This week is called "Golden Week" in Japan. It's a series of holidays that all come close together, usually at the beginning of May, and sometimes including the end of April. April 30th was one of the holidays, so the young adult group from church went on a retreat to a beautiful resort area about an hour and a half away. The first two pictures are probably pretty obvious: the house we stayed in and a group picture with almost everybody in the picture. I mentioned to Eriya and Shinya that it seems so strange to me to see forests with bamboo everywhere as the
undergrowth, so that's why I framed the first picture the way I did, if you haven't already figured that out. The theme of the retreat was "following your dream/vision", and it was a very encouraging time. It was also good just to get to know more people I didn't know, and get to know the people I already knew better.
On the way home we stopped at a beautiful park, and as you can see from the third picture, it also had an observation tower. SO . . . of course I had to pay the $2.60 to go up to the top and take pictures and videos. I think I figured out how to post links more efficiently, so I'll try that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzol9s3yK74
The second video I'm linking to is just us driving through the countryside right before we reached the park. It shows some of the scenery, and also features a conversation (well, maybe it's more of a "verbal exchange"; I don't know enough vocabulary to have a real conversation) about the fact that we suddenly realized that we were near a dairy. You will hear the Japanese words "kusai" (which means "stink") and "ushi" (which means "cow"). Here's that video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNUQuV2yfSw
