Churches and Cookouts (August 2015)

My Chinese friend invited me over to her church for an event and a cookout. While the vast majority of people in Japan are either into Buddhism or their own Shinto – 神の道 (Kami no michi) as they put it, there are some who practice Christianity.

There were several performances, a few of which we all had to stand and sing in Japanese. There was a screen with the words on it so I was saved…no pun intended.

The performance that I felt was my favorite was the one where my friend was being shown the way by God but then gave into temptation and then struggled to get back onto the right path. There was no dialogue, just action.

After the performances the church had a barbecue and we got to play around with some fireworks.

Essentially it was glorified sparklers and there were a few that went boom.

After that people started leaving and I thought I was about to leave myself, thinking that was it. However, my friend invited me to stay longer and we basically sat around and just talked. The pastor came in with some snacks he had just bought at a konbini and gave us his keys telling us to lock up for the night whenever we decided to leave. The pastor also told me I was welcome anytime whenever I returned to Saga.

We were there until around midnight. It’s not often, in fact this was a first, that I spent a Saturday night just hanging out in a church. It’s no secret that I am not much of a religious person but hanging out with friends in a church was enjoyable.

To basically finish off my time in Japan with a bang, the English speaking club at the university set up a trip to 神集島 (Kashiwajima – Kashiwa Island). It was an annual thing but I wasn’t sure how long they had been doing it.

As you can see it’s a bit of a lengthy drive from Saga.

(Note: We were driving from Saga-shi and you can see there is two listings of Saga. The other “SAGA” is the marking of the prefecture.)

Somebody thought she was being funny.

My homegirl Aki was the culprit. She liked to take pictures of people while they were sleeping, she got me a few times.

To get to the island we had to take a ferry over to it. As you can see, there isn’t much of a population on the island and it’s pretty isolated to one section of the island.

The ferry ride wasn’t long at all. Kashiwa is only about 600 meters from the mainland. Of course mainland is an interesting choice of words considering Japan is made up of thousands of islands.

Once on the island we had to trek up a ways to a building that is owned by the university. I guess it’s the official retreat of Saga University and as you can see it’s owned by Saga University. (I say that as if all of you can read kanji.)

The building is quite nice. I didn’t know what to expect or really any information for that matter other than we were going to an island.

It wasn’t next to the port where everything else was located. It was up on a hill, in the lesser populated areas of the island.

This retreat wasn’t all fun and games…well it was for me because I was asked to go as a guest because I’m a native English speaker. For the group of students, they had three lectures to sit through during our two days on the island. Three of the English teachers also joined us.

Roux-sensei, Fellner-sensei and Bowman-sensei were the teachers joining us. Fellner and Roux gave their lectures on the first day and then Bowman gave his the following day. I had Bowman for my comic book class my first semester in Japan and Fellner was my instructor for my outdoor education course and he led the charge for our class at Nanayama.

After the two lectures, it was time to get the food prepared for the barbecue. Now I thought all of us were going to help out…nope. Aki said the guys were to go down to the beach while the girls prepared the food and then they’d join us later.

Okay.

It had been awhile since I swam in the ocean and I forgot how disgusting salt water tastes. I got a mouthful of it and swallowed some when we were jumping off the rock wall.

When we returned, it was time to eat….and drink.

Natsuki from my Nanayama team (Team Kakashi) was on the trip.

One of the fishermen came up with a basket of fish. The name of the fish escapes me but they were pretty good.

Some of us were up til about 4am drinking. We didn’t originally bring that much alcohol but a few ran down to the market to buy more. The store had closed by the time they arrived but the old woman who owned it was kind enough to open it for them to buy more alcohol.

The following day, the students had their final lecture before we left to head back to Saga. Thankfully I didn’t have to participate in the lecture so I was able to sleep off my hangover.

This place is really Japanese. It’s virtually untouched by the western world.

The trip was a good way to end my adventures in Japan. I still had some time left before I returned Stateside so I was going to do as much as I could.