SUSHI!

Hanging out with the older girls. In Japan, when you pose for a picture, for some reason, everyone does the peace sign:

Here's an awesome action shot of my chopping wood. The family owns a few plots of land that they plant stuff and work with outside of the city...up into the mountains:

On on plot of their land, we found a buried car! It WAS a honda Civic!

We crawled inside of it! It was really dirty! Fun!

These are some shrines you can buy to put your idols in. Something we dont see in America:

Here is a veiw of Hachioji. You can see how close the houses are together!

We made chocolate chip cookies with chocolate I brought from America: they were very excited because American chocolate is better than Japanese chocolate:

Here are some instruments from Japan/China:

And AT LAST, my sushi! The green stuff wrapped around the rice is seaweed and to the left is barely cooked shrimp and raw tuna: I ate it all......and im still alive!

Eating the sushi:

God be with you!

School in Japan

Today, I got to go to Amy, Elizabeth, and Charity's school. It was really neat to see how different it was! Charity took this picture of me, and if you look closely, you can see the red tag pinned to my shirt (showing Im a visitor) and the shoe rack behind me (NOBODY wears shoes in school-only slippers!)

This made me laugh so hard. His guitar is hideously out of tune, and the kids are ironically singing "Rocka my soul in the bosom of Abraham"......little do they know that's from the Bible!

The first graders have to wear these yellow hats when they go to school and leave school to distinguish them:

The classes are big, and the kids never leave the room. The different teachers (Sensei tachi) always comes to them! They even eat lunch at their desks.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see the long braids of Amy.....the only non-Japanese in her class:

Sayonara!

First post from Japan!!!

 Hello from Japan! My first week here is going great! The  family is very awesome and I am loving all the new stuff I get to experience. Here is the bus I had to take from Narita airport to Keio Hachioji. Everything went great, so thanks for the prayers!

These are just a few of the mutiple buttons on the toilet ;)

 Here is a night view of Tokyo:

 My first lunch here: pounded rice, raw fish with seaweed, and some other stuff that i dont remember! The food here is very tasty. We have seaweed pretty much everyday.

 The kids were loved the American candy I brought.....they had to divide it out JUST right so each child got an equal amount:

 Here is Charity and Nathan reading the books I brought. THEY LOVE Dr. Suess.....its a good thing I do too :)

 We play LOTS of games too.

 Here we ate out for lunch. I had noodles with fish sausage, ginger with onions, and fried vegetables....which included a Japanese squash and mushroom thingy.....also I got a shrimp.....as long as my hand. Mhmmmmmmm.....oh and instead of water, you always get hot tea to start the meal:

 Here is an awesome view we saw on our drive/hike up the mountain:

 This is how red my hand got playing a game called......ummmmm.....i can't remember....but its some variation of rock/paper/scissors where you get to slap the person if you win! They do a lot with that game here in Japan.....im finally learning how to say it: "Sigh sho wagu! Chon Ken Poi!" That is the wrong spelling but its how i remember how to say it!

 My room:

We also went to church in Tokyo yesterday. It was very different than Bluffton. At lunch they made me a cake that said: Welcom Cassie written in Japanese. The people here are so friendly. I like it a lot! I'll try to keep you posted!