Mondays...

...you've got to love them! Especially when they are your day off! Mr. Yoshizawa suggested to Jon that today we go up and visit the seminary (shingoku, I believe). He said it would be a great place to visit then go on a picnic lunch and play baseball. And so we did just that. But, before all of that we had a few adventures. First off, we had to take the Ome Line (Ome-sen) to Ozaku. Sounds simple right? Well not so. We were waiting in one train on the platform at Tachikawa (Tachikawa is one of the terminal stations of the Ome Line) and Tim has this idea that some of us should run across to the other train and "race" to Ozaku. However, we forgot that Ome Line isn't really a straight line, but is shaped more like a tuning fork. At Hajima, the tracks split. Guess who was going on the wrong side of the split? That's right, Tim, David, Isaiah, Jessica, and myself. But, by His providence, two stops past Hajima, the gentleman next to me suddenly leaned over and asked me in English, "Where are you going?" I had fogotten the name of the station, so I directed him to Tim. Then he was so kind as to communicate that we had to go back two stops to Hajima and get on the train on the other side of the platform. We thanked him, and got off and did just that. That put us about 30 min behind the other group (consiting of Joy, Lindsey, and Jon). Once we finally arrived we met up with Mr. Yoshizawa and Yoshio (who had biked all the way from Tachikawa, due to his incredibly competitive nature) Mr. Yoshizawa took us over to the seminary. He showed us around the building. The place is built just like Hotchkiss, two wings joined by a central walkway. He took us up to the chapel which had a beautiful pipe organ. There, Isaiah did his Art Azurdia impression for the rest of us. We also looked in on Joshua's (Yoshuya for those of you who remember his Japanese name from last year) dorm room where Isaiah claimed even more of the lime-light. From there, Mr. Yoshizawa offered to show us the library... as if we are going to say, "No." Of course, we want to see the library! And here it is, in all of it's moving-bookshelves glory. That's right! To save space, part of the library had shelves on motorized wheels so that you could just open an isle between the shelves you needed and shove all of the rest of the shelves to one side of the room. Pretty cool, huh? Alright, enough of the seminary, on to the Tama river, once again, for some baseball! Yet again, we went down to the water and soaked our feet in the refreshingly cool water. But we had to cross a large area fully of small rocks that weren't entirely comfortable to walk on with bare feet. But you can see in the background of that picture that there was some beautiful country side just across the river. (Rachel: That bike bath that you found in that book, well here's a picture of that path by this part of the river. It would be a great ride, but I don't think I'll get the chance.) We played in the river then took to eating a lunch that the Yoshizawas cooked for us on a frying pan thingy that they brought to the park. Good stuff! Then we took up the bat and the glove. I pitched for a while. I'm still into pitching after playing last Monday. (Or was that the Monday before? I can't Remember!) I did pretty good. Gave Jon a few nice swings. Too nice. I knocked two of our balls into the bushes that separated the field from the river. At that point, we switched fields so that right-handers couldn't nock balls into the river. Of course, David is up to bat right after his brother. Stinkin' lefty! No, actually, he kept the remaining ball in the park. Actually, he kept hitting straight to my glove in the outfield because Jon had started pitching in my stead. I've got to give others a chance sometime. But it got to hot and we started dropping off and heading to the shade of some of the trees. We were so beat! On the long haul back, the Yoshizawas suggested that we stop at their house. And we enjoyed the A/C for a bit while munching on ice cream that they bought for us. Then he even gave us a ride back to the station in a car he borrowed from one of his seminary friends. (Sounds like college, huh?) We men were so beat that we decided to try out the "cool" sento by Mrs. Omura's house. Tim and Isaiah told us about it. We started walking over there and picked up some towels at our respective houses since they were all on the way. As we were on our way there, Isaiah just had to be in the lime-light a little bit longer today. He decided that he wanted a new bike. Just as we were starting to cross an intersection (the light had just changed for us to walk) when Isaiah goes out ahead on his bike and a car just refuses to let him have his way and hits him. "Oh no", I think. Then, "Well, nothing looks broken," and as he stood up, I thought, "He stood up, that's a good sign." And he stood up. The gentleman who hit him pulled his car over and got out to talk to us. In Japanese. We try to explain that Isaiah is completely fine and that he can go, but then Tim decides, "We should call the police and be formal about this." So we called Mrs. Omura on Jon's cell phone for help with translation. She was in the middle of a lesson and just told her students to study and rushed over to where we were. The jist of it is this: Isaiah won against the car. The hood of the car had a huge dent in it from Isaiah's weight, and Isaiah has a scratch on his knee and wasn't even bleeding there. His bike took most of the damage. The wheels couldn't even turn. Eventually a police officer came and took a report on the accident. He suggested that Isaiah go to the hospital. "Why?" he asked. Nothing's broken, no blood, and everything is bending fine. He didn't even go into shock. We later found out that the 72 year old man had a kidney dialysis recently and was also tired from a day of shopping. He just wasn't able to hit the breaks in time. But he felt so horrible he gave us all a ride to the store where he bought Isaiah a nice new bike. Not too expensive, of course. Isaiah is going to mail him an invitation to Gospel Night. Alright! I was thinking the exact same thing when he mentioned it. This is a great opportunity! I hope that the gentleman comes. It would be awesome. Oh, and mind you, this all happened across the street from a hair saloon where everyone saw it happen. So as we were going back to go to the sento we passed the hair place and took this picture of Isaiah on his new bike at the intersection where it all happened. Then he motioned to the people in the saloon that he was alright and got a new bike! They smiled and started acting out the incident to the new customers who came to the store while we were still out shopping. And after that, we finally made it to the Super Sento as we called it. Isaiah said it felt great after the whole event. Now, this place was cool. They had a larger shower area and even had an outdoor porch that you could sit on and enjoy the breeze next to a small koi pond. Spiffy! Except for one thing... I was sitting next to Isaiah and noticed that someone with rather long hair was sitting in one of the soaking tubs. I asked Isaiah, "Is that a girl or a boy with really long hair?" and he said that he wasn't sure. We went back to scrubbing when suddenly he takes a second glace and says, "She stood up." Yeah. That's right, a girl on the men's side of the sento. Fortunately she was leaving with her dad. (She was pretty little so she probably didn't want to go to the girl's side alone) But she kept stairing at us! Talk about uncomfortable! Especially since I was an only child and was never used to having a little sister or anyone around the house when I was young. After trying to enjoy the rest of our Super Sento experience, we decided that home is best and that we liked the smaller sento by the Takahashi's best. And the trip home was quite uneventful.