by Silas Immanuel – 2nd year from New Delhi, India
The Trip to Japan has been one of the craziest opportunities that I have gotten at Goshen college thus far. Never had I imagined that I would be writing a blog sitting inside a Japanese guesthouse, looking out the window at the beautiful bits of nature that this space has to offer. While the last few days had been crazy, Sunday offered us an opportunity to sit back, relax and really soak in the fact that we are shooting a documentary in Japan.
Sunday started off with a visit to a small catholic church. We had been informed that the pastor there was a Korean graduate and saw this as an opportunity to dive deeper into the ARI community. We hoped to land an interview with him and get footage of his work in action. The service was a wildly new experience. We had to wear headsets in one ear as a person spoke to us in English explaining what the pastor was trying to convey. While it took us a few moments to get acclimated to this new environment, it soon became a deeply pleasant experience. The pastor spent his sermon talking about the need to prepare a future generation within Japan, Korea and the United States paying homage to the people attending the service and calling each one to be the salt and light within their own communities.
After the service, we went to a grocery store where the participants would usually grab lunch. We decided to grab some snacks and hopped back on the bus as we prepared for the Sunday lunch that the volunteers at ARI were going to guide us to. The lunch was another contrasting experience. We had a robot that was delivering our food, portion sizes that were too small even for a child in America and waiters who tried to stay patient as they dealt with the crazy Americans that were frantically typing english words into their phones in the hopes that some form of legible japanese would come out as a result. Once the food did arrive, we were delighted to try new things like a soft boiled egg on a pizza, squid ink pasta and bread pudding topped with blood orange ice-cream. The food was delicious and something that we hope we can try again.
After exploring the town a little more and visiting a large retail store where we finally found Macha(Green tea) KitKat, we headed back home and got ready to head back out for our first sushi dinner. The dinner was extravagant. We got our own room with 4 tables that we split amongst the group. While others got many other dishes like shrimp tempura, my group got one huge family platter of sushi that boasted squid, tuna, prawns, salmon eggs and shrimp. The shrimp was especially exquisite with its butter-like texture that just melted in our mouth. The waiters were very kind and even chanted as we exited the store.
Overall, the day was a success. We got to rest well and experienced a plethora of new things before shifting gears and moving into a busy week ahead.
