its been 1 wonderful month of fun. the picspams and blog entries should have informed all of you of this fact (:

its been 1 month of learning. learning random japanese words and hopefully using them at the right times. learning how the pastors and missionaries run their churches. learning to come up with programmes and presentations quickly. learning the way of life in japan – through observations and incessent questions to missionaries/japanese church workers.

there were many challenges too. one definitely being the language barrier which stood between us and most of the people we met. and another being that of living together as a team [usually in relatively small spaces] without actually injuring each other. and the big challenge of what this month is actually doing for us in the long term – when we get back to singapore and normality.

our team has been so blessed by all the people that we met/worked with. we definitely cannot fully describe how hospitable people have been. perhaps some of this is just part of japanese culture but we know that its really been God’s love which has been flowing through all the people we have been meeting. some japanese people gave us gifts despite having met them once only. and the missionaries that we stayed with were just so willing to allow us to be part of their lives. we all really feel so loved by them and we are so grateful. thank you all (:

we are flying back to singapore half-weary from a month of existing out of a suitcase and half-excited from ALL our experiences [individual or group]. dawn and i are landing at about 6pm tmr and andrea is arriving at 825pm. it was a good month (:

here’s a sneak preview

so we went tracting at kinomoto church, in the rural villages with LOTS of mountains! can u imagine that this is what you backyard could look like

and this is the village!

and of course, rice fields

and this is kinomoto station itself!

and the next day, we went to shiga university to a youth meeting! its beauuutiful (NUS can u hear me)

and the very cool bridge along the moat around the school (YES. A MOAT. HOW COOL IS THAT)

yupp, here’s the students we had the prayer meeting with! (this is the number of students from the entire university)

and YO. CHECK. THIS. OUT. they have sheep in their farm in school.

sheep luv me!

and then, on the nest day (5th of june) we had the toddler’s class! these are my favourite boys! they’re yuki and koki and they’re twins!

here’s kouki close up! OMG SOOOOOOO cute! and with japanese pop star hair too

and again!

and yuuki!

and making our father’s day fans!

and we helped julie with her english class too!

yupp and the next day we ate mos burger for lunch!! YUMMM

and check out this super cool car!

and we visited one lady who does her own calligraphy! she’s awesum

and another youth meeting that night! it was fun

and to mama: just in case u didn’t notice my shirt,

haha cause i wore the daddy one on the way here, wanted to wear the mummy one on the way back but couldn’t wait

and on saturday we did kids club! (the girl in blue is really pretty)

and here’s everyone at the singapore festival!

Miho-san helped me tie my yukata bow!

a rare team photo!

and with hannah too (martin’s daughter)

and so, today! our last day in japan!! we went to nagahama church, met sayuko-san and Stein, her hubby

and our friendly pastor

hope u guys having fun in camp!

oodawn

Tues: We went to Kinomoto church to do tracting in the nearby villages…our first real taste of rural Japan after spending a lot of time in the cities. We spent the afternoon exercising our legs along steep slopes (which, embarrassingly, elderly ladies were calmly going up and down) to reach the houses, and getting pounced at by dogs who were only tied by a string (what a way to be martyred ) The villages are mostly full of elderly farmers because the younger ones have moved off to work in the city, and life is hard for them during winter cos they have to shovel snow and stuff by themselves, so even they are starting to move into the cities too.

Kitamura-sensei, the elderly pastor, and his wife Elaine were glad to have us cos they haven’t tracted there for 7 years! Interesting to think that this might be the first time in so long that the villagers there might be hearing about the Gospel. Each village, even if only a few houses, has its own Shinto shrine and Buddhist temple, and the centuries of traditional practice of those religions make it hard for Christianity to make an impact. Kinomoto church serves the entire Ika region of 28 000 ppl, which has 4 towns in which there are abt 7 Christians in total. Really impressed by the zeal Kitamura-sensei and Elaine have, despite there being so few Christians after so long, they’re still praying for everyone in the region to be reached, and climbing up the mountains to tract despite rheumatism!

Wed: Helped out at English classes, and visited Shiga University and attended their prayer meeting during lunch break. Their uni is really big and nice…they have greenhouses and rice fields and SHEEP for the students studying agriculture and environment.

Thurs: More English classes, and also toddlers’ club in the morning, where all the mums bring their toddlers together to play and hear a Bible story.

We have a fully packed rest of the week ahead, so pls pray for strength and energy for this final stretch (:

yes, after my very detailed update, let’s have some more!

disclaimer: MANY more photos, if ur eyes start to whiten out, go look at something green for 30 seconds and come back. and no, barney is NOT green

now that you’re back, LET’S GO KIDS! *high pitched barney voice*

*cue: harp music for reminiscence*

here’s the ever evasive ferris wheel i’ve been trying to take everytime i pass the biwako bridge

here’s the campsite! with the amazingly spread out tatamis (try to find the one tatami that if u remove, EVERYTHING will collapse)

here’s everyone hard at work!

our favourite, very cute sensei who looks like a zen expert!

our very cute jurgen! (hailing from germany)

our youngest okumura sensei! looking very hardworking

martin – our main host missionary

yayy and the next day, we went to a kgk meeting!

this is my new car

the ferris wheel again (from the train)

the petit pancakes and teriyaki burgers from mcdonalds that started it all

st agnes’ school! (which was featured in tegoshi’s drama, my boss my hero!)

with beechoo after the meeting! we all look so oily la =_=||

very nice train design!

me looking pleased that fateful night (before my ordeal began, when andrea first showed evidence of damage)

and so i spent the whole next day lying and groaning in bed with frequent visitations to our dear furcovered toilet bowl

and then on the 29th, i went to the ono school for the first time to help edi out with her english classes!

making kids and teachers try our singapore sarong

playing japanese games with the kids

this is for u lynbean (found this in the sick bay, where i was resting)

this is the factory line that lunch looks like everyday (the students wear white coats thingies and dish out food omg so cool)

this is me hard at work trying to translate our singapore skit

and this was the biggest smile i could manage at the end of the day with me and andrea’s places reversed

so the next day, we just did te same thing again, with diffferent kids

and different teachers

and my cute boy who reads and really reminds of of tegoshi

and all the kids who love us!

but i very stupidly went to eat curry, which just sparked off another whole day of the runs, but then after that i gt a bit better, so edi took us to the mountains! (more mountains!) it should look good, do it right this time!

and the longest roller slide i’ve ever been on (which sparked off ANOTHER day of runs, but thats another story)

nice trickles

the upward climb

to get to here:

the view from the top!

yupp! so then was service (i spent the day in bed, then went to the doctor – have i talked about that yet? anyway i waited really long but only saw him for 5 mins, and he tried to compress my stomach into 5mm thin and then said “ok nothing serious, no tumours, let’s take medicine, ganbarimashou!” =_=) but his medicine worked, now im feeling fine! but this is not the end of the post! BUAHAHAH.

anyway on monday again to the campsite to do work! and edi made us bento boxes!!!!!! my first! (MUMMY I WANT BENTOS WHEN I GET BAAAACK) i bought the bento boxes here!!

watch the tranformation

annd pete’s bento too ^^

ok! thats all for now, i miss u my family!! and the family car!!! i’ve been dreaming of driving you (no i mean literally, i had a dream that i was driving the car!) and i miss u too, my chye tao kway, and roti john, and laksa, and hock hai curry chicken noodle!

oh and brother, how did u do? i hope ur results are okay, tell mummy so she can email me ur results! ^^

nite everybody!!!!

ooooooooooooooodawn

after we went shopping that nigh in kyoto, the next day we went back to the same place to do more shopping! mmm.. and we went with hiroko-san and michio-san! and my Japanese sucks, and hiroko-san only speaks Japanese, so here’s one of our attempts at communication

and of course, we HAD to take another purinkurabu at shinkyogokuu (which has its own song by the way)

and just in case u can’t see our pretty faces, here’s the closeup!

plus lunch at smiley’s! buffet lunch SOOOO yummy

yupp then hiroko-sn brought us to arashiyama! the famous bridge that many movies get shot (or so she told us) so of course we have to have a picture there!

or two

or maybe three

aww how about 4 (we DO love picspams)

so then we went back and ate the japanese version of chap chye peng and i was the only one eating all he liver

then there was gospel choir at night, and i met this really cute girl!

and check out this shirt, first i thought it was the first shirt i’d see with english that really amkes sense with cheem words and everything, but then i changed my mind

so! that was where i left off! the next day, (23 may) we went tracting in the morning! and i found a really cute boy in the playground

then okumura sensei rewarded us with a trip to the mountains! (i’ll let the pics do the talking from here, if they don’t look breathtaking, you’re doing it wrong)

trying to find our way

on the road we saw a monkey!! can u find him?

and we went to the flower garden!

all flowers need light to survive

and all flowers need friendss

not just pink flowers, orange ones too!

hey i wanna be a rock star

lemme hear you scream!

awww our little shelter of love

we miss our bollywood bhangra

and they need sunlight too!

and this is probably as close as we’re gonna get to a nintendo ds

big shrine big shrine

my little bishi-bashi looking boats ( you know the one where u have to help the guy ake a colourful bridge?)

ok this looks more like it

then okumura sensei brought us to the river!! (it only makes me LOOK short)

we is rocks. stronggg

we is seaweed (or we we is supposed to be. although andrea looks like a malay dancer, i look like im playing tiutiutiu and okumura sensei looks like a taichi master)

CONANNNN THE BARBARIANNNN (im planting a flag, if u cant tell by now – perhaps okumura sensei’s stone-ness has distracted you)

this looks like a ship coming out of the mountain! but i dunno what it actually is

and the nice long road which takes us back!

then we went to this very nice tea place! right next to the river, and we ate nice red bean with mochi inside, as well as the japanese equivalent of muah chee!

but we look kinda chaotar there, so

and our spoilt attempt to make a tea advert

and what we originally had in mind

then we went back and made onigiri, my first time! and this is my family! (otoochan and okaachan and me and korkor!) but daddy’s is the only one where u can see the face.. sorry!

our okonomiyaki party!

and there’s kana chan, who’s really gorgeous! i secretly stole a shot of her here, so she doesn’t look her best PLUS she’s stuffing her face with onigiri

here’s the stuff we made with kana’s blue tack thingy

and she very kindly made me an ice cream with her pile of pangsai

yupp! the next day, we practiced for sunda, and went out for dinner by ourselves! found a manga cafe!

this is me chillin during the day, and i kinda look like my shirt

we went to and italian place to eat (cheap food, may i add)

and i tried squid spaghetti for dinner!

and so did jane

yeah baby, we still wanna be rock stars

we went to the nursery to get presents, and i found really cute frogs!

so we bought a plant for okumura sensei, its name is hum chim peng (and we told sensei its a round food thing, hence the face)

then sunday! service time!! our skit during service

and our song

hard at work making agar agar for potluck (we made chicken rice too)

and our veggie

and a plattter that someone else brought

introduction time at lunch

the cross i made of beads in the afternoon!

pictures! with the evening service (i like rikku-chan)

with kaori-san and her family (including kana and rikku)

with hiroko-san and yuriko-san (hiroko-san’s mother, who looks really young!)

and of course, with okumura sensei!

being solemn

ok maybe not so much

we can fly! we can fly! we can fly! (sing along!)

and THIS is what our week actually felt like

starring our ever-handsome pastor

who can be cute

and who took us for ramen! (mmmm)

AND SO ends our journy with raksai church! and there is no more space, so i shall start a new entry! buhaha

anyways..we went to Ono school [where Joanna and Andy study] with Edi. she goes there twice a week to conduct simple english lessons for all of the students. according to her, it really gives her a fantastic position to meet parents and people of her district. we followed along on thursday and friday morning to conduct ‘singapore programmes’ for the grade 3s to 6s. it was 7 sessions in total and we got so good so familiar at it that we could do an impromptu one on friday night. we also taught the students ‘chan mali chan’ and ‘singapura, sunny island’. they were really well-received and Andy came home from school singing it on friday:) Edi had the students prepare simple japanese games – origami, fukuwarai and karuta – to teach us and we were given so many things to bring home..although i foresee that we are not going to actually bring most home…

we had a free day on saturday and we really took a break. we spent the entire day on the house reading and lazing around. Edi, Joanna and the 3 of us went out to visit a mountain later in the evening. there was a slide, a rope climbing thing, a trampoline to play. and we really PLAYED! so much that dawn’s stomach went a little haywire again after that. we saw a really nice waterfall there too:)

and today was really different from what we expected/planned. it was already planned that our team would split for today – 2 members to go to Kyoto Aino church and 1 to stay in Kaori church. dawn and i were supposed to go to kyoto together. but since her stomach decided to be naughty, Pete and Edi decided that it was better if she actually went to see a doc to get to bottom of it all. and soooo…i was supposed to go to kyoto alone!!?? im pretty alright about traveling alone but i cant speak any drop of decent japanese!! so that was really freaky – like what if i happen to get lost..and i cant read road signs to make matters worse. and so Edi came up with the brilliant plan of sending 11 year-old Joanna along with me:) plus Pete wrote up some very detailed directions for us. and yup..so at about 830 this morning, we left the house and made our way to the church. she was such a GREAT help to have around cos she is alot faster at reading train stations and all that. rather weird though cos it was as if she was looking after me. hehs. but we had a really fun time together [from my pov at least] i did a testimony sharing at the church and we stayed for lunch and chit-chat till about 3 and left again for home. the bus swallowed up 390yen of hers though – rather careless of me not to realise the business of buses and change.

it has been a really good week with the Wilsons and Jocelyn. although we were a really difficult team to have since we were all down with bad tummies. but they were really understanding and sympathetic to us. we managed to visit a KGK meeting with Bee Choo and had several meetings in Kaori church. plus the 2 days in Ono school. it still has been pretty well-spent:) apart from too many visits to the toilet. hehs.

as most of you have already heard, our team is officially dying of food poisoning. no actually its just me. DARN YOU, CHEAP TERIYAKI CHICKEN BURGERS FROM MCDONALDS!! yeah sorry to all my avid fans, no picspam today i have no energy to do anything.. yeah i guess on the whole im feeling a lot better just that my stomachs just mumbling incoherently to me. TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT! i think its just been shocked at seeing food after my two days of not eating anything (and for people who know me this is unfathomable) like ‘siew mai! teriyaki chicken balls! long time no see old friends!’ yupp. yeah.. well it all started on that fateful day (two days ago) when we gaily stepped into mcdonalds to check out prices, and we realised the burgers were even cheaper than the convenience store food! (we should have already smelt something fishy) but we naively decided to get burgers and petit pancakes.. and on the way back from our KGK meeting andrea nearly threw up on the bus, and i was busy whipping out all my Saizeriya (this italian eating place) wet tissues which EVERYONE asked me why i kept. and this japanese man offered andrea his packet of tissues in lightning speed. im pretty sure he’s won a competition for that kinda thing. anyway yeah so i was all feeling happy that me and jane were still healthy, and in the middle of the night *cue: thunder and rain* i kenna lao sai and puke x 1298379831 and it lasted the entire day. after many charcoal pills and mysterious japanese medicine from the drugstore next door im feeling much better. the medicine’s really pretty good, i only took it twice and the laosai and puke stopped. yupp.

oh well, so much for my gross updates, just thought u guys might wanna know how much we love fast food now. anyway yeah, if any mcdonalds staff is reading this: BEWARE, YE MCDONALDS OUTLETS! (especially the one at exit 2 at marutamachi station) ONCE I GRASP JAPANESE I SHALL COMPLAIN AND SEND YOU DOWN TO THE DEPTHS OF WORST-HYGIENE-IN-THE-WHOLE-HISTORY-OF-FAST-FOOD-OUTLETS!\

p.s. we’re SURE its macdonalds because anything else we ate, other people ate too and they didn’t get sick.

p.p.s. not to worry, picspam will be up soon, and it’ll be really long, so save up ur eye power for then!

signed off in a mighty vengeful hand,

oodawn

Jane and Andrea are largely fine as claimed by Jane. (Yes, I really hope this is the case.) Dawn is the one who is suffering most from this,  but is on her road to recovery! (I really wonder what did they eat?? Sounds really bad.) She’s now resting at their previous accomodation which is 10 minutes away from where Jane and Andrea currently are at – means they are separated. (Please pray for their health and safety.)  

Bonnie hopes that all will be well soon. And that they will be genki enough for the activities that are laid out before them!

Well, lets not worry but pray!

PS: They wont be blogging as often because there is no internet connection.

we attended raksai church’s own gospel choir practice session on thursday night. we knew most of the songs this time and warm ups included semi-aerobics sort of exercises. it was alot of fun singing the songs (:

on friday, we did tracting around the neighbourhood in the morning. sinseh brought us leftover japanese curry rice for our lunch and off we went to visit the mountains (: it was really really pretty! literally have-mountian-and-have-water. i saw loads of stuff which i have learnt about in tourism but hmm..i guess no one would be really interested. hehs.

 
and i think that is kyoto (:

this brings to mind – same same but different. a friend has a shirt that says this

singaporeans meeting [story book] ducks for the 1st time. and one was caught chasing the ducks into the pond. identity of the above mentioned singaporean shall not be disclosed..

we came back to the church to help hiroko-san to prepare onigiri for dinner later. we have really unpracticed hands and our triangles were either falling apart or looking rather mis-shapened. it was okonomiyaki [hope i spelt it correctly] for dinner with the church members. sort of a welcome dinner for the 3 of us and henrietta. there was so much food including some super duper yummy yaki-soba. we are all growing fat here!! dawn will picspam these photos soon.

and today.. we set out for tracting again but it started raining quite heavily so we went back to the church. and it has been prep for tmr’s programme for the entire day. we are doing a short mime and presenting “in Christ alone” – the hymn version. dawn was entrusted the ardous task of translating the words into japanese while andrea and i were practising the actions over and over and over again. we must have sang the song at least 30 times. we shall see tmr [actually later today] if all the practice pays off.

and off now for more practice again..toodles everyone (:

But during team debrief yesterday as we reflected on what was the purpose of having such a relaxed week, we realised that it has in no way been “wasted”. Guess as Singaporeans we tend to be very kancheong and feel like we must get things done all the time:P Yet these few days have been a great time of simply experiencing Japanese culture (and food heh) and beginning to observe the needs and issues that people here face: as we walk past the pachinko parlours and arcades that people lose themselves in after work, as our tracts are ignored by stressed businessmen rushing to the office, as we see the funkily dressed Japanese youths hanging out in Shinkyogoku. Japan is so advanced that there seems to be something to meet every physical need (toilets that play the sound of running water to cover up undignified noises?!) and yet as Richard put it, there is still an emptiness in people’s hearts that they are trying unsuccessfully to fill. Henrietta, a British missionary we met, said that loneliness has come to be accepted by many in Japan as being natural and unavoidable, which is really sad.

Another interesting thing we experienced is the Kyoto Praise of Grace gospel choir! Never thought I’d be singing gospel music in Japan but we joined the ~25 member choir for their practice on Tues and it was really really fun, with everyone belting out the songs, swaying and snapping their fingers! Apparently only 3 of the members are actually Christians though, the rest are there because they enjoy the music and socializing. Makes you wonder how they can go for like 3 years singing “Let’s praise the Lord together” (their theme song) and never think about the meaning of what they’re singing though. Guess we can only pray that in time they will come to know Christ through the music they sing…

Haha and now they think our team can sing and want us to do a song and mime this Sun service. Pls pray for good ideas, that we’ll be able to come up with something that can connect with the congregation!