Mom and Dad
We spent any time outside of planning, teaching, et al getting the move to the shimai's house done. We had little pockets of time here and there for finding, at least.
Last prep day we met in the morning with one of the shimai's investigators. It's a couple whose whole family is really good at English, including them! It felt weird to 1) be teaching a lesson in the morning, and 2) teaching a lesson on prep day. Neither happen all that often! It was a nice addition though, because all of prep day we spent starting prep for the move.
Of course, the next day we biked to the way far place again (Mitsu). We stopped in Aioi to visit another one of the shimai's investigators, with whom we were able to make an appointment with. Then we continued on to Mitsu to teach the kinjin we found. He wasn't home though so we housed in the area some more, returned to see if he was home, housed, visited, etc. We were never actually able to find him. We met some more nice people while housing and at one point a truck selling bread stopped in the neighborhood. In Japan, bread is a big deal. It's nothing like European bread but people really love it and make all kinds of different bread. I bought this chocolate and whipped cream bread that was probably the closest thing to a real donut I've had in Japan (aside from Krispy Kreme). The donuts here are shameful.
Thursday we did the move...for the most part. In the morning we had a man from Facilities Management come and take away the big things we can't throw away without paying tons of money. I thought he'd have a big truck, but when he rolled up in his van I was very worried we wouldn't be able to fit it all. Somehow, it all fit! Every single nook and cranny was stuffed, but it all fit! Then, the Branch President and his wife came to haul everything else to the shimai's house. They only had two hours available so we hurried to get absolutely everything. We got almost everything moved out, just some small stuff left that barely fit in the basket of my mamachari. Taking it by bike to the house was interesting and we got a lot of funny looks.
Friday ended up being like waking up from a nightmare! We had district meeting but in Himeji rather than Ako. Getting to the church is really hard because you either walk for several kilos or you have to figure out which of the dozen or so buses is the right one. We managed it just fine. It just meant travel time to get back would take a while, cutting our time to get the rest of the stuff out of the apartment very short. We got back and called a recycle shop to see if they could come take some big appliances before we headed out to Aioi for a couple lessons. They couldn't. That was scary because we were to have everything out of the apartment by November 1, which was the very next day. Kind of in a half-freaking out, half-reasoning it'll all be fine mindset went to Aioi. One of the people got too busy to meet, so we went back and I tried the recycle shop again. We only had a small window before our next lesson, then the day would be over. They said they could do it because they had some business to take care of in our neighborhood, afterall! We took care of that, then had the lesson with our shigansha. IT went pretty well, but I was kind of stressed out still, and I had caught a cold the day before, so it was an interesting appointment.
Sunday also was kind of disappointing because we weren't able to visit all the remaining investigators of the shimai we hadn't visited yet. The phone died and we lost the charger in the move, so we had to spend a while searching through every box and bag we moved trying to find it. IT was no where to be found. After a lot of effort we discovered the branch president took it back with him to Aioi, so we used a members charger to charge the phone while we visited the investigators. None of them really had any interest in continuing to meet, though. But....we did finally get everything moved, figured out, and everyone visited!
In Ako, the branch actually cancelled the Halloween party a while ago so they can focus on the upcoming Gishi-sai, a really big festival that takes place in Ako every year to commemorate a pretty awesome story concerning samurai that lived in Ako back in the day.
Okay, that's all I have for this week! I'm pretty excited to get back to a normal week of dendo with no dealing with moving and/or lost phone chargers! Give my best to everyone! Happy (late) Halloween!
愛、
～ウィルソン長老
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