We spent 10 days (our spring break plus both weekends on either end) in Tokyo visiting our dear friends who are living/working there and taking in as many sights as we could! They moved there in January 2012 and we’ve been stewing about getting over there ever since. Over the last year, I spent an embarrassing number of hours, poring over internet travel sites to see if I could snag any good deals on 5 roundtrip tickets to Japan (!), setting up price alerts, etc. Finally, we realized this was the opportunity of a lifetime that we simply had to take. We finalized our travel plans. Brent had to come over to my computer and press the “purchase” button when we got to that point. Gulp. That was the most money–by far–that I’ve ever spent on one thing that wasn’t a house or a car. ;)
The trip was fabulous in every possible way. I could (and probably will) do a handful of Rides to Church/Temples/Shrines. I took nearly 2,000 pictures (thank goodness for digital photography!). But for this first Ride to Church, I thought I’d go traditional and share the pictures of the second Sunday we were there, when we walked from our friends’ apartment building to one of the LDS church ward buildings in Tokyo.
Cool story first: I did some searching online and found some conflicting information about the meetinghouse on www.lds.org. We wanted to attend the sacrament meeting portion only of a Japanese-speaking ward or branch. None of this ex-pat stuff would do! On Saturday, I told my friend with whom we were staying (and these friends are not Mormon) that I would just put out some feelers in Mormon-Facebook-land and then trust that I’d get the information we needed. And then we headed out for the day’s adventure.
Within 10 minutes, I’d heard from 5-6 people who had information about Mormon meetings in Tokyo. I also received detailed walking directions to the ward building from the closest subway station, via email, from someone I’d never met. And a phone number, in case we needed more information. It was so cool to see all that information come in. I was reminded of how close knit the Mormon community can be and how glad I was to be a part of it.
So on Sunday morning, we headed out, in street clothes because we hadn’t had room to pack “church clothes,” to find the ward building. We walked in right before they were doing the opening hymn. The only seats left were on the 2nd row (cringe) in a very small, crowded space. Right after we sat down, someone came up to us and asked–in English–whether we wanted someone to translate for us. I declined. About 5 minutes later, someone else came up and asked again. We declined again. And then, a third time. I think they were confused as to why we didn’t want someone to translate for us. We didn’t want to impose and we wanted to hear it and experience it all in Japanese.
It was interesting to realize how much we could still follow even though we couldn’t understand anything. We figured out, for instance, that they were either releasing or sustaining a woman because they called her name, she stood up, the bishop said some stuff, everyone raised their right hands, and then she sat down. Then they called 6-9 women who all stood up, they said some stuff, everyone raised their right hands, and then they sat down. So we surmised that they were reorganizing the Primary, Relief Society, and Young Women’s presidencies. It was fun!
After we finished, two very fresh faced missionaries–one from Idaho and one from Utah–came up to chat. And a few other members. Everyone was very friendly. Afterwards, we went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade–another contrast from our usual Sunday schedule!
Here’s what our walk to church in Tokyo looked like:
![img_6534](https://dovesandserpents.org/wp-content/gallery/tokyo/img_6534.jpg "A \\"parking lot.\\" Yes, that\'s two spaces.")
Love it! There should be vending machines outside all ward houses! ;-)
Wow, cool! I agree with Mike. Let’s putting some snack machines next to the Relief Society room :)
The first sign says, “This is not a ____________” followed by something else. The second sign says “Hang in there Japan” or “Don’t get discouraged Japan”. But both of them also have words in Kanji which I cannot read. I still remember the phonetic alphabets, but not much of Kanji, which is essentially the Chinese writing system, and is used for most of the content words in writing that’s meant for adults. It’s very frustrating when you can’t sound ANYTHING out even though you know the words.
Also, how were the women dressed at church? When I was in Japan, the women dressed quite formally for almost everything, so I’m guessing that your clothing stood out, even though I think things have relaxed quite a bit.