Saturday, September 29, 2012, Rick Seely (tour guide), Marie Schraven, Ginny Blair and I went to Tokyo. Rick, Marie and I met at CAJ at 8 a.m. in the morning and left to pick up Ginny.
Ginny, Marie, Rick & Winnie
Our first stop after picking up Ginny was at McDonald's. Always a good place to go for a good cup of coffee.
McDonald's Coffee
Rick took us to the Shinjuku Towers. There is an observation deck on the 45th floor that gives a good overall picture of Tokyo and its size. It is a very large city. When I went to look at population numbers, there are some discrepancies, primarily because larger cities border right with Tokyo such as Yokohama are or are not included. With these included the population is somewhere between 37 and 38 million people. If you just include the Tokyo prefecture, the population is about 13.5 million people.
Towards Mt. Fuji (see it in the background?)
East
Towards Tokyo Bay
Looking West
Neighboring buildings with interesting architecture
In some senses, Tokyo is like any other large city in the world. I was taken a-back when I would hear English speaking people. In Higashikurume (where CAJ is) or Kiyose (where I live), if anyone speaks English, it is probably someone I know or associated somehow with CAJ. 😊 Tokyo is very diverse. There are people who are dressed in various fashions.
Shibuya Girls and some random tourists
Some women in traditional dress and modern dress
One of my personal highlights was to see the Chu-Ken Hachikō statue by the Shibuya Station. Have you seen the movie Hachi: A Dog's Tale? The Shibuya Station is where the dog waited for his owner every day. It is a popular meeting place.
We were able to enter many buildings with varying architecture. That did strike me as very interesting since many of the buildings are required to meet earthquake codes. I ended up taking over 80 pictures, but cannot put them all on here, so if you wish, you can go to www.flickr.come/photos/wlangelaar to see many of my other pictures and places I went to visit. It was another reminder that there are many, many people living in Japan but only about 1% of the population in Japan are Christians (I found conflicting numbers, some up to 3%, still a small amount), which means we may be in a country that has many modern conveniences, but the spreading of God's Word is still very important!
Friday, September 28, 2012
IKEBUKURO
There have been some who have mentioned that it does not seem too busy. I live in Kiyose, which is a little way outside of downtown Tokyo. For those of you who live in Maryand, it is like living in Olney, Maryland, outside of Washington, DC. For those of you who are familiar with Vancouver, BC, it would be like living in Abbotsford, BC in relation to Vancouver, BC.
Ikebukuro (This was not one of the busier intersections)
A little over a week ago, Brian, Bette and I did take the train down to Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro would be like going down to Dupont Circle, if you lived in Maryland, and New Westminster if you lived near to Vancouver. I didn't fully get a good picture of the volume of people that were there on a Sunday evening, but needless to say there were a lot of people walking, and bicycling would be very difficult.
It was quite loud with a lot of commotion going on. I took a bit of a video, however it really was taken more for the sound rather than the visual. Have a short 10 section listen. It sounds busy, doesn't it?
I have not gone to downtown Tokyo yet, but the plan is for a trip in on Saturday, Sept. 29th. A person from the staff enjoys being tour guide and plans to take us downtown, via the train. I am looking forward to that experience.
Veggies in the pot and meat on the tray waiting to be cooked.
There were two sauces a teriyaki and a soy sauce with a small bowl of rice. The tray on the left had udon noodles.
Friday evening we celebrated a significant zero number birthday for one of the staff members from CAJ. We went out to eat at a restaurant that serves shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu is basically where you get a pot with water and seaweed and put it on a gas burner. You heat up the water and then put in the veggies, meat and noodles to cook as you wish to eat them. Apparently it is appropriate to eat the vegetables and meat and end with the noodles. There are can be variety of sauces that you dip the veggies, meat and noodles. It was my first time having this and it actually tasted quite good.
Runners waiting at the starting line.
Saturday was another good day. Bette and I took our bicycles and went to a cross country meet that CAJ had some Middle and High School participants. We ended up helping with inputting into a computer program the student's number and the their place at the finish line. We did four different races.
Bette and I were preparing ourselves for the runners when finished.
After the races were finished, we bicycled along the Tama River and on to Costco to pick up a few things. We ended up bicycling past the US Yokota Air Base. It was interesting that the stores in that area catered to the American culture, selling a number of American style items and restaurants with humburg. We also passed a number of plots of land where gardens were being grown. Here is a tea field.
Tea field in what seems like the middle of a commercial area.
We ended up bicycling for approximately 80 kilometers. There were occasions on the bicycle ride that Bette and I could chat, but much of the time we rode single file. That allowed me to look around at the scenery, relax and pray. The following are a couple of pictures of the scenery along they way. The last picture is of a Buddhist statue not far from home. That is a reminder to me to continue to pray for Japan and its people.
You wouldn't believe where I was last evening! A baseball game! I went with Brian and Bette to watch the Saitama Seibu Lions play the Chiba Lotte Marines. It was quite exciting! Attending a baseball game in Japan is not really like going to a baseball game in Canada or the US. The feel is more like going to a football (soccer for your North American folks) game. There's a lot of chanting/cheering. For each inning, the visitors and the home team fans would alternate. If the visitors were up to bat, their fans would be chanting/singing. I think there were certain chants for each player that went to up to bat, but I'm not quite sure. Once there were three out and the home team went up to bat, the home team fans would do the chanting and singing. These baseball players are of the Major League caliber. Some of these players do end up playing in the MLB in the US/Canada.
At the top of the 7th inning, the visitor team fans would blow up these balloons and release them all at the same time. During the middle of that inning, the home team fans did the same. It was quite the sight! There were young girls walking around with these mini-kegs on their back trying to sell you beer. There were also people walking around with bowls of soup or rice. There was even a Kentucky Fried Chicken booth there. A great adventure!
Here is some video of what watching a game is like!
I have been attending Kurume Bible Fellowship on Sunday mornings. It is an English speaking church where many of the staff from Christian Academy in Japan attend. I have enjoyed worshiping there and of course do know a few people, which is helpful. The first Sunday of every month we have Communion, so today was kind of special. I pray that I may be continually be challenged spiritually.
