Aogigahara

Last Monday I went on a prayer journey to a forest at the base of Mount Fuji with Mike – American – from Lion Tribe Ministries and Il-Han -Korean- from our YWAM Tokyo Team.  I will leave you to guess which one is which.

The forest has become a popular spot for Japanese people to come to commit suicide.  It is currently ranked as the second in the world next to San Francisco Bay Bridge as a place for this purpose.  Apparently the locals feel that this forest became popular as a place to commit suicide after Seicho Matsumoto wrote a novel called Kuroi Jukai – Sea of Black Trees – in which a pair of lovers kill themselves in this forest.  There were 48 bodies found there in 2000.

I am not too sure how well this picture shows it but the trees are growing out of vocanic rock.  There seems to be little or no soil for them to get their roots into so the roots tend to break up the rocks.  This makes walking off of the paths a little tricky and a bit dangerous.  However the paths are wide, clear and very well kept and we did meet a group of older people hiking on one of the trails through the forest that could be seen on the map above.

During our time in the forest we were never aware of the darkness or oppression that the rumours carry about this place.  To us it was a tremendous testimony of what the Bible calls “The earth shows us His wonders”.  On the edge of the forest is one of the five lakes around Mount Fuji.  This area had a different flavour to the hilly part we had hiked through earlier, but only added to our awe and wonder at the splendour and majesty of our God.

We did pray out the scriptures that we had received before coming to the forest.  We earnestly asked God to change the belief in the nation of Japan that says suicide is a good or honourable thing to do, to seeing that life is a gift from God,  give it back  to Him and never take it away.

A very big thank you for all of you who prayed for us as we took this journey through Aokigahara and proclaimed the faithfulness of God in the midst of His creation.

NET

The process continues.  Today I am visiting our team in Northern Tokyo, the team leader John, is probably the longest serving member of YWAM Japan.  John and his wife Jean have raised their family here in Japan and their daughter Suzie just graduated from the Christian Acadamy in Japan Suzie is planning on taking a sports DTS in Brisbane later this year.

Isabel is from Brazil and has been studying Japanese intensly for the past two years.  Isabel is an avid evangelist who can evangelize in three different languages.

Then there is Matthew, who has a great servant heart, studies Japanese, teaches English and works with the rest of the team in helping Hiro, a Japanese Christian Business man who runs a coffee shop in Chiyoda ward  called Art Decision Cafe.