More of Japan 日本

The other day I got to visit Rachel at school. This is her jumproping class. They also have classes on how to bow and how to correctly peel an apple!!!! (they never eat the skin in Japan)

Here are some of Rachel's friends doing art for art class. Almost all Japanese are creatively talented.

COSTCO! A very American store...that basically looks like Sam's Club....except its even BIGGER....and more crowded!

These fish are up for buying! We got some.....yellowtail something I think they are called.

By the end, we had 2 very full carts!!!.....but dont worry: they have a cart escalator to get to the parking garage! So funny!....especially when 2 apples toppled off my cart and rolled all the way down! hahaha.

Our very very very very very very long bill.....which is quite normal for an 11 people household :)

The emperor's grave! Sarah was sure to tell me to not make loud noises or act too happy. The wife also gets a grave almost identical to this one......this is the emperor from World War II, who famously declared, "Japan has surrendered (lost)."   

These were some monks we saw offering respect to the dead emperor and his wife. They rang this bell thing and started chanting for an entire minute. Then they bow. They clap their hands twice to "wake up" the dead person and then bow to show their respect to them. My camera was way zoomed in because I didnt want them to know I was taking a picture of them because that would be disrespectful. 

Then on the way home, it was so funny! Some elderly man on his bike started speaking Japanese to me and wanted to give me this coat he bought! He said the arms were too short for him and he wanted me to have it. Sarah tried to ask him some questions but he said he couldnt hear well and then rode off! So funny :D

Here's a view of the street where the house is: 

Here's a beautiful view of Hachioji and the mountains:   

Sayonara!

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!