Monday, August 6th, 2012

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. 

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!

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