Before we get to the "Edge of the Far East", I have to make a correction on last week's post. This young man standing by Elder Derricott (Jeff) is a picture of his companion. Last week's picture was a picture of another missionary whom Elder Derricott knows, but is not his companion. Sorry Elder Palmer for posting the wrong picture of you last week!!

Last week I touched on different forms of vehicles so I think that I will now show you where we put those vehicles....... Let's concentrate on cars for now. First you look for one of these signs......

Yes, "P" must be the international sign for "Parking". Yeah!! 

You then try to find out how much of your life savings you are going to have to pay to park your car. This place is open for 24 hours and it only costs $24. That's pretty cheap. You can pay $2 for 20 minutes or $1 for 60 minutes. I don't get that......??? Who did the math there? Our apartment is the tall blue building in the back ground where a parking spot at our place is $800 per month. Do any of you need a storage spot for your car? $800/month is a steal! Ha! Maybe the tenants of our apartment should park here. It would only cost $720/month. That's the bargain!!

There are 3, count them.....1, 2, 3 spots in this lot. You pay $3 for 30 minutes or $6 for 60 minutes? I'm not sure how much it is because there is a "100"(which is about $1) looking at me right after the "60" as well as a "600" ($6). Do we get to choose how much we want to pay? Is the same accountant doing the math for the owners of this lot as the other one? Notice the bar under the car. I'm not quite sure how that is used, but it is use for tracking the time.

Check this out!! This is a different kind of parking lot. It is a skyscraper parking facility. You drive your car down to the circle on the ground, the garage door in front of you opens, you drive just inside of the door, turn off your car, get out, press some buttons, walk out, the door closes and up your car goes.......

and up........

and up. When the day is over and you come back to your car, you punch in your number and down comes your car. You then get in your car, start it, back it out onto the circle, the circular pad makes a 180 degree turn to face you out, and then you drive away. Pretty slick.

This is a different parking facility as you can tell...... The garage door is on the right. This one must be upscale since it provides a vending machine!! 

Now this parking facility is the mother of all mothers. It has 4 pads.

and it goes up and up......maybe 20 stories?

Now if you live in the suburbs of Tokyo, you find that your car takes up your entire yard....

This is a row of homes squished next to each other with about 12 inches between each home.

Yep, the back yard is where the car has to go. No room in front. Maybe this arrangement keeps the landscapers fee to a minimum.....

Once you get your parking spot, you become very familiar with the exact size of your vehicle with no room to spare. So how does this driver get in his car? Oh ya, he drives on the opposite side of the car as we do in the states so it looks like he has given himself 3 inches to squeeze in and out of his car. The passenger side has about 1/4 of an inch between the mirror and the wall. Impressive driving!!

If you don't have a spot to park, you park on a quiet road and hope that you don't get hit by a passer-by. I'm pretty sure this guy had about 1/8 inch between his side of the car and the wall. Crawling over the seat to the other side takes some effort, so this guy must be pretty agile!! 

Now that you have your car and your parking spot, you need to make sure your car will fit on the roads. This is right next to our apartment which is on the right. If I stand in the middle of the road and stretch out my arms, they would be the width of the road. I'm pretty sure my Suburban wouldn't fit on this road.

The "Burb" could fit on this one way road, but it might take out a few pedestrians, bicycles, or signs......which would be bad.

Don't even get any ideas of driving down this road with a vehicle!

Nor this road! Just stop your car for 10 seconds, get yourself a drink from the vending machine and move on.

Just get yourself a bike and park it on the sidewalk. Notice the kick stands.....

You can load up a bike just as much as a car, so give up the car and make your life easier.

Let's now focus on one of the adventures that I went on. I was able to go and help President and Sister Budge at the mission home prepare food and feed about 30 people for a missionary leadership conference.

As you can see, these fine, handsome, young missionaries were posing quite nicely for me. Ha! Ha! They were recruited for some extra help in the kitchen before breakfast was served. Whole wheat waffles with all of the fixings including homemade syrup, bacon, fruit, yogurt, and granola were on the menu. They were happy missionaries!! Thank you Sister Budge for making sure these missionaries get their tummies filled with healthy food.

We drafted a couple of the sister missionaries to help too. Hey Rachelle, Sister Julander says "hello"!

A great looking hungry crowd!

These guys were enjoying their breakfast Japanese style....on the floor. The Tokyo mission is feeling the expansion of the world-wide missionary program. There are 80,000 missionaries out which means each mission has expanded. Tokyo mission will probably have double the number of missionaries by the end of the year to what it had only a few months ago. So cool, but it is a juggling act at times for the mission presidents.

But President Budge and Sister Budge are great jugglers!

This fine couple are working in the mission office. They are the Harrisons and are the great people who keep things organized and moving in the right direction,..... including repairing torn pants which are laying on the chair to the right!! Sister Harris stepped in as the miracle worker so a hard working missionary wouldn't find himself pantless! Thank you Sister Harrison. She also saved my "hide" today and helped me in the kitchen. Brother Harrison knows everything about everyone and where they are. They are loved by everyone.

Kent was in India from Sunday until early Friday morning. With his busy week, he felt the need to get his mind on something else which included..........

going to the American School in Japan high school football game at Atsugi Naval Air Base. 

Before the game, we drove around the base and found some interesting places.....

one of which was big open green spaces. Loved it!

Here we are at the game where Dan Budge played not only quarter back, but he played on defense as well. Was it defensive end? Of course ASIJ beat Camp Zama's high school team. Camp Zama is the U.S. army base in Japan. The two teams met at Atsugi because the field is in better shape than Zama's field. Yes, it was a nice field.

On Saturday Kent and I went for a walk - a long, long walk. On our walk we came across something quite unusual....

two fish heads. Okay, Japan is an island so that shouldn't be too uncommon if you are on the coast, but if you are..............

walking on the sidewalk next to a busy road and a freeway above you, how did the fish heads get there? Kind of creepy.

So on our walk, we went to a place called Tsukiji. I showed pictures of Tsukiji in one of the previous blogs. Remember the blog with the funny cartoon signs telling us foreigners that no strollers, touching the knives, or bothering the workers is allowed? Well, this is the place that Kent wanted to go for some fresh sushi........

We got there around 2:40 and found that a lot of the sushi shops were closed on Saturday. However, we did find one that was open until 3:00. Just in the nick of time! They kindly served us the most incredible sushi. For all of you sushi lovers out there, I will have to tell you that you can't find better sushi than here. We Americans just don't quite have it figured out as good as the Japanese do.

Normally the refrigerated case in front of Kent is full of fresh sushi fish. As you can see, all of the fish in the case is gone because it was the end of the day. Luckily they had some fish left over for us. Thank goodness!

Before we were served our sushi, we were given our plate, two kinds of soy sauce, water to drink, hot pepper spice (in the black container) and freshly made pickled ginger (in the red container with the tongs). So cool!

You also have a small ceramic container for individually wrapped toothpicks. It doesn't end there because you have......

chopsticks, and a wet, sterile rag to wipe your hands. Love it.

Getting ready for a bite of fresh sushi. Yummm!!

Check this out! We were so excited about eating it, that I forgot to take a picture until after we ate some. It was sooooooo good. For all of you sushi "nonlovers" I am sorry for you! Ha!

Notice the people at the back of the room. Do you know what they were doing? They were wiping off every page of every menu. I love the cleanliness of the Japanese people.

To finish up today's blog, I am going to take you to the supermarket. Let's check out a few things there such as........

Kinds of meats and the prices. For $10 you get about a half pound of thin sliced beef. For a better quality of meat you will pay about $20 for a half pound.

We are looking at anywhere from $10 to a little over $20 for a half pound of beef. You'll probably want to enjoy each and every bite of that.

Well, check this out! Campbells soup?! It's only a little less than $2 per can. What does it cost at home now? 

We've got bread flour here for about $4 for 1 kilo which is about 2 lbs. of flour. I'm pretty sure our flour is a little cheaper, isn't it?!?!

Don't bother baking or making your own treats. We have endless snack isles in the supermarkets. Everywhere from little kid snacks, to big kid snacks, to foreign snacks, to traditional Japanese snacks. Do you know what is funny about this? I'm not sure if they sell a whole lot of these snacks because you don't find obese people around here. Well, except for the sumo wrestlers!

Well what do you know! Saltines and Ritz have made it to the far east!

Snacks galore!

And more snacks. Those dancing girls do a pretty good job of marketing. Hey wait! Who's that other "dancing" girl on the left side? There must have been a mirror when I took the picture. Ha! Ha!

Supermarkets sell lots and lots of prepared foods. These prepared foods are different than ours. They actually make them out of real food and it is made at the supermarket! Unlike the U.S. and Sysco!

We have potstickers, chicken,

different kinds of chicken skewers called Yakitori,

tempura, meat, fish, and vegetables fried with panko,

sandwiches, rice balls with various fillings on the inside,

bento boxes with rice, veggies, meat and fruit in them,

more bento boxes,

sushi,

more sandwiches,

and still more sandwiches, 

and bakery items that just aren't sweet rolls. We have cheese bread, pizza bread, bread with hot dogs inside, bread with cheese or ham in it, plain bread, curry bread, etc. It just goes on and on and the crazy thing is that they all taste fantastic!!

America has had a great influence on marketing Halloween in Japan. We have decided that it is a good marketing event to convince other countries to celebrate our holidays. So let's just pretend that everyone in Japan goes trick or treating! Ha!

Kent has gone to Korea for a couple of days and will then come back here for most of the week. It is nice for him to not be jet lagged as much as he use to be. 

I hope this post finds all of you happy and well. Please know that we love and appreciate each of you.

Take care!

Until next week,

Love,

Mom and Dad

Grandma and Grandpa,

Uncle Kent and Grandma Barb

Kent and Barb