Day 4 - Haruna Driving and Fun

Friday Sept, 4th 2009

Today was a little rainy again. But that just means it will be cooler in the afternoon. Buta-san (the pig smell) is very strong today. :( We started the morning off with a nice walk around our neighborhood and through town. We are slowly learning more of the streets. It’s difficult here, because they don’t use street names on small roads, only on the few main roads. After our walk we went to Obata- san’s house. We talked with Steve & Debbie Carrell (American missionaries from Indiana here in Japan in the Matsudo area) on Skype for awhile. They gave us more advice on a few things we needed. Later we went to town to see about another option for getting our Alien Registration card sooner than next month.

Obata-san let Paul drive today! Paul was very excited about this. I was just waiting to see who freaked out first between the three of us. Paul did fine, no mistakes. Although he was very careful. We went back to the city office and they were able to give us a form that would allow us to give our alien registration number to receive a cell phone and internet. YEAH!!!! We will be connected to the world soon. It’s been very difficult not talking to family and friends back home. We’ve had very limited internet access, and when we do get connected it’s late at night in the U.S. I was getting very hungry. So for a fast late lunch we went to …McDonald's. Yay! Well at least we waited 4whole days before we caved in!It was really good. Not too different than home. The mayonnaise has a little soy sauce flavor to it, but not too bad. And the French Fries tasted exactly the same. We better stay away from McDonald’s or we won’t be losing any weight.

So after we filled our bellies with greasy food we went to NTT (the best fiber optic service) to see if our new forms will let us sign up for service. With the help of Obata-san we managed to get all the paperwork filled out and internet is on its way.

Only one more week to wait, we can handle that. We were so tired after trying to follow the conversation, we had to go home and rest for awhile. So after a little rest we decide to go on an adventure by ourselves at night with the van. Remember we don’t have cell phones yet…

Well we really wanted to go to the grocery store by ourselves. It was kind of hard with so many people the first time, so off we went. Also it gets dark here around 6:00pm. We started out pretty good. Then we start looking around and everything looks familiar to one of us but not both of us. So we keep telling each other ”that looks right”, “no turn here”. Well after about an hour we decided where we were didn’t look familiar to either of us. So we kept driving tell we found highway 29 that’s all we could agree on. 29 is the main road through Haruna. We were headed to Central Takasaki. OOPS! Well it must have been a little before 8:00pm when we found Beisia (ryhmes with Asia) the grocery store. Whew. We were triumphant! We shopped a little and bought some excellent bread. So, homeward bound. Uhh, which way did we come? It’s really funny, because in the U.S. Paul could never remember how to get home from a new place. I always remembered. In Japan we are totally opposite. I’m the one always backwards and going the wrong way and now that we are on the other side of the planet Paul’s sense of direction is always correct. I think it’s God’s way of showing us how we work together no matter where we are. Well we finally made it home and in bed around 10:00pm which is late for us here. Oyasumi nasai! (Good Night!)