Sunday, February 1, 2009

I don't think we're in Ichikawa anymore, Toto

It wasn't a tornado, it was a Skymark jet, but the differences are about as stark as the ones between Kansas and the Emerald city. I am now in Sapporo, Japan which is on the Northern Island of the four major Japanese islands. You may remember the Winter Olympics being held here. I will be here four weeks doing some Japanese language study at the OMF Japanese Language School.

It has been cold since my arrival and very icy on the sidewalks where not all the snow was removed before last week's rains. It has been snowing lightly today and this seems to make the sidewalks less slippery. So at this point with a 20 minute (in good weather) walk each way to school and back I'm all for a little more snow.

2 comments:

Jaime Marie Pinckard said...

So glad to hear you have made it there safely. Is Sapporo expecting more snow? I hope that it remains safe for you to walk to school.

By the way, I'm a bit curious how the Language School ended up in Sapporo. Was there a large missionary community there at the beginning of OMF?

Georgia said...

When OMF came to Japan, the base of operations was Sapporo. As time went on the work started to move southward, a piece of land was given to OMF in Ichikawa City and in the 90's the national offices were moved there. At this time we have about equal numbers of missionaries woerking in Hokkaido as in East Japan