Oct. 18th

Melissa: So on Saturday Braden and I were riding our bikes around Matsue looking for a rental store when we stopped at a stoplight and saw across the street two white guys riding bikes and wearing suits and ties. We looked a little closer and saw their black name tags and realized that it was the elders! (Mormon missionaries who are guys are called elders). So as soon as the light changed we went over to them and started talking (they were both american so I was actually able to speak in english) and we told them we had just moved there. Last sunday we had found out where the church was and when the meetings were, but when we got there nobody showed up. We figured that they must've been watching a rebroadcast of General Conference in another church building somewhere (which the elders later confirmed). We figured we'd just try again next week. Well it's a good thing we met up with the elders or we would've wasted another bike ride to the church building this Sunday, because they informed us that it was Stake Conference this week and everyone was carpooling to a Conference Center in Okayama. So they gave us the Bishop's phone number and we called him that evening and he offered to give us a ride to the conference. The next morning we went on a nice car ride back through the Japanese countryside, following almost the same route that our train had taken when we first went to Matsue. Eventually we left the highway that followed the railroad and took another road that went deeper into the mountains and to a city where the Conference Center was. The conference was really good, or at least what little I could understand, since it was all in Japanese of course :P. Braden translated some of it for me, and let me borrow his dictionary on his DS. We saw quite a few American missionaries there, and quite a few of them approached us to say hi, since we were one of the few americans there who didn't have missionary name tags on, so we kinda stood out. There was one other american guy that we did see that Braden had met during his mission five years ago. We were in a line to go in and Braden saw him a few feet away and called out to him and he turned around was, like, "Whoa!!! Elder Bennight?!?!?!" It was pretty funny :). It turns out he's staying in Izumo as part of the JET program, which is a town right next to Matsue, so that's pretty cool, he and Braden are probably gonna hang out sometime. Anywho, after the conference we rode home, and the Bishop's family shared their yummy lunch with us. It was sandwiches (YAY) and fruit and Onigiri (fancy rice balls with seaweed and seasoning in them).

Have I ever mentioned how much I love sandwiches? I really miss subway, and sub sandwiches, and salami on rye with swiss cheese (thanks, dad, for introducing me to the wonderful taste of salami on rye ^_^). In Japan they do eat sandwiches at times, but there aren't many places to buy sub sandwiches, and I've yet to find sandwich pickles in the super market. It seems the Japanese prefer cucumbers on their sandwiches, instead of pickles, which is good, but I still miss pickles :P. Anyway, after the ride home Braden and I had some fish and chicken and rice for dinner and watched one of the movies we rented.

We rented two Ghibli films that I had never seen before because they've never been released in the US. Lucky for me, the movies actually had english subtitles. They were called "Only Yesterday" and "I Can Hear the Ocean" (those are approximate English translations of the titles). They were pretty similar movies actually. They're both about people reminiscing about their childhood. In "Only Yesterday" a woman goes to visit some relatives in the countryside and thinks about her life in fifth grade, and the experiences that she had that affected what kind of person she became. In "I Can Hear the Ocean" a young man in college goes to his High School Reunion and reminisces about his last year in high school and the drama and angst that he went through because of a love triangle between his best friend and the girl that they both liked. They were pretty good movies, but I liked Only Yesterday better, mostly because I thought that the main girl in "I Can Hear the Ocean" wasn't very likeable (she's really kind of jerk for a lot of it and yet all the guys want her, why is that? lol). Now the only Ghibli movie I haven't seen, I believe, is Pom Poko. I think I've seen every other one ever made. (Most of them have been released in America, so I'd already seen quite a few before coming here). Anyway, enough of my ramblings about movies.

Today I don't have any Japanese class but I do have Karate to look forward to. And I gotta go shopping (feels like I always have to go shopping 0_o.) Lets see how well I do without Braden with me, hehe.