A weekend in Tokyo

Yesterday on the train to Tokyo I started wondering whether this had been such a good idea. The trip to Tokyo, that is. I started thinking about our wonderful, peaceful place in Shimoda, and how relaxing it all is -- and then what a big, complex "city on steroids" Tokyo is. And in our plan for the next 48 hours we had at least three engagements planned, so I was just imagining ending up on Sunday evening exhausted, and wondering why we had bothered.

Boy, was I wrong.

Carolyn and I are back at our hotel in Kayabacho (that's Tokyo's Wall Street), where we're staying in a very simple but comfortable business hotel. We got here late Saturday night, after we had been to our first social engagement -- an evening in Chiba with Mina Onoda, her parents and some friends.

Mina is a young woman in her mid-twenties who spent three months with us at Christ Church in Andover last year as an organ scholar, studying with our organist, Barbara Bruns. When we heard that Mina would be playing the organ on March 29th at St. Luke's in Tokyo, we decided that would be the weekend we would take a trip into the big city. Mina invited us to come to her home in the northern suburbs of the city for dinner. We had a fabulous evening with Mina, her parents Hisaya and Ryoko, and two other friends, Yoji (George) and Hiroko. What interesting people -- all of them! It was definitely an evening to remember. They're all members of St. Luke's, which is the chapel at St. Luke's Hospital, a venerable institution established by a young Episcopal Church missionary doctor from Rome, Georgia, in the 1890s. It is also the (or one of the) largest congregations of the Sei Ko Kai (Japan's Episcopal Church), serving both as a hospital chapel and the home of a lively congregation of families and people of all ages, including a substantial Sunday school. Its average Sunday congregation is somewhere around 100 people - a big church in Japan. St. Luke's has a very fine organ and wonderful acoustics, all so very fitting in its neo-Gothic architecture. We were eager to hear Mina play on Sunday morning.

"George" (a real character who has had a career as a tour guide for Japanese business persons in the US) showed up at our hotel to pick us up for church at 10 am Sunday morning, accompanied by Ryoko, Mina's mother. A children's chapel was taking place in the church when we arrived, so we listened intently as they sang, prayed, read lessons and performed various liturgical functions. As we waited for the main service to begin, another friend showed up -- Hideyo Yamamoto. Hideyo is the owner of the house we're renting in Shimoda, but she lives in Tokyo. We've been corresponding for months, and when I told her I was a minister, she told me she doesn't know anything about religion, but she reads the Bible and is interested. She wanted to know more. I told her the best way to learn more was to visit a church. So, when she found out we would be in Tokyo for church, she said she wanted to come. Today was her first time. I think she felt warmly welcomed and she sure seemed to enjoy it. She told people there she would be back for Easter Sunday.

One of the unique things about St. Luke's is that it has an American priest, Kevin Seaver. Kevin is probably around 40. He's a Texan who has lived in Japan for 18 years and speaks Japanese with near native fluency. His Japanese wife and their three young children are a definite complement to his ministry. Another Japanese priest, Fr. Ueda, serves with him at St. Luke's. We enjoyed getting to know them both and being a part of this community for at least one Sunday morning. It is definitely a warm and welcoming congregation and a tribute to Japan's Sei Ko Kai.

St. Luke's Hospital is not only the first truly modern hospital in Japan, but it has also served as a training institution for people in the medical field. My Japanese host mother, Sachiko, trained as a nurse there many years ago, as did her sister-in-law, whom I met in church last week in Ito. There's always a note of pride in their voices when they let you know that they studied nursing at St. Luke's.

After church, Carolyn and I went in search of sushi. We've had lots of good Japanese food these past couple of weeks, but no sushi yet. So I enquired at the front desk of our hotel where the best place would be, and they directed me to a large department store in the Ginza -- just a fifteen minute walk from where we are. We found our way to Takashimaya, up to the sixth floor, where there were several very nice restaurants, and eventually were seated at a sushi bar for what was a truly amazing meal. Our George is a major sushi-lover. He would be jealous.

Our final engagement for the weekend was in another home, this time, the home of Web and Ryoko Coates. I've known Web since he was about 12 when his family moved to Boxford around 1991 and joined Trinity Church in Topsfield. His parents, Malcolm and Debbie Coates, continue to be good friends of ours -- and Malcolm a fellow board member of the Esperanza Academy. Web is another American fluent in Japanese. After several exchange experiences in Japan during his years at Phillips Academy and U. Penn, Web decided to live and work in Japan, where he is an investment banker with Citigroup. Web and Ryoko have two children, both boys, Taka and Musashi. We spent the evening in their home in Yoga, a suburb of Tokyo, where Web treated us with his extraordinary culinary skills. Ryoko is a lovely person in every way. She and Web have both been wonderful, loving parents to a multiply handicapped child, and now also to a healthy, bouncing baby boy, Musashi. What a lovely family, and it was a privilege to spend an evening with them in their home.

We just got back to Shimoda on Monday afternoon -- happy we made the trip to Tokyo. It was a wonderful way to spend the weekend!