Week 32: September 9 - 15, 2013 Serving in Kumamoto Japan

Monday, Preparation day again.  We did the normal cleaning work and sharing our computers with the missionaries for e-mailing and talking to our children on Skype, what a blessing modern communication technologies are.  We also gave a new sister in Shimizu a car ride to the Supotu Depo to buy a bike.  This store is a Japanese R.E.I.  I can walk around for hours and drool over all the exciting equipment and cloths.  It was a long ride for her two companions and then they bought the bike and all three returned to Shimizu.

Because we have been soaked twice in the rain we took this opportunity to buy us some rain gear and better rear view mirrors.  This bike jacket and pants are made from gore-tex and are very expensive.  We hope they are worth it.  Here is Luetta's colors.

The mirrors are the type that mount to the ends of the handle bars and seem to be effective.  When we ride to the International center in the morning we are traveling with the high school students who ride like crazy.  With the mirror's we can see them coming.  It also helps me stay with Luetta.

After this, for our exercise, we started a bike ride to the new Shimizu Sisters apartment to get tools we left with them last week to assemble their new desk chairs.  On the way to the Shimizu/Tsuboi church we crossed the Shirakawa (kawa means river).  We note from this picture they are adding an additional lane(s) to this already very busy road.  See the steel piles, they are driving to bed rock.

We decided to continue our ride to lake Ezu (a place we have been to before that we enjoy).  Here is a kayak on the lake, sure made me wishing I could join him.

We got there at sunset just like last time we took this ride.  This time I managed to get one of the rowing shells that ply these waters in the sunset reflection on the water.

Here is Luetta on a bike path that we found this time that allows us to stay on the lake instead of going around the zoo, and take a lot longer to get back to where we want to be.

We passed a interesting Japanese grave yard and ended up with a wonderful view of the moon when we got to our home away from home.

On Wednesday we went to the International Center to teach English conversation and take our Japanese class. Our Japanese teach is a retired High School teacher and is teaching us in the Japanese style, to read and write.  We reviewed Hiragana and then Katagana with their respective romanized equivalents then went right on to Kanji.

Here is the word for emergency exit above a door at the International Center.

That afternoon the Nagamine sisters wanted to give them a car ride to an investigator that plans on moving into their area, but is now in the Yatsushiro branch area.  We took them and we had a wonderful lesson, during which Luetta and I added our thoughts on the principle of Faith and bore testimonies of the importance of baptism.

In Yatsushiro, we saw a rice field with the rice heads on them finally.  It is very cool to see how it grows.

One in a long while we have to stop at one of the many 7-11 stores and buy a corn dog (exactly like the ones in the U.S.).  They have a very creative package to dispense both ketchup and mustard at the same time.

Our son, Daniel, had a school project where he proposed a side by side bottle that would do a very similar dispensing of the two condiments.

Our week ended on Sunday with 8 hours of Japanese Language deep immersion.  We are starting to hear more and more words every week.  This is exciting and at the same time painfully slow.