alright, first of all im gonna say thats an interesting experience trying to add to a blog in english on a japanese computer. there is this is button convienently placed next to the spacebar, and everytime you hit it everything turns to incomprehensible symbols. anyways, i made it this far. 27 hours is a reaaally long time to be traveling. for some reason, we thought the 12 hour+ plane ride (too bad most of it was cloudy.. got to see some cool mountains in northeast mainland asia though) would be the bulk of the trip. but then, after customs and baggage claiming and a very interesting money coversion process, we took a nice 1 hour bus ride to the second airport, where he hung out for a while and dealt with the lady trying to get lukes boarding pass. i guess the people at jfk ripped out the wrong ticket from his packet thing, so they had to make some calls and figure that out. at first they said we might have to pay for another one, but it all came through. so that lead to another lovely 1 hour plane ride followed by ANOTHER 1 hour car trip to the ghents. .. and, here we are. the food, i must say, is really good. ive tried everything thats come at me (except the nato, fermented soy beans.. ewwwww) and liked the majority of it. i was surprised to find that fresh soy beans are actually green and somewhat resemble green beans or snow peas. didnt taste wonderful, but it was a start. the main focus of our time as of yet has been preparation for two retreats this weekend. theyre expecting a turnout of about 70 people, from little kids to adults. the team has come up with a bunch of music (singing in english and japanese. its quite impressive), and 3 skits (from luke 15). we`ll be camping up in the mountains with tents and cabins, having a few barbeques, setting off some fireworks, and playing general games and sports. later i think we're headed to the beach for another bbq, some mountain climbing, and who knows what else. it'll be a fun time, but pretty demanding with the sleep issues as well as the fact that it can be hard to communicate sometimes (mel and i did have an interesting experience at the post office.. we bought a couple stamps using a few phrases in japanese but we didnt have a japanese speaker with us. anyways..). so, after that, starting tuesday we're getting up early every day to start tract distribution, a power for living booklet aimed towards nonbelievers. however, i must be going. supper is cooking..

-joe