Week 3 - February 19-24

We have had a good week. We are still learning how to use things in our apartment; we can now operate our washing machine. Elder Oba and Ushiro showed us how. We are not good at reading directions on the washing machine when they are in Japanese. The cloths dryer is an old friend called a clothes line. We have two indoor clothes racks. One is small and great for socks and other small items.  The other for larger things.
We are learning how to get around in the city of Kumamoto. Addresses are so different here and do not necessarily get you to the point you want to be at. Garmin’s find place’s using satellite latitude/longitude.  However if the place has a registered ground phone line we can find it by typing in the phone number, i.e. the Kumamoto International Center.

 
 I find the sink interesting. What I thought was a garbage disposal is a food catcher. It has a metal basket with a blue net over it that catches food scraps.

We had zone meeting on Thursday. It was in downtown Kumamoto. We walked to lunch after the meeting with six other Elders.  We had Kabob’s like we ate in Germany and England when we picked up our missionaries, meat choices were different. I enjoyed a shrimp one this time. Pictured is the church house.  Notice the large parking space for bicycle.  There is very little space for parking cars and what there is, is bumper to bumper.

Friday Elder Ushiro and Oba had a baptism. His name is Yuji Masuoka or ゆじますおか. We were able to attend. The new convert is a member of the Kumamoto Ward. He was introduced to the church by a member coworker. He knew of the church here and said he always felt good when he walked by it.
 
Stores all look a lot alike. We cannot read the billboards and know what type of store is being advertised. We can tell you if a car is from Kumamoto though. 熊本 in kanji which means Kumamoto and is on the license plate. Kumamoto means original bear. There use to be bears on the island but there are not any today.