Monday, December 17, 2007

Land of the Rising Sun

I took a trip to Japan in October and, even though it’s been a while since I went, I take every chance I get to talk about travels. I just can’t help myself. Anyway, Campus Crusade is trying a collaborative strategy called City Focus, which aims to bring injections of resources to existing ministries in major cities, in order to be more effective in impacting the whole city. One of the 10 cities that we’re targeting is Tokyo, so I went on the initial vision trip as the representative for Epic.

Tokyo is an active city, full of kinetic energy. There are 1.1million college students in the Greater Tokyo area. The analogy used during our trip as to why we’re hoping to infuse Tokyo with resources was: If we were Starbuck’s and wanted every one in Tokyo to have a chance to sample our delicious coffee, we would need to think about starting multiple Starbuck’s in this place because, frankly, opening one or two stores would see those efforts literally swallowed up by the sheer size of Tokyo.

It was an eye-opening experience. I realized how little I knew about the specific spiritual climate in Japan and in Tokyo, especially. Without getting into comparisons about where/who has greater spiritual need than another, it was abundantly clear how much of a need exists in this place. I loved Tokyo and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this was one of my favorite trips! Good food + Good people = Good trip. Here are some pictures (try to put more up later) of my time there…











Conveyor Belt Sushi...much sushi for not much yen.















One form of Tokyo rush hour: sprinting to catch the subway...at 6 am!















View of downtown Tokyo from atop the Tokyo Government building.





















Shibuya District at night...people everywhere.

3 comments:

becky lai said...

i had a conversation with tim awhile back about japan... about their warped view of familial love/duty and how the biblical analogies of a father or brother may be difficult to grasp.

did that come up in discussion?

Truman and Amber said...

I think you should take Carita's name off as contributor until she actually decides to make a post :)
Good pics by the way

akshung said...

Wow, Dennis, three posts this month alone. I think you've turned over a new leaf wrt to this blog! I like the pics too. You managed to capture the essence of Tokyo in a few photos. Good job.