Week 12: Temples, Tomatoes, and Typhoons

Temples...

The Sapporo Temple is now dedicated! President Russell M Nelson gave a beautiful dedicatory prayer, which thankfully was in English. It was cool, the translator repeated the prayer right after in Japanese, so we got to feel the powerful presence of the Spirit for twice as long.

It was so fun to travel down and see some friends who were there! My MTC companion was there, another person from my MTC district, as well as my MTC Branch President. I was so excited to see them again, I freaked out... there was lots of excited hugging on my part. I think a little too much, perhaps...

We got to ride down there (about two hours away) on a fun bus with the whole ward. It was like a field trip with all of my best friends, who happen to be grandmas!

The bus ride

JAPAN IS SO BEAUTIFUL, EVERYONE

Tomatoes....

Everyone feeds you in Japan.  Yesterday, on the bus to the temple, people passed around food to share.  Every time we enter someone's home they bring out snacks and drinks.

We got "gotchi'd" (where someone feeds you a meal at an appointment) three times in one day!

And everyone, EVERYONE, has been giving us tomatoes!

We have bags upon bags of tomatoes!

This morning, the ward mission leader calls us up and says "You guys probably need tomatoes, yeah? I'm leaving some on your door!"

WE ARE AWASH WITH TOMATOEY GOODNESS!!

Quote from my trainer concerning this night-shady (lol tomato puns) situation:

"We have enough tomatoes to kill..."

I don't know what she meant by that, but if I you don't hear from me, I have a guess as to why...

Typhoons...

YEAH, I SAID TYPHOONS!!

Yeah there was a typhoon. It was raining pretty hard all day, and we were like "oh, typhoons aren't that bad," well, at least I was. My companion was pretty soaked and cold, and we had been riding all over to get to appointments all day. We were riding to our last one as it was getting dark, and the rain kept getting worse and worse. And then the winds started.... About then, we realized we were pretty lost! We called the people who we were trying to meet, and they were like "oh, you better hurry! The typhoon is coming!"

The typhoon is coming? As in THIS isn't the typhoon???

We were lost for about another hour until we finally found their house.

We rode the bus home that night.

I now know what a typhoon is.

This is what I wrote after we made it home safely,

"The rains came down, the floods came up, and while the house on the rock stood still, we certainly did not! We got lost.. And almost got hit by a garbage truck. Which, in Japan, are more cute than scary. But really..."

The next day we kept getting "Area Messages" on our phone, but it was all in kanji, so we kind of ignored it until we realized our neighbors were getting them at the same exact time, and even though our phone was on silent, a special ringer still sounded. We decided they were probably important, so we set to working out what they meant.

The first kanji we looked up meant "CALAMITY."

At this point we started freaking out.

Followed by "DISASTER" "DANGER" "EXTREME CAUTION."

Yeah, we called the Zone Leader and asked what was up.

Turns out it was just a flood warning for a different area near us, so we were fine. But for a second we were terrified!

(This was taken the day BEFORE the typhoon.)

(And this was taken the day after)

In other news, last pday a member took us to one of my most favorite kinds of places in the world... Can you guess what it is? Disneyland? Good guess, that IS one of my favorite places in the world, but not the one I'm thinking of... DING DING DING, YOU GOT IT! A museum! Wow, and it only took two guesses!

I don't know why I'm being so weird today.

Guess I didn't have my rice this morning! (My companion ate it all)

This museum was AMAZING!! It was all about the history of the island of Hokkaido, so there was artifacts and things from the ancient Ainu people (the people who lived there before the Japanese took over the island,) an old Japanese replica house, and some cool modern era antiques! They even let you walk around inside the replica homes, but of course, being Japan, you took off your shoes before entering! :)

Here is a little diagram of an Ainu bear sacrifice, which is though was really cool!

They believed that bear hunting was a religious practice, and that the bears they caught were a gift from the gods.

Oh, and here is a picture of our apartment!

Lol just kidding.

It looks really ancient Japanese to me, but the ward member we were with said her grandmother had a house just like it. And she was hardly and grandmother herself! Amazing.

Look at this super sick Japanese painting.
But be careful, don't look at it too long otherwise you'll catch a cold!
Lol, get it. Because it's sick. Hahahaa.....