Day Seven

May 7th

Today was a very relaxing day. I think jet lag finally caught up with me today. I was pretty tired most of the day. This was the first day we didn't have much planned, so maybe I felt like I could just relax.

After breakfast, I watched some news from NHK, a Japanese network. I was pleasantly surprised to see ABC News (in English). The news here in Japan is much more global than the news back in the United States. There is little local news shown here, and the weather shows not only the weather for Japan, but for the whole world!

Guess what came on after the news? The Seattle Mariners! I couldn't believe it! Here I was on Monday morning in Japan watching the Seattle Mariners live against the New York Yankees in a game played on Sunday. It was weird to watch the game from the Japanese perspective. Occasionally, we would get the feed from the New York Yankee broadcasters, but the camera work was all done by Japanese. You could tell by the fact that they zeroed in on all the Japanese players from Ichiro to Hidecki Matsui to Kenji Jojima. And they would follow them to the dugout, out of the dugout, out to the field, etc. It was kinda funny actually. They also replayed every pitch to the Japanese players after the inning. And then replayed (in slow motion) how the player did at his at bat.

I couldn't see all the game since we would go to meet Akiko Arai at the train station. We got to know Akiko while she was a student at Bellevue Community College when we were in Washington. She accepted the Lord during her time in Washington and has grown by leaps and bounds since moving back to Japan. She spent a year at a Bible college in Singapore about 5 years ago. While there, she met an Indonesian man also studying there who would eventually become her fiance. They are planning to get married next month in Indonesia. He is a youth pastor in the same church his father serves as the senior pastor. There is so much more to this story, but I don't have time to write it all. The main thing I took from our visit with Akiko is that God is at work and He will accomplish His purposes in our lives as we follow Him.

In the evening Ken and Madoka helped us get some of our pictures on cds for us. We've already filled up a 2 gigabyte memory card in just a week! It took 3 cds to do it, but they finally got it done. This will free up a memory card for the camera for mom's trip into China.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Kofu, where mom and dad first met Ken and Miko, and where mom and dad lived for around 5 years. I'm looking forward to seeing the city. I'm also hoping I'll see Mt. Fuji. I've been here a week and still haven't seen it yet. Maybe tomorrow...