Missionary Moments - The First Week in Japan

Jakob is now in Japan, so no longer on the other side of the world and only an hour behind us rather than 16 hours behind :)

He writes....

My Area is ah... Kyoto. I think. Anyway, a city near Osaka and Kobe.

 

 

My trainer is Elder Greenburg, he's from Atlanta, GA.... Our apartment is super nice. Probably a bit expensive too, but we look after it well. We sleep on Futons on the floor....

 

and the windows and balcony are open 24/7. No insects fly up this high though, we're on the 4th floor, so it's really nice.

The weather is muggy but not unbearable. Probably about 28 C and the rains haven't started yet....

We've taught two planned lessons and a few unplanned ones so far, and tracted a heap. Hours and Hours of it, and I've only been out here since Friday! 

The Ward here are extremely nice, and so totally fun and bubbly. The chapel is an old converted fish market, although it's really nice inside....We had dinner at the Stake Presidents apartment... It was the best thing I've eaten since entering the MTC. Like a potato bake with rice instead of potato, fried chicken things, fishy things, meat and pasta stuff, really nice pasta salad and onion/potato salad thing, and lots of rice. Really delicious. ...Japan is great.

We stayed at the mission home for two nights, Wednesday and Thursday. We got to have an excursion in small groups to the Kobe city town hall/town centre on Thursday. 

 

It was pretty cool. There are small shops and vending machines everywhere, and everyone is really nice, if a little shy. Probably not used to seeing so many gaijin (aliens). 

It took about an hour and a half of hopping trains to get to my area. And my luggage arrived on Saturday...

Language wise I don't say much, yet. I speak to the ward members and they understand me. And just short sentences to people on the street or in houses. Otherwise I've got a bit of a script I'm following. I can understand everything Elder Greenburg says to people, which is pretty cool, my brain is just too slow right now with the language to be able to talk like he does. A few months and I may just have this. I can understand most of what other Japanese say too, if it's relatively simple.... The Japanese talk at like 10 times the speed of comprehension.

My first lesson the lady spoke English, she is an Eikaiwa student (the English class missionaries teach every Wednesday night for free).

So, the ward clerk who was in the chapel just now (he's a super hard worker, devotes his spare time to his calling totally, it's so impressive) asked if I was okay, as I was coughing... said something like I should eat fruit. I said my favourite fruit was bananas. 10 minutes later he gave me a banana. Too nice. They're true followers of Christ here.

We spend most of our time after church or before it accepting thanks and gifts and trying to politely say it's alright, we're fine sorta thing. 

Japan is Great and I'm happy to be here!