On My Knees With the Japanese: Week 18: THE SOUND OF SLURPING

As I write this my district is sat around a table in the church's kitchen, slurping away at the most delicious soup thing that our Ward Mission Leader made us. You would not believe how loud the slurping is. And we only have two native Japanese at the table!

SLUUUUUUUUUURP!!!

Speaking of food!

I ATE MY FIRST SUSHI!!!

Here's a video!

I hope you are as appalled as I am that it has taken this long for my trainer to let us go get sushi. It's like she's trying to be smart with the church's money or something! Hahahaha that's a joke because we spend all of our money on bread and peanut butter substitutes. #ForeignerLyfe

At the sushi restaurant they served hot salt water.

You drink hot salt water when you eat sushi.

Basically, you pretend you're a fish.

It was so good guys, like so good. And we just went to one of those cheap ones where the sushi goes around a conveyor belt! America can never compare. I may never be able to go back home...

But then I remember Mexican food.

Ah, how I miss tortillas.

At our grocery store they sell tortillas.

Sad, little, dry and crumbly tortillas.

In packs of two.

FOR 400 yen = ~$4.00

But hey, at least they have good bike parking here!

Like literally a parking structure just for bikes. Mountains and mountains of bikes.

SO. MANY. BIKES.

This week, we had splits again! We went all the way to Ebetsu, which is near Sapporo, and it's about a 3 hour train ride. Oh, yeah, that's right I said train. I went on my first train ride!

It went a little something like this.

"Ooh, I can't read the sign that tells us where to go."

"Ooh, I can't read the sign that tells us how much our tickets costs."

"Ooh, I can't understand what the conductor is saying so we know when to get off!"

Luckily my trainer suddenly woke up from her nap exactly when we needed to get off. #Blessings

Oh, and I almost forgot. We got paparazzied by this really hyper 70-year-old man. He just came over and started filming us eating bread (our dinner for the day.) :) Japanese people love foreigners.

On splits I was with another bean! (Brand new missionary!) She is a transfer behind me, and we were friends in the MTC! But.... Neither of us know Japanese! :) We had fun pretending to understand people, and if I'm telling the truth, I actually kind of did! But don't tell my trainer. I don't want her to think I can actually speak Japanese yet! ;)

On the train ride home, we had a similar, though less invasive, and yet somehow more unnerving experience....

So we rode home in the morning. Early morning. Which means we woke up at 5 IN THE A.M. to walk to the station and board our train. We were pretty tired. So we passed out, asleep. Apparently (I cannot confirm this story, because I was asleep the whole train ride) my companion heard the word "gaijin" (foreigner,) which stirred her from her slumber and she woke up to a TRAIN FULL OF JAPANESE HIGHSCHOOLERS, ALL STARING AT US. Haha! And apparently I was sleeping with my chin on the windowsill like a dog. Beautiful!

By the way, my District Leader just asked me to choose a Dungeons and Dragons character for the next district activity. (I am so excited.)

This week we Heart Attacked a sister in the ward!

She speaks English FLUENTLY!

Therefore, we are good friends! :)

This week we tried to visit Kinjin Investigator Who Is Getting Baptized, but he wasn't home... We found out on Sunday that he was out buying a suit for church!

He is so wonderful!

We taught him the Word of Wisdom, and as most of Japan, he has a tobacco habit... But when we told him about the Word of Wisdom, he almost immediately said, "Okay, from today, I'll stop!"

He is amazing.

We just cleaned the baptismal font, for him, and hopefully others! This area of the mission hasn't had a baptism in a long, long time. I hope the ward will be excited! :)

Also, these pictures came in from a few weeks ago. The members here print out the pictures they take when you visit, and give them to you at church. This was from when we pulled weeds at this super cute Sister Grandma's house!