The ‘developing’ Japan

So was how my adviser refers to Kochi. He loves Kochi anyway, just as he loves the Philippines.

Kochi prefecture is located in the Shikoku Island, southwest of Japan, along with Kagawa, Ehime, and Tokushima prefectures. According to my adviser, its population is around 300,000. I have yet to know what Kochi is really like, but on first impression: a quiet, organized, and safe city, rural in some sense compared with the bigger cities of Japan.

One amazing fact to me is that the website http://www.baobab.or.jp/~stranger/mypage/church.htm records 50 churches in Kochi. Our God be praised! I don’t know about all these churches, but what can be more wonderful than 50 churches in a single prefecture speaking about Christ’s grace.

Coincidentally ("By God's sovereignity,..." as Marlon would put it), Kochi prefecture, by way of a memorandum of agreement, is a sister province of the Benguet province in the Philippines (according to an officer at the prefecture office whom I met in the welcome party for foreign students). Around 60 Cordillerans are all around Kochi learning Japanese farming technology cum helping produce vegetables for Japan. One might say it's accidental and that "it’s a small world after all." I say, God destined it to be for reasons I have yet to find out.