Courtney's journals

Wed June 30, 2004

Coming up in this entry: tea ceremony, lavendar crafts, foot onsens, dinner with Noriko2!

9:02am JST

Yesterday driving in Yamagata City we saw store with names like "Hard Off" o_O and "Ouchi" as well as "Toyopet" and "Book Off" (ahh, memories).

11:33pm: No time. Must sleep. Today:

• Everyone came over for the tea ceremony
• We made our own tea and had sweet bean (anko) desserts (which Laurel discovered she despised)
• Made lavender crafty things and talked about Christianity/growing up with religion with the church ladies - that was really cool
• Went to 3 foot onsens ("hot spring for the foot" as they call it - they give you pink socks!) - the first one on a hill (with a peeing statue) which we got our feet in, the 2nd next to a shrine, and finally the 3rd at Kaminoyama castle (video), which we also went up to the top of, looking out over the town, and then through the museum underneath (where there was a life-size statue of a huge sumo wrestler). Also tried konnyaku (mountain vegetable balls - kind of like a tasteless gummy bear in consistency... Laurel went to buy milk to wash away the flavor and found out she'd bought some strange soy "natural" milk that wasn't much better) from the snack stand next to the castle.
• Went to Yamazawa store for coffeehouse/cooking supplies
• relaxed a bit
• went to Noriko2's for dinner with Pastor Ito - played a music game w/ her daughter Yuka, talked a lot, played piano a bit and watched Noriko2 and her sister Keiko play
• had a team meeting

Need to do devotions.... must get up early.

Laurel/Maureen's blog post from this day: (here)
"Hi everyone, Moe is speechless now that she actaully has internet access, so this is Laurel. Things totally rock here, and God has been amazing, totally Womba (we`ll explain later). The thunder storm last night was amazing and Pastor Ito is way cool. So yeah, we miss you all, but it is great to be here, please pray that we would be able to stay focused on the time we have here and that we would be obedient to what God calls us to. (by the way it's not really 6 in the morning... that's Port Angeles time ... it's 10pm here!) Maureen says goodnight and God bless!"