Kyoto~!

I went to Kyoto yesterday (Sunday) and just came back a couple of hours ago (Monday night).  For those who don't know, Kyoto is a city known for its rich history and is a pretty major city in the Kansai region of Japan.  Our purpose in going was a little different though: we went to learn more about the roots of Christianity in Japan.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  For the record, this is gonna be long, with lots of pictures.  You have been warned.

Yesterday morning Carol, Becky and I took a bus from Tsu to Kyoto, where we went to visit a Baptist church.  It was small, but a really cool experience.  The oldest member of the church is 94, and she is super genki!  I want to be like her when I get old.  It was also interesting to sing hymns in Japanese (it was a pretty conservative church).  The three of us sang Trust and Obey (two verses in Japanese and one in English), which actually went relatively well, even though I played on an ancient, dusty, out of tune folk guitar, haha.  It was pretty awesome~  Here, have an unfortunately blurry picture of the church.

After church, we went with some of the church members and met up with members of another church at a graveyard, to sing some hymns and remember those who have passed away.  That was pretty cool too.  And the cemetery was on the top of a mountain, so it was gorgeous.  Look how different Japanese cemeteries are though.  Everyone in Japan is cremated, so it looks a lot more crowded.  Also, a lot of the graves are Buddhist.

This is, I believe, the grave of people who went to the churches. 

The back of the grave.  You could actually see the canisters with the people's ashes.  o_0  Sorry if this is kind of morbid, but I thought it was super interesting.

And some other pictures of the cemetery:

After that, we had the chance to go visit Yuri, another NAB missionary who I hadn't met before.  Yay!  :D  We also had tea at the house of the pastor of the church she works with.  (Yes, I drank tea.  I actually drank a lot of tea- green tea, to be specific- during my time in Kyoto.  Weird for me, I know, but I figured I need to learn to drink tea to survive in Japan, haha.)  And then we had a little time to pray together with Yuri before we had to go, which was nice~

From there, we went back to the church we were staying at (the one whose service we attended that morning).  The Yuzawas, the pastor and his wife, live in the same building as the church, kind of behind everything?  Anyway, we chatted for a while, and then had dinner.  Mrs. Yuzawa, being Japanese, is big on presentation.  "For looking, not for eating," apparently, haha.  But really.  Look at this food!  It tasted as good as it looks.  The rice was amazing~  It had carrots and mushrooms and scallops (?) in it.

An overview of the table.  The stuff in the cooker thing (lol, my vocabulary) is tofu, to be eaten with sauce and toppings (that little dish just to the right of the tofu).

Daikon, and beef with veggies inside.  The meat things were the best part of the meal.

Fancy salad!

We continued to chat for a while after we finished eating, and then we headed upstairs to go to bed.  Check out our super Japanese room.  My first time sleeping in a tatami room, and on a futon, for that matter!  That pile of stuff covered by a blanket on the left is our futons.

Carol taught me how to play a really fun card game called Golf.  I'll have to introduce it to my game-playing friends (you know who you are <3).  And then we figured we should turn in early in order to get the most out of the next day!

So we got up this morning, took our time getting ready, and headed downstairs to have breakfast with the Yuzawas.  It was, once again, an amazing meal that naturally required much picture-taking.

The main dish is yukitora, which means "snow tiger."  It's called this because, if the bread stuff is lined up properly, it looks like the stripes of a tiger hidden underneath the grated daikon (snow) and the greens (bushes).  Pretty cool, I thought.  We also had tea (that's a cherry blossom inside! so pretty!), miso soup with potatoes and seaweed, and rice.  The miso soup and rice are pretty typical for a Japanese breakfast.  The yuki-tora was special~

A closer view of the tea.

After breakfast, Shan joined us from Osaka, and we spent a couple of hours learning about the history of Christianity in Japan from Yuzawa-sensei (the pastor, as you may recall), since he's spent a lot of time studying this topic.  It was pretty interesting stuff, like about how Thomas preached the Gospel in India, and how Christianity was spread by the Silk Road, and the time when Christians were persecuted.  We especially spent time on the 26 martyrs who were forced to march from Kyoto to Nagasaki, where they were crucified. The little museum we went to was pretty much all about their story.  But before we went to the museum, we went to lunch.  It was sad though, because Carol, who wanted to see this stuff more than any of us, got sick all of a sudden and couldn't come.  :/  But lunch was at a cool little place in a hotel.  Here's a picture of Yuzawa-sensei, me, Shan and Becky, taken by a super nice hotel employee.  idek what's going on with my feet there...

Shan, Carol and I all got the tapas meal.

Fancy salad that supposedly had 10 vegetables.  It certainly contained a lot of vegetables that I wasn't familiar with, but everything was good, so~  Before this, we had vegetable juice that was basically like a carrot smoothie.  It was interesting, but strangely good, especially with the little breadsticks they gave us.

The tapas, aka a whole bunch of different things.  I'm not even sure what everything was, but it was cool to try so much different stuff all on one plate.

The whole meal.  The miso soup had all kinds of stuff in it, like pork, potatoes, uh...other stuff...yeah.

Dessert: little carrot cake-like things and coffee that was pretty good once I dumped a whole bunch of cream and sugar in it.  

When we were finished with lunch, we went to the museum, which is actually the house the 26 martyrs lived in before they were arrested, or something along those lines.  There were lots of artifacts having to do with their story and the story of Christian persecution in general.  Lots of stuff with hidden crosses and such.  Thank goodness the people of Japan are free to worship God now!

This sign says something along the lines of Christianity being prohibited and that if anyone suspects someone else of being a Christian, they should report them.  Crazy.

This fan has a picture of a three-tiered church building from that time period.  The emperor had it torn down, of course.

This is the reflection from a mirror.  The cross is only visible when strong light is reflected from the mirror.  It was one of the ways Christians of the time hid crosses on things.  Pretty awesome, right?

Some more artifacts from Christians of that time.  They pretty much all have crosses discreetly on them somewhere.

The stone lantern is supposed to be sort of shaped like a cross, and the base (which I failed to get into the picture) has an etching of Jesus, which Christians kept buried until they met together.

From the museum, we went to a shrine (dedicated to silkworms, lol), where there are a couple of things related to Christianity.  Plus it was my first time visiting a shrine in Japan, so it was pretty cool.  It was getting dark though, so some of my pictures are less than amazing...

The entrance to the shrine.

Inside, walking towards our destination.

I wish this was a better picture...  Anyway, I think the three points are supposed to represent the Trinity?  Yuzawa-sensei was explaining in Japanese so I'm actually not too sure.  There was also a pool that supposedly had healing powers, but it was empty.

I'm not sure what this is, but I thought it was cool-looking.

From the shrine, we headed back to the church, where thankfully Carol was feeling better.  Yuzawa-sensei took us to the nearest train station, so that we could get to Kyoto Station to catch our bus.  Kyoto Station is super big and awesome, especially with the Christmas lights!  I wish my pictures were better.  :(

Oh, and here's some other random pictures.  At one point we got a little lost so Yuzawa-sensei went to go get the car to pick us up, so we walked over this bridge in Kyoto, and I thought it was pretty, so I took some pictures at this intersection.

And as an added bonus, this ad for canned coffee has been on tons of vending machines recently, and I find it highly amusing.  LOL WHY IS IT TOMMY LEE JONES.

Anyway, from the Kyoto Station we caught our bus and now I'm back in Tsu.  :D  Overall, it was a great experience, and I was able to meet a lot of truly wonderful people.  It's so cool to see the passion of these Japanese Christians!  Anyway, I'm going to sit in on a couple of Carol's classes tomorrow morning/afternoon, so meeting her students should be fun!  I think I'm gonna be pretty free from the afternoon onwards though, so maybe I'll have to explore around Tsu a bit more~  I definitely need to find the movie theater so I can see Harry Potter when it comes out.  :D :D :D

Related note: A lot of people were really impressed with my Japanese, which was encouraging!  It wasn't the typical condescending thing either; I think they were actually impressed that I know enough Japanese to hold a conversation (albeit with quite a bit of difficulty on my part, haha).  What's particularly interesting to me is that they don't understand how I can be as good at Japanese as I am without having lived here before.  I mean, I don't think my Japanese is that amazing, but I actually can speak it, you know?  I'd imagine it has something to do with the difference in teaching methods between America and Japan, plus the fact that I exposed myself to so much Japanese media.  But hopefully soon I'll start taking Japanese lessons, because I definitely still have a long ways to go!

Also, I get a great reaction every time someone finds out I'm an Arashi fan.  XD;;  Good times~