Friday May 29th

After school we took a bus to a garden called Sankeen. It was really pretty and described as being “Kyoto-like.” And it was Kyoto-like, beautiful and open. It made me miss Kyoto a lot. It was still pouring and I was glad that I brought my rain boots because it was really muddy and kept me from getting muddy. My camera fogged up though and kept taking blurring or smudgy pictures so I don’t have very many good ones from today. That is kind of a bummer but that’s okay. Rain is fun. I just hope that we get a couple more sunny days. We all want to go to Tokyo Disneyland and another theme park. We will see if we actually go. I might go to Disneyland with my family so that will be fun. I hope so.
After trudging around in the mud we all went home. I was happy to be home because I was really tired and even fell asleep on the bus ride home. Traveling is so expensive here. A lot of my budget goes to that. And then eating too is expensive. Most of the time we just go to Lawsons and get food so its cheaper than eating out but eating that for a long time isn’t great. Haha. I got home and played with the kids and worked on my homework.
Random Note of the Day: One of the scariest/coolest sounds I have heard is when two denshas pass each other and you get a thunder clap noise. It is crazy.

Thursday May 28, 2009
Today woke up and went to school. It was pouring so that was kind of fun. We are supposed to have rain for the next couples of days so that will be interesting. School was fine and we played some Japanese games so that was fun. After school we all went to the Catholic Church down the street. The missionaries of other churches were there obviously a long time before ours were so that was interesting. We looked around the church for a little bit and talked a bit about the history. The Church was destroyed a couple of times so that was interesting. They had a big part of bringing Christianity to modern Japan so that is cool. They had a place with people’s bones in them though so that kind of creepy. J
After that Hana and I went to eat Ramen and walked around for a bit and then went back up to the Church to study. I studied for about an hour and a half and then went home. It was pouring so that was fun. I played with the kids. We watched the KBYU channel and watched shows in English including Barney. Oh the joys of Barney. Haha. Hinari really wanted me to be a horse so both the kids got on my back and I crawled around. My mom got a kick out of that and was telling my dad later. Haha. It was funny. The boy is so funny and now runs around and says my name all the time so that was fun.
Random note, I am really glad that I bought that ipod because since I am wearing a mask on the densha I cant really talk to anyone so I just listen to music. I even bought some Japanese cds so it is legit. Haha.
We had fried chicken and fish for dinner. It was delicious. I am not loving Meso Soup any better yet, but I am starting to not really be able to taste the Mugi Tea anymore so that is fun. I drink it everyday. J My mom says though that this is actually with oats instead of wheat like the others ones…so weird. I played more with my little siblings. Hinari sang “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” and did actions for me so that was funny. Haha. She is cute. They all went to give the kids a bath and I worked on homework and then all the sudden it went to Chaos. Hinari was bawling and screaming and there was a big family fight. Talk about awkward. Not really sure what to do. So I just watched music videos and worked on some stuff. It is still going on so I am not really sure what to do. Oh well, every family has their moments. Anyway, I will try to have a more exciting day tomorrow!
I think it calmed down because Mom and Dad Orito and I watched most of Ponyo, the new Miyazaki movie. It was cute and they turned on english subtitles for me. Unfortunately, it only worked for the first ten minutes of the movie and even then it didnt make sense. haha. It was good though but I will probably regret the staying up so late thing.

May 27th

Today I woke up and read for a while. Hinari was sitting on my bed reading so I was surprised that it hadn’t woken me up enough to keep me awake. We ate and then I went to school. We are going to the temple tonight so I wore a skirt. I got to the place where I usually trade lines and there was like mad chaos going on. Apparently there were like 2 accidents and other problems with some of the denshas. So after trying to ask someone what was going on, a guy just told me in English that there was a delay and I should switch lines if I could. I went over to a different line and met up with some of the other students. It was fun. We got to school and all of us were tired and doing the laughing when tired thing. It was probably very frustrating for our teachers.
After class I read tomorrow’s homework while the rest goofed off. Then we walked down and got lunch and headed off to Tokyo to spend the rest of the day. We started our first time in Tokyo with the Imperial Palace. It is closed to the public though so we could only take pictures outside.
On the way we saw this really cool fountain that of course we had to check out. It had little paths of water down the middle of the “street” and it was really neat. Naturally, I took a lot of pictures. J
We then made it to the imperial palace and took a bunch of pictures there. We couldn’t go inside so that was a bummer but that’s okay. After the Palace we went to Shibuya to see our favorite famous dog, Hachiko. He is a symbol of loyalty and patience here in Japan. We shopped and got dinner and then headed off to the temple. It was really neat to get to do baptisms again. The temple is beautiful and it was am amazing experience again. It was nice knowing how it worked here too so I could help everyone else. They gave us the option of the confirmations in Japanese or English and I definitely choose Japanese. I didn’t understand it, sometimes couldn’t even pick out the name, but it was a really neat experience. I was so blessed to get to go twice. I love to see the temple!

Tuesday May 26th

Today I woke up and was relieved to find out that my sister had not woken up yet and it was 7am. I read my scriptures for a little bit and then had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, when returning back to my bed to continue working, she woke up and that was the end of my studying this morning I thought. However, she wanted to come over and read her scriptures with me so we both read them. She is amazing and reads both the English and Japanese book of Mormons. That girl is amazing. Haha. Anyway, we had eggs with shrimp in them, salad, toast and hot chocolate again. The hot chocolate kind of tastes like, I don’t know, it’s not very good whatever it tastes like but I drink it anyway. I made a goal the other day to drink the tea every morning and just deal with the fact that it tastes like dirt. One of the missionaries in Kyoto said that you just have to keep drinking it and then you will love it, so I have been trying. Not working so far, although, I almost can take that back because I think it is not as gross as it used to be.
I played with the kids for a little bit and then headed off to school. To get to school I have to walk to the densha which is about 10 minutes away, get on a densha to Yokohama Station and then transfer to a subway taking me to Motomachi-Chugachi or something like that. Then today I met up with a classmate, Angie and we walked through part of the Motomachi shopping street and then went up a death hill to the church at the top.
Yokohama used to be a town of about 400 fishing families. It was one of the first to open to foreigners after Japan was forced to open and now it is one of the largest towns in Japan with 2-3 million people (or something like that). Anyway, when foreigners started to move here they sent them to the hills because the prime land was down on the ground for fishing. Now, though, the top of the hill where the church is is some of the most prime land in Yokohama. Haha. I have another interesting fact about the church but I will write it tomorrow when I get a picture J
School was okay. I feel like I have a much better grip on Japanese now but have hit a wall. I can say almost anything I want in broken Japanese or short sentences, but I want more now. I was to be able to say longer sentences with more in them. My TA says that is really good because it is what is going to get me through it and one day it will finally click and I will be really speak Japanese. I am excited for that day. J
After class we went up to the foreigners cemetery. It was okay, but we couldn’t even go in the graves area so that was dumb. Yay looking from afar? Then we went to a place that overlooks Yokohama bay. It was really pretty. It also had a rose garden that was really pretty. After we walked back down the hill and went to a convenience store and bought lunch and then traveled to Yamashita Park where we ate lunch by this big fountain. It was really cool and I made the mistake of wanting to take the picture after lunch because a HUGE group of school kids came to take their picture and they kicked us out.
Lilly, Hannah, Staci and I went to Yokohama Station and looked around. I bought some capris that I really liked and when we went to Starbucks a little while later I changed into them because it was a beautiful hot day. We asked some old lady where to find a young people’s mall and she pointed us in the right direction. We went to this mall and then looked around for like two hours. I didn’t buy anything but others did. I went home after that and did my homework, helped my sister with hers, and played with the kids until dinner. It was really fun. We ate kind of like a stir fry for dinner, only with this really bitter tasting vegetable which I didn’t like at all. I forgot the English name of it. Its texture is really weird though, I will take a picture some time. Anyway, we also had cabbage meso soup which was okay, and rice which I live. I drank Mugi tea. It’s a wheat tea is I didn’t say that earlier. After dinner I played with the kids more and watched some shows with them. My little sister and dad love “full house,” so that makes me laugh a lot. We all showered and are now going to bed.

Bridge to Heaven

They say if you look upside down at this island, it looks like a bridge to heaven (hence our heads between our legs)

We also rode a rollercoaster...it was a blast

Email update from Jamie - Swine Flu Scare

We move to Tokyo saturday.. They are really worried about swine flu. So much that they cancelled school for the next week for public schools, cancelled church, and　cancelled our trip for tomorrow... :( Oh well, i guess i have already been to the himeji castle... its actually kind of scary because my family and all the yokohama families want us to wear masks but every store in Japan is sold out. Scary huh? I have to go to school this summer, stinks but i have to.

Feeling better - May 16th

Saturday May 16th, 2009
I woke up this morning and was surprised that I had slept so well. I made a deal with sensei that I wouldn’t push it if I didn’t feel good but I felt fine. I went down and ate breakfast and told them that I felt fine and so Marcy and I left at about the same time to go to Kyoto eki to meet with everyone. We got our rail passes for next week. They are cool looking. I had fun telling everyone my story and promised to tell sensei if I felt anything that was wrong. I did fine but was exhausted after climbing any stairs. It was really weird, I guess my body was just tired from last night. We all rode a train to Osaka and looked at Osaka castle. It was cool on the outside but I think almost everyone was disappointed by the inside because it was a modernized museum. I thought I had gone to this one when I came last, but it must have been the castle we are going to next Friday. We had to walk up the last three flights of stairs to the 8th floor and I was so tired my legs were about to give out. I would randomly get a sharp pain in the same spot but for the most part it was fine. On the eighth floor we were able to look out over Osaka. It was an overcast day but it was beautiful! J

After leaving the castle we went and ate lunch. They had a lot of the head pictures (where you stick your head in) so we took a bunch. I had chicken curry which is one of my favorite things I have eaten here. I LOVE it. J I also had a mix of strawberry and vanilla ice cream cone and tried someone else’s Hokkaido milk cone. It was good. I went and stood by a bunch of school boys so I could get a picture. They were taking school pictures. One of them (the one that is closest to me on the top row) told me that the castle was his house in English. It was pretty funny. Haha

We then ran into this group of kids who were dressed very strangely and so we got a bunch of pictures with them. Some other kids took some very funny ones of me, so I will have to get them later.

We went back to the church for their investigator’s BBQ which didn’t end up being a BBQ but was still fun. The like 14 missionaries set up a representation of Lehi’s Dream in the “gym” and chapel. They told us that we couldn’t do it because they didn’t have enough apples but then one Elder told me I could go. He was my “guide” and I had to listen to his voice because I was blind folded. It was really tempting to take the chocolate but I decided I should be good and that my guide might kick my butt if I did. It was funny though because I was tempted in English and Japanese. I made it all the way and held on to the rod to get my chunk of apple. It was hilarious. I thanked my guide and then went and talked to this little girl named Clara whose English is AMAZING. She is five and goes to an English day care. It is so cute. I talked to her mom in half English half Japanese later—she says now that it is really hard to hear a lot of sounds that the English language has because their ears aren’t trained for it. It is really cool that the Japanese people all learn English. Well, cool for me anyway. I talked to a lot of the missionaries for my project that I will talk about later. There was one native Japanese sister and the rest were white. Well, there was one tongan and one Brazilian there too. That was cool. But yeah, I had a great time. We ate dinner with the members and investigators and we talked to this adorable Japanese boy who we all fell in love with because he was so shy and like a cute kid. He was so funny and I think we all danced with him at the dance.
We had a dance at 6:30 and it was really funny to see the elders standing there watching and listening to the music. I asked them if they were tempted to go in or wanted to. Some of the newer ones did but only really when they heard a song that they knew. Haha. It was quite amusing. I talked to one elder who commented on me running in and out of the beginning of the dance. I guess it was just like home when I was flittering to different places during the dance. I talked to him for a while and he told me to get back in there and go dance with some Japanese guys. The dance was SO cool because they all do what they call the “jitterbug” or the “blues” during every dance. So fast or slow, they were always partner dancing. It was really neat and I danced a lot. It was so fun and I wish that they did this in America. I danced with both investigator boys that I knew about. One of them was supposed to be baptized today but he went home last weekend and his parents want him to wait until he is twenty. So his new baptism date is October 4th, his birthday. J The other one came to EiKaiwa (the English class) and they invited him to this so he came. He told Tuchiya that he was having a lot of fun so that was cool. Me and three other Japanese kids sang “My Heart Will Go On” at the dance so that was amusing. One of them was a boy and if you get the video I am going to send he is the nasal voice that is singing as high as all of us that is really loud. It was very amusing.

After the dance we went to McDonalds and I got a burger and orange juice and they got me fries. It was really good and I would even say that the fries are better here…We got home and I took a shower and then Yumiko, Okaasan and Otoosan helped me write my talk for tomorrow. Yes, I am giving a talk. AHHH. In Japanese. AHHH. Haha. We were up until midnight doing that and then I went to bed exhausted.