Number 8

The best-laid plans are meant to be changed. Shortly after I finished my last chronicle, Dana told me he had been asked to stay here in Yamaguchi a couple extra days, so our travel plans to Mito will change a little. As of this morning, we will be in the apartment one more week, until next Saturday. Saturday and Sunday nights we will stay in a Japanese hotel here in Yamaguchi.

On Sunday, Dana needs to be here while the rest the team is at the other site switching operations to Yamaguchi. I guess he is here to reassure the client that they will indeed be able to control the satellite from the backup station while the team begins their work at the next site.

How smoothly the transition goes, determines when exactly we will get out of here. Our plan is to travel to Hiroshima and spend some time there and arrive in Mito on Wednesday afternoon. Dana will begin his work at the next site on Thursday.

The week has been pretty quite. We have spent some time shopping for Christmas presents, walked through a shrine and went to a zoo in Tokoyama. Last night we had a wonderful dinner with our new friends.

One thing that I discovered about shopping is that when they offer to gift wrap something; it is a good idea to let them. I went to several stores just trying to find a box to wrap a gift in, but I couldn't find one, ~so Ginger, your Christmas present is in a Japanese cereal box!

One of the stores I shopped in was rather like a personal shopper store. I made my selections, and while I waited for the bill and wrapping, etc., we were seated at a table and brought drinks. It was a fun experience and the prices were also pretty good.

Our trip to the Carmelite convent did not happen. Father was apparently called away, so we were unable to go. While I was at the church, I picked up a map that appeared to be the significant locations in Yamaguchi where St. Frances Xavier worked or where there are memorials. One location was close to home, so I decided to try locate it. There was no picture so I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I was pretty sure I knew where it was on the map. It turned out to be a church, but I couldn't tell anything more than that.

After finding the church, I decided to continue down the little road, just to look at the homes. At some points, it got very narrow and I wondered if I should go on, but at the end of the road, there was a shrine with a beautiful waterfall. We wandered around the rather large grounds. It was very peaceful.

Thursday, we went to a zoo. When I read a brochure I had, it said they had pandas and I thought that it meant giant pandas, but it meant lesser pandas. I don't think I had ever seen those before either. There were actually several animals I had not seen before and most of the signs had the English names, so that made it very nice. The exhibits are much smaller than we are used to for a zoo, but it made it an easier walk.

Later Thursday afternoon, Christina managed to drag the mother of some of the children she had been playing with over to visit me. She wanted to learn more English. It was a nice visit. She studied English in school, but has never used it. She said the hard part is Americans speak fast. I had to laugh, because that is exactly how I perceive the Japanese to speak! With the help of a dictionary and phrase book, we were able to talk about many subjects.

One of the ladies from Dana's team at worked offered to watch the girls so we could have a night out and we decided to take her up on the offer for Friday night. I had mentioned to Myota-san that we were going out dinner and Dana had asked her husband to recommend a restaurant. Through a series of miscommunications, he told Dana that they would meet us in the parking lot of our apartment building at 7:30pm and take us.

Dana thought that he meant he and his wife, so I fed the girl’s dinner and had them ready for bed. When we went outside to meet them, they had their children with them and wanted to know where ours were. Long story~short, I told the Christina and Catherine to get dressed and left Charlene with the babysitter!

Our evening alone, turned out to be far from what we expected. If we had made the plans ourselves, it could not have turned out any better! We went to a shabu shabu restaurant where we had our own little room for dinner. When we arrived our room was ready and as soon as we were seated, we got drinks and large platters of thinly sliced beef were brought out.

If you are not familiar with shabu shabu, as I was not, here's the way it works. On our table we had these pans with water on a heating element. Once the water is boiling, you take a piece of meat and put in in the water to cook. It cooks quickly, and then you remove it and can dip in a sauce. We had two sauces, one was a sesame oil based and the other seemed to be soy sauce based. They were both good. After you get going on the beef, there are veggies and noodles you can add. There was also something that was rather like a rice based dumpling. It was all very good and we were all stuffed, especially when you realize that the girls had already had dinner once! There was only one item that we couldn't figure out the translation for, it was called con-yak in Japanese and appeared to be some sort of seafood.

The girls had a good time with their friends Naomi- pronounced Nowme and Essay- pronounced E-say. Naomi is 12 and Essay is 7. They took three rolls of pictures. I think that is a record for a two and a half hour dinner! I'm glad Charlene was able to stay with the babysitter because she would have gotten tired very quickly and I think she had fun coloring anyway.

Dana and I had a nice time visiting. Myota-san's husband, Muraoka-san speaks English pretty well and they also brought a dictionary. We talked about how our time here would be good memories for all of us. We shared our hobbies and found out that like us they celebrate their 15th anniversary this year. We hope to be able to meet again over the Christmas-New Years holiday and perhaps go to Tokyo Disneyland.

Making new friends was wonderful. As I said before, if I had tried to plan it, I could not have planned a more perfect evening. Dana and I both came home thanking God for how wonderful He has been to us!

Today is Saturday and Dana is working. I am going to finish a set of pillowcases that I began cross-stitching before we left, so I can give them to our new friends. Naomi just began playing piano next door and it is very beautiful.

Blessings and prayers,
Marion