Ichinoseki

This was a more normal week, but we still seemed to be busy enough.  We were watching conference when we could fit it in.  We are starting to make the first arrangements for the returning missionaries going home in the spring and to finalize the travel for those going home next month.  They keep coming and going!

This week was Mission Leadership Council again.

These are the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders.  It is always fun to have them around the office for a little while.

Then on Wednesday, we were back to Tagajo for Eikaiwa.

The game this week was 20 Questions.  She did finally guess "Hello Kitty"

Thursday we made it back to Kakuda for our English group out there.  I've been asking them to give short reports about people they admire.  It's been interesting to hear their responses.  One of the men talked about Soichiro Honda who founded Honda Motor Company.  Some of the other people were Elvis, Michael J. Fox, Steve Jobs, Ichiro Suzuki (a Japanese baseball player).  I learned about Chiune Sugihara who was a Japanese diplomat during WWII that wrote visas for thousands of Jews so they could escape Lithuania.  I also told them about Ben Carson and how his mother encouraged him to become successful.

On Saturday, we went out to Furukawa and picked up the Hills.  Then we went out to Ichinoseki to meet the Mowers.  There was a festival planned for Sunday.  The Hills tell us that last year the festival started on Saturday, so we thought there might be something going on, but what was going on is the setting up for Sunday.

The temple site next door was a nice place to visit.

This group of Buddhist prists were posing for a photo

A lovely little stream flowing into the pond

Many of the locations here were destroyed hundreds of years ago but have not yet been restored.  But you can imagine what a beautiful site it must have been.

Scarecrows watching over the harvested rice hanging out to dry

Then we visited a place with a temple built into a cave

This bamboo is amazing

The buildings are built on stilts with stones for the foundations.

A lovely terraced field was across the road

Then we went to see a river

On the far side of the river, they serve dumplings from the restaurant.  They send it across the river in a basket.  Quite a good tourist attraction.

We went across this hanging bridge

And a glass factory.  We watched a man blow glass and make a bud vase, but no photography was allowed inside the factory.

And Elder H wanted us to see the waterfall.  You could see it in the spring before all the leaves grew on the trees.  They walked down to get a good view.  I decided to take his word for it.

It was a lovely country home location.

It was nice that we had such good weather because they say a typhoon is headed our way.  It was fun to spend some time with the other senior couples and Sister Shitami

On Sunday, we took our laptop to Tagajo so the missionaries could watch conference in English.  They only have one TV at the ward, and they were using it for Japanese.  In between sessions, the bishop had a snack especially for the Americans.  Bread and jam and milk!