Tuesday

...two weeks late. :) Again, I apologize for the delay.

Tuesday was a big day for us! We were up bright and early and hopped into Pastor Taizo and Yukiko's cars and headed out for Okutama. (Yukiko is a counsellor for Fukushima refugee children. She had two boys, Akira (13) and Taka (11), who became our translators.) Along the way, we stopped at a little bakery. We all had our share of mysterious filled donuts. (A big hit was a custard-filled donut. It was like eating battered and fried creme brulee. Oishii~)
Okutama is a lovely little corner of Tokyo; full of green and surrounded by mountains. The Okutama Bible Chalet is located here; a pretty little compound that hosts many camps during the summer. Just up the road was our destination. I can't remember the name of the camp itself, and the sign was in Japanese. No help there, either. But anyway, it was a small, but tidy and scenic camp; as well as the current residence of a large group of refugees from Fukushima Babtist Chruch. We were greeted by and introduced to Pastor Masashi Sato, who showed us a PowerPoint about his church--its history, its members, and what life has been like for its members since Fukushima was devistated. Sensei, as we called him, always had smile on his face and was a fantastic host :) We also started getting to know the other refugees who were living at the kids. There was everything from facsinated toddlers to excited school-aged kids to mild grandparents there at the camp; all of them very polite, gracious and extremely hospitable.

As we worked on getting settled in, our luggage arrived. We were happy to see it and everything, but I personally (and I'm sure the team felt similarly) felt a sense of guilt--almost selfishness--after talking with the refugees. Here we had been fuming over our lost luggage for the past several days, but we knew we'd be getting it back eventually. When the earthquake first occured and the Fukushima residents left home, they had expected to be able to return home after a few days and, like us, have all their familiar belongings back with them. That was, of course, before the tsunami and the power plant meltdown. The refugees were left with nothing--and most of them still have very little.

That afternoon, we walked down to a nearby river for some wading with the camp kids and a few of the adults. A perfect way to cool off during Japan's muggy summer! After our river run, we went to work practicing our skits for Bible Adventure Camp, which would be starting the next day. We breaked for dinner, and then continued late into the night decorating our camp classrooms--making mazes out of duct tape, palm trees out of streamers, and taping fish to the walls.

We were all happy to see our beds that night :)

(I don't have any pictures for Tuesday. They'll hopefully be here soon :D)