Week Eleven

Near the train station here at Ichinoseki.

Hello family! This week has been pretty interesting. As the time goes by, the things that used to seem so unusual and weird about Japan have become less and less strange. I`m pretty sure I`m entering the culture shock phase where I start getting somewhat irritated with things that aren`t like they are in America. Lately, posture has been something I`ve been corrected about constantly. The Japanese can`t stand any deviation from perfect posture, so it`s been somewhat irritating. The food, while delicious, is also kind of unfilling, and I`ve definitely begun to miss the treats you sent me at the MTC. Biking is usually pretty fun, except when it`s extremely hot and humid and I have to go uphill, or when Katayama Choro gets us lost, which happens fairly often. Thankfully, the hot season should be over soon, and then biking will be a lot nicer.

I think it was another festival, but I`m not sure what.
 I think each city around here has it`s own local traditions.

On a better note, we had the firework festival just a few days ago, and since it gets dark much earlier here than in Utah, we actually made it back to our apartment reasonably on time. I have some pictures from the show that I`ll send later, but just know that they were much more spectacular than anything I`ve seen in Utah, even though we`re in backwoods Japan.

I understand more about this city now. One interesting thing about this city is that there`s an unusually high number of mentally ill people! Kind of strange, but usually they`re not dangerous at least. I`m trying to avoid drinking the water; it`s one of those poor areas that people who can leave end up doing. We have a lot of less active members listed, but most of them have moved away to nicer cities where there are jobs. The area is certainly beautiful, though. And the members are very kind, giving us fruit baskets each week as well as drinks when we visit them. The branch mission leader is actually pretty funny. We go every week to have family home evening with him, which means apple curry (not my favorite) and ice cream!

I have to go to many members` houses to do mogis with them, which has been interesting. Hopefully I`ll be able to do real lessons well soon enough. In fact, I`m meeting with a real investigator for the first time tonight, and I`ll be teaching about God and families! Wish me luck!

Also, here`s an ancient house we visited! More than 100 years old.

Japanese culture point (I`ll do one of these a week, I doubt I`ll ever run out of things to say):
In Japan, most people have intercoms on their doorbells, so rather than actually answering the door, they`ll talk to you through it. They can see you, but you can`t see the person inside. I`ll send a picture later. We call it the *not interested* tool.

Anyhow, talk to you later! I`ll be sure to send photos in about four or so hours!

Week Ten: Japan!

Decorations for Tanabata Matsuri in Sendai.

Hopefully you`re all doing well! This has been a crazy week so far, but very exciting!

Yummy Japanese meal, yakisoba, rice, pickled cucumber, and miso soup.

When we landed in Tokyo, it was pretty crazy. I thought it looked cool and rainy outside, but it turned out to be very intensely humid and hot. Not fun when you`re wearing a suit. It was fun to wander around Tokyo airport and try some authentic Japanese food and drinks, like Calpis. I can pretty much guarantee that I`ll need weekly trips to the Asian Market to survive after two years here. I`ll talk more about the food later, but anyhow, we flew up to Sendai after not having slept since Saturday night at the MTC, so we were pretty exhausted when we got picked up. After we got there, we went off to the church to fill in some forms for our residence cards and got our luggage ready to be shipped. That night was spent in the mission home apartments, which was pretty crowded considering the 13 additional elders arriving in Sendai. We had a welcome orientation at the church again and I got my new area and companion. I`m now in Ichinoseki, Iwate Prefecture, just a bit over an hour by bus away from Sendai, but a world away. My new companion is Elder Katayama, a native Japanese who speaks very little English. Meaning, I`m pretty sure he understands English fairly well, but he speaks almost exclusively in Japanese. After we took our bus to our new area, we met the couple missionaries, the Tanaka`s from Kobe. They are very nice, helping drive us to distant members` homes and other such things.

Here`s a picture of Ichinoseki itself! I`ve taken tons of pictures, but it takes forever to send them. So many interesting things here! Hopefully you weren`t worried about the flooding in Tohoku, but you probably didn`t even hear about it, thank goodness.

Perhaps I should describe Ichinoseki. It`s very small-town Japan. The climate is hot and humid, at least for now, and there are lots of cicadas. It pretty much looks and feels like Missouri, with slightly higher mountains. We also have a few neighbouring cities included in our area, such as Kesennuma which was damaged by the tsunami quite badly. The branch itself is quite small, only around twenty people, but it is fairly successful for Japan, having had a baptism per year for a few years (that`s actually really amazing for this country). I got my bike prepared yesterday, so it`s been fun to use it around this city. It`s very old-country Japan, as you`ll see in the pictures. Apparently, there`re also some World Heritage Site temples just north of here that I`ll hopefully visit sometime.

Anyhow, Japan is great! I`m so happy to be in Tohoku, though I haven`t seen a foreigner for a while now. I`ll be teaching Eikaiwa (English conversation class) on Wednseday, which should be exciting! Anyhow, matta ne!

Arrival

Dear Parents,

I'm sorry this is impersonal but I wanted to let you know quickly that your missionary arrived late last evening into Sendai.  We met them at the airport and they were all doing great but they were tired after 24 hours of traveling.  They were loaded onto a bus that brought them to the Mission Home where we fed them a light meal and sent them to bed.  Today has been a wonderful day of interviews with President Rasmussen, training and information before they left for their first area of service with their new best friend, their trainer.  Everyone was healthy, happy and excited to finally be in the mission field.  

Preparation Day in the mission is Monday (which is Sunday in America) so you can expect an E-mail from your missionary that day.  I knew you were very anxious to know if they were safe and sound and I hope this E-mail will ease your mind.  

The pictures were taken this afternoon with their trainer before everyone left for their areas.  We had 24 new missionaries arrive so this is a large group.  

We have fallen in love with every one of these new missionaries that have come to us.  They will be a wonderful addition to the Japan Sendai Mission.  Thank you for preparing them so well!

Our love and best wishes, 
Sister Rasmussen
Japan Sendai Mission Mom

Week Nine

So, Seth told me that my emails needed to be longer and with subtitles for the 日本語(Japanese), so here it goes! This week has been somewhat more exciting as we actually prepare to leave this place. Our 先生(teachers) have been preparing us more for actually leaving to Japan, which has been pretty nice. We've learned a bit about Japanese 文化(culture) lately, such as how important it is to have shoes facing towards the door when you take them off, proper words to say when starting a meal（ いただきます）and other such things. Yesterday was our in-field orientation, which was fairly nice, just them talking about important things to focus on in the field like how to find investigators and make goals and things like that. It was pretty cheesy most of the time, sometimes overly so. I thought the main speaker was a bit prideful, which made listening to him kind of annoying. It was also weird to see how many English missionaries there were at the MTC, it seems like nearly half of missionaries leaving in the next few days are English speaking, including some going to Provo and St. George. I was so grateful to be going to Japan, especially since almost all the English missionaries seem kind of weird. I hadn't realized that the Japanese missionaries were abnormally interesting people (in general). In the past few weeks, I've been getting to know the other missionaries going to Sendai better, and they all seem pretty cool). It's going to be weird leaving my district behind, since almost all of them are going to Tokyo instead of Sendai. By the way, I'll be buying my phone card today, and it seems that I'll probably be calling you from Dallas around 9:00-10:00 am, so be prepared for that! I'm so excited to head out to Japan, we're all going a bit stir-crazy here. 愛しています！
アール長老

P.S. We finally got our full Japanese nametags! I'll be sure to send a picture later.


I miss being outside with normal people, though at least I'll be in the real world soon enough.


Well, I won't deny that I'm really excited about having good food (hopefully Cafe Rio at the airport, if it's open (can you figure that out?)), we're going to make Greenburg 長老 try sushi in Narita. I'm also excited to be out of the MTC, it feels like a nice prison sometimes. It seems that it will be pretty warm in Sendai when we get there, which is slightly disappointing, but I don't really care, I'm ready to be gone.

Eating for sure, we'll have sushi, but other than that, probably just look for souvenirs and things.


[Zach: What did people think of the photo album we sent you?]
They said they were surprised. Also, all the shimaitachi thought Hannah was my girlfriend, even though I very clearly said she was my friend. (Though the pictures do admittedly make it look otherwise.) They were like "you're (implied quotation marks) "friend" is pretty cute". And they thought I was a world traveler too.

Week Six

こんにちは! This week has seemed longer than the other ones, but things are still going well. All of us are getting a little bit bored of the MTC, but we still have a lot to learn, so it's OK. Right now, we've begun having other missionaries teach and be taught by each other  so me and Greenburg Choro are teaching Snow Shimai with Day Shimai acting as a church member. Snow Shimai is being a neighbour of hers from Midway and it has been interesting. We've gotten her to read from the Book of Mormon and pray about the restoration. They've said our lessons have been pretty good, but our latest lesson was taught in an empty classroom in the Spanish building, which was interupted by a group of four elders sitting in and watching us teach in Japanese. Eventually their teacher took them to the correct classroom, but it was a bit more scary teaching in front of an audience. I've been acting as Daniel Parrish, which is apparently the same person Andrew had chosen, which I hadn't known about (he had said he was being a church member). Snow and Day Shimai's lessons have been very good, but we'll see if they can convince me to be become a full member of the church. Our lessons to our teachers have also gone well, though we only taught twice this week. Komeda San forgot about our lesson on the Word of Wisdom, so we had to re-explain everything to her, which was a bit annoying though the lesson ended up being really good in my opinion. We also taught Shohei Kun about the Word of Wisdom, which he was willing to follow, since he is too young to have started any of the really bad stuff. 

In other news, Greenburg Choro was allowed to receive a Kanji name for his tag, so I'm going to try to write them again and see if I'll be able to get a Kanji name printed in time. I never thought they'd allow us to do that, so I hadn't even tried, but hopefully I'll get to be 伯爵 Choro. Yesterday, we had an English fast, which meant we could only speak in Japanese. It was really long and difficult, but it was interesting. We had to speak in Japanese to a few police officers, but they eventually understood what we were saying. Pretty much everyone I know outside our district is leaving on Monday or Tuesday, which is pretty sad, but I'll get to see Andrew and Carlin in the basement of our classroom building on Monday night, so we'll get to say our final good-byes. Right now, all I want to do is go to Japan and start doing stuff like them, but I'll keep working to be prepared to go there. またね！

 

伯爵長老

Our district and Tingey Sensei with the candy Snow Shimai's mom sent each of us.

It was a bit rainy last Sunday, so we got this picture too.

Here's me and another Elder Earl. He's going to the Czech Republic. I don't think he's actually related to us, but he wanted a picture, and I got one too.

FHE Reunion and Naming

Kirk was able to get a picture with everyone who was in his FHE group while at BYU!

Email from the Sendai Mission:

Just a note from the Mission office requesting your assistance on a couple of items.

#1   We have to order your name tags and meishi (business cards) within the next 2 weeks.  In doing so, we need your name, as you would prefer it written, in Katakana.  If you do not have a preference or do not know how to do this, then we will do it for you.  I need you to respond to this email ASAP (please,  within a week) so  I can get the process rolling.  With 24 missionaries coming in August, the printing companies are requesting more time to prepare the cards and tags.  If we don’t hear back from you by July 17th, we will process your Katakana name with the best guess of our resident Japanese office experts.  J

#2  We also need your name as printed on your passport in English and Katakana.  So if you take care of my first request, that will pretty much take care of the second as well.  I feel your pain with the Japanese language, so I’m trying to make this as easy as possible. 

We are so excited to welcome you to Sendai!  You will love our mission!!!  The rainy season should be over by the time you get here, and you will get to enjoy the heat and humidity of August and September!  Yeah!  We’re all looking forward to that one.  ;-)

God bless you as you continue your studies in the MTC.  Your efforts there will pay huge dividends when you begin serving in Japan. 

Much love,

Sister Rollins  

And Kirk's response:

おはようございます！Some of us were actually going to email about whether we could choose our katakana names, so thanks so much for this! My full passport name is Kirk Montgomery Earl, and my Japanese name that I'd like to have used is カーク*アール. We're all excited to go to Japan in about a month, Sendai's going to be great. ありがとうございます！

Just in case you were wondering, Kirk's Japanese name カーク アール is pronounced Kāku Āru.

Week Two

Ohayo family, this week has been pretty good. I finally got my camera to get pictures onto these computers, so that's been a good thing. My Japanese has improved quite a bit, which I am very happy about. By the way, at the MTC, our main focus of every day is the lessons we have to teach to our investigators. We'd been teaching Tominaga-san for about a week, but now he's going to be replaced by our teacher, Gregory-sensei. We were really happy about convincing Tominaga-san to give up drinking and getting him ready for baptism, but now we'll have to start from scratch again. 

Thanks for the cheezits, the other chorotachi have almost eaten all of them. By the way, just a few hours after sending the emails last week, I saw Carlin walking down the stairs in my building. It turns out he'd been in the same building the whole time. He also told me that he and Andrew's classrooms were on the floor below mine, so I went and saw Andrew! You might have already heard all of this, but I was pretty happy about it, and he seemed pretty happy. We've seen each-other almost every day since then, like both times at choir practice, which I have been going to! 

I saw Clement Shimai come into the MTC, and she seems to be doing pretty well. We've also had a group of real Japanese missionaries come in, though they'll only be here for a few weeks. They seem to understand our Japanese pretty easily, though I think they laugh at our accent. Some of them from Nara, and one of them even recognized Nishiyamato Gakuen. They think my name is pretty difficult to say, so it's a good thing I'll get a katakana name once I have my fully Japanese name-tag. Our district seems to have unusually good Japanese, even though we're kohai. Some of the daisenpai seem to have much worse Japanese than us (the three "generations" of Japanese missionaries at the MTC are called kohai, senpai, and daisenpai). 

Also, everyone thinks Eliza's letters are adorable. Don't tell her that other people see them, though, or she'll probably be pretty mad! I don't think I need anything else right now, and I think things are going about perfectly here. Mata ne!

My District:

From left to right, Jaycox, Von Niederhauzern, Cottle, Greenburg, me, and Olsen Chorotachi (Elders), and Ivory, Haderlie, Snow, Christensen, Moss, and Day Shimaitachi (Sisters).

Me and my friend/former roommate Elder Humphries:

Last Saturday, I found Carlin while walking down the stairs in my classroom building. It turns out that he'd been in the same building the whole time!

My cousin Andrew and I:

Carlin told me where Andrew's classroom is, and it turns out that he's been in the floor below me too. I've seen him almost every day since then.

Week One

Kirk with Sister Merrill, an MTC worker in our ward.

Konnichiwa! It turns out that today is my P-day, you probably weren't expecting me to write so soon. The MTC has been pretty good so far. My companion is Elder Greenburg, who I knew from Startalk. I think we've gotten along pretty well so far. Our district has 12 people in it, six chorotatchi (elders) and six shimaitatchi (sisters). All the sisters and three of the elders in our district are going to Tokyo. Class has been pretty intensive; our teacher only speaks Japanese and we're supposed to use as much Japanese as we can possibly use, meaning if we know a Japanese word, we're supposed to use it. I really like our teacher, Gregory-sensei, he's always cheerful and has so far kept from using English.

I still haven't seen Andrew or Carlin yet, even though I've seen people from their districts for sure. I've seen nearly everyone else I expected to see here, though, and I'm hoping I'll see them pretty soon. Our living space isn't nearly as crowded as I was afraid it was going to be. Only the six chorotatchi from my district are in our room. Everyone keeps saying that today is supposed to be the worst day of our lives so far, but it really hasn't been bad at all so far, so I'm pretty happy. Our district gets along really well, which is always a good thing when you're stuck with them for the entire day. When you get to the MTC, you start teaching an investigator on your second day, and our district is currently teaching Tominaga-san. Our appointment with him went pretty well, except for how we kind of walked into his "house" without knocking first and left our scriptures in our classroom. He acted like he understood most of our Japanese and we managed to teach him how to pray, somehow. Tonight, we're going to teach him about the holy ghost. Hopefully it goes better!

By the way, we eat meals really early, in fact dinner is at 4:10, so I'm usually pretty hungry at night time, so unlike Andrew, I'll be very happy to accept food! Also, thanks for the new towel, the one you sent me felt like a shower curtain. My departure date has turned out to be August 5, so you might want to use that if you want to send stuff in the future, though I've gotten everything you've sent so far, I'm pretty sure. I've taken quite a few pictures too, but I'm not sure how to attach them. Hopefully, you'll be getting another email with pictures in a few minutes. I love you all, and tell Eliza thanks for the daily messages.

Saying Goodbye

Last movie before being set apart! 

 Going to the Timp temple the day before.

 

Right after getting set apart 

No hugs allowed. :( 

 Last time with Copper for two years.

Last hugs! 

Driving into the MTC.

Kirk's Farewell

(By Zach) Last week, we had a farewell for Kirk. It was beautiful. We had lots of yummy food, and great friends and family! Kirk is going to do great!

 Some delicious sushi Jesse, Hannah, and I made!

 Kirk and Lily talking about going to Sendai. (They're both going, how crazy is that!?)

 More delicious sushi.

 Nigiri sushi, one of my favourites.

Partying it up!

 We all played Smurf in the piano room.

As you may now know, I, Zach (Kirk's awesome little brother) will be updating the blog while Kirk is in Japan and the MTC.