It looks like you guys are having tons of fun on your trip!
I wish I could be there too, it's probably not the same without me. Maybe
a little cheaper though, haha. Things are going great over here.
This week was so much fun, busy busy busy, a lot of missionary work and a lot of
quality time with the members. I had my first okonomiagi experience the
other day. Okonomigi is like a really thick cabbage and bacon and
mushroom and onion and fish and BBQ sauce pancake, haha. It's crazy
looking, but really good. A member in our ward owns an okonomigi shop next
to the college and he let us and the sister missionaries come over and make our
own okonomiagies for lunch. The next day, we went to a Yakiniku place for
lunch. Yakiniku is where they give you a big plate of raw meat and
vegetables and there is a grill in the middle of the table where you cook the
meat yourself. Totally unsanitary, it would never work in America, but
it's really popular here, haha. For dinner that day, we met up with Audrey
and Thomas and went to a local diner and had a lesson/meal. One of the
pictures I sent has us at the restaurant with 4 Book of Mormon's in 3 different
languages and 4 hot fudge sundaes, haha. Classy.
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The day after that, I
went on splits with my District Leader Miura Choro. He is Nihonjin, from
Hiroshima, 21, a total boss, speaks pretty good English, but I basically had to
only speak Japanese, ha. He is like 5' 9", 130 lbs, looks really
young, but is a great people person and people just like talking to him, idk,
he has a gift. We went to a members house for lunch that day and I have
no idea what we ate. A lot of mushrooms and cake, it was weird.
They had us pull weeds for like half an hour before we came in which was nice
'cause Japanese people will not let you give any kind of service what so ever.
They will go way out of the way just so that we don't have to do anything for
them, it's weird. After we ate lunch, we sang hymns for like 20 minutes
before they would let us share a spiritual message with them. Just an
absolute bizarre experience. That night, I taught Eikaiwa, English class,
in Kawasaki 'cause I was on splits, and I met the craziest guy ever. He
called himself Rocky, though I highly doubt that is his name 'cause he is
totally Asian, and he is a huge, huge, huge wannabe hippie. Huge wannabe.
He is like 50ish, has long grey hair, told me he is a lover not a fighter, but
he speaks almost perfect English. He said that English is his hobby and
that he misses the 70's. He wore a sugarcane white stripped conductors
hat, John Lennon sun glasses, a Tokyo Band Camp wife beater, womens 70's
bell bottom jeans, and womens heels that had flowers all over them. A
crazy guy. He knows everything about everything with the Church, loves
everything about it, reads and prays every day, but is what we call an Eien no
Kyudosha, Eternal Investigator. He has been investigating for like 20
years but won't get baptized. He drives like 2 hours everyday just to come
to this specific Eikaiwa, no one knows why, there are tons of classes all over
the area but he insists on this one.
The next day was Elder Gallacker's Birthday! We split back
from Miura Choro and decided to go to Lala Port Mall to try and find a less
active member that no one has talked to for a long time. All we knew was
that his name was Jimmy and that he owns some sort of painting shop in the
mall. So we get there and the mall is enormous, absolutely huge. We
are looking for a needle in a hay stack. After a few minutes we were able
to find his shop. He owns a chain of cartoon painting shops, the ones
where they draw you as a cartoon with a blown up head and everything, and he
was working that day. So we walk up to him and are like, "Jimmy San
desu ka?" in Japanese of course and he was like "Elders, hey!" in English
with a thick Spanish accent. His name is Jimmy Roes and he is from Mexico
city. He grew up in the church but stopped going often after he moved to
Japan about 7 years ago. He was studying art in the US when his visa ran
out and his Japanese girlfriend convinced him to move to Japan and finish
school there. He got married not long after he came to Japan, has two
kids now, is a great guy, only like 27 or 28 and is just super busy with work,
like all Japanese people, and can't come to church. He speaks
Japanese pretty well, but his Spanish accent carries over in
everything, haha. He painted my companion as a cartoon and said
that he will paint me next time we visit. He has a goal: by the end of
the year, he wants to move up to a higher mgmt. position so he can take the
weekends off and come to church with his family. He really is a great guy and
we will check up on him about once a month and try and help him reach his
goal.
We had Krispy Kremes that day, went to a Curry shop for lunch
called Coco's Curry, it is a huge chain in Japan, really popular, went to
the city center and got my residence card so now I'm official, scrubbed
the baptismal font, and met up with the sisters and their investigator and the
zone leaders and went out to a shabushabu tabehodai! It is an all you can eat
buffet, totally fun. What you do is you grab a ton of vegetables
and noodles and raw meat from a designated room and then you put all
of your food into a pot of boiling sauce and water that is in the middle of
your table, everyone at your table, everything, into the same pot, and you let
it cook for a few minutes, and it turns into a community free for all pot
and you just go hard and eat for days. Super easy, tons of fun, and we can
do it as a family when I get back!
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Then, the next day was Thomas' Baptism! We got
to the church super early and started filling up the font. The water
was warm thankfully. At about 9:30, Thomas and Audrey showed up and
we had a chocolate chip pancake breakfast together at the church. The
service started at like 10:45, everything went smooth. President Budge and his
family came and spoke at the service. My companion, who is an amazing singer,
sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" in three different languages, and then Thomas
got Baptized! Yaaaay! After the baptism we went and ate at a local ramen shop
with the Sisters and the single adults in the ward. After that, we went
back to the church and ended up waiting there for like 2 hours because all of
the Single Adult women and Audrey and the Sisters changed into traditional
Kimono's and got all fancied up. Once everyone was ready, we all
headed out for Yakosuko. That day was called Friendship day, it's a
national holiday, so every year there are a ton of celebrations on that
day. So Yakosuko is the American Naval Base in Japan. It was
about a 40 minute train ride away and we had our residence cards and
they let us onto the base. The base is basically a little slice of
America, completely Americanized, just straight cut out from America itself and
placed into Japan. It was awesome! They had tons of American shops every
where, American food, white and black people, people that spoke
English, and it was refreshing. At around 7:15ish, they put on a huge
firework show out on the bay on naval ships and man, let me tell you,
Japanese fireworks are the coolest things ever! It blew my mind, I can't even
describe it to you. It was a pain getting home, 20,000 people were
leaving the base at once, but everything went well and everyone was safe.
Then yesterday, I confirmed Thomas at Sacrament Meeting and
gave him the Holy Ghost!
It was a great moment, just completely awesome, it is the
reason I am out here in Japan, way far from home, away from my old life, the
ones I love, the language I know, the culture I know... I will forever have a
connection with the people in France and with the Missionaries who taught
Audrey the Gospel so that she could be a good influence and help Thomas.
After church, we set up a ton of appointments with members in
the ward, 'cause now they are excited about missionary work, and then ate a
French lunch with Audrey and Thomas. They made stinky french cheese
sandwiche,s which are totally nasty, but we had a good time anyway. And
then we just did missionary stuff the rest of the day.
Today is P-day. And today was the my first Daiso
experience. Daiso is the Japanese dollar store and it is legit. I got a
sweet blue koala bear tie and some Japanese letter paper. Excited
desu.
Let me tell you more about Japan. They don't have any
dryers so we hang dry everything, the people are obsessed with Stitch from Lilo
and Stitch, idk. People are starting to pick up on the Hipster fashion trend,
but for the most part they are stuck in the early 2000's. There is anime
stuff and advertisements everywhere you go. Every one has two cell phones, one
has really good Internet, the other has a really good texting plan. The trains
are tons of fun to ride and people hate it when you talk on the trains, but
that is all that we do. You see shirts with American swear words on them a lot
but they have no idea what it means, everyone is surprised when you talk to
them in Japanese, anyone older than 50 says that they are Buddhist, it's
hard for Mormon women to get married 'cause there are so few men
members, we are not allowed to talk to women on the
streets, there was a car accident outside our house last night,
not a bad one but that is the first one I've seen in Japan so far, they are
actually way good drivers here, cops do not do anything cause there is
basically no crime, every 4 months they elect a new prime minister 'cause the
old one quites after 4 months, if you do not say shitsure shimasu when you
are trying to end a conversation, you will probably end up saying thank
you have a nice day thank you so much thank you, for like 10 minutes, everyone
uses umbrellas, everyone works like 6 days a week, and money is the God of
Japan, it is the thing that they worship. People either loves us 'cause we
are American, or they hate us 'cause we wear white shirts and ties and
wear helmets and break all of the social norms and are nice to
people. It is hard, but it is fun, and at the end of the day, I feel good
about everything that I am doing.
love to you all,
Elder Crandall
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David was able to make it okay to my house and thank you so
much for everything! We had an awesome brownie and nacho eating party last
night in celebration of the new transfer! 
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