Some thoughts

It may take some time to fully understand the reasons for this trip and the events that it has put in motion. Let me mention some of the interesting things we have seen and experienced.

One of the more significant places we visited was a medium sized Shinto shrine near our hotel. Jonathan and I were walking back from church on Sunday when I felt like we should go visit. We walked around a bit, but didn't find anything in English to tell us about it. Once we got back to the hotel and researched it, we found that it houses a deity that is the protector of Tokyo, and maybe the Imperial Palace. On Monday, before we went and prayed at the Imperial Palace, we stopped by this shrine and prayed. We didn't pray *to* the shrine like folks normally do there, but we walked around and prayed to God. I feel that this was significant.


Among other things, we have been reading a lot about the history of Japan. I believe a lot of the history has spiritual significance. I think that by knowing this history and praying accordingly, God's kingdom can be grown more effectively here in Japan.


We had the privilege of hearing the general director of New Life League who spoke about a Christ-centered Manga (Japanese comic book) that they have published. In Japan, teens as well as adults read Manga. The top seller is a 486 page weekly magazine which sells 3.2 million copies every week. This organization has published a couple of Manga which they hope to reach folks who might not otherwise hear the gospel. Manga is also popular in most Asian and many Western countries, so they are distributing them overseas too.

We also heard about mobile phone ministry opportunities. Some stats: 69 million Japanese access the internet on their mobile phones...more than the number of regular PC internet users. The average high school student uses their mobile for 2 hours a day...a lot of it is mobile email use. It is their primary communication tool. Churches are starting to create mobile web sites which will probably end up being used much more than normal web sites.

It has been a good trip. God is good. It was a great blessing to have Jonathan with me. I hope that we will be able to return together sometime in the future. We have many things to pray about for the future of Japan and our role in that. Thank you for all your prayers and your financial support as well.

Jonathan has left the building

Jonathan has started his long trek back home. In addition to missing his valuable friendship over the next couple of days, I'm going to have to rely on my own blogging and photography. He has been doing such a good job. I've been slack and not written anything in a while and taken very few photos. If you've missed his posts, they can be found here on his blog.
After seeing him off on the Airport Limousine Bus (which sounds nicer than it really is), I went and did some laundry. I hope to follow this brief post later today with a longer, more interesting post. We'll see...

Thursday

Thursday morning we relaxed and gave our feet some time to recover. In the afternoon we went to the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association offices at the Ochanomizu Christian Center. Some folks were there working so we pitched in. We helped collate, count pages, and bind the meeting materials for the JEMA 2009 Plenary Session which is next Tuesday.

But more importantly we met some interesting folks and established some friendships. We will be going back to the OCC Monday night for fellowship and Tuesday for the Plenary Session. We normally wouldn't be allowed to attend the Plenary Session without being members, but God worked it out that the President of JEMA was there and since we helped put together the materials, he said we could sit in on the meeting. :) We hope to meet some other missionaries there and build more friendships.

Here are a couple of pictures from the JEMA office. Note the finely bound session materials on the table.

Jonathan's blog

Here's a link to Jonathan's blog about our trip. He has a penchant for writing, so it will probably be a bit more descriptive.

http://xsandos.blogspot.com/

Tuesday and Wednesday

On Tuesday, we spent most of the day at the National Diet Library. We looked at quite a few post-war documents on microfiche. It was quite interesting. I perused the 22 volume set of documents from the Tokyo Tribunals where the war criminals were tried. For dinner, we ate at an English pub.

On Wednesday, we spent some time at the Imperial Palace Plaza praying.



Then we sat on the Yamanote line and rode in a circle around Tokyo and prayed.

After that, we had a lovely lunch at a Italian restaurant.

We spent the whole afternoon at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. (Edo was the former name of Tokyo.)

For dinner we ate at KFC.

We have been doing a lot of walking...my feet and legs are really feeling it. We may spend the morning tomorrow just relaxing/reading in the hotel room.

That's all for now. おやすみ　なさい。

Hillary Clinton's Motorcade

Here is a picture of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade from our 14th floor hotel room. She is in one of the white SUVs.

First Day

On our first day we walked...and walked...and walked. We went by the National Diet building and found an obscure park. In the park was this:



From what I can find it is called the 'benchmark of Japan' and was used as a datum for measuring sea level and position in Japan. The details are sketchy, but I hope to find out more about it later.

We then walked to the Imperial Palace area.







We then took a train to visit a museum, but it was closed. :( We did find a few interesting statues nearby.







I'm still trying to find out why Tokugawa Ieyasu in the picture above is riding on a turtle. I couldn't find anything about that on the Internet.

That's all for now. I hope to provide more interesting posts later. This morning we are heading to a library to do some reading.

We made it!

Jonathan and I are in the hotel after a *long* day of travel. Our travels went extremely smooth...flights were smooth, going through immigration/customs was fast. Praise God! Now we just have to stay up for a few hours so we can get on schedule. We're 14 hours ahead of EST.

The adventure continues...

I and my friend Jonathan are heading to Japan tomorrow! I'll be posting our adventures to this blog over the next 2 weeks. Check back soon!