Another Fantastic Week In Shibuya!

Elder Mumford enjoys drinking coconut milk, straight from a coconut that he bought from a street vendor in Okachimachi- (Tokyo's largest permanent open air street market.)

Here is Martin's e-mail dated June 18th, 2009:

Dear Everyone,

It is another fantastic week in SHIBUYA.

(by the way, speaking of packages...  I will try and ship off mine soon.  It has a bunch of cool (but irrelevant) things I have gotten from Investigators.  (A cool fan, an ancient abaccus, a wierd hand-drum thingie), plus the letters you all have sent while Ive been in Japan).

Ok, so Shibuya.  It's the most incredible place I've ever been in.  First of all there are a lot of different challenges and benefits for serving here.  Elder Haight and Gerber are working with the Gaijin ward, which means that they get American Food for us all.

We're looking for a better email place, but there doesnt seem to be anything that is (1) clean, no bad posters, you can see your companion and (2) cheap to email at, except the one we have.  So forgive me if these are a little shorter than normal.  I'll try to consider the best stories to tell before I write the email, and if anything else cool happens, I'll just send a supplement letter.

VIDEO: Click the "PLAY" arrow to view.

So here is our schedule of some interesting events that happen each week:

1. Monday- Service: we make Onigiri (sushi) for homeless people, at the Catholic Church in Roppongi. (Apparently, we havent missed a Monday in 20 years, so it's pretty permanent)

2. Tuesday -Teach JKaiwa (Japanese Class)

3. Wednesday- Teach Eikaiwa, (English Class)

So those are certainly some blessings.  Lots of fun, interesting, productive activites.  Another amazing thing is that there are people EVERYWHERE!  From the second you step out of the apartment there are people to talk to, so that is never an issue.

The tough thing, is that everyone is in a hurry.  A rediculous percentage of the people we stop are in a hurry, or busy.  It's kind of sad.  Especially in the heavy city areas, people are almost 100% unable to talk to you.  We still try when we pass through those areas, but it's extremely difficult.

(Martin and his companion made coconut rice pudding, then served it in the coconut shell!)

We also meet a lot of crazy people.  I dont know if more people here are crazy than other places, but it seems they certainly show up a lot more frequently.  The other day we met Captain Mickey, a 'retired captain' of the navy, who was on his bike dragging some garbage around the city. He came up to us and asked if we were the missionaries, and of course we wanted to talk.  But after a while he started rambling off about the most random things in broken english/japanese... haircuts, california, strange movies, the war... and it became clear he wasn't altogether there.  So we eventually had to leave.  Then he gestured to the garbage on his bike and talked about raising his 'kids'.  We hoped that his kids werent in those bags (yikes).  But the entire time there was this crazy electric Polka band playing in the park next to us.  These kind of experiences are becoming sort of normal. 

There's always incredible things going on.  There was a Bangladesh festival the other day, right next to the Calpis Headquarters (that famous Japanese drink).  Very interesting,  we met some strange people there too.  :)

 

(Missionary Zone Conference)

Also, the one thing you dont realize is just how little time you have in a 4-man apartment.  You get home and within 10 minutes it is 10:30 somehow and time to go to bed.  Likewise the morning time sort of evaporates.  I have absolutely no time, it seems.

It's rainy season.  Two days ago we had the most violent rain storm I have ever been in in my life.  We had raingear, but we both were completely 100% soaked through.  The roads were rivers, and water was blasting in fountains UP out of the drains.  Then the next day it was beautiful and there was not a drop on the ground.  The rivers didn't even go up at all.  Japan has the #1 drainage system, I think.  I'm sure us two missionaries looked really cool just wading through the streets, not even trying to avoid it because we were already so wet.

(Pictures with the zone)

Anyways, it's been a good week, the next one should be even better!

Good luck everyone, have fun, and work hard... if you feel like it!

Love,

Elder Martin Mumford,

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