Art and Photography

Ryan Talking Shop

You may not know this but I have always had a rather casual interest in photography or just taking pictures I guess.  This month I was riding the train in Tokyo – nothing too unusual about that – when I met a very unusual Japanese man with a very usual Japanese friend.  The Japanese guy was a professional photographer and has a studio right here in Shinagawa where we live.   I talked with him for awhile and as we parted company I was able to give him my business card and tell him about the photographic exhibition that was being held by Akira and his friends in Kichijoji.  The gentleman seemed genuinely interested in coming.

Akira is a friend of mine from Tokyo Baptist Church. I worked with his father, Toru,  the accountant at Christian Academy in Japan for two years while David & Jonathan did their senior years of high school at CAJ.  Part of my job was to handle the “Petty Cash” payments from week to week.  The amount of money passing through my hands was quite impressive so one of my legacies to CAJ was changing the the “Petty Cash” account to the “Significant Cash” account which I hear it still holds to this day.

Akira Mizuno

Akira had  invited me to the Photographic exhibition via Face Book a few days before and, now that I had met a new Photographic friend,  I fully intended to go and invited Ryan Otero from our Tokyo team to come along.  Ryan joined the DTS staff last year and is an avid photographer who will often just go around Tokyo on his own to take very impressive shots.

At the venue of the exhibition I met two other photographers, both of whom attend a nearby church and one of whom used to be a professional photographer but has left that job to pursue Bible School with a view to becoming a Pastor in the future.  Unfortunately the friend I met on the train was unable to attend; never the less Ryan and I had a great time.

English Outreach.

Ichiki

This year we had a new outreach for us.  We provided an English home stay for three high school boys all seventeen years old.  During the day they studied a little but mainly hung out with some of our students and staff.  This boy on the rights is Ichiki; he is a train buff and knows almost all of the train stations in the greater Tokyo area, which is a major accomplishment as there are over 200 stations to be remembered.  He can begin at the first station of just about any line and read all the stations on that line out in order.  It really is an incredible feat of memorization.  Ichikii lives in Hamamatsucho right here in the heart of Tokyo.  The monorail runs from Hamamatsucho right though to Haneda airport.

Jun

This boy is Jun and he is from Kanagawa, which is just south of Tokyo.  Each of the boys improved so much in their English communication skills that their teacher whom we arranged this home stay with really wants to do it again next year.

It seems from talking to them that the boys also highly enjoyed themselves during their week with us.

Jun was really warm and friendly and had union Jacks on his Jeans so I guess we kind of bonded rather quickly.

Katsu

Finally I introduce you to Katsu.  He comes from the furthest away and his family runs a wedding chapel in Fukushima.  However they are not a Christian family.

I asked Katsu if he was a Christian and he said no but that he had originally thought that the Bible was not a very interesting book but having been introduced to it through this week of learning English he now wanted his own Bible to read.  Katsu will be coming to Tokyo Baptist Church tomorrow.  I will be meeting him at Shibuya Station

Summer Outreach (Prep)

Bonnie, one of the volunteers

While the DTS was in Hokkaido, we started prep on an outreach here in Tokyo, an English camp for first graders. We had three volunteers come to participate in the outreach: Bonnie, from Virginia, Lizzie from California, and Katie from England.

Katie, from England

This past week we have been doing a lot of the camp prep: cutting, gluing and laminating. In the camp we are teaching the children the phonetic sounds of the English letters. To help illustrate this, we made letters (left) and props (right).

So, for example, in the case of the letter A, we made a monster mask along with a large letter A. When we show the kids the letter A,  the monster will come out and the A will say ‘aaa!’ Then we will teach the kids a song (to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell) which goes ‘the (A) says (‘a’) (x2) every letter makes a sound, the (A) says (‘a’).

We ended up making everything from paper moons, to paper cupcakes, to cardboard cars. Also, we were gluing, laminating and cutting out alphabet cards. These are for the kids to take home at the end of the week.

Derick, hard at work on a mosquito mask

Mostly, things went smoothly. However, when we were laminating the alphabet cards, the laminator ate one of the laminate sheets so we had to wait for John to come and get it out. After that we were very careful with the laminator!

Jesse, one of the DTS students

We were very blessed to have Derick (left) and Jesse (right) with us as both are talented, trained artists. Fortunately, everyone with us seemed to have their own creative side so our props turned out very colorfully.

By Thursday we finished the letters, props and alphabet cards and began our briefing for the English camp. It was a learning experience for all of us. As we tried out the different exercises and games we had planned, we were able to see what would work and what could do better with a little tweaking.

Olivier, cutting out the alphabet cards.

Also, on Thursday, we did briefing on the English class we would do on Friday at a local school (read the next post for details!!!). This whole week has been a lot of fun although very tiring. I think we all feel really blessed to be a part of God moving here in Tokyo, and are excited to see how he will move in miraculous ways.

Mary, coloring the 'M'

He has already moved in building relationships with the parents of team member Maria whose daughter is in Japanese grade one with the children coming!  We will be having a recital the last night for the children to show their parents their accomplishments.  It will be an opportunity for volunteers and others to say a little something as they leave to return home about how it is that they have come to Japan.  They have been such a blessing to us.