Castle on a Mountain

The Kamioooka (上大岡) area is full of hills and hills and gigantic hills.  (That's why it has three of the letter o in its name.)  There are some flat parts, but other than that it's all hills.  We live in a really nice (and very visible) apartment complex on top of a really, really big hill.  It's basically a castle on a mountain.  This area is also very densely populated.  Any square meter that's not a park is covered in buildings.  

They had the Bon festival last weekend.  I wish I payed more attention to what it was about (it has something to do with ancestors) but it was a good chance to talk to people.  Apparently there are going to be a lot more festivals coming up here soon.

Lanterns floating down the river in the Bon Festival

These two were going at this drum for hours... and then one of them got on the stage and started dancing with these clappers.  I talked to one of the drummers afterwards (the one who's drumming in this video), and he said he'd been doing it for eighteen years.

Closing

I'm being transferred to Kamioooka!  My new companion will be Elder
Kennedy.  He was in my MTC district.

Another reason I felt weird last week is that I had a pretty good
image of what life after my mission will look like, but I had no idea
what the last three months would be like.  I was pretty sure I'd be
transferring, but I really had no idea where I'd be or who I'd be
with, no idea what the ward would be like or who I'd be teaching or
what kind of finding we'd be doing.  It was a big, black void in my
forecast of the future.  That kind of uncertainty hasn't ever bothered
me before, though.  Oh well.  At least I have half of that filled in
now.  :P

We saw Elder Cluff off at the train station this morning.  He'll be
well on his way across the Pacific Ocean by the time we go to sleep
tonight.  In the meantime, I've been attached to another companionship
because transfer day isn't until Thursday.  My companionship is
closing this week (there are going to be four elders in this area from
now on, instead of six), so I'll be making sure that my investigators
are set up with the other elders.

I don't know what time is anymore

This is Elder Cluff's last week in the mission field.  We've got a
busy week set up, too, between lessons with investigators, and members
who want to have us over for dinner before he goes.  I just hope we
have time for him to pack before he has to go.

In the meantime, I've been having weird feelings.  I feel like I'm
almost done with my mission, but at the same time I know all too well
that an awful lot can still happen in the three months I have left.
(For example, I could go through two new areas and two new companions
(assuming no emergency transfers) and it wouldn't be surprising given
how it's been for me so far.)  I also have a nagging feeling in my gut
that I haven't accomplished enough yet and that I need to make the
most of what I've got left.  And at the same time I feel like my
mission so far has been a success...

It's going to be an interesting three months~

Summer Heat

Elder Cluff has been calling up all the people he knew when he was in
the area last year, and we've been able to start meeting with quite a
few of them again.  He was here in Sagamihara quite a bit longer than
I was, so he had more and better connections.  Incidentally, Elder
Cluff is known as one of the biggest goofballs in the mission.  He can
make people laugh.  We've been having a lot of fun.  ^__^

It's been raining for the past couple weeks, but over this weekend
it's all cleared up and the sun's been out in all its glory.  It's
humid.  And hot.  Even the wind is hot.  I feel like I'm swimming
through the atmosphere.  The sun reflects off the sweat on the back of
my hands.  I want the rain back.  :P  I'm glad I was working in the
mission office last summer (air conditioning <3).

We got news (from a member of our bishopric, who saw it on Facebook)
that they have Meet the Mormons translated into Japanese and they're
going to send a copy to each ward.  That's really exciting.  :3  We've
already been using it in the mission, setting up movie nights and
providing our own interpretation.  It's going to be a lot easier to do
that once these new copies show up.



I saw this at the supermarket across the street, and I knew someone
 was going to want to see a picture of it.

Green Mountains

They changed the transfer schedule again.  We're still getting transfer announcements on Saturday but transfer day is Thursday again (instead of Monday, which apparently caused some problems when they tried it lat time :P).  My companion is transferring out this week, and my new companion will be Elder Cluff.  This is going to be his last transfer, and he's coming back to his first area.  I've been charged with making sure he doesn't get "trunky".  

We went up to the furthermost corner of our area last week (a place called Tsukui), and I realized that I'm relatively comfortable with Japanese city culture, but I'm a bit more clueless when it comes to country culture.  o.0  Fortunately the country people are a lot more laid back, so it's not as bad to mess up.


Tsukui

This is the most bizzare No Soliciting sign I've ever seen.  (It says something more like "we refuse all soliciting", which is normal in Japanese, but that cat...)

Interpretation

For all the zone meetings and mission conferences and what not in our
mission, it's done in English with someone interpreting it
simultaneously into Japanese for the native missionaries.  The mission
office has a set of interpreter devices (radio receivers with
earphones for the listeners, and a transmitter with a microphone for
the interpreter), and for most meetings the interpretation is done by
older missionaries (or missionaries who happen to be at least fairly
fluent in both languages).  When a General Authority comes, usually
interpretation is done by a member who does interpretation
professionally.

(By the way, "translation" is for written language, and
"interpretation" is for spoken language.)

I got invited to an interpreters' training last week, and it was a
really good experience.  A lot of the principles we talked about apply
to missionary work and to life in general.

Japanese and English are some of the hardest languages to interpret
into each other.  In order to get the meaning across with our
abilities without falling too far behind, we usually have to simplify
and sometimes reduce to the most important parts of each sentence.  We
just have to remember (and this is one of the principles I really
liked) that they'd rather get 40% or 50% than 0%, so we just work to
get that percentage as high as possible and let the rest go.  It's
like that in missionary work or the rest of life; there's a lot of
things we just can't get perfect, but when it has to be done, 70% or
50% or 30% is better than 0%.

Some other principles were things like understanding the speaker's
feelings and what not, and imagining how what you're saying sounds
from the listener's perspective.  Brother Wessman (who was giving the
training) said that changing complex sentences to simple ones is the
same skill as tailoring the message of the Gospel to people who aren't
familiar with it already.

Meat and Vegetables

I got word the other day that my brother got called to the Little Rock
Arkansas mission~!  He reports to the MTC on September 9, so he's
going to be in the field about a month before I get back home.  I'm
excited for him.  ^__^

We had a ward BBQ last Saturday.  In Japan they don't really do
hamburgers and hot dogs, but they had all other kinds of meat.  It was
pretty good.  They had potatoes too, but those all got eaten before I
got to them.  We got to bring along some investigators and students
from English class, and they all had a good time, too.  :3  It was
kinda cool because I was here for last year's ward BBQ, too.  Last
year they did it down by the river, but this year it was up at a
campsite place up in the woods.

We found this out in the farm country.  Basically, you drive through
and buy things from machines.  They had food, drinks, and other really
random stuff.