A few years ago my brother, Brad LaPray, got us involved with a biodegradable plastics company.  At first we just invested in the company then later Scott started working for the company.  They set up operation in a vacant potato warehouse in Blackfoot.  A 20 foot long screw, cut in an intricate secret way with a lathe produces pellets that can be turned into plastic that biodegrades when exposed to soil and heat.  This whole process was invented by a Japanese Scientist named Dr. Uchiami. 

We planned our trip for months.  We put apps on our i-pads to help us learn Hiragana, Katakana, and Japanese words and phrases.  We bought pocket dictionaries and grammar books and wrote an expensive packing list.  Then we started to study.  We memorized all of the Hiragana and Katakana symbols fairly quickly and knew how to read them.  The main problem is that here they use a ton of Kanji symbols mixed in with the other symbols.  They use Hiragana for pure Japanese words and Katakana for foreign words and as far as I can tell they mix Kanji in whenever they feel like it!

We left from the Idaho Falls airport on Monday evening, September 10^th at 5:30 p.m.  Then we traveled for 24 hours to get to the airport in Miyazaki Japan.  While we were traveling we gained 15 hours so we didn’t arrive here until Wednesday morning. Wenji and Mr. Katowaki picked us up at the airport.  They drove us to a bank where we changed some of our dollars to yen.  Next we went to the realty office so we could rent our apartment.  We have a small 2 bedroom apartment.  There was no stove or fridge and it didn’t even come with lights.  We went to a second hand store and bought a small fridge and microwave and 2 lights that screwed into the ceiling and a lamp.  Then we went to a store and bought a single burner gas stove.  We brought quite a few dishes and a queen size air mattress with us.  Mr. Katowaki let us borrow a table and 4 folding chairs from the factory.  It feels a bit like camping, but it will do.  The first day we tried the air conditioner and it didn’t work.  The maintenance guys came and put in a new unit the next morning. It is in the 90’s and the humidity is very high.

We went to the grocery store and got a few things.  It is pretty hard to tell what you are getting because everything is written in symbols.  But we bought cabbage and broccoli and yogurt.  We brought some hot cereal from home.

Mr. Katowaki bought us a lot of things for our apartment, clothes lines, laundry baskets, a garbage can, hangars, slippers and more!  He is so kind and thoughtful. 

Yesterday we went to the beach.  It is only about a 20 minute walk from our apartment.  It is not a good place to swim because the tide is high, but they surf there.  We found a lot of pretty sea shells.  There are palm and bamboo trees everywhere.