Tokyo draft

Now I hope that nobody's angry at me for not telling stories about Japan sooner, there is a very valid reason for that. And I'm still sticking to my once-a-week routine, so it's all good.

Anyway... we arrived in Tokyo on Monday evening after a decent 9-hour flight, during which we got no food or TV... I didn't mind really, I was able to sleep through most of it, which I found very impressive. So we had our first meal on Japanese soil at the airport, in McDonald's, right next to a sushi restaurant... I mean come on! We're in Japan for goodness sake! However, getting food fast seemed to be priority over fine dining, so we went for the easiest choice. The meal was followed by an hour of traveling by train to Senzoku where our home for the 2 weeks is. It was about 11PM by the time we got to the Senzoku station where Derick, our host and fellow YWAMer welcomed us and took us to the house. The house is decent size, basically a narrowish two storey house with a big kitchen, a sitting room and a bathroom and a toilet downstairs, and 4 bedrooms upstairs (plus Derick's room which is basically a little closet). You can fit about 20 people to live in this house as all the floorspace is reserved for futons. Me and Jess had a deal to kneel down to open the sliding doors as the Japanese do, having to kneel down and get up again about 10 times a day. It worked out for a day, till it got too cold... Anyway, after getting to the house we all just crashed. It was freesing cold at night but luckily there were some extra blankets in the cupboard in our room, or else I think I would've died...

So the first morning was rather pleasant. Sun was out and though we had nothing to eat for breakfast everybody seemed very refreshed and happy. Derick took us to a grocery store which was an adventure in itself. The Japanese sell the weirdest food. The veggie and fruit section was tiny, instead hey had a never ending selection of nuudles, rice, fish, bacon etc. Lots of weird dried stuff, like fish and squid and mushrooms and stuff. So many times we found something dodgy-lookin and had to get Koji to tell us what the heck it was, cos obviously we didn't understand what it said on the wrapper... After lunch (noodles) the director of YWAM Tokyo, David McDaniel, came by to get to know us and talk a little about Japan. He's an amazing dude, one of the funniest guys I've ever met. In the evening we went to a Ywam meeting in senzoku. There weren't that many people but it was still nice.

I honestly don't even remember the order of the rest of the stuff that has happened this week. It isn't much so I guess it doesn't matter. Sometime on wednesday the heaters in our house run out of kerosine. The temperature outside being less than 5 degrees, and the house having no isolation, the temperature indoors dropped down quite remarkably and it ended up beeing colder than inside our fridge... This went on till today when Derick finally went and bought some kerosine (usually this one dude comes and fills the heaters, but apparently he was unable to come this time...) So now the one in the kitchen works, which now feels like frikkin luxury. Coming from 35 degrees in Oz to 5 degrees was not a pleasant experience. Feeling frozen down to my bones even just staying inside the house made me very reluctant to go anywhere outside it. But we did our best to do something every day even though our schedule has been almost empty. On wednesday we led worship at this youth meeting which was very nice. The youth seemed very grateful for our different kind of worship than what they're used to. One guy came up to Josh to thank him and said he hadn't been to a worship session like that in years. It was good to feel like we were actually doing something useful after a day of loitering in town. We went to Shibuya, which is one of the big stations in Tokyo. We found a H&M, the largest one I've ever seen (on the outside, it was like a massive skyscraper), and on the inside it looked more like zara than H&M. But it was expensive. I could pretty much tell what garments would've been 10 or 20 euros in Finland, here they were 10-5 euros more expensive. And I didn't really need any more clothes (or so I thought at the time).

After the H&M experience we started lookin for a place to eat lunch in. Now trying to find a cheap lunch restaurant for 8 people in Tokyo at lunchtime is NOT an easy task. After wandering back and forth, being cold and tired and hungry, I was about to snap at anyone who came too close. I was very close to punching Nick in the face for making stupid comments about me. Finally we managed to find a place, though the servings were so expensive that we had to share a dish between two people. But it ended up being just enough and we all left for home happy and fed.

Thursday and friday we had nothing to do, which was hard for me cos of the nagging voice in my head that keeps saying that we're wasting time. I'm sure it's not the Holy Spirit cos He'd never be so mean. But it's hard when you know you're on a mission and fell like all the other teams are probably being all creative and seeing God move in magnificent ways, while we're just sitting in a pile trying to keep warm. I know comparing is a dangerous path to go and I'm trying my best to avoid it. And hopefully the weather will get better, and our schedule busyer.

Despite the fact that we had no scheduled activity for thu or fri we still did our best to do something. On Thursday we went to see the Meiji Shrine. It was pretty creepy going to a place that we knew as heavily spiritual. I didn't really feel it too bad, though I did sense some kind of heaviness over the place. Mostly I think I was just freakin out because I knew that there were demons all over the place, rather than because I felt them. Some of our guys, however, felt chest pain and whatnot, and Jess wouldn't even enter the main shrine. I kept praying in tongues the whole time, maybe that's why I didn't feel anything... From the Shrine we continued to the famous Yoyogi park right next to the shrine. We prayed over the place where we knew we'd be playing on sunday. It was all good fun despite the cold and the rain and I felt like our team got a little closer. In the evening we watched tropic thunder and ate weird Japanese snacks while trying to stay warm under our blankets in a room colder than our fridge.

On friday we were a little more puzzled about what to do. In the morning we played with ideas but none of them seemed to work, so we waited till lunch, after which we went to Sibuya with a couple of guitars and a djembe. Me and Jess went to starbucks while the guys tried busking on the side of the station. 15 minutes later they came to us saying that the cops had told them not to play there or anywhere else in Shibuya. So they went to look for another place while me and Jess stayed in starbucks. about a half an hour later the guys came back again. They hadn't really found a place to play at, but some girls had asked them to be topless models at Abercombie&Fitch. The guys's self-esteem weas through the rough, though I'm pretty sure that anyone who's tall and white and lives in Tokyo will be asked to that job... so anyway we went home for dinner (amazing homecooked okonomiyaki) and then early to bed cos on saturday we had to wake up early.

So today, saturday, we woke up at 5:30 so that we'd be at Yoyogi park in time for the homeless ministry that a local church runs. There were about 50 homeless people already waiting when we came. The church had an abundance of food to give this time, but first they had a service for the homeless before giving out the food. I didn't really like this kind of ministry, forcing hungry people to listen to a message before they can get food. But we tried to go along with it and it wasn't too bad. Steven gave a cool testimony and we helped to give out hot drinks to the people. It was zero degrees and raining this weird icy snow, and I towards the end I thought I was gonna die, I was so cold. But we went to McDonald's to have breakfast and melt a little. After going to this printing place to print out fliers about our gig(on friday) and buying more clothes for ronnie we left for home, where we found the heater in the kitchen working! A happy happy happy surprise.

So this is how we're doing atm. Tbh I'm really struggling with not having any "real outreach stuff" to do, though I don't even know what that means. I guess I still have no clue whatsoever about what the heck I'm actually here for. We seem to be falling slowly into this weird coma where everyone uses all their energy to stay warm and nobody's being creative, including me. It's hard, it's really hard, and it's definitely a part of spiritual warfare against us. I just don't know how to fight the cold that seems to drain all life force out of me. If you have any creative ideas on what we could do with our time or how we could fight this ever growing apathy, please let us know. Fortunately next week seems to have a little more content to it, so it should be all good. Keep us in your prayers, pray especially for warm weather!! Arigato.