Marathon

Today at school instead of classes we had a school-wide marathon. The girls ran a 5k, and the boys ran a 10k. All students in the school partake in the festivities, which means about 900 students running around the school and local roads. The locals came out to cheer them on as they ran/walked by (yes, many students chose to walk the WHOLE thing!) On the other hand Travis decided to run the whole thing- after months of training (well, only 1 month and random days)!

Of course the day began with some old-fashioned calistetics. And, yes, the whole school joined in on these together! I guess it's an old tradition, and the calistetics they do are unique to Toogijuku.

Then, the boys were off, followed by the girls about 15 minutes later.

And Angie went to her assigned spot to cheer on the students and make sure no one passed out or got hurt!

It was painful, but it was enjoyed by all!!

English Camp

After a rather busy and frustrating week, we manage to hold our first English Club Camp. The camp was held at school (the school has a dormitory area that is pretty cool) for one day. We didn't have time to take many pictures because we ran the show and were pretty tied up running around and entertaining the students. A total of 17 students came (and went when they had other club activities). We played many games and had some lesson time. We had a lot of fun with the students and hope this camp has helped them with English and with God! Even though the students had no Japanese for the entire day we think they enjoyed the time and realized they can speak English.

Prayers please

Tomorrow Angie will give a sermon at chapel. She will be talking about Heaven and Hell and how Jesus is the only truth, and faith through Jesus is eternal life. Without faith in Jesus, you do not have eternal life. Like, in most places, this is a taboo topic. Even more so in Japan because 99% of the population is not Christian. Plus, in Japan people do not like to disturb one another, and stirring the pot is definitely not looked upon favorably. In fact, we just had a talk with one of our co-workers about her sermon and how this topic should be avoided because we don't want to give Japanese people the impression that they will not go to Heaven.

Though her sermon will be a difficult one, she will follow through with it. Please pray that her message will be received well.

75.75 miles

Yesterday we challanged ourselves with a long distance bike trip to a lake about 50km north of Hirosaki. This challange would be twice the distance we have gone before and would take roughly 4 hours there and 4 hours back. Well, this was our plan...






Thanks to our great friends here we exchanged our 3 speeders for mountain bikes. Sorry Big Red and Silver Bullet, you had to sit this one out.









After a few bike adjustments we set out at 8:30, an hour and a half after our original plan. But the day was clear and cool. The Tsugaru Fuji was as beautiful as ever.









Although we planned well with printed maps from Google and a road map, the roads of Tsugaru still thwarted our efforts to make an easy ride. But even in our mistakes we could still see the Almighty in the beauty of thousands of blossoming apple trees.






Our trip was filled with adventure.


We visited a national park with a beautiful lake and interesting playground equipment

As the trip grew longer and hunger over came us, we stopped at a bakery for fuel.

At 12:30 with 25 more kilometers to Sanjuko we made our turn around at Dekishima beach. This beach had the potential to be a very beautiful beach but as you can see it was much less than that with litter strewn all around.

Although we didn't make our destination, we know it was only time that stop us short. Our trip was filled with adventure which was the original idea of the trip. We saw Japan and found some neat places.

Mountain Vegetables

Yesterday we went out with some old friends and some new friends to the nearby mountains to look for some mountain vegetables. This is a past time for many Japanese and quite similar to mushroom hunting. But this time we were looking for tree buds, or something like that.

If you look closely you can see the little bud at the top of the branch Travis is pulling down. We guess they are good when deep fried, but we'll have to try it out.

Next we had lunch near Lake Towada, a crater lake in the mountains. The place, being a tourist trap, was jam packed with people on vacation. This weekend is the big travel weekend in Japan.

Sorry, we didn't take a ride in the Swan paddle boats, much to our dismay!!

After our delicious lunch we ventured out on a river walk through a scenic gorge. There were some nice "scenic rocks" on the way including this "elephant rock."

Obviously, since it is at the top of a mountian, there was quite a lot of snow--quite a lot!

Finally, we finished off the night with a climatic ending of eating whale sushi! We know you will all hate us for it, but we promise it was for scientific purposes--promise!

Oh yes, we did have a visit to an Onsen but didn't happen to take any pictures of that!

All in all, a pretty adventurous day.