Tag Archive for Urahoro town

Meeting the felt needs of the small town as a ministry

2009/04/02 About Hokkaido, About our ministry, Missions in Japan, My Story No comments
Urahoro town from the mountain top

Urahoro town from the mountain top

After we moved to Urahoro town with less than 6000 people, I began to realize how important it would be to meet the felt need of the town. Number one need for this town seemed to me was that they needed to have profitable businesses so that they could provide the basic needs of the society. Many people left the town since we moved to this town. When we arrived here, the population was 6200. Now it is 5900. What had happened between now and then within 3 years period? Many older people died; some bankrupped; some businesses closed down; some committed suicide. Each year about 100 people left the town. One of the reason why my house was on sale was because the branch office of a company in Urahoro where the previous owner worked for closed. Many still struggle for their business management. Somehow the IT could be a way to get away from this bad cycle.

Urahoro Shopping Area

Urahoro Shopping Area

The town’s shopping area has pretty much of what you need. Recent addition of home center perfected what a small town could offer for shopping.

The picture on the left shows what it is like on this major shopping street. Drug store, electric shop, cake shop, etc are shown at this picture.

There are about 200 businesses registered to Urahoro Chamber of Commerce. As I shared about one of the construction company CEO committed suicide last year, the management of the businesses were not running well. One of the major reason was the highly priced yen now.

Urahoro Camp Site

Urahoro Camp Site

They need to come up wiht better plan or better management. There are great need to improve the management and creation of new businesses. There may be some governmental fund available for new businesses and current businesses. However, much is not used from this town I suppose.

How can I help this town? This is one of the major question I ask to myself many times. I ask God to bless this town since the prosperity of this town means the prosperity of myself according to the scripture.

“Work for the good of the cities where I have made you go as prisoners. Pray to me on their behalf, because if they are prosperous, you will be prosperous too.” Jer. 29:7 (TEV)

Abraham Lee@Gospel House

Commuting to Makubetsu town from Urahoro town each week

2009/03/17 About Hokkaido, Life in Japan 2 comments
cranes

cranes

Each week, we have classes at Satsunai, Makubetsu town. So we drive for about 50 minutes from Urahoro town to Satsunai, Makubetsu town. We take national route 38. On this route, we pass Toyokoro town. There is Tokachi river on the way and around there, we often see cranes. They usually roam as a couple. Sometimes with a child crane.

Many tourists come to see cranes in our area. They are most well known in Kushiro city where marsh is. There are areas where they protect so that cranes and other animals would keep habitats in those areas.

lots of stars

lots of stars

On the way back from Satsunai, Makubetsu town to Urahoro town at night, we see stars on the sky. They are just awesome and beautiful. One of the merit we moved to Urahoro was so many chances to see the stars. It reminds me of the story of Jesus’ birth where the wise men from the East came to greet Jesus by following the star. They finally found the baby Jesus by the lead of the unusual stars. Likewise, every time we come home, we really enjoy watching the bright stars.

In summer, we go to the mountain and lay down of the ground and see the shooting stars. Each night we usually see about 10 of them if you stay there for about 1 hour or so. Each time we found one, we exclaimed pointing where we found it. What a fun and exiting time we had!!

God made all things for men to enjoy and I hope we do not miss them in our lives.

Abraham Lee@Gospel House