to have to find a place to get floppy discs or something to transfer photos and upload them.... I need to pick some photos out of the 5 million we've taken already for the webpage x_x
This week will start to get progressively more busy, starting Thursday especially with our cooking class and birthday-themed coffeehouse ministry night. Fri we'll have a pinata as well.... and Saturday is our first English class of the summer, eek! Lord help me....
I need to make that the forefront of my mind... Lord, go before me, be my strength... and thank you for a wonderful first few days.
