Farewell Party

So, on Sunday I got a farewell at church. They had Yan Yan speak since she and I are almost always together at church. She came up to me beforehand and said she had not prepared much, but then went up to the stand and spoke for 15 minutes bringing some members of the congregation to tears. It was quite moving. However, when I am nervous, I have two moods: nervous laughter and vomiting (yes those are moods). I spoke afterwards, followed by the YW singing 'Be Strong'.
In the evening, we had a ward party with tacos! Sis Miyasaka knew I was looking forward to eating Mexican food when I returned, so she prepared the meat, shells, chips, salsa, avacado dip, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese etc. Then it was potluck style, so people brought in curry, onigiri, puddings, fried rice, etc. which was really nice since Char, Em, and Mom were there. They got to try a bunch of home cooked Japanese foods. Plus, my ward has some pretty freaking awesome cooks. The laurels made a 'Stephanie Quiz' to see who really knew the crazy foreigner. It was a lot of fun. Char got a picture of me laughing my head off when they gave the intro to it. It was adorable and funny. 'Cularious' (cute plus hilarious) if you will. Naomi ended up winning. She, being the YW secretary, did hear them making part of the quiz, but she did still remember all the answers I gave. Good job Naomi! Yan Yan, Naomi, and I are all around the same age, so it is natural that we hang out and know more about stuff about each other than others would. She actually got baptized earlier this year. Yan Yan and I have grown quite fond of her. We'll fight over her sometimes. She just laughs at the strange foreigners. She used to be kind of shy, but she seemed to transform within a week. I mean one Sunday she was shy and the next she decided not to be. She has since not been shy. It has been awesome to watch her progress, and even more to see her come out of her shy shell. Or perhaps she was just getting less scared of the crazy foreigner. Either way, I am glad it happened.
Here are some pictures from that day!

Tacos! (among other things)

She is eating a rice krispy treat with chopsticks. I freakin' love Naomi-chan.

Rei and Yuri

Em's 1st plate

Kengo!

Tomoko and me =D

Half of them singing.

Sis Masumoto. She is freaking awesome!! She became the YW president earlier this year and kept me on as an advisor.

Kaori, myself, and Risa. Go SAs!

Naomi-chan took some pictures with my camera. I liked this one.

Since I was kind of the focus of the first half of this event, I really didn't get any super awesome pictures. Maybe I will steal some from Char or Em and post some more later.

More to come

See you this week!

July...is almost over?!

Ok. July has been crazy. Exams were this month, so not only did I put in time and effort to study for them, but there was also all the end of semester deadlines we had to meet. Which brings me to my first picture.

What does chocolate have to do with end of semester deadlines? We had a small speech conItest, and I won. Ironically I did my speech on the history of chocolate in Japan. At the end of my speech I handed out chocolate to my classmates. They voted, and I won (teehee).
I have since then finished my exams, but not before taking a trip to Fuji's 5 lakes. One of my students, Yuko, insisted on making sure I had a good memory of Japan, so she and her husband showed me some of the best places to view Mt. Fuji.

Mt Fuji is behind there, I swear.

Since it was cloudy, they decided to take me to a cave where shoguns used to store ice since in the bottom it is always 0C or less. 

Outside the cave entrance. You can see half the map of the cave route.

See the ice!

Oh for the record, I did not know we would be entering a cave, let alone one that is at freezing in the middle of July, so I wore shorts and sandals. It was chilly.

The weather still had not cleared up in Yamanashi Prefecture, so we decided to go get some food, and then try to get peek at Fuji's peak in Shizuoka afterwards. 

Cold cucumber soup

And a variety of veggie dishes grown on the farm we had lunch at =D

Before heading back towards Mt. Fuji, we stopped by a fruit stand and winery to buy some peaches which Yamanashi is famous for. I still am surprised by mountains. I see them by my apartment everyday, but sometimes I still think 'Holy Tall Earth!'

As we were heading to Shizuoka, Fuji started to appear.

When we arrived at Lake Yamanaka, you could see Mt Fuji quite well. 

Yesterday, I climbed Mt. Fuji. We all met right after midnight, hopped in two different cars, and arrived at the foot around 3 am. We parked around 3:30, but our parking space was around 3 km away from the 5th station where you begin to climb. So we ended up starting our real climb around 4 am. 

Morning sky from the 5th station (where we began to climb).

Mt. Fuji is 3776 m above sea level. We began at 2400m.

There were a lot of people there. Don't worry it was only like this for a few minutes at some narrow places. You have to be polite and let the people climbing down use the easy trail too.

There were some pretty flowers at the start of the climb.

Me still happy and energetic. A little side note, I was woken up Friday morning at 6 am by an earthquake. And for some reason, I could not go back to sleep. I managed to take a 3 hour nap before meeting up with everyone. 

Part of the climbing team. YanYan, Tommy are included above. 

I reached the new 7th station!

Yuuki (Shiho's husband) helped drive. He kept coming arriving last at each station going 'This...is...a..piece...of...cake' in English when he met me at the station. I decided to take a picture of him as he arrived. He looks like an old man.

Yan Yan stole my camera.

The old 7th station. 766 meters to go.

It was really nice when the clouds roll. It felt so good.

This is it in motion.

My first step onto the Top.

Where magma used to boil when it was a once mighty volcano. See the snow ^.^

This is the tallest rock on Mt. Fuji. It was naturally the tallest. I got to touch it =D

Monument stating it is the tallest point on Mt. Fuji. I made it.

The shrine and post office at the top. I pulled Best Luck again. Good to know Mt. Fuji loves me.

Take a nap before you make the trek down.

It took me 6 hours to get to the top. We waited at the top for 2.5 hours for the rest of our group to show up. We let them rest for about 2 hours before we decided we best be going. It took me 2.5 to get down (all that walking really paid off). 

My legs hurt, and my face is bright red (I was a topic of conversation at Church today). I did not bring sunscreen to reapply. I wore sunglasses too, so I look like a red raccoon. 

See you in less than a month.

June

June is coming to a close and since I recovered from the mumps, it has felt like I have been moving non-stop. That is good though, since it feels like I am making the most of what little time I have left here.

Jon came to visit again. We went to Odaiba. It was raining that day so not too many interesting pictures for you. But we also went to Yokohama where I found another boat to take pictures of! Hurray!

New boat!

 

We also went to China Town. Why can't I remember to take a picture of something before I eat it?!

Fashionable!

Ok so before heading to the main event of Jon's trip here, we saw a musical play. I say musical play cause it had songs during the scene changes, but really no where else. No one breaks out into a song in the middle of a scene and everyone starts dancing to it. But anyway, it stared my favorite girl idol group, so I had to go see it. It was indeed lame. But I enjoyed it. I REALLY enjoyed how much I understood. It made me feel like I have been learning a lot since getting here. Plus, the characters made for Jun Jun and Shige-san were perfect. These girls have been doing acting for a while now, and Ai-chan has certainly come a long way since trying to save the earth in a very very lame musical in 2004. There was a lot to love about the play, but I shall spare you all. I will leave it on this: ironically each girl had one outfit that really made me go 'Fashionable? Really, guys?'.

The next day we hopped on a Shinkansen...

Shinkansen!

To go to Hiroshima!!

Hiroshima styled Okonomiyaki! Nummy! Notice I ate some first >.<

Big batch of them being made

Actually, we got off at Hiroshima, got lunch, and threw our bags in a coin locker to head to Iwakuni (in Yamaguchi-ken) to check out a super cool bridge. 

Is this not cool?

Up and down

It is built like this because whenever the river would flood it would wash away the bridge. So an architect in the 1600s decided to build solid stone blocks to support wooden arches that would wash down the rive rather than be destroyed. They would pick up the arches and return them to the stone pillars when the water subsided. Pretty smart, huh? Unfortunately this is not the original. They did not have money after WW2 to repair the bridge, and in 1950 a typhoon came through and destroyed it. They rebuilt it exactly the same 3 years later. And thus Stephanie went to Iwakuni!

There is a nice park on the other side of the bridge. There is also a castle way up on the mountain. Talk about defense.

What is a Japanese park without a temple?

Irises in bloom =D

Stray Kitty! It stopped raining and this kitty came out and started rubbing against my legs. It is a crime to feed them. There was a sign that said so...alas, I had to just shower it with affection.

Coolest water fountain ever!

Now to the main event! Miyajima!!!

The mighty Toori!

It was low tide, so I walked out to it.

So big!

We went into the shrine that is looks out to the gate and I got a picture with it.

Before we left the tide got higher. Here is what it looks like at high tide.

The shrine before high tide.

The shrine after high tide.

A cute little fawn. The deer here are not afraid of people. But unlike Nara, you cannot feed them here. They ask you not to. But I did see a deer try to enter a shop! I guess that is one way to get food.

And like Nara's, they will eat your map. Luckily I was heading to the boat to leave.

You can climb mountains and take trams across Miyajima, but what really impressed me was the clarity of the water. Japan polluted a lot during the 1960s. You still cannot swim in many of the rivers.

The rest of the trip was spent in Hiroshima.

The A-bomb dome. It was only a 150 meters away from where the bomb detonated on Aug 6th 1945. It is the only building to remain standing since then. They decided not to demolish it since it was still mostly intact.

Hiroshima Castle! It is nice to see a non-white castle. The white castles to me seem like giant targets...

Only one guard....so easy to get in >.>

We returned to Tokyo and tried our luck at an amusement park. Unfortunately 3 of their major (IE fun) rides were not running. Luckily, at Japanese amusement parks you can just pay by ride. So we hopped on the coolest looking one that was not closed for the day.

The bandit! This ride is quite long. I actually decided to ride this one because when Morning Musume had a TV show, they had a segment called Screaming CM where they would try to advertise their latest singles/albums/DVDs etc while screaming on Japan's most infamous roller coasters. It was quite funny. I tried advertising a bit while on it. I don't see what is so hard about it Abe-san!

http://www.yomiuriland.co.jp/attraction/bandit.html

That link will give you an idea of what it is like.

Finally, we have some more kit kats!

Citrus flavored. It was DE-licious. I am not sharing. (Hiroshima)

Strawberry cheese cake from Yokohama

Wasabi from Shizuoka. Actually, I have not tried this yet >.>

Bitter Almond. That was some DARK chocolate. It was almost evil.

Aloe and Yogurt flavored. I can live with out this.