The Kouhoku Castle

So, I got transferred again for the last six weeks.  This makes ten
areas and fifteen companions over the course of my mission.  My last
companion is Elder Ikeda, a native of the Kansai area.  I've been in
the same zone or district as him for more than half of his mission, so
we knew each other fairly well already.  He was a railroad worker for
seven years before his mission (doing electrical work for the electric
trains, I think).

The area is called Kouhoku.  The ward building (which happens to also
be the stake center) is shared with the Kanagawa ward, and because the
number of missionaries in the mission has gone down, the Kouhoku and
Kanagawa areas are now the same district.  Up until yesterday I'd been
going to church at 10 am every single week, but Kouhoku Ward meets at
1:30 pm.  It makes for a somewhat different Sunday experience.  :P

The missionary "apartment" in this area is actually a two-story rental
house on the edge of a sizable cliff.  It was opened last year while I
was working in the mission headquarters, so I got to see it between
the furniture getting put in and the missionaries moving into it.  I
moved into it myself last week, and when I got there the owner was
around back looking for leaky pipes with a jackhammer.  Turns out that
it's a much older house than I realized.

We went Christmas Caroling

The elder's quorum in our ward planned this "Super Home Teaching"
event, which originally was going to be a thing where everyone went
out and visited less active members.  We had four elders from the
quorum and four missionary elders (including myself) show up, and
somehow it was decided that what we were going to do was go all
together and visit three not-less-active households and sing to them.
The first one was a new member who was baptized last week.  When we
piled out of the two cars and were next to his apartment building
discussing what song to sing, someone suggested a Christmas song and
the elder's quorum president was like, "That sounds good!  Let's do
it!"  and so we went up and rang his doorbell and sang Angels We Have
Heard On High as soon as he came out.  XD

The next family got to their apartment complex at the same time we
did, so we didn't get to ring their doorbell.  They invited us in,
though, and we ended up singing Joy to the World and Ye Elders of
Israel.  The family was quite entertained.  :P  We just sang Ye Elders
of Israel at the third house.

I get my last transfer assignment this Saturday.  My current companion
and I are going home on the same plane come November, so if they keep
us together for this last transfer then they'll have to whitewash the
area the next transfer, and that probably wouldn't be very good.  So
we're pretty sure one of us is going to transfer.

We got a pretty good earthquake the other day.  It happened early in
the morning and woke us all up.  It doesn't seem like it damaged
anything, but afterwards all the trains were running late that
morning.

These pictures are from the JMA website (http://www.jma.go.jp).  If
you look up Yokohama in Google Maps you'll see roughly were I am.