Week 14

Hello World,

This week was pretty okay.

Early this week we had zone leader splits so I got to work with Elder Dance for a day. That was pretty fun. We missed our first train in the morning and ended up having to wait for nearly two hours for the next one. So we tried to street for a while in front of the train station and then we studied in the waiting area.

We were taken out to eat twice this week. The first one was to a Ramen place on Wednesday after Elder Free and I got back from ZL (zone leader) splits. It was pretty good. Then the next day we went to another restaurant with a Sister from our branch and her nonmember husband. It was a pretty cool place. I got to try some squid and octopus. There was also something else that was foreign to me, but I don't recall what it was called. It was all decent if I focused more on chewing than tasting. We had planned to share a short spiritual thought, but as soon as we started talking about church stuff, the husband got up to go to the bathroom. It was too bad.

Well that's about all that was worth mentioning this week, so I guess I'll talk about some of the interesting things that we've heard while talking to people since I've been here. These are sort of rough translations, but they get the general idea across:
 - "Sorry. I'm old, so I don't understand"
 - "What are you doing?!?! It's the middle of the night!!" That one was at about 7:30 p.m.
 - "Sorry I can't talk right now. It's the important part of sumo"

All of the pictures are from the District P-day that we had today. We colored Easter eggs for a while and then it sort of dissolved into everyone emailing.

I hope you're all doing well,
Elder Mitchell

The eggs are all ones that I did. There's one that I sort of scribbled on in green and 

then the other two say 'Sendai' and 'Mitchell'. It was really hard to write with the 

crayons that we had. Or maybe I'm just bad at artsy things. One of those two.

 Everyone around the table.

 My companion, Elder Free.

 And then a couple of me. I figured people might be interested 

in seeing my beautiful face. :)

Excerpts from the family letter. . .

Dearest Family of mine,

Several of you seemed to be interested in how we get to watch conference here so I will tell you. :) We get to watch it next Saturday and Sunday the 8th and 9th with the rest of the Branch. They just wait a week, so they can get the Japanese translation all good and professional before they put it out. So we'll just be in the same room but watch on our tablets with earphones. 

This week we had zone leader splits and I got to go with Elder Dance. It was pretty fun. He has quite a bit of enthusiasm. The whole time he would entertain himself with things like putting our little English class flyers inside newspapers and stuff that were already in the post slot and say things like 'they won't even see this coming'. It was pretty funny. 

We ate out on Friday because we took our bikes and went out decently far and didn't really have anything that we could pack very well. We had some dollar-menu type hamburgers that cost about three dollars. And they weren't that great. It was a little unfortunate.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but there's a rule that says we're not supposed to ride our bikes when the road is wet. So this week we had a little instance of being stuck in the rain with our bikes walking for a little over an hour. So that was interesting. I might buy another jacket soon because I have the inside half of my coat that keeps you mostly warm if it's dry and there's no rain. And then you can add the top half that makes it super warm but also keeps off rain and wind. Or you can use only the top half that doesn't really keep you warm but does block wind and rain. So I don't really have a happy medium right now. I'm either super hot (as in temperature :)) and wet with sweat, or sort of warm and wet with rain, or not warm at all and dry.

I love you all the most :),

Elder Mitchell