Nagoya Castle II

I just couldn't resist sharing more of the incredible art work of centuries ago in Japan.

These may be some of the panels that survived the fire from WWII.

These sakura blossoms are exquisite.

This is an actual screen or door that survived. You can see the layers of paper it was made from.

And I loved all the cats. I wonder if these cats were around in Japan at the time.

PS: I know you are waiting for a couple more names of beauty shops: Hair Creative Opera Ball, and (this one is for me....) Only Hope Hair.

Getting a Haircut

Imagine! You walk into a beauty shop and you can't say much more than "Thank you."

You take two 20-year-old young men with you who you don't know really well, and ask them to translate what you are saying to a 20-year-old woman who you've never seen before. Then you sit and watch and pray.

But it's kind of fun to sit and watch. First you are taken to the shampoo chair. A light-weight blanket is placed over your legs (to keep you warm, I guess). A dryer sheet-like rectangular thing is placed over your face as you are leaned back (to keep water from splashing on your face, I guess). You are given a very quick shampoo and taken back to the cutting chair.

A tiny strip of toweling is wrapped around your neck. A hair cutting apron that barely covers your shoulders is snapped around your neck. And away she goes--she snips as you pray. No words are said, which is really wierd and uncomfortable for me. Every once in a while she stops and looks at a picture of you on your iphone, and every once in a while she calls the missionary over to ask him if I think it's OK. I bravely point to some part of my head and say, "shorter," or "please thin this out." And away she goes again.

Finally she puts a little product in it, and I can't think of anything more to say. So she indicates that I should follow her. I get up and back we go to the shampoo chair. Blanket. Dryer sheet.

Ahh! Nice long shampoo. Conditioner. Rinse.

Back to hair cutting chair. She tells the missionary to ask me if I want a massage. (If she knew me at all, she wouldn't have had to ask.) She pulls out a can that looks like a mousse can, but with many little white tips on top. She asks the missionary to tell me it will be cold. Is that OK? OK. She presses it lightly into my scalp in three different places, and it IS cold. But it feels kind of good. She massages my scalp, then my neck, then my shoulders. Takes a good five or six minutes. Heaven.

More product and some styling and a few little snips, and Voila, we are done.

And.....it actually turns out pretty good.

And.....it actually cost less than I've been paying in Oregon.

Another adventure in Japan.

PS: What better place for a few more names of beauty shops: Lovers Blanket Hair, and Hunky Dory Hair Room.

Nagoya Castle

Nagoya Castle is just beautiful. The elders invited us there on our first Saturday in Japan, and we were so touched that these 20-year-old boys would want to spend half their day with a couple of oldies. But we were thrilled. Nagoya Castle was built in the 1612 by a feudal lord (his slaves). It was bombed and burned in WWII. It has been rebuilt and they are currently re-building a mansion right next to it.

Look carefully at the two top points on the castle. There is a golden fish-like statue on each point. We got brave, climbed all the way to the top, and they let us sit on the Kinshachi to have our photos taken. They only do this with LDS missionaries.

See the lovely blue sky and clouds behind us. It was a little frightening, but we decided to smile anyway.

And here are our four elder tour guides. Oops. Maybe we weren't on the top of the building.

Here are a couple of samples of the wonderful screen paintings from the period. Love the tigers!

The grounds are breathtaking, even in winter.

I can't wait to see this arbor all covered

in blossoms.

We are excited to go back in a couple of months during sakura (cherry blossom) time. We hear it is just beautiful.

Nagoya Castle was built when they had Samurai Warriors. We watched a demonstration of their fighting, language (including lots of scary-sounding grunts and screams, and even a dance (that reminded me just a little of Michael Jackson.)

Hooray!! A photo of the wonderful photgrapher! He's the one without a mustache. Notice, too, the rock walls behind him. The castle has a mote around it. I hadn't realized Japanese castles had motes, but tis true.

How would you like to carry this armor around as you fought a battle....in 110 degree weather, no less.

I'm sure glad my husband doesn't resemble this guy.

Here's the castle and mote before it was bombed in WWII.

And here's how they got the rock into place around the castle. Looks fun, huh!

This is what remains of on old well. Very old.

You get to hang out with all kinds of characters in this job. (That's what the guy on the right is thinking.)

And we stopped these two young women for a photo as we were leaving. We didn't know why they were dressed like that, or what they were doing, but they were very happy to have their picture taken. (Because we were with four good-looking young men!) The girl on the right had hair down to her knees. It was beautiful.

This is the top room of the castle. (This time I'm telling the truth.) I lost count of how many floors there were in the castle, but it was at least six. We had a view of the city from all four sides. We could see several snow-covered mountains in the distance, including the Japanese Alps. I hadn't known they existed before now.

We have hundreds more photos, and I just might do one more blog about Nagoya Castle. Fun, fun, fun!

The People

We have been to church three times now and have attended two English conversation classes. We have been so warmly welcomed, with people going out of their way to meet us, ask us questions, offer to help us. They are kind, thoughtful, welcoming, warm, and lovely. I can’t imagine being treated any better. The Japanese learn English in grade school and junior high, but they learn to read it well, not speak it well. So they are often very happy to speak English with us, so that they can improve their conversation.

But here is a great example of what I mean. This is Sister Kondo. Sister Kondo has been a member of the Church for a long time. She was among the first group of Japanese saints to charter a plane to go to the temple in 1965. They had to save up; the nearest temple at the time was in Hawaii. She was living in Tokyo when Lee was a missionary here 43 years ago.

Sister Kondo is my visiting teacher. She just got the assignment last week and asked me in church when she could come visit with me. We have been so busy in the evenings that I asked if she could come to the office during my lunch hour. Thursday was the best day for her. She showed up carrying a large (at least 14" across) deep (6") wooden bowl filled with food. It was a rice/veggie/ shrimp/tofu/egg dish that was one of the best things I have ever eaten. There were 6 of us in the office including her, and we all loaded our plates, and only went through half of it. She promptly directed the elders to get containers to put the rest of it into for the Mission President and his wife, and the other two elders. I asked her if she would teach me how to make it, and she is going to.

Now let me share more details about Sister Kondo, as if making a meal and bringing it is not enough. You have to climb four flights of stairs to get to our office. Stairs in Japan, at least the ones I've climbed so far, have about a one-inch higher rise than in the US. Stairs are harder to climb. Lee and I stumbled a few times at first before we got used to it. Sister Kondo rode her bike over with the huge bowl of food (about 20 minutes away by bike), climbed four flights of stairs carrying the heavy bowl, and--are you ready--she is 79 years old! She is full of energy. One Monday a month she gets on the shinkansen (Bullet Train) and rides to Tokyo (less than two hours away when on the Bullet Train), and works at the Tokyo Temple on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, then comes home on Saturday. Wow! I want to be like Sister Kondo when I grow up.

I love the Japanese tradition used when you hand something to someone. You hold it with both hands, extend your arms a little, and bow as you offer it. The person receiving bows and receives it with both hands. Really nice! When we were introduced in Sacrament Meeting as the new missionary couple, someone indicated that we should stand. We stood and bowed slightly, and that seemed to cause the whole congregation to bow in their seats in unison. It was cool (but it surprised me)! Kind of like “Alohaaa."

I really hope I can develop some friendships. There are enough Japanese who speak English that I can begin, and hopefully I will learn enough Japanese eventually that I will be able to make more friends. We are going to try a Japanese Only Day in the office once a week to encourage me to get going on my Japanese. I am furiously working on things to say on the telephone so I don’t sound like a total idiot.

Oh, two more fun beauty shops names: Dog Tails and Safety and Convenience June Hair.

Beauty Shop Names

Sister Baird, our mission president's wife, began noticing the very interesting names of beauty shops in Japan as she has traveled around the mission. She has been listing them on her own blog each time she finds a new name. She graciously gave me her list and permission to share them with you. They are really fun, and one wonders how the owners ever came up with such names. The Japanese like to use English, but it's just fun to read them. I'm not going to give them all to you at once. But you can expect them from now on in several of my blogs.

So here come a few. Just envision yourself getting your hair done in one of these shops:

On a walk Lee and I took the other day, Lee got a picture of Green Room Creative Hair (not a funny name, but that's where I'm planning to get my first haircut. Sister Baird gets her hair cut here, too.)

Jet Party Hair (What's a Jet Party, and how do they fix their hair when they go?)

Slow Trip Hair Salon (Maybe you get to stay there all day.) (Or maybe you don't want to go, so it takes you a long time to get there.)

And here's today's winner in my mind: Hair Erase! (They only use shavers?)

Stay tuned for more in later blogs.

Our Apartment

We are now living in a five-room apartment, not counting the three little bathroom rooms. All five rooms are approximately square and approximately the same size—between 8 X 8 and 10 X 10. Three of the rooms have heat sources. Two of the rooms have heat sources that we think can also become air conditioning sources. The two rooms without heat or A/C function as a closet and a food storage room.

I don't know what we will name this room. It's really a bedroom, but for us it will be a walk-in closet. A chest of drawers on the left. All of our clothes in the rear, and a little vanity on the right. Not in view, a closet big enough for clothes, but with one shelf horizontally designed to hold futons right in the middle. It could use about four more shelves. All of our clothing is hanging on those metal bar stands like they sometimes use in department stores. We have three of them. There is another tiny vanity with itty-bitty drawers that we haven’t started to utilize yet. We have some of our smaller suitcases in there. Our larger suitcases won’t fit.

The food storage room has shelves. The Oldroyds left quite a bit of food as food storage but warned us to try to have it all used up by the time the warm weather hits. Otherwise, the food in there will be cooked. We will do our best. And I’m sure we will be doing the same for the next couple who follows us. The Oldroyds were very generous and kind with us, in so many ways. This room also has a small convection oven that we can use.

This is our bedroom. The bed was old when the Oldroyds got here two years ago, and now it is quite broken down. We have been given permission to buy a new one. I had hoped to have room for a king-sized bed, but if we got one, it would be wall to wall. So we will probably buy a queen-sized. We already got new pillows. My pillow the first night had some spots that were soft, with nice smooth padding. Other spots had these little hard things I could feel. Sister Oldroyd wondered what was in the pillow, so she unpicked it a little to look. It was plastic drinking straws, cut up into small pieces. Go figure!

Our kitchen has a narrow refridgerator, a stainless steel sink and counter top, and a stovetop (no oven) all on one wall. There are metal shelves hanging below high cupboards, and they are filled with miscellaneous kitchen utinsels. It looked kind of cluttery, so we bought baskets to put the utensils in. That made a surprisingly huge improvement. The low sink gives us motivation to do dishes often. Otherwise we would have back ache from bending down.

There is a table that sits four (six if you cuddle) and a washer and dryer that came from America. Not so great in the main part of the house, but very functional. The washer in the bathroom is tiny and the dryer doesn’t work well. Doing laundry in the heat of summer will be fun, though. But I guess we won’t be spending that much time in our apartment.

The living room has a sofa, a small desk, a chair and a kerosene heater on the floor. There is a place where they had sliding doors that would close the room off from the kitchen, but the Oldroyds took them out because Sister Oldroyd felt claustrophobic. I think we will leave it. It would be easy to get that way. The ceilings are low and the doorways are barely above Lee's head. Japan is just built in miniature!

All of the windows in the house are frosted glass. There are no screens on the windows. So if I want to look out, I have to open a window and let the cold air come in. Spring and fall will be nice. I'm praying that Japan doesn't have flies.

Bathrooms

We have now been in our apartment for a little over a week. We lived in the apartment for General Authorities who visit the mission for the first week we were here. It was a lovely king-sized bed, beautiful décor, a fairly large walk-in closet with drawers on one side so you didn’t have to live out of your suitcase, and a bathroom that I initially called small, but now I would call it adequate. It was an American-style bathroom, with sink and mirror, toilet, and shower/tub.

If I was doing a top ten list for Japan, I would have to list the people as number one. They are so mannerly, kind and welcoming. But number two would definitely be the heated toilet seats. Everywhere I went for the first week here, the toilet seats were nicely heated, and since its cold right now (it snowed lightly one day last week and again yesterday) those seats are so wonderful. I thought that would be something I could enjoy everywhere I went.

Our apartment bathroom is actually three rooms. Sounds luxurious, doesn’t it? There is the room with the toilet. It is very slightly larger than an airplane bathroom.

And check this out: The toilet has a little dip in the top of the tank where, when you flush the toilet, clean water starts running from a little tap. There is a soap dispenser there, so you can lean over the front of the toilet and wash your hands right there before you leave the room. The water is icy cold. The toilet seat is NOT heated. There is no heat that comes into that room. I'm sure this fact will not bother me in the least, come July.

Next we have the place where you brush your teeth and put on makeup. It is 63 centimeters wide--I measured it. In case you are wondering, that's barely over two feet wide (24.8 inches). See how nicely Lee fits into it.

It has a sink, and above the sink is a mirror with some tiny places to put a few items. Not enough room for my makeup. On the right side as you are facing the mirror is a very small washer/dryer stacked. Slid in at the side of the washer dryer is a book shelf with four

shelves. There are about four inches between the washer and the book shelf, so anything you want to put on it has to be smaller than that. I have put a little of my makeup there, but it’s not convenient. Did I mention—no heat source.

Last is the room for the shower/bathtub. The bathtub is about the width of one in the US, but it is about 2/3 the length. It is very deep. If one were to sit in it and one was any taller than 4’ 2”, one would be looking at their knees. The Oldroyds only used it when their grandchildren visited.

The entire little room is tiled. On the wall opposite the tub are some little places to put shampoo and soap. The shower head rotates to fill the tub or to be used as a shower if you stand outside the tub. If you extend your arms, you can touch opposite walls in any direction. No heat source (except the warm water). Water is heated as you need it. Hot water is "on demand," which in this apartment means, "turn it on and wait a while." When we first got here,

I wondered how one would stand in that room, turn on the ice cold water to wait for the heat to arrive, and NOT get wet. But we've got it figured out now. Here is Vanna White (40 years from now) demonstrating that one can sit on one end of the tub and rest her hand on the opposite side of the room.

Because the whole room is designed as a shower, you step down a little to go in. That’s so that water doesn’t run out into the hallway. Then, of course, one must step up to go out of the bathroom. In the mission home it was the same way. Lee and I both stumbled over that about three times before we decided to lay a white hand towel down over it. That caused us to notice the towel, and remember to step up coming out of the bathroom. No more bruises on our arms as we caught ourselves after a stumble.

Nagoya is very warm and humid in the summer. Mildew is a constant problem. Those of you who know my love for cleaning bathrooms will now feel sorry for me. (I’m hoping Lee will take pity and clean the mildew.) But the Oldroyds left it spotless, for which I am eternally grateful, and so we are off to a good start.

Airports

There were 8 of us sadly seeing off the Oldroyds.

As Lee and I flew into Japan, we saw only a small part of the Narita Airport, which services Tokyo. But what we saw was very clean and modern. They have excellent service that connects you to any terminal, buses to everywhere, trains to everywhere, and people who are so service oriented that they put the US to shame. The employees, many of them women, are perfectly dressed. They go out of their way to help, and there are so many of them that you rarely have to wait in a line. In the airports, nearly all employees speak English.

At the Nagoya Airport, it was even more modern and beautiful. Sparkling clean. Connections to everything mentioned above and even boats. The Nagoya Airport is built on one of, if not THE, largest man-made islands in the world. So you can leave the airport by high-speed boat, if you wish. Notice the shining floors. I wish we had a good picture of how darling and perfect all the cute little female airline employees and stewardesses look.

This is Brother and Sister Oldroyd, whose jobs we are now busy learning.

The thing I love about Japanese airports is that all the advertisements on the walls (and they are not plastered everywhere, but are artfully placed) are G-rated. Unlike walking the streets of Las Vegas or being in a European airport, where you are bombarded constantly with R and X-rated pictures and phrases that you wish you hadn’t noticed, I felt perfectly safe and comfortable here. And the crime rate is very low in Japan. If you leave something somewhere and your name is on it, you will very likely get it back. I love it!!

This last photo is Sister Baird and Sister Oldroyd saying goodbye. The Oldroyds have been here for two years! This photo speaks volumes about how we come to love each other while serving the Lord.

New home. New friends.

Just walked in the door of our home for the next 17 months. Number one order of business: remove shoes and put on slippers, the Japanese way of things. Oh, and unpack.

But before I talk about that, I just have to talk about the Elders we are working with.

One of our Sunday meetings is a district meeting with the missionaries. Here the four elders who work in the mission office are teaching three members of the church from Japan how to be missionaries. All three are planning to serve missions, so the elders are giving them a jump on the instruction they will get in the MTC. Lee and I also got to practice, which is really good because we hope to teach some people while we are here. This photo gives you a little view of the office where we work.

"Choro" is the word for Elder.

This is Kishi Choro. He is native Japanese and I think he is probably considered a knockout in Japan. Surprise: he comes from a family with nine children. I didn't think there were families that big in Japan. His father is a farmer. He is a great missionary, as are all of the Elders we work with.

On the left here is Hollister Choro. He is from Colorado Springs, Colorado. His stake president is a friend of ours. He left the Air Force Academy to come on a mission, and he plans to return and become an AirForce Special Forces Officer. He is really sharp, another amazing missionary.

Elder Jessop (right) is from Fielding, Utah, a tiny town next to where my mom was born. He is such a great Elder, always thinking of other people and finding ways to help. He is a superb translator and has taken upon himself to help me learn Japanese better. He is fabulous.

Elder Rust is the fourth of these great Elders we get to work with daily. (Not fourth in order of greatness!) He is from Indiana. He is wise, calm, dedicated, dependable, and just plain good.

Can you see that I love these great young men? And I've only known them for two weeks. This is so fun.