Sapporo: 6/3-10

The calendar says it's only been a week since we left Seattle, but it seems like a month ago.  So much has been packed into these days…

Leaving Seattle on Friday afternoon 6/3, we crossed the dateline and arrived at Tokyo's Narita airport on Saturday 6/4.  Wild, huh?  We were in pretty good shape (thankfully so was our luggage), exchanged dollars into yen, got an "obento" for supper, and then joy: found a Starbucks in the airport!   

Our evening connecting flight to Sapporo flew directly over the disaster areas but it was too dark to see anything.  Tim Clark met us with a rental van, and took us to our homestay (wow, what a nice place!) for the time we're in Hokkaido.  Got to bed about 11pm Japan time, which is 7am Seattle time - we had been awake and traveling for 24 hours.  

Next day was Sunday 6/5, so in the morning went to Grace Community, a remarkable church with a wonderful influence in the Teine community of Sapporo.  Set up a Skype connection from there, and while the service was happening upstairs, was able to skype with Westminster Chapel's WE CARE Concert happening Saturday night back in Bellevue.  

Sapporo's O-dori Park

After church, we enjoyed lunch downtown and a walk around Sapporo's famous O-dori Park.  Can't remember much of the rest of that day, other than fighting through jet-lag.  Hmmmmm….

Monday was a prep day for the DVD production of the Marriage Course: we set up both video cameras, 4 wireless mics, 2 mini production lights, and a studio backdrop, then did a test run of everything and burned off a demo disk for Tim.  It all was working well - hurray.  Supper at Tim and Wakako's apartment was fresh-from-the-sea sushi.  Aaaaahhh….

With the Sasagus and Abes

Tuesday 6/7 we drove 2 hours southeast from Sapporo for the 3-day Marriage Course at a retreat lodge in a national park.  15 Japanese pastors and spouses gathered from around Japan, even from Okinawa, to take the course for their own marriage tune-up, but also to understand how they could use it with their own churches.  

Production sessions

Mike Harvey and I were the production team and Sylvia helped Tim with hospitality.  We were joined by Tomo and Jessica Abe, a marvelous international couple serving in Tokyo, who came up to help with the DVD and the retreat.

Returning to Sapporo on Thursday 6/9, we were starved for internet access (email and blog backlog were immense) and for food other than very traditional Japanese meals (raw fish and pickled veggies were intense).

DVD editing: Tomo, Mike, and me

Mike, Tomo, and I spent most of today, Friday 6/10, editing the DVD sessions, but ran into several wrinkles that took time to iron out.  We'll have to finish next week.  We stepped out for lunch: Sapporo ramen in Sapporo is "totemo oishi!"  Meanwhile, Sylvia, Jessica, and Tim were off to visit several key churches in the Sapporo area.

That brings us up to date, at least on the high-lights. I'm constantly reminded that even though everything seems so normal here, just several hours south of here is catastrophic devastation and we'll be surrounded by it all next week. 

Tomorrow is Saturday 6/11, and we say "Goodbye" to our Sapporo friends, fly back to Tokyo and connect with our relief and recovery partners.  It looks like while we're in Ishinomaki area, we'll have an opportunity to launch some recovery work in Onagawa - the "horror movie" town from my April trip.  Hope to meet up with the Kouno family again…