Transportation, Food, Fun, and not so fun

Hi All! Here's your weekly update from the funny boy in Japan! :)

"This week we had a little bit of an interesting week. We thankfully got over being sick, but we also were running a little low on money. To try and save on some money we biked from Tama Center Station to Hachioji Station for district meeting. Wow that was a trip lol, it's about an hour bike ride, and there's some awful "fun" hills that make going both ways a bit challenging. I now can say I've biked to District Meeting in the dead of heat, up hill both ways.... Next up, I'll do the same in the snow this winter! (probably not!)

Wednesday we had a new PI come to Eikaiwa. He's really cool, and he likes the missionaries. We also went with him to the batting cages and had a lot of fun.

On Saturday there was a funeral at the church for an older member. It was a little weird to see a christian funeral, we were expecting it to be a Japanese style funeral.

Today we were going to go to Tama Zoo for P-day, but there was a pretty big rainstorm, so we canceled that activity. We cleaned the apartment and then got a random call from a member saying he wanted to take us to yakiniku. WOW THAT WAS GOOD! Wow!! It was way good. His wife is from Spain and she and the kids have been out of the country for about two weeks, so he was feeling a little lonely. We had a really good time, and he enjoyed it a lot.

Yaki Niku

Brother N.

Sadly... when we got back we had a not so fun experience... I followed Elder O. into the apartment. As we came in and started getting things ready to wrap up the day and prepare for splits tomorrow he turned around and started screaming. I turned around to find a cockroach (photo included) on a plate we'd been storing pancakes on while we made them so we could freeze them (we'd finished cooking just in time for us to get them in the freezer and then go to Yakiniku, but we'd left the plate out). He was HUGE! Thankfully I've had some training with killing them already (heard lots of stories, and killed a few on the back porch when I cleaned it off). I'm just GROSSED OUT RIGHT NOW... GROSS!!!! Gross gross gross!!! We've been trying SO hard to keep this apartment clean so we'll never have this happen. GROSS!!! I want to just throw up right now! GROSS!!!... well anyways... EW! I killed it... and we're currently setting up a ton (every single one we've got in this apartment) of cockroach traps. I don't know how well I'll sleep tonight now... GROSS!"

"With a US coin so you can better understand his size... you can see the crumbs of pancake he was nibbling on and took with him when he ran... GROSS!!!"

All I've got to say at this point is those things are nasty and I'm glad that blow torches are NOT standard issue missionary items.
*said while looking at the boy's father and rolling eyes.* 

(If you don't know that story you might want to ask Leighn sometime.)

And, just for fun, here are some other pictures from this week:

"This is a train as it was coming to us. I told Brooke I'd take some photos of a train for her. I'll get some of the inside some time. (I have to wait for an empty train)."

"Welcome to a standard Japanese door way (Genkan) during any party."