11:36pm
Halfway through our trip... 2 weeks left in Kaminoyama :(
Today we got up as usual and showered, and after some time noticed no one was coming to pick us up for church like they normally do on Sundays. Around 10:15 I called Ito-sensei, who then called Mieko-san, who picked us up around 10:45. We walked in late and Laurel (who had ridden a bike) said Mr. Yoshida covered for us by praying for a really long time :)
We then went up and sang "Turn your eyes upon Jesus" and then "Seek ye First" with the ukulele - missed a few words but everyone seemed to like it anyway :) Moe and Jeri gave testimonies after that.
Afterwards we had "American Lunch" at the church with the sloppy joes and metric ton of potato/macaroni salads we'd made the night before (though we found out later the big bowls we'd bought to put the salads in were actually dishwashing bowls or something like that, hah). That seemed to go over well - anything that was left over got taken home by various folks (some, like Toyoko-san, wanted recipes) and everyone said it was "oishii" :)
After lunch we crashed at the house for awhile and took a short bike ride, during which Jared called and Maureen talked to him for a bit. While we were waiting I took a photo of a pretty big dragonfly by the side of the road.
We rode back home after that and we crashed for awhile more while waiting for news on Denise from Asian Access (scheduled to visit us for a few days). There was a bit of drama over her ending up on a late train and Mr Aoki not understanding when we tried to tell him, and having to call Ryoko-sensei to explain to them. Finally Ito-sensei showed up and we all went to the train station to wait for Denise. She arrived safely (yay!) and we walked back to the house and let her settle in for a bit, then headed over to the korean church member's house for a BBQ and "youth time."
Had good food (including kind of strange Korean "lettuce tacos" that were tasty) and watched Jeri and Rio stack up multiple Oreos into one, lit off a bunch of hanabi (fireworks) in the dusky evening light with the same Jr high boys as last time, then played our favorite middle school youth group game "double bubble" with them (which went over really well and was pretty hilarious, 2 of the boys lasted a long time and we gave each of them a full bag of Double bubble gum), and then played Actionary (our charades-ish version of Pictionary) which resulted in some pretty hilarious acting (and during which Jeri's gum exploded in her hair while she was blowing a bubble). Jeri gave her testimony and then after brief chats with everyone and a few group photos we headed back to the house with Denise.
Immediately we were talking - about Texas Brian's injuries (he hit his head and needed stitches, then hit a car while riding on his bike), about how the other teams were doing, about the CareNet/abortion alternatives thing, about weird stuff in Japan (houses, bread, property, tissues, etc) - and we told her stories (like Mieko-san's gift bread we ate and how Ito-sensei was laughing soooo hard about it [she said we may get in the next Asian Access manual for that one], yukatas and the scary onsen, Jeri's toe injury, bike riding, English classes, Ito-sensei and karaoke, etc etc etc). We looked at pictures and talked until after 11pm; it was fun to talk to her and share our stories. She told us how the other teams were doing as she'd already visited most of the others.
Now going to bed - Zao tomorrow, whee! Ito-sensei is taking a trip starting tomorrow and will be gone a few days.
Heh, he was funny at the BBQ tonight telling the kids what their Actionary word was - he'd glance at the other boys and whisper all carefully like it was some top secret military code ;D
Must sleep... midnight-o
