An Emergency Retreat
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; 1991] After I witnessed a murder, we fled Kamagasaki. Immediately. We went to the safest place we knew. We tried to have a retreat.
After the Murder in Triangle Park, a Japanese Mafia man told us to leave Kamagasaki.
He was protecting us. I was an eyewitness to a murder, a murder done by a violent gang member.
That gang would be on the lookout for me. To stay in Kamagasaki would almost certainly mean I’d be killed.
We heeded his advice. Immediately.
Tom and I left Kamagasaki. Like the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, we fled into the night.
It might seem that we should have waited for the police to show up. Then I could offer my eyewitness testimony.
However, homeless people don’t enjoy the same attention from the police as mainstream people.
The murder of a homeless old man would not prompt an investigation by the police.
There would be no case file at the police station. No detective would be assigned. Nobody would care.
We walked to Shin-Imamiya train station. It was one of the stations on the Loop Line, which was operated by West Japan Railway Company.
Everybody we knew called it the Loop Line.
At that late hour, the trains arrived only every hour or so. So we stood on the platform for a long time.
It seemed like an eternity.
Would the gang member follow us here? It would have been easy and likely. Waiting on the platform, we were vigilant for our very lives.
Finally, the train came. We boarded.
The train looped around the heart of Osaka, finally arriving at Osaka Station at the north of the megacity.
Osaka Station is huge. Quite a few train lines intersect there.
Fortunately for us, it was always filled with people. There were crowds everywhere, even at this late hour. That would help protect us from being murdered.
We disembarked. We walked among the crowd to another major train station. This station was called Umeda.
Umeda Station was huge, too. Quite a few train and subway lines intersected here. We rode escalators down and down and down.
Finally, at what seemed like a mile underground, we were at the subway level. There were three subway lines.
In this vast underground maze, following the excellent signs everywhere, we soon found our way to a subway called the Midosuji Line.
Again the wait was long. Agonizingly long.
It was really late at night. The train we boarded was the final one for that night. Again, we drew comfort from being in a crowded subway car.
We went north, first through Nishi Nakajima station. Then Higashi Mikuni station came and went. Then it was Esaka station.
Then the train announcer’s voice told us the name of the next station: Ryokuchi-Kōen. That was our destination.
We got off the train. Then we walked.
We walked to a beautiful park called Hattori Ryokuchi Kōen. I called it Ryokuchi Park.
The time was around 1 or 2 am.
In my previous missionary life, Ryokuchi Park had been my place of prayer. I had spent lots of time in prayer there.
Sometimes when I was at Ryokuchi Park, I had fasted and prayed through the night into the next morning.
We found a secluded place, laid on the ground, and tried to sleep.
To go from Kamagasaki to where we laid on the ground took at least two hours.
It wasn’t very far, the way a bird flies. Maybe eleven miles. But we had traversed some of the most densely populated cityscape on the planet.
We had taken the Loop Line. Then we walked. And we waited. Then we took the Midosuji subway. Then we walked to the park. Then we scrounged for a hidden place to sleep.
It was a long trip. We were exhausted. Yet we were still flooded with adrenaline and hyper-vigilant.
Neither of us could sleep.
Ryokuchi Park was a slice of heaven. It would be our hiding place. Our Fortress of Solitude.
We found safety in the hope that nobody from Kamagasaki knew where we were. We weren’t followed, as far as we could tell.
By our taking a train and then a subway, it would have been difficult for anybody to follow us.
Plus if one of the rough men from Kamagasaki were to show up here here in this cradle of safety, he would stand out from the crowd.
The next morning, we found a hostel. We booked a stay of several nights. We washed our laundry. We had a traditional Japanese bath.
We were able to leave our things in the hostel and walk around unencumbered.
Not having to carry everything we owned was wonderfully pleasant.
For the next few days, we read the Bible. We prayed for guidance. We ate decent meals in decent restaurants.
We tried to make it a mostly silent retreat. That meant we wouldn’t talk unless we needed to.
And we tried to relax.
We needed guidance. After the Murder in Triangle Park, what should we do next?
- Leave Japan?
- Move to a new city?
- Switch to a different ministry?
- Return to Kamagasaki?
- Something else entirely?
Even in this safe place, we found it very difficult to relax.
We had been homeless for months. We had been residing in the most violent place in the nation. We were vulnerable to intimidation or violence from anybody at any time.
We were tasty rodents in a land of hungry predators.
Without meaning to do so, we had unwittingly developed a sort of hyper-vigilance for our safety.
Now we were walking around in the safest place we knew of. Ryokuchi Park was beautiful and safe and huge. There were no predators.
Around us were mainstream Japanese people. Good-hearted, fun-loving, non-violent, happy Japanese people.
We were hopeful. Perhaps the LORD God would reveal some guidance for us.
RESOURCES
At Wikipedia:
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
NOTE. Names, dates, and locations may have been changed.
Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the World English Bible and the World Messianic Edition. These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.