Candles and ice

Heidi and I took a trip to Otaru, a city in Hokkaido with a beautiful winter candlelight festival every year. Cold and beautiful! Otaru is situated on the sea, so it gets lots of snow. It's also considered to be one of Japan's most beautiful cities, and the Japanese film "Love Letter" (an old popular favorite) was filmed there.

The canal runs right through the center of town and is a site for photographers and visiters. The cold was palpable; the icy wind off the sea made our noses and hands (even through gloves) sting.



Heidi and I walked up a side street to take a photo of the gate to the canal (below), and we passed a beautiful old building with a strange, rustic charm I had never seen before. As I was standing outside in the snow-filled street wondering what kind of building it was, a white man in a funny hat came out and spoke in a language I had never heard. I was so taken aback I just stared, and he smiled and repeated his sentence (showing a gold tooth). At about that moment I realized the building was a pub, and the man was probably one of the Russian sailors that frequent the area. They're known for drunken carousing and have caused foreigners to be banned from certain places (according to the reports). Needless to say, Heidi and I hastened up the street and back to the canal walk full of people!


We walked through the town and found beautiful fresh crabs for sale along the street. Hokkaido is famous for a famous kind of hairy crab (kegani) that has tender, succulent meat and is supposedly not found anywhere else.


This is an old-style street lantern you see on shops advertising ramen (noodle soup)shops, pubs, or other restaurant-like establishments.




At night the canal glitters with hundreds upon hundreds of ice and snow candles! The candles are shaped from water or snow in molds and then left out to freeze. Then the mold is cut away, leaving a perfect cylinder with a hollow for a candle. The candles are placed inside and sparkle on the ice as they burn, shimmering all along the side of the canal and reflecting into the water. The sight of so many candles and water was just breathtaking - and extremely cold! I thought I would freeze right there on the spot. After we had taken all the cold we could, Heidi and I made our way back to the train station and took a train (packed with other Sapporo travelers) back home.

We've had an early blizzard here, dumping more than three feet of snow in some places. I've never seen anything like it! Everything is totally covered. Walking down streets is like a bizarre dream - lumps of strange shapes and sizes rise out of the snow, trees and ditches are glutted with huge globs of white. Roadsides are lined with massive walls of snow taller than my head... what do you think??



Snow, snow, and snow!

It began to fall yesterday evening, and during the night snow accumulated to about five feet. It was piled on top of cars, completely covering everything. I've never seen anything like it!

This morning it was still snowing lightly, so while Heidi was having a women's class in the apartment, I decided to get out a bit. I did the unthinkable: I dressed for snow and went outside, to the local park, for a walk. There was nobody out "walking"... obviously during the end of a blizzard isn't a good time for a stroll, but I needed to have some rest and the solace of nature. So went, carrying nothing but my camera plus some writing paper and a pen.

The park was completely choked with snow - it was so deep that it was even impossible to walk through unless a path had been made first. It stretched across the empty field like a white canvas that someone had elevated - showing only tips of takenoko (bamboo shrubs) and small trees.

I found a spot under a little covered shelter and just sat there, in absolutely solitude - the only soul for what seemed miles. It was great. I listened to the tiny "clink-clink" of snowflakes as they hit my down jacket (they do make a sound), and then noticed how the extreme cold began to leak slowly through the openings - where my sleeves met my gloves, for example, or around the collar of my coat. I sat and wrote, listened, watched the white continue to fall, and then got cold enough to leave.

I was just about to leave when I was greeted by a construction crew, wading through waist-deep snow on their way to their parked cars for lunch. I don't know who was more surprised - them or me! After all, it isn't every day you see a white foreign girl in the park in the middle of a blizzard...

Surprise!

As soon as I woke up this morning I knew something was different. It was QUIET. A strange sort of quiet - muffled, soft, distant. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window, and sure enough, the first SNOWFALL!!! (I think I would be slightly more excited if I had found boots already... but snow is snow, and there's a thrill that I hope always goes along with it).

It's falling now, in almost absolute silence, in big flakes past the window, cascading and whirling like a giant waterfall. The ground is coated white, the coppery-orange trees left over from fall are frosted. Grey falls against grey in the sky like tufts of goose down. A whirl of white confetti; a tickertape parade from our balcony.

And even now - silence.

Beautiful and still.

Please pray with me for Japan and for Sapporo. Blanket this area with your prayers the way the snow falls - gently and persistently, filling in the holes and corners until all is clean and fresh and new.

*Pray for the nine junior college girls planning to come to our apartment and eat tacos tonight! Pray that they would see Christ displayed so greatly in us that they would want Him for themselves. Some names are Yuuka, Noriko, Maki, and Aki.

*Pray for Yuriko, my new friend from the nearby university. She met Amiko, a Christian friend of mine at the same university, and the match was a success. Apparently Yuriko's boyfriend has a Christian grandfather, and Amiko says she's a little interested in Christianity. But she does not want to be pushed. Pray that the Holy Spirit would speak so gently and softly, as the snow falling outside, that she will not be afraid to commit her life to Christ.

*Pray for Heidi's work with about seven apartment women and nine children who come over to learn English each week.

*Pray, on this Sunday, for a revival to take place in Japan's churches - especially those here in Sapporo. Pray that they would be havens of hope and healing, places of truth, and places to which young people are drawn.

*Pray for the seven junior college English club students planning to come over for tacos (one of the biggest ministry tools yet! And we get to eat the evidence!! :) this coming Thursday. I really love these students. Pray hard for them: Kumi, Minoru, Ayumi, Ayako, Mana, Mari and Asami. All but Mana heard the gospel presentation at Korean Night.

The snow is still falling in diagonal slants outside the window.

Pray, pray for the peace of God in Sapporo.

love,
jenny