First Impressions + Traveling, Traveling, Traveling

Wow!  48 hours of wearying travel, and we finally arrived in Japan!!!  After many long hours of flight delays, that is.  If you want to read about that, scroll down to the ***  explanation.

When we walked off the plane, it was immediately evident that we were no longer in America by the Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji written all over everything, everywhere.  It was also immediately evident that the Japanese people are extremely health and germ conscious.  All of the airport employees and restaurant workers wear surgical masks (go to this site for an explanation: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/world/asia/22japan.html).  Soon after getting off the plane, I used the restroom, which was quite an experience- they have more gadgets than a person should ever need to go poop.  Example: some sort of little thingy on the wall with all these spouts coming out of it said in English: "equipment to be washing the buttocks with warm water".  Don't worry, I didn't try it!  Another thing: English is fairly widely used here, for business purposes, and also because it is required in their schools for many years.  But- their grammar is atrocious, which leads to many funny phrases!  (Like a CD called Hope You Dreams Come True).

Tomoyuki Shinozaki, the pastor, picked us up.  The first thing we did was exchange our money (exchange rate: $1.00 = 93 yen) and buy a milk tea~ so yummy!  Ian, of course, finished his in a matter of seconds!  The drive to Numazu took 3 hours (2 hours just to get out of Tokyo, apparently just the outskirts of the humongous city).  It was dark by 7:00 p.m., so I couldn't really get any pictures, but all I have to say is that it is probably the most industrial, frenetically-paced city in the entire world.  We stopped at a rest stop, and it was quite a shock to the senses.  Neon colors and crazy packaging and very interesting looking snack type things  (edible?? maybe...).  We got to the church and met Eric, the English missionary minister (he's just a few years out of ACU) who then took us Shofuku, a Ramen noodle shop that has been recognized as one of the best in the country the last two years.  The bowl was HUGE!  It was really good (and nothing like American Ramen), but I didn't even come close to finishing all of it.  We then took a walk down to the beach, which is about 5 min. away from the church.  Then, we hit the sack cause we were all exhausted!

The beds here are wonderful.  The traditional way is to sleep on the floor, but the church has small bedframes for us girls.  The mattresses are firm futons, and I am so thankful because when I woke up my back felt better than it has all summer!!!  Also, tell grandmother that it is very safe here.  They have the lowest crime rate in the world.  The town was silent (and I mean SILENT) by 10:00 p.m.- no cars, nothing, in a town of 200,000 people.  This morning, I learned why they call Japan the "land of the rising sun"-  I awoke at 4:14 a.m. to BRIGHT sunlight outside.  

Today, we are going to go buy groceries and explore the town.  I am very excited!!! Tonight we will have our information meeting so that potential readers can find out more about the program and sign up for times with us.  Pray that there is a good turn out!  

From Numazu,

Marabeth

***  The journey began at 6:30 Monday morning and ended at 9:00 Wednesday night (we lost Tuesday due to the time difference).  On Monday, we were supposed to fly to Salt Lake City to make our connection to Tokyo.  Unfortunately, the plane's emergency systems were not working, so we sat on the plane from 8:30-11:30 while they kept promising that the mechanics would have it fixed soon.  At lunchtime, they decided that the problem was much more serious than they thought, and so they deplaned us.  Our connecting flight was at 1:30, so we missed it, and we were at the airport for many more hours while Delta tried to fix the mess of people who were now stranded.  At 4:00 Tuesday morning we arrived at the airport, this time making it to Atlanta (a flight which took us farther away from Tokyo) without a hitch.  We boarded the international plane, and as it was about to depart the pilot announced that there were volcanic eruptions in the Aleutian islands, and we were going to have to reroute our flight, unload a bunch of cargo to make the plane lighter, and add a bunch of gas.  This delay added 3 hours to our flight.  Anyways, I do believe that things like this happen all the time, but the real problem was that none of the Delta workers knew what was really going on or what to do about it... it seems that the company hasn't quite gotten the kinks worked out of their merger with Northwest yet.  So, that compounded with the fact that the travel agent accidentally forgot to book Ian's flight along with the rest of ours made for a very, very difficult trip here.  I do not think it is exaggerating to say that God made a miracle happen to get us all here in one piece and with all of our baggage in tow!