I just came back from the Tokyo area for the LIFE MInistries Day of Prayer. Quick thoughts.

I'm definitely a city boy. When I rode in someone's car, I was happy there was traffic. Oh, the people here in Date sometimes complain about the car traffic. But when they complain about traffic here in Date, they're talking about 5 cars in front of them at a stop light. I think they'd go berzerk if they drove in the bay area around the MacArthur maze. When I rode the train, I was elated that there were so many people around me... with the exception of the time when I caught the last train of the day in the Tokyo area, and hence the train conductor pushed us all in the train car with his white gloves.

I walked a lot. In Tokyo you walk or you stand. And I did a lot of both. In Hokkaido, you don't do a lot of either. We sit a lot. We drive a lot. And it showed by how exhausted I would be at the end of the day in the past weekend.

Missionary get-togethers are weird. They feel so surreal. I mean, everyday, you work with Japanese people with Japanese values, speaking the Japanese language, and then for a concentrated few hours or days, you go to some place and see, talk to, and interact with all these Western people doing the same kind of work as you are. I'll probably write about this more a little later.

I visited this really interesting church that Sunday. Super conservative. Super traditional. But a good number of the congregation were 20, 30, and 40 year olds. Totally weirded me out.