A Weekend at Uncle Jeff's and Aunt Tricia's

Last weekend we had a great time at Uncle Jeff's and Aunt Tricia's place in Portland. In fact, we were so busy, that we didn't even get to write a blog post about it until now. As always, I wish we would have taken more pictures of all the fun things we did, but these will have to do.

Sunday night we had this amazing chicken dish. I don't remember what it was called, but as you can see, it was pretty exotic including kiwi, bananas, and pineapple. 

We played MarioKart on the Wii quite a bit. We were so adventurous that we even played upside down.

Sunday afternoon we had fun doing a crossword puzzle including all 118 of the periodic elements.

We spent quite a bit of time in the competition of who would win first. Kirsten ending up finishing first when I had only seven words to go. 

 Besides the yummy food and games, we got to watch all of the sessions of General Conference where we got to hear from the leaders of the Latter-day Saint Church including the prophet, Thomas S. Monson. Although there were several good talks, I think that my favorite was given by Elder Jeffery R. Holland on believing. He said that everyone had different levels of faith, and that's ok. We don't need to compare each other but to just press forward with where we are. As long as we do our best, the Lord will provide. Click here to watch his address. I'm thankful for the powerful messages shared by my church's leaders because they help me to be a better person.

Although it was really fun to spend last weekend up in Portland, it was also nice to have a quiet relaxing time this weekend. We hope that everyone is doing well! Love you all lots!

Awesome Weather and Fun Trips!

What a crazy and long week! Emily started classes and I started at work again. I didn't really mention it before, but I got a job as a substitute instructional assistant (IA). You might wonder what an IA does... Well, IA's get to work with kids that have variety of mental and/or physical handicaps. I have only worked with students at elementary schools so far, but it is quite the experience! I come home fairly tired, but it is just awesome to see the kids progress. How much do I actually get to see them progress as a substitute you ask? Well, as a male IA, the schools that I sub at want me back. I have had the privilege of working for several weeks and have only been to 3 different schools. Maybe I wouldn't call it progress, but it is awesome to see the kids being independent on their good days (I won't go into the bad ones). Most of the kids are in what the schools call a Life Skills classroom environment. I get to spend a lot of 1-on-1 time with kids and also get to ask a lot of questions when I'm not sure what to do or how to react to a situation. All in all, it has taught me more patience, and also a variety of ways to communicate with others.

I don't want to bore you with anymore stuff from school, so I'll post a few pictures about some of the highlights of the week.

This is Uncle Jeff, cousin Brady, and I at the golf course in Portland. Emily and I went up to the temple with our church's youth (I got called into the Young Men's Presidency... yay!!!) and stayed with Uncle Jeff and Aunt Tricia Saturday night. The last time I golfed, was when I was like 10. Uncle Jeff and Brady were really good at feeding me encouragement. :D

Look yummy? It was! 

Aunt Tricia, Kayla, and a few of the other girls made this awesome chocolate cake that has crushed heath bars on the top. We also got to eat a gourmet dinner on Sunday night with them... I wish I had taken a picture. Thanks Tricia and Jeff!

This was my birthday present. It's the lego edition of Blackbeard's ship from  Pirates of the Caribbean. It actually took me quite some time to put it together.

Just another view. The little guy in front was a free monster car set that I got with the purchase. Pretty much it's awesome!

Well, that's about it. We are just excited to start another week in the beautiful weather we are having here. Much love! Until next week!

Trying New Things.

Branch Conference


Every Friday night we set time aside to have date night (and we do pretty well at keeping it). We switch off every week planning some kind of activity for the evening. In the past they have been usual things like watching a movie or going out to eat, and other times it has been pretty unusual (at least for us) like having a candle-lit dinner or going out for a walk and eating yummy Japanese treats. Well, this week it was Emily's turn to plan. She found this place where we could paint some candles that are famous here in the town we live in. However, when I went Friday right after work, I found out that we needed to have reservations and that we needed to make them a week or so in advance. Bummer! I thought to myself, "here is Emily trying to get us to try something new, and it didn't work out... I wonder what we'll do instead." I emailed Emily the news about needing reservations for the place. She wasn't worried but instead was excited to try something else, french onion soup. That may not seem that cool, but we love trying to make new foods (mostly Emily does... I just help out by cutting up the vegetables or stirring things so they don't burn). So for date night this week, we went shopping and made steak, some veggies, and french onion soup. Although the soup took some time, it was amazing! Lighting some candles for the table made it a fun and enjoyable dinner.

When toasting the bread and cheese on the top of the soup, we decided to through it in our toaster oven praying that the bowls wouldn't explode. We were lucky and everything turned out great!

Aizu Wakamatsu hosted a Fukushima festival on Saturday. There were tons of people watching making it almost impossible to walk down the main street with the parade.

Although we didn't see all of the groups, there were several traditional Japanese dancing groups and a group from Tokyo Disneyland. We were sad that we missed the Disney group. :(

Earlier today we had branch conference at Church. They asked me a few days ago if I would speak. Luckily it was only a 3-5 minute assignment and they gave me the choice to speak on whatever I wanted to. I ironically talked about the importance of preparation because Emily and I had read some messages earlier in the week about that. It went well and it was nice to see so many people at Church.


We hope that everyone is doing well! お元気で (good health be to you all) and good luck with the upcoming week. Much love!

A Happy Mother's Day in Japan

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there! It was nice this last week to get back into a routine with things. We had missed three Sundays of church here in Aizu Wakamatsu, so today everyone kept saying, "we thought you died..." We did tell them that we were going to be gone. Anyways, Emily and I noticed that people here in Japan seem to celebrate Mother's Day differently. For example, usually the speakers at church are male and they speak on a theme around mothers, but today, most of the speakers were women and they spoke about the blessings of the Priesthood; have to admit it was a little funny. Women get no breaks here in Japan.


Like I mentioned, it is nice to get back into a routine here at our apartment; also our routine of posting every week. Last weekend we went to Yamagata Prefecture and stayed with a missionary couple that I served with, the Niwa's. It was fun to spend the night with them and then go to the branch we served together in the next morning for church services in Tsuruoka (the couple served in the neighboring branch, about two hours from their house at the same time I served there about six years ago). It was a lot of fun to reminisce in the experience and was surprised at both how many people I remembered, and how many people remembered me. The most common thing said to me was in reference to Emily, "bijin da ne. Yokatta desu ne," which interprets, "she's so beautiful, good for you." So much fun! 

I don't remember the sister on the left, but next to her moving left is Sister Niwa, Emily, me, Sister Chiaki, and Brother Niwa,

We have some pictures of some of the other highlights of the week as well.

We got to tour a famous pottery place in Aizu Misato yesterday. We visited a girl's family that Emily had taught at one of her high schools. Consequently, after she graduated, she went to college at the place that I teach. It's pretty funny. This is a room where the do the sculpting of cups and dishes and what not.

This was in a locked room,  a kiln that was made 400 years ago. 

The kiln was amazing to see, but it was locked up because it got pretty messed up in the 3.11 earthquake last year. There are plans to restore it, but nothing has happened yet.

The kiln was pretty impressive. They explained that this place makes really famous pottery. When I asked why the pottery made there was so famous and ridiculously expensive, they told me that the materials were taken from a nearby mountain and when combined with the 8th generation pottery maker family that owns the place and the large kiln, it makes for some rather unique colored pottery. 

After our tour, we went over to our student's house, played card games, relaxed, and had yakiniku for dinner. The easiest way to explain yakiniku is to say Korean bbq. Pretty much it's different kinds of meat and veggies cooked on a hotplate in which you dip in yummy special sauce. It was awesome!

We really had a fun time with the family. From left to right; mom, Wako (front, youngest sister), Yuka (back, currently one of Emily's students), Kana (Emily's previous student and my current student), Emily, and me.

Other than that, Emily has been hard at work on applying for graduate positions at University of Oregon. We hope everyone is doing well! Much love and again, Happy Mother's Day!

Ice Cream: A Good Sub for Exercise

The highlight of this week was definitely being able to watch the first session of General Conference this weekend. Usually, in Japan, General Conference is broadcast the following week in a city that is about an hour away. Fortunately for us English-speaking-technology-addicts, we can watch it online the same day from the comfort of our own bed. We haven't been able to watch the whole conference yet, so feel free to comment and tell us which talks we should be listening extra carefully for. What was your favorite?


A couple other fun things that happened this week included a lunch outing with Sonoka, a friend from BYU-Hawaii. Who would have guessed that a few short years on some obscure island in the middle of the ocean would turn out to be such a life-changing experience? And that it would result in having friends literally all over the globe? 


I (Emily) have been attending a weekly Zumba class when I can for the past couple months, and I have dragged a couple friends into it with me. This past week, our friend Chizuko and I tried to go together, but found out that it was cancelled. We thought it was a waste to get out and not do something fun together, so we substituted (see below). Perhaps not as healthy for the body, but definitely needed for the soul :)

Yummy!

We are so lucky to have such a good friend in Chizuko. She has been a lifesaver on multiple occasions. We love her!

James went bowling this week with the missionaries and some friends. I was at work, so I didn't get to go, but we are going tomorrow for Family Home Evening. I've sworn to beat James in at least one game, so stay tuned!

Spring weather is so crazy! We had two beautiful days this week where all of the snow melted, the sun came out, and the breeze was semi-warm. We had to take advantage of it, so we had a romantic dinner for two out on our back balcony for date night.

That's all for this week. Love to all our family and friends!!!

It just doesn't get better than this...

This week was packed with fun stuff. Usually we would post a bunch of pictures from all the different activities that have taken place this week, but we had too much fun and forgot to take pictures. Well, we didn't forget entirely, so I do have a few photos to share.


This was my last week of teaching for the school year. I was asked at one of my schools to prepare speeches for each of the three classes I was teaching that day. I thought to myself, what part of my sagacity could I possibly share with people who were maybe only 10 years younger than me. I thought back to a quote that I have always kept close to me, a sort of motto. "It's choice - not chance - that determines your future." Instead of "future," the real quote by Jean Nidetch, uses "destiny." However, I like using future better. I don't want to bore anyone with the details, so I'll sum it up as this... I used this quote as a basis for my speech to simply explain that the things we choose to do in this life shape our own future. 

Right before I left, the teachers had a special meeting where they gave me this bouquet of flowers to take home on the bus. Unfortunately, I will not be going back to this school to teach. I had such a blast at the Aizu Bange 2nd Junior High School!

On Tuesday, we had another holiday (I really love Japan for the amount of holidays we have), and took a branch trip down to the Tokyo Temple. It was our first time to do baptisms for the dead there and had a very nice time. We went home with the Takahashi family in our branch and stopped at Costco on the way. Although we had the usual fun of looking around at everything, but the most enjoyable part was sitting down and eating Costco pizza and ice cream. Yummy!!! 

This is a picture of some of the boys I taught after their graduation celebration. Once again, I found myself with a few tears despite trying to quell my emotions. So sad to see them go, but they can't stay in 6th grade forever!

Now that the school year is over and kids have started their spring breaks, Emily and I get to start our spring breaks too. Well, actually, Emily still has to go to work every day. I have to keep myself busy by finding fun things to do for the next 3 weeks. :D It's actually time for me start studying for reals for the GRE. Exciting? I suppose. After spring break ends, then we'll be taking our vacation down south to Fukuoka, so I'll be doing some planning for that as well.

Emily went to a Relief Society activity at church where they made these cute little key chains. Emily said although it was fun, it was a LOT of work and her fingers are still sore.

This is the Relief Society after church holding a party to celebrate the Relief Society's 70th birthday.

All in all, the week was a lot of fun, mostly because of the trip down to the temple and Costco. Now it's time for me to kick back, relax, and enjoy the next few weeks off... And of course by that I mean, time to start studying! We love you lots and wish you the best of weeks!

Merry Christmas from Japan!

First and foremost, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We had a very eventful week leading up to an awesome Christmas. There was supposed to be a blizzard, but it looks like the weather held out. The crazy snow should start sometime tonight! We took lots of pictures and some videos that I'm sure will tell our experiences this week better than I could. To fit everything in one sentence, Emily took the GRE, we spent a day in Tokyo Disneyland, went to the Tokyo Temple, went to a neighborhood Christmas party, had our own Branch Christmas party, went to a baptism, and opened lots of fun presents on Christmas day.

This is the building in Tokyo that Emily took the GRE at. She was up on the 15th floor . I am just glad that there wasn't any major earthquake.

For some reason, Japanese people think of fried chicken during Christmas time and KFC is  where they go to get it.  Colonel Sanders stands at the front of most KFC's here in Japan and is often wearing the Santa suit during this festive time of year to remind people to get their fried chicken.

This is what "Main Street" in Tokyo Disneyland looks like during the Christmas season!

There were tons of decorations everywhere, but I thought that  among them, Goofy's house in ToonTown looked especially awesome.

Us in front of Cinderella's castle. I think it's Cinderella's at least...

Every time we go to Disneyland, we get a certain number of "cultural treats." We had stayed with Diliana and Chihiro, some friends from BYU-Hawaii, the night before and Diliana told us we had to get the turkey leg. I have to say that the turkey was moist and yummy and would suggest it to anyone who likes meat!

We spent all day in Disneyland and we were so blessed to have great weather. It wasn't what I would call warm, but there was no snow and a whole lot warmer than Aizu!

The picture is a little dark, but we had some pretty fun decorations at our Branch Christmas party. We had to get special permission to have decorations in the cultural hall type area, because it doubles up as the chapel. We spent all morning cooking and decorating the room with all sorts of things.

Last week we talked about how much fun we had going to Costco. We had bought a bunch of stuff for this Christmas party including Christmas plates, napkins, and cups. The Church members wanted to wash everything and save them for next year. I told them to just throw stuff away because it wasn't that expensive. I was asked to plan the whole Christmas party event maybe 2 months ago and of course that meant that Emily and I were going to be planning it together. I also told the Branch that this year was going to be different, that the Branch Presidency would take care of the meat. In the end, Emily ended up making a type of shoyu chicken that we put over rice. It was really yummy, but after eating it before the party when we were testing recipes, eating it at the party, and then taking home left overs, we were pretty much done with shoyu chicken for a while. All the other members brought desserts, salads, soups, and of course sushi.

We invited a group to come and do a little puppet like show. They had come the past 3 years for our Branch Christmas party so I just thought that they would be doing a Christmas puppet show. However, it was a bunch of random stories. It was really funny and they were awesome even though it didn't exactly fit the whole Christmas theme.

The group also had some sing/dance along time. It was pretty funny.

 This is Hiroyuki Haga, the husband of the Relief Society President. I knew him when I served my mission and asked him if he would play a couple songs on the sax. The kids loved it!

We asked the Primary to act out the Nativity and it was so cute! They did such a great job! It is kind of hard to tell in this picture, but they asked the missionaries to dress up and be the wise men (they are the ones with their backs to the camera kneeling down). In the back is Sister Kuwahara, the Primary President, holding a stick with a star attached to the end. Just before taking this picture, the star was being run all over the stage with the wise men trying to follow it to find the Christ child.

Emily pretty much did everything for the party including cooking the meat, making some of the decorations, and played the piano during the activity. We sang Christmas songs in between the kids' acting.

Here is Joseph, Mary, and 2 of the shepherds with their canes. 

We also had Santa time... Unfortunately, Santa got sick the day before and couldn't make it. We had to make due with Santa's friend "Santa." In this video, Santa is asking Yuho (she was the angel in the Nativity) what she wants for Christmas. When she told him some kind of game, he told her to get it from her parents... lol. It was a lot of fun!

This is our cute little Christmas tree Christmas morning. We had fun opening up some packages and presents. Most of our presents revolved around clothing items to help keep us warm for the rest of the winter and various games to have fun with!

This was our Christmas breakfast feast. We cooked hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, bacon, and corn fritters. Super yummy!

White Christmas

It looks like we might have a white Christmas around here after all. James and I opened our door this morning to find about four inches of snow on the ground and beautiful snowflakes falling from the sky. The snow makes everything so much more festive!


That said, we are actually praying that it doesn't snow tomorrow morning because we are leaving on the 6:30 a.m. bus to Tokyo. I am taking the GRE (yikes!) tomorrow, then Disneyland (yay!) the next day, and finally the temple (enter appropriate exclamation here!) on Wednesday. I'm not sure about the GRE, but Disneyland and the temple seem like the perfect way to start off our Christmas week. 


This week was another exciting and busy one. Highlights included watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, Christmas lessons with our classes, homemade Mexican food with some friends, dinner with the missionaries, watching Christmas movies, and a trip to Costco. As always, here are a few pictures we snapped along the way:

Costco was about three hours away, but it was definitely worth the trip, just for this pizza. There were a few differences between Japanese Costco and American Costco (like an entire aisle devoted to ramen, clean trash cans, etc.), but they still had huge shopping carts and free samples, so we were happy.

Lunch. Yum.

English Club activity of the week.

This is the most loyal English Club student I have. She is amazing. This was her first time making a gingerbread house, and when I told her that we don't usually eat them, she was horrified at my wasteful habits. She insisted that we eat the house, and she wouldn't let me put anything on it that she didn't think was "oishii."

This zoo is actually the Primary room. The kids have decided to participate in our Christmas party Nativity program. They are letting me play the piano for the program, so I got to snap a few pictures of today's rehearsal.

I'll try and take some video of the actual performance for next week. I'm pretty sure it's going to be hilarious. 

Love to all of our family and friends. Have a wonderful Christmas week! 

Crazy Monkey Show

This week was full of reflection and Thanksgiving. Just when Emily and I thought we were finished with our Thanksgiving lessons, we had a huge Thanksgiving lesson with the English class we help teach with the missionaries at the Church every Wednesday night and a lesson on giving thanks at a Family Home Evening activity that happens at Church every Friday night that we were asked to do. You may be wondering what people do for Thanksgiving here in Japan. Seeing how Thanksgiving is an American holiday established by President Lincoln back in 1863, the Japanese people haven't really even heard of it. However, they also have a similar holiday on 11/23 every year called Labor Thanksgiving day (I think it is like the American Labor day). That didn't keep us from celebrating Thanksgiving this past Thursday though. We ended up inviting over our friend Tomomi and had steak, mashed potatoes, rolls, an asparagus dish, and pumpkin glory (a dessert Emily made that was kind of like cobbler... yeah, we made up the name). Nothing too extravagant, but it worked all the same. It was super yummy and it was the first time that Emily and I made steak. Glad it all worked out!


Other than Thanksgiving stuff, our branch has been very blessed. We have had 3 baptisms here in the last 2 weeks and the missionaries keep finding more and more cool people. We have one guy from our branch, Sei Kuwahara, that is leaving on his mission tomorrow heading out to the Provo Missionary Training Center. He is called to serve in the Nagoya Mission in Japan. We also had the Primary Program in our Sacrament meeting and it was so cute. Our primary is so small, but they did a great job. Emily also had the opportunity to help them out and play the piano for them during the program. The next thing on our list for Church is the Christmas party that we are planning for the Branch. We are so excited for the Christmas season and will be setting up some decorations around our apartment this next week!

From left to right for kids: Ryui, Yuho, Haruki, Marin, Karin, and Riho.
From left to right for adults: Sister Kuriki, Sister Kuwahara, Chizuko, and Emily.
Even though the Primary is small, they are still quite rambunctious! 

Lastly, I wanted to mention the fun time we had on Saturday with one of our other friends and her son, Chizuko and Harunobu. They invited us to go get crepes with them and there ended up being a little petting zoo set up right next to where they were selling the crepes. It was all outside, but they had a llama, a bunch of baby chicks that were all huddled together in a ball under a lamp to stay warm, and a monkey. The monkey wasn't actually there to pet, but to do a show. At one point of the circus like show, the guy running the thing asked for a volunteer to throw a ball to the monkey from the audience while the monkey balanced on a basketball. Emily volunteered and I actually caught it on video. Hope you enjoy! The monkey walked on stilts, jumped over high things, balanced on balls, and did all kinds of crazy stuff. We had a fun time even though it was stinkin' cold. bbbrrrr!! We love you lots and hope that everyone will have/had fun setting up for this upcoming festive season, Christmas!

Little baby chicks looked so cold...

There's Emily, Chizuko, and Harunobu.