Thursday, February 25, 2010

Quick Note--S'mores are Amazing!

Are making s'mores at home in Japan a mission IMPOSSIBLE??



The Materials: Gathered


Materials Assembled!


Chopstick Marshmallow Roasting: In Progress!


Mission Delicious S'more: ACCOMPLISHED!

Excellent :)

Until next time!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Spectacular Saturday

My past Saturday was awesome, but I am going to make a few notes about that Friday as well. First off, Friday nights are Sports Nights at the church. A lot of the single adults, missionaries and investigators show up--everyone is welcome. I have a really great Chinese friend, Tony, who is currently investigating the Church and who comes to sports nights. He helps me keep up on my Chinese :). We were chatting when I noticed we had a few new missionaries in the mix. Usually missionaries from all over Tokyo come, so it isn't like too big of a deal--but one missionary in particular looked super familiar.

It was bugging me soo bad and then I figured it out!!!!! And can I just say that the world is one small place??? So it turns out this missionary, Elder Brad Hilton, has a cousin, David Hilton (also on a mission, but in Brazil), who took me to my freshman year Homecoming at BYU...like in 2007...:P. Elder Brad Hilton also doubled with us--thus the familiarity. Funny funny eh? Even funnier is that I did see him like right before he left on his mission randomly at BYU and remember him telling me he got his mission call to Japan! Small small world!

Tony, Elders Lloyd and Koja,a friend name Shizuka and I walked to the train station after Sports Night. During the walk they mentioned this noodle cook off Tony would be teaching the next morning and invited me along. I had already made plans to go ice skating with my friend Rie Saito (from the Kichijoji ward) and although I love Chinese food, I was hesitant to go. But Elder Lloyd mentioned to me how he thinks it would really help Tony (who is currently an investigator) if I was there. You can't argue with the missionaries! So I set out to do both since skating was at 1pm.

So Saturday morning finds me meeting Tony at 9am in Tachikawa. We walk to the Kunitachi ward's building (where Tony goes to church) and met with a member of the bishopric. He had really awesome English and was pretty fun to talk to. We headed out to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients and when we got back quite a few people had showed up. It was really fun meeting more Japanese members! They are soo awesome :).


Once more people start showing up, we start working on making 鸡蛋西红柿: Jidan Xihongshi! Ok, Eggs and Tomatoes over noodles! It is a very common dish in China, and so Tony thought it'd be a good one for us to learn. I wasn't able to stay the whole time (since I had to travel to meet Rie for ice skating!) but I was able to learn how to make noodles from scratch! It was super fun! We spent soo much time on it too! :)


Elder Koja, someone awesome (aka, I don't remember his name) and the member of the bishopric Tony and I went shopping with (on the right).

My beautiful noodles :)

Tony and I showing off the noodles!
Oh, and BTW Tony is from Xi'an (西安), which happens to be my favorite city in China!!!

 All my new Japanese friends!!! Ryoji, Anne, and Akemi (from left to right)!!!
We have now all added each other on facebook, so its legit! :D

Ryoji and I were having a little too much fun!!!  
Well, ok, I am the only one putting noodles under my nose....

Hehehe, I like this picture!

Yes......I was pretty happy about my noodles....is there anything wrong with that???
  
On a random side-note, who else loves the song "Dr. Jones" by Aqua?? Or am I really just a freak??
After all this noodle-ishis-fun,  how could my Saturday get any better?? Hmm...ICE SKATING!!!

I was able to meet all of these Japanese young single adults like myself who go to the same chapel as me (though some go to the ward right after mine)! Rie is pretty much the best, and I love her soo much! She has been soo great to help me make all these new friends :)

I was taking lots of pictures but then the ice skating "life guard" (what do you call those guys? Monitors?) told me, in English (which was impressive) that I wasn't allowed to take pictures when I was in the rink..oops! Well, here are the ones I got!!

Here's the gang--minus me of course :)

With me--minus Inoue-san

It was super fun because while I'm not like amazing at skating, I have done it ever since I was little. So I am pretty decent. For my Japanese friends--well, it was like their first-third time ever! I got to play teacher, and it was soo awesome! And they all did improve quite a bit! By the end Inoue-san was almost as fast as me! It was great fun :). Plus, just picture this in your mind--a group of Japanese people (in Japan) trying to skate in little circles while this white chick is readjusting their feet and tightening their laces. It makes me laugh! It was great fun teaching them how to do little spins and such! The girls and I eventually moved on to skating backwards--the boys gave up!! Lol, it was soo much fun. 

There were actually quite a few people there too!

Well, that is all for now! I am blogged out!! I still have a few things to catch up on...blog-wise, but I have to be up early tomorrow...so all for now!!

Love, 

Brooke

Valentine's Day--the overview

Lol, so for Valentine's Day we had stake conference!! It was really cool because Elder Donald L. Hallstrom and his wife spoke there! It was nice to hear some English, especially from one of the presidency of the Seventy. After church I decided to make pancakes to celebrate the day of love and I was pretty happy with my creations! Here are a few of them (also on facebook):

Feel the love?


How about now?



Yeah, I was having fun.



Well, that's all for V-day!! It was delicious :P


Love ya all!

Where to Begin???? Maybe with the Capsule Hotel Amazingness?

Hello there!!

Sorry, it has been awhile!! I have soo much to talk about....but yes, where to begin?? Well, my Valentine's weekend in Tokyo was pretty cool and I probably should mention it at least a little! I partied it up with my dear friend Liz Sanderson!

We wanted to spend as much time together as possible, so we met up on Friday the 12th after work and stayed at a capsule hotel. This is the womens rooms at the Asakusa Capsule Hotel! How cool is that?? The rooms are actually somewhat spacious....you just can't really sit up or anything. But hey, they are just to sleep in so no big deal! Yeah, I was pretty stoked about the room size! Liz had the room right next to me, which was fabulous! You will see why in a few more pictures...hehe. You might have already seen these pictures
facebook. If you have, I'm sorry--deal with it!!






We were pretty pumped about the whole situation...like a lot!!!!
It was pretty crazy :P

And the fun  was just beginning when we started taking all of these crazy pictures!!!
We spent the whole evening pretty much just catching up! It was great fun! We also got hit on by an old man...at least I think so... :P. What happened was that we were sitting in this diner talking for like FOREVER and had long since finished our meals when the waitress brings over two salads. We are like what? And she says, these are from the old man over there. Weird...I've never been given a salad before! First time for everything right?

The salad +Liz



She is looking slightly less than happy because she squirted the oil based salad dressing all over my favorite jacket...but its ok!!! Don't worry Liz, I still love you!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 As they say, no use crying over spilled salad dressing?? Hehehe :)

We had made all these cool ideas for the next day--only to have it snowing like CRAZY outside! Thus all of the outdoors ideas --> rubbish bin. Oh well, we certainly had fun in Akihabura--also known as the "Electric City". It is home to some of the most advanced consumer technology in the world! Pretty shweet eh? Also, we found the cutest store ever and I wanted to like buy everything!!! I seriously do want to decorate my house with their style furnishings one day...sigh.


Yay! A happy and cute Liz in Akihabura!! 

Well, after just playing all day Liz went to a rockin' Paramore Concert and I headed home :)
 It was a blast and I can't wait to hang out with that girl again!!! Best times ever doing the silliest things ever :) It makes me happy :) :) 

All for now, more later....

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Yakiniku with Tongans!

I have been favoring the photo journal type blogging of late--I think it is much more interesting. If you do not agree, let me know! Otherwise, enjoy! :P

Thursday was a holiday and so I spent the day with my dear Tongan friends, the Fifitas.
Just as a reminder--I met Api at the Interac Office I sometimes work at.
Upon discovering that I was also LDS and that I also live in Fuchu, Api pretty much made me family.

We had a lot of fun watching a video of her sister in BYU Hawaii's evening show performance, "The Breath of Life" and the kids had fun snuggling up to me! I loved it!!

Around five we went out for dinner--real Yakiniku!!!! It was soooooooooo amazing.


First you take off your shoes!! They had tatami mats in the restaurant! How cool!

You grill your own meat...it is soo awesome!

Her children speak mostly Tongan and Japanese! I don't remember her daughers' names, but I remember the son is Kiseki! Darling kids :)

Bro. Fifita is a pro rugby player! Cool eh?

Glorious Food

Meat! I never buy meat, so this was a nice treat!

We ate soooooooooooooooooo much.
I gave up.

Kiseiki did too...he mostly just played with the shoe boxes! He is three years old.

Yeah, I love this kid.

And these girls!! Plus one more daugther (who is on the other side of the table).

They are soo cute and fun! The oldest is only nine!

How could you not love him?? The name Kiseki is Japanese for "miracle".
Somehow we managed to have room for dessert!! Luckily Japanese serving sizes are much smaller than in America.
I had a lovely day and am soo appreciative for such wonderful friends :).

Sunday, February 7, 2010

A Moonlit Walk...through the GRAVEYARD!

Saturday mornings Brooke is very lazy and likes to sleep in. However, after talking to her mom until like 5pm (1am mom's time), she decided she did need to leave the house. So Brooke decided to go on a "short" walk...HA! Heading down a street she'd never been down before, Brooke notices that the light is starting to fade quickly.

Phase One: Quick Walk through the Neighborhood



There was this super shweet looking house!


Phase Two: The Graveyard


As I was winding my way through the residential area I stumbled upon the super huge graveyard I live by! And since I didn't quite remember the way I had come, I decided to go through the graveyard (since I'd done that before). The only problem was the receding daylight...


The Graveyard....well, the first part anyway.


It is actually a great place to see older-Japanese style architecture.



These pictures are pretty much self-explanatory. Enjoy the creepiness.


I did.

I thought this looked kinda cool.




Hehehe :)

Doesn't that just inspire fear??

It did for me! It was also really really cold. Thus the two jackets plus hat.




The winding path of DOOM! Well, not really, but it kinda looks creepy eh?

Stay away from the light!!! Muahaha.
Yeah, I definitely had way too much fun with that!

On the first part of my walk--during phase one!--I found an orange tree..and these had just fallen off...so.... :) Free fruit!

Yeah, I was pretty tired afterwards....hehe. But it was much fun!
More later!