28 February 2017

28 February 2017

Another week with no official email, but little tidbits here and there.

I accidentally deleted your email about the Book of Mormon. Elder
Holland talked about Christ visiting the Americas and it was really
good. I don't really have anything that can help right now. I'm sorry.
I'm so ridiculously tired right now. It was temple p day so we had to
wake up early, take an insanely packed train, and then take a super
long train ride back.

It was ward conference this week and I met the stake president
Savstrom. He translated all the talks during the Elder Holland
conference. It's weird because he is a half but he was born and raised
in Japan speaking Japanese and didn't learn English till much later.
He has an interesting life story. But it's confusing to talk to him
because you kind of forget that he is Japanese despite not being
Japanese which doesn't happen very often.

It's been a weird and busy p day. I had to split with one of the other
Chōrōtachi so that he could come to the church and send emails. Sorry
I didn't send any real emails again...

I found the mini haichus, they do exist.

Now he's a tree hugger? Yes!

At the temple

20 February 2017

20 February 2017

My understanding is that the mission president asked the missionaries to not do the "back and forth" emailing with their families so we no longer hear from him on Sunday evenings. :(  I am glad that he is obedient, but I miss the little exchanges.  Here is all we received from him this week -

Sorry we've been all over the place today. Email soon hopefully

I'm sure you saw this creepy picture of me...

We've been biking a lot recently and it's been really windy. The
weather is weird here. Haha.

Oh, Sakae Chōrōs sister reports to the MTC the day before Erik does [Erik enters the MTC on March 22nd].

We haven't found any new investigators and we haven't been able to
meet with any current investigators either. I still haven't been able
to meet many ward members because this Sunday was a special conference
by Elder Holland. So I still haven't been to church yet haha... they
seem really cool though. 
There are also two other members in this ward that report the same
exact day. One is the son of a general authority that lives in this
ward. Tokuzawa and Hirata. One is going to Tokyo and one is going to Sendai. This ward has quite a few youth.

Yup, that's all we heard from him.  Boys . . . ;)  He does send lots of pictures though!

12 February 2017

Hello.

I am now in Machida. And like always, I start out my new location with sickness. Not me, as usual, but my poor dōryō. He is pretty sick. 

榮 長老 (Sakae Chōrō) is a cool guy though. He was Cuff 長老s (who was in my district in the MTC. Also know as my 同期(douki) or the group of missionaries I came to Japan with) dōryō last two transfers. 

He is a super amazing cook. It's pretty crazy to watch him work in the kitchen. He made a cheesecake the other day as well. His English is probably a little better than my Japanese so communicating is a done in half English and half Japanese. He's a quiet guy too so communicating is... interesting. Haha. He's awesome and I can't wait to get into the Machida game with this guy. Wow, that sounded like Cuff 長老... Anyways. This is Sakae 長老s fourth transfer here so he knows the ward and the area well. 

I don't have a whole lot to say (yeah, big surprise) this week. But I'm looking forward to having many stories to share about this transfer. 

I decided to tell you some funny language/culture stuff for fun. So. First of all, Japanese is a very.. declarative language. An example of this is that about nine times out of ten people have to say "I'm going to pray now" or "I will pray" right before they actually pray. This is even in sacrament and meetings and always. The funny thing is that gaijin missionaries pick it up as well. Not everyone, but some of the older missionaries cannot pray, even in English without stating that they "are going to pray now". 

Also, I'll tell you about some of the ridiculousness of Japanese. Assuming I have this correct because I don't know if I'm 100% correct on this one. But as far as I understand it..

Inoru, is "to pray". Inori, which is conjugated (this is actually conjugated into "base 2") makes it a noun "prayer". To politely say, "I will pray", you use Inoru conjugated into base 2 (sorry don't worry about that) and add "masu", which makes it Inorimasu. Which of course is the correct way to say "I will pray". If you want to make it more polite, you use "o" in front of Inoru to make it more "honorific" kind of. So that would make it o-inorimasu, which is still just "I will pray" but now you're just being more honorific towards prayer. If you want to make it more humble, and in being humble, more polite, you say "o-inori suru". O-inori is honorific prayer, and suru is the verb "to do". However, suru is an irregular verb and base 2 conjugation means it is now "shi". So to say "I will humbly do the honorific thing of prayer" it's o-inori shimasu. But you can make it MORE humble by using a different version of suru which is itasu (which conjugated into base 2 is itashi). So NOW it's o-inori itashimasu. And I'm sure there are more way to do that. But there you go. 

Japanese is great but it couldn't be more different than English sometimes. 

That by itself is a correct sentence in Japanese because you don't need a subject at all because it's all implied. 

New district

New view

New apartment

Anime Area Plan

Nerf battle

The last days of the district before transfer day

This district really enjoyed being together!

Pictures and videos

I thought Peter was done emailing, but he sent pictures and videos of his last P Day in the Kouhoku area.

 "A great last p day with the zone and the best district ever."

5 February 2017 - Transfer!

5 February 2017

Well Wade, you can be excited now. 町田に行きます。

I'm transferring to Machida 1st Ward this week and will be companions with Sakae 長老Chōrō. I'm excited but also sad to leave Kōhoku of course. Kōhoku is amazing and I really love this ward. But I'm moving on now to Machida. Machida is only one area over so I'm not technically going that far. I've heard a lot of good things about Machida. Sakae 長老was the trainer of someone from my Doki (the group from the MTC I came to Japan with) so I've actually heard quite a bit about him as well. He sounds really cool.

As for what happened this week I went on two day long splits with my best friends over at the Kanagawa apartment again. I got to dendō with the new zone leader Murata 長老 and my buddy Burnham 長老 again. I met my first crazy man on the street. It was pretty hilarious actually. He was a nice guy for sure but he was crazy and had the eyes to match. 

I got to say a preemptive goodbye to the Eikaiwa students because I had a feeling I was transferring. Including my fluent baptist friend who is super awesome. I'm gonna miss that guy. 

I'm excited to see what Machida will be like. 

Also, if you can figure out this English puzzle then good job. It is a correct sentence. Hint is below.

James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

"The medicine had a better effect."

"The medicine had had a better effect."

Myorenji Shrine

The holiday was Setsubun, the first day of spring.