Skills to pay the bills

The T-shirt I bought at the concert.
This is on Monday morning at MOS burgers.

Naomi, me, Arthur and Adachi in Ochanomizu(御茶ノ水)

Arthur Holland's 1800cc Harley motorbike with a rainbow and olive leafs
Just like in the days of Noah

Naomi at OCC(Ochanomizu Christian Center)
Where I bought the Hillsong London CD.

Mami(真美), Adachi(足立), Naomi and I(taking the picture) at Ochanomizu Church of Christ

Good(delicious,but not healthy) International food.
That is a Big Mac.
Not the American size though.

So ah... yeah, these are some of the pictures of the trip my sister and I had in Tokyo.

My younger sister, Naomi and I went to the Hillsong United concert in Tokyo(Shibuya, 青山学院大学)on Sunday night the 19th. We left Aomori on Saturday night by the night bus. 9 hours later we arrived at Shinjuku Station. Our time in tokyo was like this...

From Shinjuku Station we made our way to Kita Urawa(北浦和) by train. Ate a Teriyaki chicken burger breakfast at Wendy's until the wittets came and picked us up to go to Saitama International Church(I think that's the name of the Church) where the Hansens are serving. Then we went to the Wittets house in Higashikurume(東久留米) to have 15 minutes of sleep. While we were still sleepy, we got on the train again and made it to Shibuya Station. There we met with our Church member's younger brother who knew a person that had 2 extra tickets. So, together we walked in the rain(with umbrellas) to get to Aoyama University. We attended the Jesus Lifehouse International Church service from 2:30 PM in the concert hall. It was great! It felt more like a concert than a service.

Then we waited in line for about 2 hours before the doors to the concert hall opened. There were some Australian guys entertaining us with the Aussie call(Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi...)

During the long wait, we met a bunch of people we knew from mostly Hi-ba. During the wait we talked and caught up with stuff. After we went in and found seats to sit in we also met some more people from GT and Hi-ba camp. Before and after the concert we met so many people we knew. People from TAK and such.

The concert was AWESOME!!! The band sang a lot of songs that are worship songs written in the Hillsong church in Australia. A lot of us knew most of the songs from their previous CDs, so we all sang along and were jumping, screaming, shouting and worshiping God. It was totally Awesome. It was definitely worth the long bus ride and the money. At the concert we bought a T-shirt, a CD(United We Stand) and some rist bands. They're really cool stuff. Whenever you see a CD of Hillsong United, buy it!!! Their CDs are great!!!

That night, my friends lead us the way back to Higashikurume by train. There we got some sleep. The concert went on for 3 hours so by the time we got back it was about 11 Pm.

On Monday morning we did some shopping in Ikebukuro(池袋) and stayed in a MOS burger's for a while. At noon we met up with friends in Ochanomizu(お茶の水) and had lunch with them. We happened to order at McDonald's and while we were ordering, the drummer and Guitarist of the Hillsong United band came into the store to eat. Naomi recognised them and we started talking to them. It was cool. They were really nice people. We were very surprised we met them.

After we ate our burgers in Ochanomizu Church of Christ with our friends, we saw Arther Holland!!! Naomi and I were so suprised. We went out and talked with him for a while, while he was covering up his 1800cc motorbike. It was huge. Apparently he parks his motorbike at the church often.

After that we went to OCC(Ochanomizu Christian Center). We went in to the Japanese Christian bookstore and the English Christian bookstore on the 2nd and 3rd floor. They were nice places. I found 4 CDs I wanted to buy, but I didn't have enough money, so I bought the Hillsong London
CD. After buying and looking around the OCC we went back to the church and slept on the coach for a while to catch up on our sleep. That night we spent time near Tokyo Station. We went to Maruzen. If you don't know what it is, don't worry. I'd never heard of it before until a couple of days ago. It was a very nice building with expensive restaurants and shops. We decided to eat at a Japanese restaurant near the station. It was cheap, but really good.

We spent several hours around Maruzen until the bus back up to Aomori left at 11:30 PM. I actually got more sleep going back up to Aomori than going down to Tokyo. We arrived at Hirosaki station at 8:00 Am. That was the end of my 3rd trip down to Tokyo this year. We met so many people we knew and had an Awesome time. We were mostly lacking sleep during the 2 days, but it was all good.

Thanks to Doug Wittet and his wife, Haunani and son, John for letting us stay at their house on Sunday night. Also thanks for the person who gave the tickets for the concert to us and thanks to my friends that I met at the concert and lead us the way back to Higashikurume. Also thanks to Adachi(足立) and Mami(真美)who took time with us in Ochanomizu. Most of all I thank God for ableing us to go down to Tokyo and providing tickets for us to go to the concert. It was all really good.

I hope to put pictures on the next post.

Bruce Truss and I did some wiring work in the newly built sound room back above of the church sanctuary. My job was to put in 6 outlets(sockets) and to put in an earth wire through the ground.

Bruce worked on switches for the sanctuary. He put in three-way light switches so that we can turn on and off the light switches from the sound room and also from the back of the church. He dealt with a bunch of old wires so it looked very complicated.

Bruce and I were also working on the Electrical wiring in an old house today that will be used by a couple that used to work in the CLC Christian Bookstore in Akita. It's a house that was going to be torn down so we need to put in a lot of work in to it to make it look better. We basically replaced the old wires with new ones as well as adding more outlets and lights. It's quite interesting running wires through walls and ceilings and connecting them to outlets and switches.

On November 3rd(culture day), which was a while ago, Karl and I climbed Mt. Iwaki. First we drove up these 66 curves going up the mountain. I know it's not really climbing the mountain if we drive up(it's actually cheating), but we didn't have much time and we wanted to get to the top before the weather got bad.
After we arrived at the parking lot, we walked up through this very narrow path with bamboo leafs on both sides and slowly moved toward the top. After about 40 minutes of climbing we reached the top of 1625m. The view from the top was pretty good. It was a bit hazy, but that was it. We saw the Japan sea and saw as far north as the Goshogawara sports dome.

On the way down we decided to write our names on one of the big rocks. So if you see my name whenever you climb Mt. Iwaki, be sure to tell me.
We drove down the mountain and came down to Ajigasawa. It started to snow on Mt. Iwaki a couple days later so we were glad that we made it up before it did.

This week I learned how cement is made! I found out that it's quite simple. You just have to mix a bunch of stuff as if you're making a cake. The ingredients are 4 things. Gravel, sand, cement powder and water. Thankfully we didn't have to mix these stuff with a bucket and shovel or something. We used a very nice cement mixer(runs with electricity).

The amount I mixed was 10 scoops of gravel, 6 scoops of sand, about 2 scoops of cement powder and about 1/3 a bucket of water. My Dad figured it out by making the first batch. We worked together while I did the shoveling and my Dad did the spreading and smoothing.

That was a lot of shoveling. I got to tell you. I shoveled all the sand and gravel that was on the truck, which was quite full and shoveled a bunch of sand and gravel that was a pile on the ground after we ran out with what was on the truck. By the time we finished I was cream crackered. It was good exercise though.

I know that some countries in the world just moved their clocks one hour ahead. I think it's a brilliant idea. My question is "Why hasn't Japan started doing it?" It will save farmers to not need to wake up so early in the morning and help people like me to be able to skateboard for extra minutes(not that I can't skateboard at night). You basically can't shoot a basketball after 5 o'clock, because it's too dark.

Oh, well I guess I just need to get up earlier and and go to bed earlier until summer comes along again or when Japan decides to save daylight.