Dec 20

Christmas lights with the Tokoyo Tower in the background.

 

 






This is our apartment.  We live on the second floor.  It is a pretty nice apartment with one bedroom, living room/office, kitchen and bathroom.  We even have a tiny dishwasher. . 

Visiting a sick missionary and her mother in the hospital. The missionaries are very special!

The Tokoyo temple is close to our home.  It is wonderful to be able to visit there often.

This scarey guy is one of four "guardians" that are always at the gate of Buddhist temples.  We are seeing many of these shrines here in Japan.

 

We often eat at the office cafeteria so we can get to know the people who work there--and practice a little Japanese.  We also help them with their English.  They order little lunch boxes called "bentos".  It is interesting to try their food. Here is Clair with a bento.

 At our office Christmas party we got to taste a lot of Japanese food.  We are even learning to eat with chopsticks.  These cakes are called "monburon" and have chestnuts on top and in the creamy filling.

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

We have arrived in Tokoyo!

Our first impressions of Tokoyo: It is beautiful, clean, and full of honest people.  Tokoyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world with about 15

million people.  (shown here is a park near a shopping center)

 We are getting acquainted with the subway system.  It works very well here, but can be crowded at rush hours. 

 

 Here we are in front of a crematorium.  Because of the shortage of land everyone is cremated here.  Families may have a area where they bury the ashes of various family members (much like our tombstones in the U.S.)

 People really like their little, pampered dogs.  They dress them up and stroll through the parks--sometimes even taking them for a walk in a dog stroller as shown below.  Sorry--you can't see the dog, but we could hear him barking inside.

We live in Minato Ku (a part of the city that borders on the port where large ships come in.  Near our home is a beautiful Japanese Park where they have "Radio Exercises" (music and directions over a loudspeaker) every morning.  We have met some friendly people there.

 

We just moved into our permanent apartment yesterday and are trying to get settled.  It is cool here but not COLD--at least not yet.  I hope to post more soon.