The sight greeting me as I walked out of the condo in Futakotamagawa in Tokyo at 7am on Easter Sunday felt auspicious. There was no sign of the usual hustle and bustle of moms with babies on their bikes, students in uniform with sports equipment strapped to their backs, businessmen in their dark grey suits or slightly snobbish “office ladies” making the mad rush to catch the train. Were the streets calm like this every 7am Sunday? Or was it just this particular Sunday?
I was starting out the day groggy, thanks to a late-night outing to see a fiddler from Kyoto play a couple of hours away. Despite sleeping only a few hours, I’d woken up before the alarm went off at 6:30, as I do every time I set an alarm on my phone. I’d heaved myself out of bed and followed the usual routine–changing into day clothes, washing my face, brushing my teeth–but opted out of making a cup of tea. Instead, I peeled a banana and consumed the entire thing in three giant bites. I will find food later, I told myself.
Despite my groggy indifference to grooming, I’m excited to go to church in Japan. The only other church experience I’d had in this country was maybe 50 years ago as a Brownie, at a Catholic Church (presently gone, having been torn down) in the heart of Tokyo. I loved that big gothic stone building, with its echoing walls of stone and musty-smelling pews with dark velvety cushions. Even to a kid in first grade, the vaulted high ceilings and low murmur of people in it felt right, like a dark womb enveloping me in its serenity, offering a rare space of slowness and calm away from the noise and flurry of the city.
In hopes of recreating that experience, I had looked up “Easter services in Tokyo” on my phone, and a few listings of churches popped up. Ah, but what denomination? I am not Catholic but a liberal Christian baptised in the United Church of Christ in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where the congregation advocated for LGBTQIA, solar energy, and marched for what folks in eastern Kentucky might say (nicely), “those hippie things.” My affiliation with this church had started in my college days in Boston. My then-boyfriend, who was Irish Catholic, had wanted to attend Easter mass, so I’d simply picked the prettiest-looking little church in Copley Square. It ended up being a Protestant church and he was traumatised, but my hippie self couldn’t understand the difference between any of the denominations. Even today, they confuse me. Aren’t we all celebrating the same story of the resurrection of Jesus? Aren’t we all Christians? I suppose I ought to care more about doctrine, but I am today back in Japan and still doing it “wrong”: I chose an Easter church on the basis of geography, not liturgy, ultimately selecting a service being held nearest my friend’s house near Yokohama. As it happens, it also offers a service in English.
When I reach the train station, I’m oddly surprised to discover that it’s busy. Absently, I look around to see if anyone is decked out in spring dresses with big bonnets, the kind of fashion show I used to see on Easter Sunday when I lived in Macon, Georgia. Instead, most folks look tired and morose. Some looked dishevelled, as if they’d had a rough night out and were just now on their way home, but I guessed that many of these travellers held blue-collar jobs, the kind that offer no respite on weekends.
This is my first time riding this train route. Since I’d left Japan some 40 years ago, the Tokyo rail system has blown up with spider weblike outreach from the edge of the bay to the suburbs with no nooks left behind. To get to Yamate, I will have to switch my train to the Negishi Line. This line hugs the Tokyo Bay coastline to Kanagawa prefecture. It makes commuting easy and living affordable outside of the big city, but it is not a scenic route; the coastline of Tokyo to Yokohama bay is a hub of industrial factories and large container ports. It is a landscape of huge chimney stacks and billowing smoke, and giant warehouses that manufacture anything from seafood to furniture, serving the whole country as the port for trade.
The next transfer is easy as it brings me to the terminus for the Oimachi Line. At Oimachi. I walk past a coffee shop and think about getting tea but I decide to keep going and grab something at Yamate station. Flowing with the crowd, I go down the steps to the lower platform and wait for the Negishi Line train. I pop into the first car that arrives. It’s almost empty. A man with a top knot is sprawled out on a train seat, so hungover he looks like he is in pain. I hope he will not vomit. The other riders are like houseplants wilting over cell phones.
When the train stops in Yokohama, nearly everyone gets off, and no riders get on. The car is now nearly empty. We are heading to Ishikawa Cho station, where you disembark if you want to go to the big Chinatown of Yokohama. Usually this means the many riders packed in like sardines, but not today. Bored, I gaze at an ad inside the car about a Super Iwashi (sardines) Show at Sea Paradise. You can go see happy sardines swimming around, and then you can eat them in all sorts of ways. We love our animals so much, we want to eat them. Somehow, nobody else seems to think this is ironic.
Next stop is Yamate. I’m now totally ready for a light breakfast, but Yamate station is so small there isn’t even a snack kiosk, never mind a standing noodle shop of the kind often found on train platforms. Sighing, I take the deserted stairs down to a small ticket booth and scan for a coffee shop, but spot nothing at hand, so I decide to venture to find a place I can sit for a bit and get my “morning” (usually a hot beverage and thick toast with a thick block of butter). Very quickly, I find a small road with decorative streetlights: a sure sign of a shotengai, a local shopping district.
Yamate Shotengai is in a valley of small hills descending towards the sea. There are steep hills on either side, and the small walkway that branches out of Main Street and ends with huge, steep steps that seem to lead to the stack of homes above. The street is desolate, and I am feeling my stomach “stick to my back,” this being a phrase from a Japanese children’s song describing intense hunger. There is a tiny glass aquarium with a giant turtle moving about in front of a beauty parlour named Monaco. It’s closed. So are the vegetable stores, meat shops, pasta restaurants and a retro Showa style coffee shop.
Disappointed, I turn back around towards the station as my destination church is the opposite way. A 24-hour gyoza sign is flickering, but I discover that it’s a gyoza self-service dispenser for you to buy and cook at home. I find myself at a 7-11 convenience store. Given that everything is closed for the morning, I suppose I should not be surprised that the store is crowded with hungry tourists looking for food. I scan the rice ball section, end up going for my default pickled plum, then buy a bottle of green juice which is supposed to give me all the vegetables I need for the day. On the way out, I cross-paths with an Indian couple I’d spotted earlier. They have plopped themselves down to eat their breakfast on the sidewalk. Like me, they were probably looking for Starbucks.
I decide to do the unacceptable, and eat while walking. I tell Jesus I’m sorry but I won’t be able to celebrate Easter properly without food.
*****
What did people do before cell phone apps to tell you where you are going? I’m following my phone, which is directly taking me up the steep residential hills of Yamate. The narrowing road becomes an exercise in bad judgment. I’m gobbling my rice ball as young students rush past me in workout clothes. As they pass, they look at me with mixed expressions of horror and embarrassment, matching how I feel about walking with my mouth full of rice, seaweed, and pickled plum. But I am so hungry and my rice ball is delicious! The hill has me gasping for breath as I approach a small park. My app commands: Go there. But there is no visible path, and now I’m bewildered. I think of the recent social media post of a car flying off an unfinished highway following its GPS. Great, my phone is doing the thing where they want me to crawl through a yard or something to walk the shortest distance. Then I hear a man behind me.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
I turn around and see a small smiling old man pointing at my phone.
“Where do you need to go?” he asks.
“Oh uhmm, I’m looking for this church?” I tell him.
“It’s right this way, follow me.”
I tell him he can just point me in the direction but he insists and takes me into the bushes. Foolish with trust, I let him lead me. The friendly stranger says: “I could explain how to get here but these steps are hard to find, it’s easier to show you. Up there is the church compound, see? But all these trees hide it.”
We are walking through a tiny path through the bushes and a set of stairs appear which ascend steeply up a hill. We climb the stairs together and he does so quite slowly, which I realize is his fastest speed. I apologize profusely for making him climb these steps to guide me but he remains quite steadfast and cheery. Eventually, the steps bring us to a big road at the summit of this hill. At the top, he stops, and gestures towards the building. His chin notifies me: You Have Arrived at Your Destination.
This is as far as he intends to go, so I shake his hand and wave goodbye. His eyes twinkle goodbye as I walk towards the entrance of the church.
Was this my Easter gift? Did I just encounter an angel? My heart is warm and I recognize that church or no church, the good lord is everywhere.
My mind travels to the song my partner Randy’s late 100-year-old mom’s voice, singing her favourite gospel hymn with his banjo accompaniment. This song, which I call “Jesus Song” has now become my favourite, and I hum this song as I approach the doors of a tiny building. I am greeted by a Caucasian man in a linen Filipino shirt and an Asian woman dressed like a flight attendant.
“Welcome!” they say with big smiles.
And I do feel welcome. This church is an older building, but does not resemble the big catholic structure from my childhood. It looks more like a big house that kept randomly needing more additions over time. It definitely lacked the kind of “solemn” vibe one associates with religious icons shrouded in a dark musty quiet. Instead, it feels like a much-loved community centre. People are everywhere, walking every which way, eager to shake my hand and everyone else’s.
“Hello, welcome!” they greet me.
My cheeks are starting to hurt from the wide smile I am making to match theirs. The church is filled mostly with non-Japanese Christians, including Southeast Asians in colourful outfits. My friend is yet to arrive, and I decide to sit in a pew made of hard walnut, thinking I should probably get out of the way of this excited fellowship. Just a moment ago, I was the only gleeful Sunday traveler on the train full of morose Japanese folk, but now I feel like the Grinch, overwhelmed with the intense festive feel of this overjoyed congregation. There is a choir on the “stage” practising songs for the service. The song they are singing is not about talking with Jesus but about being saved, and that we love him so much, we must think, feel, dream of him constantly. The choir is made up of people of all ages and colours. They range from grade-school-aged girls in their pretty sundresses to old men in linen shirts, but the leader appears to be a woman with long, brown, streaked blond hair in a colourful beachy outfit. She is belting out these songs with both her arms raised. In total ecstasy, she sings:
Every praise (is to our God)!
The choir responds. My eyes widen with my mouth in half a smile, my cheeks sore from intense smiling, trying to assess the situation I was in. I am in a church, which must be a new evangelical/ gospel church. At the very least, it is definitely a rock ‘n roll Jesus hymn kind of place. I am hearing people speaking multiple languages around me, then a caucasian woman approaches me with a big smile and addresses me in English.
“Welcome to our church. Where did you come from?”
I explain that I live quite far away and am visiting in search of an Easter service.
Her smile fades with the understanding that I will not be coming back. Just then, however, my friend arrives. In a pretty easter dress, Sunshine (her real name) walks right in to save this conversation. She shakes the woman’s hand and tells her she lives down the street. The woman is vastly more pleased with this answer. After they chit-chat a bit, the woman departs, and Sunshine sits next to me on the hard walnut pew as the services start.
The linen-wearing caucasian man (the one who had been greeting worshippers at the front door) now walks up to the podium on a “stage” covered in deep red carpet. Dog be gone (as Randy, my partner from eastern Kentucky, would say)–he’s the pastor! Next to him is the Japanese woman in the blue airline suit; she is translating after each sentence. The projected image of sparkly glittery cross behind the choir is now superimposed with the words of the pastor and the translator; I assume this is to reinforce the message and to assist the hearing-impaired. For two hours, he narrates the Old Testament, starting from “In the beginning….: as the thin walls and windows of the “sanctuary” buzz with elation. There is definitely a beaming of love for Jesus shooting out of this church this Easter morning. But after the long sermon, my stomach is now quite stuck to my back and making loud noises of complaint. My butt is also quivering in pain from the hardness of the pew. Just then, the pastor announces that there will be a big barbecue in the park across the street.
Praise the Lord! All are welcome!
Sunshine and I look at each other, smiling with aching cheeks and raised eyebrows. Though hamburgers and hot dogs sound great, we simultaneously say: “I don’t think so!” We’ve filled our hearts and souls with the most pumped-up, Hallelujah! Easter service I’ve ever experienced, where every moment is full of praise, every praise! We walk out of the church full of happy resurrection vibes, squinting into a bright and sunny Easter day, ready for a quiet meal with just the two of us.
“How about a nice full-course brunch with a great view of the Yokohama harbour?” Sunshine asks.
Yes, indeed. Praise this auspicious day and the nourishment I am soon about to receive! We skip down the same hill I’d climbed with the help of the unexpected angel, the two of us hopping like bunnies in the Sunday sunlight. Having found a church, my friend, and food, I will soon have found something to eat.
