Laura Sensei

Laura spent most of the summer with us and did some tutoring in English with children we've made contact with in the community. Some lessons were once a week, but some were everyday, because of a student's plans to enter an international school in the Fall.

Sometimes English teaching goes beyond just English, it would seem! So, with Laura's birthday and departure date approaching, we had a party for her and invited her English students to attend as well.

So, Teacher Laura (Laura Sensei) headed back to Canada to start a nursing degree at Momac, which is Mohawk College/McMaster University.

A Vanishing Part of Japan

Retailing has changed drastically in Japan since we arrived. Big box stores, particularly big box drug stores, have all but made extinct the little corner drug stores that used to be everywhere in Japan. The few that survive do so through personal connections, I suspect. Here's an interview with one remaining store owner. A little slice of life in Japan:

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Pharmacist Masaaki Goto | The Japan Times Online

Boys' Club

This was a project we did with the boys in our monthly Boys' Club. Design your own cabinet/shelf/box, we'll buy the materials together, and then we'll build the projects. Well, we wrapped that up, and some of the projects looked like the boys had designed them on their own.
In the picture above, one boy is carefully following the drawing he drafted.

Don is helping one boy make a straight cut on the wood, but not his thumb. No injuries, other than a few slivers, from this project.

We've also been reading about some heroes. Daniel was one, unafraid in the face of intimidation and certain death. Joseph is another, and we're still working through his story right now. The study of "out of the frying pan, into the fire" biblical heroes.

English or Italian?

The words you can read are all Italian, because we're at Segafredo, the Italian coffee shop chain. But, the words we're speaking, or some of us are trying to speak, are English. This is where I spend most Saturday mornings.

Taxis for Martians?

These two vehicles are at the end of our island. Most of the time they stay parked in the fenced off area, but every so often they are used. For what? They pull in front of a striking building that rises about 6 stories tall and has an impressive, but usually completely empty, second floor hall.



Well, Harumi is not quite the Caribbean, or Vancouver, but every so often we do get a cruise ship or two, and that's what the vehicles are used for. They rise to the occasion, so to speak, and extend a warm welcome, or at least the platforms on either end, and form a covered walkway joining the cruise ship to the port building. You can see one of the vehicles at work in the picture below.


In the terminal building there is a vast area for customs and immigration offices to inspect people coming and going, as well as the lounge in the picture above, but most of the time the building and the vehicles sit empty.

We're using our apartment for our Sunday Praise Time meetings and some Bible studies, and we have regular access to the meeting room on the third floor for other events. We're thankful that unlike other places where we've worked to see believers and congregations established, we don't have an expensive building we rent that sits empty most of the time. Our goal is to see small groups of believers like our Harumi group and the Toyosu group spring up in the area like dandelions. We want to serve as mentors and coaches, training local leaders.

Sunday Lunch

After our Sunday morning worship known as Praise Time, some people stay for lunch. It's a good opportunity to get to know people informally, and with so little free time, Sunday is the best day to do that.



With this many small children (and another on the way, we found out on Sunday!) our Praise Time worship needs to be concise! Most Sundays the children do very well, but there's a limit to how long they can occupy their time.

Is This a Great Place or What?

Where else are you going to see one of these? This is a real zeppelin, made in Friedrichschaffen Germany, just like the originals 70 years ago. They updated the design, and of course use helium this time. It's more oblong in shape because it has a rigid frame inside. That's what distinguishes it from blimps.

On weekends with good (VFR: Visual Flight Rules) weather, it lands at the end of our island to pick up sightseeing passengers. 12 seats, at about $400 for a cruise around Tokyo.



No, as a matter of fact, we haven't gotten around to taking the tour yet. But what other neighbourhood can boast of having its own zeppelin landing pad?