Japan 2

Not sure where I left you all....what story was I telling??

Hmmm... anyway, carrying all the luggage through the metro was really reminiscient of doing in in Paris with Brandon. Difference there was that I was almost crying. This time, I merely ripped my shirt in two places. 

It was a journey. We hit the hotel long enough for me to rinse off and then were off to a dinner at the Pfeil's (a missionary family) house. They work with the missionary, Seima, that we are here to visit. The dinner was great. We met a bunch of locals who I genuinely enjoyed talking to. They were super pumped about Hawaii so hopefully we'll get to see them again after this trip.

After the dinner, we were pretty much dead. We headed back to the hotel and crashed.... until 5:30am.

Pretty good if you ask me, but I thought that my clock was still on Hawaii time so when I woke up, I thought I had only slept for an hour! Such a relief to find that I had actually slept 6 (I am dying right now I am so so tired!)

We ate breakfast at the hotel, and then met up with Jon Pfile. Jon now works in Tokyo but previously worked in Chiba, a town about an hour from here near the airport. This is where MTW first started the Japanese church plants so we wanted to go see a few, ha there are only "a few," of the churches down there. 

Street in front of our hotel. It was raining this morning but it was such a nice break from the crazy humidity.

Jon's car.

Buildings of Tokyo

Disneyland!

Church #1. If I have the story right, one church split into three. This is the original one.

Same church, different angle.

Lunch at 7-11.... espressoda anyone?

MaryAnn opted for a large grapefruit juice.

Me eating gyoza in the car.... I think that I will be eating a lot of gyoza!

I ate this too...

More disney

Tokyo skyline as you drive into Tokyo!

Trash room

I was so clean. It was this huge room of trash.... it had NO smell!

The trash and this lobby are at the Pfeil's apartment building.

Ginza! On our way to our third church service of the day.

Curved building

Illegal diamonds!

Tokyo is bidding for the 2020 olympics. There is stuff everywhere!

I'm falling aslee.....

Japan 1

Hello All!

Guess what?! I am in Japan! My church has been forming a relationship with a group of pastors in Tokyo and decided to send a few of us other there to check it out, meet everyone, and start being their friends. And at the last minute, I got asked to fill in for a guy who couldn't go. So it was off to Japan!

I have never been to Asia before so this I obviously was/am super pumped!! So here are the details.

On the Japan trip was Nathaniel, Matt, MaryAnn, and me. MaryAnn is a flight attendant for United so the plan was for all of us to fly standby with her... that was a good choice. 

We got upgraded. Oh yeah! Great way to start the trip! MaryAnn was riding cool in first and and Nathaniel, Matt, and I "slummed" it in business. Slummed! Let's just say, I survived.

Here is me, chilling in my seat. 

Ah, yes, my feet resting on the foot rest. Loving this pod thing. And yes, of course, duh! The seats were lie flat. I'd had such a hard day, basically I of course needed it.

So MaryAnn told us to pace ourselves with the food. I thought she was exagerating... she wasn't. Nathaniel put it like this, "I feel like a Kobe cow, you sit in a really nice area and people feel you, and feed you..." We are a lot and we ate well!!!

So we started with warmed nuts.... and champagne. Then came the appetizer. Caprese salad, shrimp cocktail, and some sort of sushi roll. I had a lovely bordeaux.

Then the meal came and I stopped taking pictures. I had beef tenderloin with gnocchi and green beans, followed by a cheese platter with port, and then ice cream. I was really packing it in because i was definitely filled to capacity!

Here we are demonstrating the lie flat seats. I think the seat was more comfortable than my own bed.

I tried to watch Rock of Ages... it sucked! Then I rewatched the first half of the Katy Perry movie. Then I tried to sleep. Then it was time to eat again.

Omg! I have to say, for me, this is the perfect breakfast. Yougurt (which was actually good because yogurt usually makes me nervous, meat, meat, cheese, fruit, croissant with a tiny jelly container. It was great.

So sadly, after 7 hours and 19 minutes, we had to get off the plane. We all wished that the flight would have been longer but what can you do. There is still Japan.

So here is our plane. It was very good to us.

And then we made our way into the airport. Pretty standard airport I guess but  I have to say, not super foreign looking. Headed over to customs, I got to go in the pregnancy line... hmm, but I did get through first! We grabbed all of our bags.... we have like 13 I think. 8 checked and 5 carry on! and headed to buy train tickets.

I need to say this. I love getting to a new place, having no clue what you are doing, and then trying to figure it  out. I hate doing this while carrying 200 pounds of stuff. We had two hundred pounds of stuff.

The line for train tickets was super long and you couldn't bring your cart, with our thousands of bags, inside, so we just left it all alone outside. Which was super cool! As we keep learning, Japan is rediculously safe. No one would ever dream of taking, or doing anything like that! Really cool and people are crazy polite. I'll try to get some pictures that demonstrate this.

So from Narita Airport to Tokyo it's about an hour by train and two hours by car. We took the Narita Express train. Great train, great way to see the countryside. And bam! we were suddenly in the Tokyo metro system.

And then the fun began! (I'm leaving... more later)

August 22, 2012

But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

On the Road

Recap

I am obviously behind!

There were so many things that happened at the end but it got to crazy and I couldn't keep up. But it was fun. Maybe one day i'l happen, but the combo of lack of internet and being behind killed me, but one day... maybe.

But just because I am no longer blogging about my trip, doesn't mean no blogging.

Check out what I ate today, here.

Dubrovnik

(Pretend that I am not ten days behind.)

Action!

After yesterday's events, I don't think anyone would blame me if I never wanted to venture out again. But it's Dubrovnik, The Pearl of the Adriatic, the sun was shining, you'd be nuts to stay inside.

We made the 30 minute walk to the old town and got ready to explore!

There is really not too much to say expect that the place really is stunning. I have never seen water that color!

We walked around for a while to get a feel of the place and by that time it was lunch time. We had already gone to the tourism office the night before to ask directions to Spahetteria Toni, and then twice this morning with various questions. Oddly enough, each time, we talked to the same girl. I went in for the third time today to ask her for a lunch suggestion. She sent us here. Tutto Bene. Nice!

More wandering around the place.

This guy turned out to be really rude but it was cool watching him jump.

Love this picture!

And then it was time to take a break. I wanted to write some postcards but didn't have a pen. So we went to the post office to buy some stamps and while I was paying.... Brandon commandered a pen. You'll see later.

We grabbed some ice cream... it was quite warm.... mine was so good! It was blood orange but it tasted like a Flintstones Push Pop! Um, yes!

After the ice cream, we went to the tourism office, yet again, to ask our now friend, where we buy tickets to walk the city wall. She directed us, we thanked her for her awesome lunch suggestion... to be honest, how often do you think that happens, ha, and walked across the street to buy tickets.

We got a wicked student discount and headed off.

The entirety of the old town is surrounded by the city wall as it used to be its own state. Now you can walk the wall. It think they said it was 3km all the way around, so it takes a couple of hours.

Isn't the sky really cool!

A flag.

Like this picture!

Doesn't it all look fake.

So about here we find two groups of people on of which was French. I am not sure if I have mentioned this yet but, I had read somewhere that in Croatia you will hear more French than Croatian or English. I thought was funny because before leaving France, so many French people kept telling us how great Croatia was... however most of them had never been there. Well, the book was right, French was everywhere.

This particular group of French speakers were great. They were about 60, there was about 10 of them, and they were here to have fun. And have fun they did. They loved the tower and views, they loved making fun of the other tourists around them, they loved climbing onto things. It was great. They were a fun group.

After the wall hike, we went around the city a bit more. There was a church that we hadn't yet been in. So, and wow, I wish I had pictures, not of the church, but of what happened. We go into the church, it is small, and the first thing that I see is a man in a blue windbreaker and khakis, and a fat women wearing black.

Brandon had gone in before me and was off the right a bit. Just like how I freaked out on the bridge in Prague with Johannah, I freaked out and make a beeline for Brandon.

It was Paul and Fat Linda! Remember them from two days ago. I guess they made it to Dubrovnik!

Brandon of course had seen them and was playing it cool. We avoided them for about 5 minutes and then I went over to talk to Paul. He was safe. Soon enough though, Fat Linda came over. She proceeded to complain to the three of us about something. We took it for a while and then said we had to leave.

Love it! What chance to see them twice... and in the same outfits too! What a treat! After that, I needed a break. Coffee time?

And here is the pen that Brandon stole. It worked quite well. And it came with a stand too!

A really fancy hotel in Dubrovnik that we stood outside of for 20 minutes just people watching and trying to look cool.

We had planned to go a place that Nina recommended for dinner but ended up finding a cool pizza place and eating there instead. At fist we were sitting next to some really annoying British girls talking about weight loss... ah fin, it was these two girls complaining to one another. One would complain and the other would build her up, and then they would switch. And they were loud! Thankfully, they left about 10 minutes after we got there.

We both ordered the veggie pizza, Brandon the large, me the small. While we were waiting for the food, Brandon went to the bathroom and who passed by our table but.....

Paul and Fat Linda!

I said hello, thankfully, Lind...err, Fat Linda didn't say anything.

Dinner was great. The waiter accidentally brought out red wine instead of white, we didn't play helpless tourist and sent it back. Yes! He was really nice about it.

After dinner we headed to a bakery to eat our heart out on pastries. We got three....shocking, they weren't great.;

30 minutes back to Nina's... Brandon found an unlocked car....we didn't steal it.

And scene!