WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT?!

Sorry About the Delay

 

Maybe some of you are wondering if we fell off the face of the earth or something earthshaking like that but no . . . computer problems.  We were not able to post the blog last week as usual but are hoping that today will be a different day.  And wouldn't you know it, we had tons of photos and things to tell you last week!  So here is the wrapup:

 

Halloween Happenings

 

Who would have guessed that the Japanese celebrate Halloween?!  Yup, they do, albeit a subdued version (nothing could be as intense as the U.S. right?).  The Japanese, being Japanese, are somewhat embarrassed to get dressed up but they do like the festivities and the IDEA of having costumes.  This past week in our children's English class we made paper plate skeletons:

 

 

And the finished project:

 

 

They turned out really cute and later I took my sample to the Primary Halloween party and they had never seen them before and loved them.  These are some photos of our Primary Halloween party.  First, Calvin and his prized carved pumpkins (also a hit--haven't seen those yet either!):

 

 

Then us in our costumes (me as a witch and Elder Sakamoto as a broom if you can't tell!):

 

 

Bobbing for apples:

 

 

Souta (our little Primary boy) in his costume next to our bean bag toss game:

 

 

And the rest of the kids with hardly any costumes!:

 

 

 The party turned out really fun and who would have guessed that one of the real highlights was that I brought unfrosted cupcakes and let them frost and decorate them with sprinkles and M&M's.  Even the adults insisted on decorating since it was such a novel idea!  And several asked what the frosting was!

 

Service Project

 

We helped at a service project at a temporary housing unit that has mainly disabled/handicapped people.  They had what they call "undokai" which is a sports activity.  There were several activities to get them moving.  There was a ring toss around food which were the prizes:

 

 

Racing to get goodies with your teeth:

 

 

And the highlight (lowlight?) of the festivities was racing to sit on balloons and popping them.  One man missed the chair.  Another man actually jumped to sit on his and met this unfortunate demise:

 

 

Yes, the entire chair broke and luckily he was not hurt!  Other activities included volleyball, learning the hula and listening to some singers.  It was a fun activity and the weather was perfect!

 

Other Random Happenings

 

Our week was filled with other random happenings.  One of which was eating our first (but not our last!) oyster burger which was really yummy.  It was fried oyster and the funny thing was the bun was delicious too.  I hadn't realized it had been almost a year since eating a bun!:

 

 

When we were walking one day I decided to take a picture of the manhole covers here in Ishinomaki.  This one is painted but not all are so colorful; most have this same design.  It says "Ishinomaki sewer" or somthing like that.  Anyway, it pictures their biggest industry--fishing, and their summer fireworks which they will proudly tell you are the biggest display around.  Oh and the fireworks are above this bridge.

 

 

 

Another store along our walking area is this Dart Store.  Who knew you could make an entire business out of darts?  And who knew there were dart accessories?

 

 

One day we were starving and couldn't get back to our apartment for several hours.  We stopped at a roadside place and had this authentic (but pricey) food.  It was fresh seafood (oyster, scallops, sea snail, shrimp, and something else!) and some clam soup:

 

 

And finally we had a Relief Society project making book covers for our hymnbooks.  I was a little leary about this but they turned out really nice so our Relief Society room now has really nice hymnbooks!

 

 

All in all a great week.  And we have lots more for next week since many things have overlapped and we needed to finish the stories before telling you about them. 

 

And as a great ending to a great week, we learned on Sunday that our investigator Abe san has talked to all of his daughters and is now ready to be baptized!  This will be happening soon so we will keep you updated on that.