Sunday, June 26: Japanese birds are noisy.

I was awakened at 4:30am with the awful noisy calls of stupid birds.  Luckily, my mad skills of sleeping anywhere anytime allowed me to fall back asleep until my alarm went off.  Poor Madelyn could barely sleep but luckily we had some free-time this afternoon for her to rest and me to blog!
I showered this morning, nothing too crazy once I figured out which kangi symble meant more hot and which meant less hot for the water.  Since our room is an old classroom the shower is in a different building and is normal-ish size.  However, the bathroom is the perfect size for a 5 year old:

Left: our beds. I'm on the bottom with the curtains.
Center: bathroom door is kinda hiding.
Right: green lit sign marks the door to our room.



The other half of our room.

We were told to be ready to leave for church at 8:30am but nobody actually came to get us until 9, which was VERY concerning and kinda frustrating since we have no way to communicate with anybody.  We felt very hopeless but finally Minako arrived and said she was late which made me feel better to know it wasn't a mistake due to miscommunication.  She drove us to the church which is across the street from a shopping mall kind of deal.  It's 3 stories high and has lots of shops in it like starbucks, arcade, grocery store, dollar store, department store, etc.


Wigs!



Minako and I with our coffee!

We got starbucks for breakfast (yay coffee!) and then Minako showed us around the different levels.  Next Sunday we will have an hour or so before church to explore and shop some.  In the middle of the mall was a random set-up display thing.  Minako said sometimes it's dancers or musicians or special item for advertisement.  But today it was hair pieces.  Lots of hair pieces.  I thought it was so..."unique" (aka strange) so I had to take a picture. 

(sidenote: a fly keeps chilling on my knee.  i don't want it there.  somebody come kill it for me!)

Their church of about 20-30 people began with lots of singing in awkwardly high keys.  I recognized a few songs thanks to hymns sings with my Free Methodist relatives!  Then there was a song directed towards the kids, the song was repeated using each child's name and that kid would "twinkle" (which seemed more like spirit fingers to me).  Then of course, since Madelyn and I are guests we got to have our turn "twinkling" as it was sung to "Madelyn Sensei and Emely Sensei".  Yeah, apparently that's how I spell my name now :)  After singing, a lady with an animated voice told the kids a story and then they left for snack time.  Then Minako's brother (I don't know his name) read random bible verses for what seemed to be forever!  Majelyn Nishimura (Minako's sister-in-law) tried to help us follow along but they skipped around so quickly with no apparent theme that I was very confused.  Finally, Pastor Nishimura got up to speak for maybe 5 minutes.  I wish I could understand Japanese because he spoke on Genesis 3:15 which I thought was an odd choice of verse on which to focus a sermon.  The church service ended with Madelyn and I introducing ourselves and the congregation singing "welcome to Japan" to the tune of the happy birthday song.  It was great!
I'm pretty sure the bathrooms here will forever confuse me.  The flushing handle can be turned 2 directions but I don't know which kangi means what.  So I alternate :)  At the church, when I flushed the toilet, it turned on the sink for 5 seconds and that was that.  There was no other way to turn on the sink so yay for hand sanitizer!
After church, we ate a curry rice and biwa fruit lunch with the congregation and they got to interview us with questions like:
- do you have a boyfriend and was he okay with you coming to Japan?  Eric, I told them you were okay with it...you are, aren't you? ;)
- what do your parents do? They thanked you, Mom, for teaching Japanese people English
- what souveniers are you looking to buy? Daddy, I told them about finding you Anpanman toys :)
- were you afraid to come to Japan after the earthquake?  BTW apparently there was a mini earthquake here this morning but I slept through it and Madelyn didn't feel it even though she was awake



Kids singing at church



Me and some curry rice



After lunch, Majelyn took us to Keiko Kohara's home for an orientation.  Probably not the best thing to do when dealing with so much jet lag but hopefully I'll retain most of the information!  After that Minako took us grocery shopping which was VERY overwhelming as the store was huge and crowded and (big surprise) everything is in Japanese!  As we left I couldn't help but wonder if people got bored when they shopped because in one area of the shopping center square surrounding the parking lot was this:  

A giant ferris wheel!

Now we're back at our "home".  Madelyn is napping.  I'm blogging.  Minako will be here in a bit to take us to dinner with her parents, Pastor Shin and his wife Keiko Nishimura..........Two and a half hours later and I'm back here finishing up today's blog.  The dinner ended up being with some extended family and friends celebrating some of them turning 70.  It was a 4 course meal consisting of a weed-like salad, cold pumpkin soup that I tried and then "was done", steak, and ice cream.  Eric!  The steak was delicious, a little more rare than I would have chosen but you would have loved it!  I would have saved you some but it wouldn't have still been good in 7 weeks...so I ate it all :)  The Japanese people talked and TALKED which is why it took forever to get back "home".  I left my camera chip in the computer from earlier blogging so no pictures from dinner.  Favorite part: Pastor Sin's (pronounced Shin) laugh. People make fun of my laugh for it literally being a loud ha-ha-ha-ha etc. Well, his laugh is a soft heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.  It's adorable so I don't know why people think my laugh is strange :)
Goodnight Sunday...tomorrow I start Kindergarten!

Prayer requests:

- Energy and stamina

- Patience for dealing with communication complications since we don't know the language

- Comprehension and mental awareness

- Calmness not to be stressed out by all our duties (I didn't think we'd be expected to do much more than assisting the teachers but if I understood the orientation correctly, we are teaching soon?  Ahh I don't know!)