The Japanese Sunrise

About a month before I left Japan, I decided that I wanted to see the Japanese sunrise. I thought that since Japan is the land of the rising sun that it would be a cool idea to see the sunrise before I left. I probably should of thought of this idea earlier because the sun was rising at 4:30ish. It would have been better to do this during the winter when it was only rising at 6:30. Anyways, I decided that in order to see the sunrise I would need to get to the beach, but in order to get to the beach I needed a ride. The trains in Japan don't run until 5:00 and there was no way I would make the sunrise if I left on a train at 5. So, I decided that Rebekah would need to come with me, well rather, she needed to drive me. Rebekah wasn't too keen on the idea at first and got even more aggravated as I kept bugging her. After a while I got over it and stopped asking her and decided that I would just go to the top of the hill by the Lighthouse and watch it from there (all by myself...tear.)

Then comes my last weekend in Japan. I hate packing, I greatly dislike getting ready to leave places and at this point I had been staying up well past 12 to finish things before I left Japan. I think our group of friends ended up hanging out till about 10 or something, but then I stayed up till 1 finishing up a video for Nate. At about 3 o'clock in the morning I woke up to some noise in the hallway and the bright lights of my bedroom. To my surprise Rebekah, Kimberly, Derek, Liz, and Bridgette had planned on waking me up and taking me to see the Japanese sunrise. It was a good surprise, but with a full day coming up, it was a little bummer that I only got two hours of sleep. (It was worth it though.) All I can remember from the waking up part was that I kept saying, "I'm so confused. What's going on?"

So after I got dressed we piled into the van and drove out to Kamakura. It just so happens that Kamakura is on the other side of the peninsula that we lived so we didn't get to see the sunrise over the ocean, but I'm not complaining. It was an awesome little getaway before I left Japan. The planning committee brought firewood and supplies for smores. I've never had smores at 4 in the morning, but I can tell you that they are still as good as they taste late at night. Derek brought along a guitar and we sang some worship songs and hung out on the blanket for a little while. Soon after, our party was crashed by a Japanese fisherman who said, "No hire." We are concluded that he meant "No fire." and so we buried the fire in the sand. After that we took to taking pictures and walking up and down the beach.

When I think back about Japan, this is one of the moments that I wish I could go back to. It was a great time with friends and something that I really miss as I'm sitting here writing this. Rebekah, Kimberly, Liz, Derek, and Bridgette, thanks for waking me up to go and do this.