So a few of this week's adventures:
Exercise:
So one of our members has been after us to go walking with her on Monday mornings. Last week I finally relented and said I would go. The catch: she wanted us at HER HOUSE at 5:00 a.m. and that meant basically that we had to awake at 4:00 a.m. in order to get up, get ready and walk to her house. And lest you think that it might be dark at that hour (4:00 a.m.): Wrong. It is light at 4:00 a.m. So here is the school we walked to (after a steep incline):
And here is proof that what I am telling you is true:
Every school has a clock on the front.
The Japanese Way:
In people who live across the street from our church building have been doing some intense landscaping lately. They have a big backhoe and have pulled out trees, added full-grown trees, and hauled in tons (literally) of rocks. I wonder sometimes at the rock placement in this land of earthquakes since these next to the road look pretty precarious:
And for HOURS at a time they are working on the landscaping. This is the Japanese way: There is a man who drives the backhoe and directs two old grandmas on where to shovel the dirt so he can place the trees and rocks properly with his high-tech machinery:
One Man's Junk is Another Man's Treasure
On Tuesday we did some more hand massage service at a temporary housing unit that we have never been to before:
There were quite a few older people who came in and took advantage of the service. But one of the highlights was that I brought a bunch of stuff that I did not want (bags I had sewn, trinkets, hot pads, cookies I had made and bagged), etc. We put them all on a table and let whoever wanted have at it. It was more popular than the "free box" at a garage sale. Within just a few minutes pretty much everything was gone and by the end of the day, not a thing was left. If I would have known this would have been so popular, I would have been doing it long ago!
We Oughta Be in Pictures
One afternoon we met a film crew from Salt Lake at Miyato:
Elder Halvorson (on the right) called us the night before and asked us if we could go and help the cameramen who could not speak Japanese because they were filming a documentary to be shown between general conference sessions about the aid given in Japan after the great earthquake and tsunami. Elder Halvorson had to be on some conference calls right at the time they were going to be there so he wanted some help. We took the sisters (Sister Watanabe is fluent in English since she went to BYU Hawaii) and watched them film a segment featuring a large building that the Church had donated which houses several refrigerated rooms.
They made a "fake set" and pretended to be carrying in boxes of nets with seaweed (nori) seeds attached which had to be refrigerated:
Then we were treated to the real thing. They gave us several packages of nori--actually HUNDREDS of sheets!:
While we were there we also went on a beautiful hike up a small mountain (in Japan EVERYTHING not level is a mountain):
And from the top we could see the bay below:
Expensive Haircut
Another day I got a haircut and color. It was good to get a nice, short cut. Anyway, while I was there Takie, the hairdresser in the branch, said, "Here you can have a pair of my haircutting scissors. They are quite expensive." So she pulled out a few scissors and I tried each one and chose one. Then she also gave me some thinning shears:
She put them in a box which wasn't really the box for that particular model of scissors but my interest was piqued when I saw how much the sticker price for the scissors that were supposed to be in the box was. So when I got home I googled the scissors I got and saw how much they were worth: $578! For one pair of scissors! I really doubt that I will get my money's worth out of those things but they ARE nice!
Eating Out
And, of course, always there is eating out. When we went to district meeting we decided to go out to lunch at an "all-you-can-eat" place that lets you cook your own meat in front of you, has anything else you can imagine like salads, sushi, desserts, even do-it-yourself cotton candy. The food was
actually pretty decent for what we got:
And it's always fun when we have our district to eat with.
Stake Conference
This week was stake conference. At our Saturday evening adult meeting the Young Women were selling key chains, brownies and plates of curry to raise money for girls camp.
And it was a great conference because we had a visiting authority: Elder Yamashita and his wife of the Seventy. On Saturday he had a demonstration of how to HUG each other (rarely done in Japan) and on Sunday the general session of stake conference was held in a concert-type hall and was very nice and comfortable (a far cry from the seats at the stake building I must say!):
Even Calvin looks happy!
Well, enough for this week. We hope all is well with you. Go out and HUG someone for us!
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