More on the title later.

Yesterday, conference ended. We were sad. We said goodbye to the kids, the missionaries, the wonderful food. Oh the food….

We got a bus to the airport, LOOK! PEOPLE WHO WILL HURT ME SHORTLY. ASLEEP.

We said goodbye to the other missionaries again, sat in the airport for a few hours, said goodbye to the same missionaries who happened to be at the same departure gate, and got on our plane south, out of Hokkaido. We arrived at the guest house last night, and slept a glorious sleep. So yesterday was pretty much travel and tears.

We are now in TOKYO.

Its a big place. With a really complicated train and subway network:

 

Getting from the bottom left of that map to the top right takes about 7 trains. 7! Thats more than you can get in the entirety of northern ireland!

Anyway, we’ve done a few things today, from walking through Tokyo to a decent sized park:

<Image removed by request from someone who thinks they look like a house but actually doesn’t. Silly person who shall remain nameless.>

Walking. Its what we do. Go walking.

 

 

 

 

We then went on a water taxi over to the district where a Buddhist temple is to see it.

The Buddhist temple has a street leading up to it covered in shops selling what can only be described as Touristy things. It was incredibly busy, but there were virtually no queues in any of the shops…

Then we arrived at the temple. We did not like the temple. I took many photos, but I think describing it would be better.

The building is quite large, about the size of a regular church back home, red and black in traditional japanese structure, and a set of steps going up to the main entrance. Outside are 2 long buildings with windows for people to sell things from, like fortunes and possibly specific prayers. Theres also a pit of burning something, that people were rubbing the smell on themselves. There were many statues of Buddha and various other statues scattered around the building.

Upon reaching the temple itself you’re pretty much struck by one thing. The sound of money rattling down into the offering system. It is nonstop, and drowns out the noise from the throng of people in the quite large outer chamber room. The inner room appeared to be quieter but much more exclusive.. One team member compared it to the sound of slot machines in Vegas. Inside the temple itself was another stall selling things, like those outside.

We did not feel comfortable.

Some of us felt the urge to leave immediately. Some felt the urge to tell them what we believe, but couldn’t. Others just felt a bit sick. Personally I took one step inside and left immediately. I don’t know why, I just did not continue into the building, even though I’d been taking a lot of photos of everything. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to pass any further in after seeing the stall inside the temple. It was all a disconcerting experience for all of us I think.

So much so that James did try to use the right vending machine out of these 2 while it was like this:

He got his water. After the guy handed it to him, with his change.

After this (and buying some of the souvenirs some of you lovely people will be getting from us) we decided to pop over to the Electric Town. Or, as it has been put, “That place Dave will like”.

 

They were pretty correct with that statement, though the prices are weird here, Sony is more expensive, Apple is cheaper. Very Strange. Without the ridiculous markup in the UK, a macbook air is actually a reasonable price.

We then had Chinese food and came back tot he guest house. We are now in bed. Well, by the time anyone gets tot his point I will be.

😀

Dave – James also broke a plate. Hence the title. I forgot to put that in there.

 

 

Today was very similar to yesterday, complete with the other guys getting naked together, and im knackered so the blog isn’t much tonight.

Here’s some photos from the week that didn’t fit elsewhere to sate your appetite:

This could be a magazine cover for short term missions. “Look at the happy smiley people you could hang out with or be!”

Robbie called Sarah up to do some stretches for the start of day warm up. She’s a ballerina. He clearly isn’t.

This was sitting on the tables for lunch. We assumed it was a coffin for a large rat…

…until we were brave enough to open it and realise it was a treasure trove of goodies:

If you have a fear of ducks this isn’t gonna help:

And a couple for someone in particular who apparently reads this and gets annoyed when I don’t post, to the point of texting her daughter to remind me. Hello! Here’s a pic of Flic:

And a slightly more ridiculous one…

That’s all for now!

We’ll be in Tokyo for the next blog, it’s our last few hours with the kids tomorrow, hopefully it’s a brilliant few hours.

Dave – Totally not naked. The other guys are though. Definitely. If this mental image isn’t lodged in your head I’m clearly not trying hard enough.

Yesterday’s blog got lost between the publish and delete buttons. 🙁 sorry!

Today’s will make up for it, hopefully. Yesterday we had our first full day with the kids, 3 hours in morning of a program, 3 hours In the afternoon of games, and an hour and a half in the evening of something else.

In the morning we introduced the theme properly, Jump for joy, and the topic, Paul and Philippi, and began bonding with the kids.

They’re very smart, and very capable. We also played many games, and Drew chatted to monkey again. (He’s not dead. His uncle, however, was ripped apart by a lion)

We went to the local park and the kids happily ran around for an hour in the baking sun while the rest of us struggled to move. One kid ran round a rugby pitch 6 times!

That evening after another glorious dinner we watched Shrek, and Drew gave a short talk that compared donkey to Jesus… I may need to listen more. Fun fact, Shrek was released before most of the kids were born. Feel old?

The other guys on team then got naked again.

This morning was more of the same as yesterday, with us discussing Philippians 2, and making Christmas decorations, as Paul mentions Jesus coming to earth, and we Thought we’d have a Christmas party this evening too. We played various games to Christmassy music, and had a short message from Drew.

This afternoon I slept. It was glorious.

Photo attachments on this device are awkward so here’s a bunch of photos from the last few days:

Dave – now confused about Christmas. It’s 30 degrees, the weather is far from frightful! Unless…You’re a snowman…. Hmmmm….

Today, we finally made it to the hotel where we’re doing our kids work. I’ve struggled to find wifi today, and have only just gotten one of my many devices connected via a tether to the one device I have that will actually connect to the Internet here.

There’ll be no photos on this blog due to the aforementioned problems, if I can get more charge in my phone there’ll be many photos tomorrow.

We left Sapporo after tidying our apartment this morning, after making even more decorations under the strict guidance of Amy. We travelled with a missionary couple who filled us in with their missionary story on the way, they’d a very varied life, though had mostly been in Japan since the 80s.

Upon arriving at the hotel we discover it was very well placed beside a river and pretty idyllic. seriously wish I had photos for this bit… We also discovered the very traditional Japanese room we’d be staying in, complete with no beds, only futon style mats.

And a super famicom, aka, the Super Nintendo.

🙂

Hopefully I don’t waste too much time on that…

We decorated our halls, like you can see here… Wait no. Maybe tomorrow…

It’s so warm here that we’ve turned the air-conditioning up as cold as it will go, and don’t really want to leave the room.

We attended the first conference session and introduced ourselves to the missionaries who’s kids we’d be looking after, then taking the kids for half an hour (supposed to be 15 minutes…) and played some random kids games with them. We acquired a new team member, Sarah Grace who has become the girl of the inseperatable names, as most of the team cannot just say Sarah and have to use her full name, due to an email miscommunication a while back. It’s getting awkward.

We had a massive dinner, words cannot express the choice on offer, and pictures aren’t available so use your imagination and picture lots of fried things, rices, noodles and cakes.

We then had another 2 hour session with the kids, playing yet more games, breaking my voice again, and making Robbie and Philip take the kids for piggy back rides. Running. (There’s Karen’s voice again…) Drew took out Monkey and told a story that ended with him getting eaten. It was pretty grim. I’m wondering how he’s gonna come back tomorrow after being eaten by a lion…

The kids are great, appear to be pretty smart, and it’s great to see each other working hard on what we’d been planning for months. Some of the kids cannot sit still or be quiet for more than a few minutes, but that’s normal… Right?

A key problem I’ve seen is some of the kids that don’t speak English are struggling. They look pretty bored and struggle to participate in games. We only have one interpreter and she can’t work with all the kids at the same time, so it could become a bigger problem.

I dunno where the girls are, but the other guys are enjoying some quality time together. Some quality naked time. Yup. They’re up on the roof, in one of the hotel baths with many other men being naked and wet.

Apparently it’s an awesome experience.

Tomorrow sees the start of our program proper. Hoping for some good fun with the kids and no awkward questions about how monkey survived today.

Time to sleep on the floor!

Dave – Hoping you used your imagination for everything but the bit about the guys being naked.

The bugs have found us. Well, they’ve found Heather and Flic, both suffering with multiple bites. I’m assuming there’s a common theme of slight gingerness in what the bugs like to eat. Hoping the specks of ginger in my beard don’t make me their next target.

Today, we went to the Lifehouse church, Helen’s church in Sapporo. The girls got dressed up in Kiminos:

 

During the service I played the flute, Philip presented a gift to the church, and Helen translated the message for us. It was a pretty different experience, where the Pastor gave out some notes (in both english and japan) and we followed along, as he added points and explained the notes. It kinda helped in following the message better. We then had this photo taken with the Church:

We had a barbeque for lunch! From pigs guts to Lamb, we ate lots and chatted to some of  the members. They were very nice people, one conversation that stood out was with a police officer, who proceeded to lift a 23 month old child in one hand well into the air, as far as he could above his head. Then repeated it with his 3 yr old. And then his 6 yr old. I could hear Karen Jardine’s voice in my head yelling “CHILD PROTECTION” and just ignored it.

This was good brilliant food, and Robbie noticed them putting some sort of spice on top of it. He declared it glorious and wondered why we didn’t have it, going on and on about the wonder spice… he finally asked Helen and found out what the magical spice was:

Salt and pepper.

He and Philip have now bought a few cartons of the prepared mix…

We then went to Helen’s and prepped some of our stuff for the next few days, like a pair of massive glasses and streamers.

Thats right, Flic. Scroll down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helen has a quilt that was made by the women and a few of the men (apparently, we’ll have to ask Drew) from Bloomfield, Felicity, Amy, and Philip found their grandparents on it:

We’ve now come back to the guest house and started on finishing off our decorations and craft for tomorrow, fueled by our third trip to get Pot Noodles. They’re MUCH better here. Like most foodstuffs.

Tomorrow we travel to the Hotel for the Conference,
meet the majority of the kids,
and start our program.
But now I have powerpoint words to type up.

Totally didn’t mean to type that as a verse.

Dave.

…not like we did after travelling though. Now we smell kinda like death.

This lovely guy was greeting us at our first stop for the day, Hell Valley. Its a few hours outside of Sapporo, but has some pretty interesting geological features. It was a volcano that pretty violently became a valley. Continue reading →

The Title will make sense eventually.

So we arrived about 24 hours ago, baggage and everyone intact. First thing we did after 34 hours of travel wasn’t shower, wasn’t sleep, wasn’t unpack…

Nope

We went to McDonalds.

Best. McDonalds. Ever.

The Chicken Burger was epic, and actually appeared to be real chicken. Flic was VERY happy they had Double Quarter Pounder Cheeseburgers. The fries actually filled the larger fries box. So good, and some of us bought this random pink thing.

It was gross, and looked kinda like wallpaper paste wrapped in marshmallow.

We then slept a glorious sleep in the OMF Guest House, until 2 of the guys decided to get the giggles at 8 am. There was almost an Incident. Fortunately we all lived, and visited OMF International Sapporo HQ, where the Japanese Language Center is.

We saw how people are introduced to the language and culture, and played a random totally unfair game. Yes, we lost, but the rules were deliberately biased against us. Or the only Boardgaming Geek would’ve won.

Following this we went and wandered around Sapporo for a few hours, meeting Chiaki (I only know how to spell this as she just added us on Facebook), a lovely Japanese girl from Helen’s church, climbed the TV tower and giving a brilliant view of most of the city.

We then had some traditional Japanese meaty, omelette, sharing pancake things, which Chiaki came very handy in explaining. They were very nice, though we probably ate too much. And may have given ourselves food poisoning. Though it involved Squid, the greatest of the Cephalopods! If you think its an Octopus you’re obviously wrong for so many reasons I can’t get into.

 

Then we wandered back to the subway stopping at a petstore to stare at the PUPPIES.

The subway was pretty full… though I expect this was nothing compared to what Tokyo Subways will be.

A few of the girls went and got icecreams, including this:

Yes it was sweetcorn flavoured. And thus, most of the team is playing Jungle speed, so I’m looking up what number to call for an ambulance…

Dave: The designated emergency caller.

Today, me, and 7 other crazy people left for Japan.

I’m typing this on the second plane we’ve been on today… It was an interesting journey getting here. There’s no wifi so the timeline might seem a bit odd.

Personally I didn’t sleep last night, could’ve been the anticipation, could’ve been the indigestion from the large pizza James and I ate the night before. Probably the second. It was regretted. Good pizza though.

Anyway, we got up at 4 and left for Dublin airport at 5, in the church minibus. We decided to avoid risk of silly traffic and leave 5 hours before we needed to be there. Of course there was no silly traffic and we arrived before check in had even opened for the SAS flight, at about 7 o’clock.

Our flight was scheduled for 11.05 so we had breakfast and began the long process of waiting. After check in and security, we discovered the flight was delayed by 2 hours… Then around 11, it was cancelled.

We went to our gate, stopping for a brief prayer, and an SAS employee informed us where to go.

And thus began the event now known as the Dot-Matrix queue. So called because the desk where flights were rebooked used a very slow dot matrix printer, and, of course it took about an hour to get through, and we were very close to the start of the queue.

We found out our flights were rescheduled to different airlines via Munich. As you can imagine, the delay to our separately booked connecting flight in Tokyo was… problematic, and we’ll have to claim off insurance to get the fee we had to pay for changing our flight to sapporo back.

Turns out this was the lesser problem.

We arrived at checkin for our first flight in our redirected route and were given quite mixed signals about our baggage. 4 of us were told it would be waiting for us in Tokyo, the other 4 were told we’d have to check it in again in Munich after baggage claim. After some discussion we eventually got onto our later 4.20 flight to Munich. One team member was not exactly taking this well, dehydration, tiredness, and lack of food didn’t help.

We had about an hour in Munich to get baggage, get checked in again, and get to the other side of the airport. Munich is a BIG airport. We were geared up for a sprint to collect the 4 bags and get to check in, and actually hit German soil running… Into a closed door. In a glass cage. In 33 degree heat. So, after a few minutes the doors opened, and chaos ensued. We ran. Robbie shoulder barged an old lady. We continued running… Into a nice German man from AVA holding our flight number and destination on it.

We stopped running.

And thanked God. There was now way we could’ve known where to go and where our baggage was without this guy, and we’re still not quite sure who told him to actually go there, we didn’t expect this help from the experience in Dublin.

We, and the other 6 passengers just made our flight to Japan. I dont think I’ll ever know that German mans name, but we thanked him as much as we could and got on our plane. At the time of writing I’m sitting in my seat, looking out over what might be Finland, and about to get my inflight meal. Without the prayers of our friends and families I don’t know if we would’ve made it.

It’s 9.51pm at home. But it’s nearly 6am in Japan i think. In 9 hours, I’ll be there. Or actually am there. Writing this in the air is confusing the tenses.

But it is (gonna be) Brilliant.

Dave, eating now. Nom nom.

FYI Finland, is beautiful from the air, at twilight. I have photos…. Somewhere.

…or is gonna end. In any case, Tomorrow is a significant event, probably nowhere near the end.

Tomorrow, I leave for JAPAN. Well, I leave home to stay over in Belfast and actually fly out of Dublin on Wednesday morning, but close enough. This will be the longest flight I’ll ever go on, and the furthest I’ll ever be from home, to look after some crazy missionary kids while their parents attend a conference. I’m convinced good things will happen.

So imagine my surprise when not only did my job situation get a little precarious 2 weeks before I was due to leave, but 4 days beforehand my right knee decides to freeze up. Fortunately the work situation has worked out pretty well, (more on that in a few weeks) and my knee SEEMS to be getting better. Ibruprofen FTW.
Heres hoping nothing else silly happens, but pretty certain this means something good WILL happen. I may blog. Regularly. Maybe.

Anyway, my ridiculous project is still possible, just gotta get me a decent mic for my camera. Which will also help with me making these things videos. I figure vlogging suits my more randomized thought nature and ridiculous good looks better. If you don’t agree, well you don’t have to watch. You should probably listen though.

In other news I managed to wire in a Google Hangout with a missionary in Japan for an interview in church. This doesn’t sound like much, but I did it in a church with no internet access, and integrated in 2 way video, using the churches own camera system, something the video system was definitely not designed for. It was fun! Though stressful. It was actually only fully working about 10 minutes before the service, despite how smooth it apparently appeared and our multiple tests.

New consoles! My opinion? PS4. Ain’t no Microsoft crony spying on me while I do my Darth Maul impressions with a broomstick.

And lastly, the big question, What does MVF have to do with my beard? Cryptic.
😀

DAVE. IN CAPITALS, ‘CAUSE IF YOU’RE NOT YELLING MY NAME, I WON’T ANSWER.

P.S. Its very difficult to fit all my carry on luggage into 8kg. Perhaps I should leave my second laptop at home…