Nov. 2nd

Melissa: I love our rice cooker :). We bought it at a second hand shop called Off-House. It was only 5,000 Yen (about $60 I think, which is a steal for a large rice cooker here. The other big ones I've seen are well over a hundred dollars) and it works perfectly! The second hand shops here are called "Recycle Shops" and they're pretty great, you can find tons of stuff in great condition, at a fraction of its original price! I also bought a hairdryer and a toaster, and they're both awesome :). As you can probably tell from the picture, the buttons on the rice cooker are all in Japanese, which made it hard for me to use at first, but Braden figured it out. Now I can use it just fine, I just memorized what each button is for.

Braden: School has been pretty great so far. I'm doing good in all of my classes and gradually getting the hang of how things work out at Japanese Universities. First of all, things like assignments and their due dates are very vague. I don't even know how each class is graded. So far I've just kind of been coming to class and that seems good enough. Only this week have their actually been any real assignments due which I actually had to complete on time. For example, today me and another student from University of Arkansas named Zack had to give a short presentation on jobs which are either exclusive or traditional for your country. It was pretty hard for us to think of one, so we finally decided on giving a presentation on Quarterbacks for the NFL, and more specifically Brett Favre and his accomplishments. Karate has been pretty awesome. I learned a lot yesterday about how to make my punches a lot better. I found out that my punches push more than they punch, so I need to focus on pulling back as soon as I land a punch to make it more of a karate punch. I got to do a bit more kumite, which was also fun. I like their style of kumite here. They all go pretty hard and aim to kick the head most of the time. A couple days ago we were able to get our Japanese Pension waivers registered at the city hall so we don't have to pay for that. The church members have asked us to go to the missionaries English classes every Thursday, so we'll be helping out with that from now on. Tomorrow is a Japanese holiday "Bunka no Hi" or "Culture Day". I have no clue how the Japanese celebrate it, they probably just don't go to work. Well, I better keep it at about this length so everyone doesn't get bored. Until next time!