Week 2 Update

Written by: Laura R.

Friday, February 21

Spent the day playing tourist and brought Mark to Osaka Castle. We stopped at 7-11 and got a hot coffee to share, then walked around the park surrounding the castle.

Saturday, February 22

We met with Matt and Jen who are missionaries in Osaka with Encompass World Partners (thanks for introducing us, Allana 😊). We spent a good few hours talking about everything from their transition to Japan to the ministry they do to learning the language.

It was honestly so great to meet them and hear their stories. After talking with them, we had a lot to process and discuss about Japan. Specifically, how we want to move to Japan and what exactly we want to do (types of visas to get, if we should come as missionaries vs working, how long to study the language, etc).

Sunday, February 23

Oh happy day! We met with my high school host family for lunch!

Monday, February 24

Travel day! Left our Airbnb and lallygagged in Osaka with our packs until we could check into our next Airbnb in Kyoto. Literally, we just hung out at a train station’s mall— No interesting pictures to see here.

Tuesday, February 25

Slow morning. Which, really, is my favorite kind of morning. I’m thankful it was so restful, because our afternoon was not.

I wanted to go explore a nearby castle and the Imperial Palace, but I completely under estimated how close “nearby” was. 😅

Three miles of walking out to our destinations, and the castle was already closed for the day and the Imperial Palace was closed for the season. 🤦🏼‍♀️ Sometimes the day doesn’t go as you planned, and you end up walking miles feeling cold, tired, and hangry. You win some, you lose some, but the Lord has a way of redeeming things. ☺️

Wednesday, February 26

This day we made some new friends at Kyoto Mustard Seed Church!

Mark and I have friends who used to work at Osaka Mustard Seed Church (shout out to the Cobos family!) and they absolutely loved the community there. So we reached out to Kyoto Mustard Seed to connect for the day.

We got to have coffee with Jared and Ben who both work for Kyoto Mustard Seed. It was fun to hang out and joke, but also to hear about their church’s vision for Japan.

Thursday, February 27

We didn’t do much during the day, but attended Mustard Seed’s English Connect Conversation Meet Up at night. It was a lot of fun meeting people and getting to know them through games and discussion questions. Both Mark and I loved this ministry and could see ourselves doing something like this in the future. I could tell Mark missed teaching English, he was going hard on the lessons. 😌

Friday, February 28

Tourist day 2.0! We went to Arashiyama, a mountainside that holds a bamboo forest.

Really we just skipped the touristy areas and walked through the city as it winded up the mountain.

It was so beautiful and serene, and offered a great time to talk about how we were both doing and what we wanted for our future in Japan. We also discussed this blog and what platform we want to use this as. 🙂

Saturday, February 29

Tourist day 3.0! We went to Fushimi Inari Taisha, a series of shrines and gates leading up to the top of Mount Inari.

This time we couldn’t just skip the touristy areas. 😅 All the way up the mountain you’re in a tunnel of red gates, so you’re really committed to being surrounded by crowds.

Despite the crowds, we had fun hiking and found the history to be interesting.

Sunday, March 1

A chill day— just getting things done at our Airbnb and preparing to go to Sanda tomorrow. We’ll be helping at Flip English Education Center for the month of March. Some of my friends have worked with them, and I’ve heard nothing but great things about the work they do. We’re so pumped. 🙌🏻

Thank you for reading! We appreciate you all a whole lot!

Laura & Mark