Week 35 - October 1-7 2013

There where Halloween decorations out at the International Center in Kumamoto when we were there on Wednesday.  Decoration like we use in America are being used more in Japan but many people from Japan are not familiar with Halloween.  Kumamoto Eikaiwa has a tradition of a Halloween Party which is being planned for October 30th during Eikaiwa time.  My students at the International Center have never experienced a Halloween Party.  The decorations remind me of home.

  This week we did an apartment check for the Elders and Sisters in Nagasaki.  They had two clean apartments.  Terry and I had the opportunity to take them to lunch.  They chose an Indian Currey restaurant.  This is  picture of my lunch.  It was very good.  The bread was made by stretching out bread dough and cooking it on the sides of a hot oven.  It reminded me of my childhood.  When mother ran out of bread and was making more she would cook us scones.  They were made by stretching the bread dough out thin and putting it on a hot iron surface to cook.  We use to cook it on the top of the wood burning stove.  They were always a delicious treat!

 

After taking care of the apartments in Nagasaki Terry and I tried to visit the the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the Peace Memorial Hall.  We rode the trolley from our hotel to the park (first attempt at using public transportation).  The museum was closing for the day when we arrived  but had a activity going on in the hall next to the museum.

We saw a sign to an observation deck.  We decided to walk up to it and see what we could see.  It was an awe inspiring experience thinking about what happened on this spot in 1945 and watching the sun go down.

This is a large photo from the same place after the bombing in 1945.  You can see the same mountain in the distant in the photo as we were looking at.

We were able to sit on a bench and watch a beautiful sunset overlooking this place.  It was an amazing experience though we did not get to go inside the museum this trip.

The trolley car (densha) ride back to the hotel was a bit of an adventure.  We rode it from stop 19 to stop 28 which is in front of the Toyoka Inn.  Going down was very easy.  We thought the return trip would be the same.  We boarded the trolley and started counting stops.  We counted to 27 and then got off at the next stop but there was no hotel.  The street looked very different.  We later discovered that there was a Y in the track and we had boarded the wrong line.  More learning is necessary.  We walked back to the Y intersection and up the other leg of the track to our hotel.

Sunday we attended church in Yatsushiro.  It is a wonderful little branch of the church.  I enjoyed our visit their.  After the visit we enjoyed a visit with some of the members that live about a ninety minute drive from the chapel on the Yatsushiro Sea.  Pictured is a little marina near their home.

Terry and I biked to The Suizenji Jojuen Garden on Monday.  It is a beautiful place with a natural spring.  

 

The Izumi Shinto Shrine is next to/part of the park.  We visited it as well.

Another interesting place in the park.

One more view from the park.

As we drive though the country side we see that the rice fields are starting to be harvested.  This field has already been done.

This picture show the rice drying waiting to be thrashed.

Scripture for the week:

Alma 32: 21

And now as I said concerning faith-Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not see, which are true.