From Idaho Falls to Japan

Sunday, November 25, 2012

We had a Thanksgiving Day picnic at The American Kindergarten on Thursday. The 2 and 3 year olds peeled the cooked potatoes and the 4 and 5 year olds mashed them up with their hands. Then they added mayonnaise, eggs, cucumbers and salt and ate it with their lunch. They washed and sanitized their hands really well first!

This is a picture of the children getting ready to do their "thankful for the food" chant.

Here are a few more interesting lunches. I especially liked the one with the fish with the skin still on. They often eat the skin on the fish here.

These little picks are in many of the bentos, just to decorate them up a bit!

Thanksgiving Day was our 32^nd Wedding Anniversary. We celebrated by going out to dinner. We decided to be brave and try somewhere we had never been before, so we started walking towards town and found a building that looked like it might be a restaurant because of the fabric curtains out in front of the door. We walked in and said, “taberu?” which means to eat.

A man and woman said, “hai”, which means yes, and they asked us to sit down at one of the two tables. It was a very small restaurant attached to their house. The menu was posted all over the walls, in Japanese, of course, so we asked them if they served “kare”, which is curry, and they said, “hai” so Scott ordered that. I told them to bring me their “ichiban” which literally means ‘first or best’. They went to work in the kitchen that was open to the dining room. They brought us out several things to drink. The first was a yucky barley tea called 'mugicha' that is very popular here, but we don't care for it. The second was some sort of hot herbal tea, and the third was ‘mizu’ or water! Soon Scott’s curry beef and rice dish came out followed by my yaki-soba. It is grilled vegetables with brown noodles and sauce. I have had it in Japan before and it is very ‘oishii’, or delicious! We were also served some sort of apple salad and hard boiled eggs. They kept trying to talk with us and we could understand just enough to get us in trouble and have them keep trying to talk to us. That seems to be a big problem for us here. We usually just laugh and we say “wakarimassen” a lot! Which means-I don’t understand. I think I say that word more than anything else! It was a fun adventure!

The cute couple that own the restaurant.
They have been married for 52 years!

There are Christmas decorations everywhere here in the stores and homes. I find that pretty interesting since less than 2% of the population here are Christians. Shinto and Buddhism make up about 96% of population according to their birth certificates, but about 70% of the people will claim no religion at all.

I have some receipts that state the year as 24 rather than 12. It is also printed that way on my train pass. I thought it was strange, but I found out it is because that is how many years His Majesty the Emperor has been reigning in Japan, so many official documents and papers have that date as the year!

Here are some bikes parked along the side walk in downtown Miyazaki. They are rarely locked up.

This is a picture of a large rocket ship that greets us near the park on our way to church.

And this is a picture of the park that we cut through to get to the church.

Most things in

Japan

are small with the exception of bottles of soy sauce (which they do not put on their rice) and radishes! We were given this large Japanese radish by a local farmer. You can eat it raw or fry it or boil it in soup. It’s going to take awhile to eat this! Scott’s dad could make a month’s worth of radish sandwiches from this one!

They grow very large beautiful carrots here. This field was hand thinned by some elderly Japanese people and now it looks as if it wasn't thinned at all! We like the carrots so much here that Scott went to the local 'Home Depot" and bought some seeds to bring home and try in our own garden next summer!

This is a restaurant across the street from The American Kindergarten where we often go for lunch on Wednesdays before faculty meeting.

This fruit on the right is called ‘kaki’. In America we call them persimmons. This one is larger than most and doesn’t have any seeds. It was really sweet and good!

This is one of the attendants from one of the express trains at the station. She was bowing to the train as it was arriving at the station!

We have also seen the butcher turn and bow to people in the supermarket before entering the back room. It is always astonishing to us!

Hello Kitty is very popular here in Japan. You see it on towels, toys, clothes, bags and many more things throughout Japan.

Speaking of bags, most Japanese women carry at least 2 bags with them wherever they go. I thought one purse was bad enough! Here is a picture of a typical teenage backpack. They love to decorate them!

I helped out in the Nursery in church on Sunday. They had interesting snacks. Hot barley water (mugicha), little gel filled cups and biscuits. This little guy had the cutest smile and dimple ever!

We took a walk down to the beach after church today. It is still as beautiful as ever. We are really going to miss it. These amazing 'daisy bushes' were out in full bloom and were really beautiful. It's wonderful to see flowers blooming this time of year. That is another thing we will really miss!