Office Party

Hi Everybody,  We hope you have had a great week and weekend.  We just had our once a year office party. The weather was terribly rainy up until yesterday and then it magically cleared so that we could have a warm and wonderful office party.

How's this for a beautiful setting.  It was at Odiba, overlooking Tokyo Bay.

Elder Chandler- ready for some fun.

For our first activity, we had to gather whatever we could that was lying on the ground and make it into a picture.  We were pretty good at gathering and, luckily, we had a creative group to put it all together.

They only gave us a few minutes to gather and to put it together.  Here's some of our group hard at work.

Here's Elder Chandler hard at work!

Almost there. .  . . .

The finished product!  Impressive, I would say.

Next we had to work on our orchestra.  Some of the groups were human percussion, some had kazoos, and we had our voices. We learned our parts and then put it all together at the end.  The only thing I can say was that it was fun and that was also an interesting finished product.

All the time we were there, we had fun watching the boats go by.

The human tug-of-war was great.  This isn't our team because we were too busy pulling to get photos of our own group.  Luckily we had Elder Chandler on our team, and as he was immovable, we easily won!

Here are some of the finished masterpieces from the different groups for the nature pictures.

I really liked the bridge picture; it looks just like rainbow bridge, wouldn't you say?

Time to barbecue!

I think they should have parties like this in the U.S.  This is what you do:  Go to the park, the people at the parks have the tables and chairs all set up for you.  They provide the barbecues, hot charcoal, utensils, plates, food all ready to cook, and all you have to do is cook it!

The people from the office all love to cook and they all pitched in and cooked it together.  This time Gary and I were mostly able to just sit and be served.  Gary cooked a little but let them do most of the cooking.  So good!  There was pork, thick bacon, chicken, and tons of niku (meat).  Last year they had squid, too, so we were a little disappointed. (Not!)  My favorite were the piles of vegetables and soba noodles that they cooked.

Such a beautiful setting for such a great outing!

Notice the chopsticks.  He is right at home using them.  I had to use them, too, as they didn't provide any "foku's".  As you might suppose, one of us is better with chopsticks than the other.

Another highlight was the Baskin Robbin's ice cream.  Notice the flavors. . . .so good!

Then it was time for the raffle and in true Japanese fashion there were some contests to win some of the prizes.  For this one, the volunteers each had a pedometer and whoever got the most miles in three minutes got to pick the first prize.

For the next prize, the first volunteer pumped up a balloon as full as he dared and then the next volunteer had to pump four more times.

It was amazing how many times they kept pumping four times and passing to each other. Of course the winner was the one who didn't pop the balloon and then he got to pick a prize.

For the next prize, three artists were supposed to draw ghost busters.  Without seeing the picture behind them, they all did pretty well, I would say.

Personally, I think the best was the limbo contest.

The one that didn't fall over, got to pick the prize.  Fortunately, there were prizes for everyone.  We picked a beautiful gold package of Ramen noodles. I think the most popular prizes were the electric toothbrushes and the the packages of rice. All rice isn't created equal, and the rice packages they had were quickly swooped up.

We come to the end of a perfect day.  Here we are with our dear friend, Emi, who is also our fellow office worker. She is an amazing person who knows and does so much. She has pretty much taught me all that I know in my office work!

We took one last photo before the party ended. These people who are in the Asia North Area office are some of the very best people anywhere.  These are all active, hard-working LDS people.  Many of them are bishops, in stake presidencies, high council, relief society, primary; you name it and they do it!  For their work in the office, they do translation and printing and finances, etc, etc. and carry on the day to day work of the Church here in Japan.  Many have sacrificed better paying jobs to devote their talents and efforts in doing what they can to hasten the Lord's work here in Japan.  We respect and love them as our friends, and wonderful brothers and sisters in the gospel.  Fortunately, we still have a few more months here, but when it is time for us to go home, leaving our friends here will be the hardest part.                                                                                                   Sayonara for now, everybody!

Protests and Cicadas

Hi Everybody,

Usually the protests that go by are just trucks with loudspeakers, but that time there were the loudspeakers and the marchers were holding signs.

This was the view from Elder Chandler's office window of the protest group marching down the main street.  The Japanese are very quiet people except when it comes to protesting against China over some disputed islands.  This protest went on for quite a long time. They also like to drive by the Chinese residential area which is by our Church with their loudspeakers loudly yelling something in Japanese.  Many times on Sundays we have had to pause Sunday School until they go by as they are very loud.                               

We also told you about our typhoon, Phonfone,  last week and we felt very fortunate that we didn't have the terrible winds and damage here in Tokyo.    Now we're awaiting Vongfong, which is another typhoon and which just passed over Okinawa with 84 hour winds, although it is now forecast that it is weakening should be down to 69 mile an hour winds when it gets here, so we should be fine.  There will be lots of rain and they forecast lots of flooding in some areas as the typhoon moves along.  The heavy rains should begin tomorrow here in Tokyo.

We haven't taken many photos lately as we have been busy and we also haven't ventured out to do very much.  We continue to host the missionaries with their investigators and so we spend a lot of time cooking meals and buying food to cook meals and walking to go shop to buy food to cook meals. We calculate that we will walk 255 miles walking back and forth just to go and buy food before we leave!  Not to mention the "weight-lifting" involved to carry home the groceries!  We love it, though!  Last night we had over the Sister Missionaries with their sweet investigator, Sarah.  Today, we will have the Elders with a new member named Taka.  He is excited to go on a mission and he will be counting the days until he is eligible to apply.  His mother is not a member but she came to church today for the first time, and after church, she was the one telling her son that he should go on a mission!               We did recently go out to visit another English speaking ward to check up on one of our friends, Louie, who is from the Philippines to see how he was doing.  After Church, as we were walking to the subway station, we passed by the Tokyo hospital and had to take a photo of it because of all the vines that they are growing just a few feet in front of the hospital.  Interesting, huh?  The subway station was actually located sort of inside the hospital. 

Okay, that's all the news we have, so would like to learn a little bit about our famous Japanese Cicadas?  Cicadas live underground as nymphs for most of their lives.  Cicadas can live underground for as long as seventeen years.  They stay busy during that time digging and feasting on tree roots, sap and xylem.  After that time they construct a tunnel to the surface and emerge.  They then molt (shed their skins) on a plant and are then very loud adults.  The exoskelton that they shed stays on the tree.  After mating, the female makes a slit in the bark of twigs and deposits her eggs there, sometimes laying as much as several hundred eggs.  When the eggs hatch, these new nymphs drop to the ground and they burrow into the ground for 2 to 5 years or 13 years or 17 years or however long their particular type stays underground. And the adults live for only a few weeks.  There is a different group of new cicadas that emerge from the ground every summer, though.

This is before shedding.To see the process click on this: molting

This is after. Some are a little hard to see on the tree bark. Every time we go to the park in the summer, the noise of the cicadas is super loud! Would you also like to hear what we hear every time we go there? This isn't something that I recorded but this is what we hear.  Turn your volume up really loud so you can hear as we hear.  Click on this: Lovely music of the cicadas

So sweet; they even make wall hangings to look like them!

Or maybe you would like to eat one?  Some people do, you know. Of course they eat almost anything here! Here cicadas mean summer and people are excited when they first start to hear them because that means it's summer. 

Here's a Japanese poem dedicated to the cicadas.  I'm not so sure exactly what the meaning is, though.

Yes, the sound is so loud that I think that at times.

If you can't beat it, join it?

Lovely, huh?

I don't think the dog is a predator, I read that the predators are the praying mantis and the cicada killer wasp. I don't recall seeing either one of those insects here, though, hence the huge number of cicadas!

In case you are wondering how they make their noise, I also read that male cicadas have a noisemaker called a tymbal below each side of the anterior abdominal region. The tymbals are structures of the exoskeleton formed into complex membranes with thin, membranous portions and thickened ribs. Contraction of internal muscles buckles the tymbals inwards, producing a click; on relaxation of the muscles the tymbals return to their original position, producing another click. The male abdomen is largely hollow, and acts as a sound box.  By rapidly vibrating these membranes a cicada combines the clicks into apparently continuous notes, and enlarged chambers derived from the trachea as resonance chambers with which it amplifies the sound. Did you get all of that?  Maybe you could explain it to me!  It's almost a little sad as the sound is getting quieter each day when we go to the park which is a signal that summer is almost over.

Here's one last poem as an ode to the cicada!

All shrilling together,
the multitudinous semi make,
with their ceaseless clamor,
even the mountain move.

Actually, let's end this post with a beautiful night photo of the Tokyo temple!   Also, if you weren't able to hear the prophet and apostles speak, you can watch the videos of conference anytime.  Just click on this link:  General Conference and then click on "general conference".  Have a great week, everybody!