Give Peace a Chance!

Hey everybody!

I think we left you with a cliff hanger last post, about Luisa's latest classic moment. So on that same Sunday, during the potluck with the whole Fujigaoka church there, we were hanging out while people were taking pictures with Wendy, since it was the last time that they would see her for a year. Wendy would call out different people and make them take a picture with her... there's your background info. So everyone's just chatting and having a good time, when Wendy asks one of the families to go stand with her. Now this family had three young boys that were part of kid's club, so we knew them and had been playing with them... and at the moment, Luisa was playing with the youngest, the one year old, in the next room. So the parents call for their son to come out, and Luisa picks up the baby and starts to bring him into the next room. They're laughing and having fun and everyone's happy, when Luisa decides to throw the baby into the air while she's walking--- right when she was in the doorway!!! There's this huge cracking sound as the kid's head smacks into the top of the doorposts and everyone whirls around to see what happened and there's Luisa, still holding the now crying baby, not even sure what to do.

Everyone was so shocked that it had even happened, but then it was so funny and awful all at the same time that we HAD to laugh... even the pastor was laughing. So the baby went back to his parents, and Luisa came to us, her ever supportive and loving teammates... who were just laughing at her and made her feel even worse about it when she felt horrible to begin with. But there was no damage done, he quit crying in less than a minute, and we're pretty sure no one is permanently scarred, except for maybe Luisa only because we made fun of her so much. We still laugh though, remembering the moment and everyone's faces, and then Keiko's comment: "It sounded like the wood broke..." And Kiara and I are pretty sure that we saw the kid weaving as he walked around afterwards, though... haha.

Anyways, Monday we left for Hiroshima on the shinkansen. Now the shinkansen is really great, and gets you places really fast, and it's even a little cartoon character that you see on Hello Kitty lollipops... however, apparently there are unwritten rules about shinkansen conduct. We were all sitting in a row, eating snacks and laughing about how awful we all feel in the sticky weather and how long shorts make us look huge when suddenly the conductor comes out of nowhere and shushes us, in Japanese. Mind you, we were seriously at medium volume, not loud, just normal laughing, but apparently that's too loud for the shinkansen. Yeah, we got shushed, along with the five year old in front of us who was being actually loud. Then as he was walking away, the conductor gave us an extra shush for good measure. Didn't exactly help the laughing situation, which turned into poorly muffled giggles.

Our first day in Hiroshima started with a buffet lunch with the pastor of the church, his family, and a few other people with their kids. It was good to meet new people again and the buffet had a chocolate fountain, so we were happy. Then we got to visit the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Peace Park, the Peace Memorial and the Peace Museum. The A-Bomb Dome was the first thing we saw... it was a governmental building and been a landmark of Hiroshima at the time during WWII with its beautiful dome, but it was about a kilometer away from the hypocenter of the bomb, so it was pretty well destroyed and only the skeleton of everything was left. Now it's still a landmark of Hiroshima, but it's a sad reminder. The peace park was nice, with a bell tower thing surrounded by thousands of paper cranes that people from around the world had made and sent... legend has it that if you make a thousand paper cranes, your wish will come true. Each of those cranes was made with a wish for peace in the world and no repeats of the destruction and violence in Hiroshima. We all rang the bell. Then we took some pictures of the really neat memorial monument where the names of all the victims are kept with an epitaph that reads in Japanese: "Rest in Peace, for the error shall not be repeated." We can only pray that it's true.

There were a ton of chairs set out on the grass to prepare for the memorial service for the anniversary of the bombing on August 6th... and lots of foreigners were walking around. We went to the Peace Museum and went through the whole thing and learned the story about exactly what had happened and the causes and effects. It was a lot of reading at the beginning, but then there were a lot of artifacts and things to look at, including some really horrible wax figures of people right after the bomb went off, with skin melting off and hair all singed together from the thermal waves.

So yeah, it was a lot to think about and deal with... so we had some ice cream to feel better. But right after that we were dropped off at our host families and had dinner and went to bed. The couple that Kiara and I stayed with had the shyest cat EVER. Tuesday morning we went to to the church and helped out with an "English party." We didn't actually do a whole lot, just played with the kids, read a book about Noah's ark, and did our skit. But after that, we went to Miyajima island where there's a really famous shrine. As we rode the ferry over, we saw the gate to the shrine standing on the beach in the low tide with people walking around by it and we started to feel the darkness of the place. It was such a different experience, being uncomfortable and praying the whole time against the spiritual darkness, but wanting to be respectful at the same time. As we walked around it got more difficult for us as we watched people ring the bell to call the gods to come. Thinking about how many years and how many people had come to do the same thing and ask false gods to enter that place kind of made us feel sick. So when we made it down to the beach, we went by the gate and held hands and prayed together for the people of Japan, asking that God would show them his love and how false all of that really was.

That night we ate dinner at a woman's house who had been at the English party and played card games with the kids, then went to pack our bags to ride the shinkansen again to Osaka the next morning... which was today! No shushing took place on this ride, but we did get a whistle blown at us for getting too close to the tracks while we were taking a picture. Today was pretty uneventful... we came to the Izumi Hope Chapel here in Osaka and were shown all around the church. We had a meeting and then unpacked every single item of clothing and souvenir that we have, then went down to dinner. Coming back upstairs after dinner, we opened the door and had were just horrified at the awful mess the room was in. Seriously, all of our stuff covers the floor and we're debating the different ways of getting it all home, usually involving getting another suitcase to check, because we're not sure if it'll work to come back the same way. It's pretty bad. Really bad, actually... some unloved clothing items will probably be left in Japan, including the nasty, horrible green dress that I really hope there are not pictures up of. It's bad.

That's probably enough for now. Tomorrow we go to Kyoto with Megumi, the pastor's daughter, for sightseeing so we'll see more shrines and temples and maybe understand the religion of Japan a little more clearly. Tell you about it later...

In peace,

Allison and others who's names start with K and L

P.S. I think we're going to add some pictures to the other blog posts, so be checking!