Christmas is almost upon us and we found a little celebration down the street with the local volunteer fire department band, laying down some rock-n-roll in a neighborhood street concert.
On Christmas Eve we were invited to the Yanai Ward Christmas party. Yanai is about 35 km west of us, right on the coast. They asked us to play Santa and Mrs. Claus and of course we could not turn down the opportunity.
They had a nice program that included a YSA bell choir
That was followed by a cake decorating activity involving children of all ages. They had preformed cakes, and then used whipped cream as the frosting, with fresh fruit decorations. It was good fun and to my amazement, minimal mess. The Elders and Sisters served as team leaders and did a great job.
Even some of the more adult children got into it and had a great time.
With things so different, it is fun to find familiar things!
Christmas was very nice, enjoying a quiet day at home after church with a chance to reflect on the true meaning and spirit of Christmas.
On the Friday before New Year's Eve we discovered a new wonderful place to eat with the Bridges family, a new delicacy called "okonomiyaki". Hard to describe but I will try. As you see from the picture, it is cooked on a flat grill, right in front of you. They start by creating a very thin crepe. On that they put a variety of layers including a copious amount of shredded cabbage, then optional items such as pork (bacon), squid, octopus, cheese, onions and even jalapeno peppers. It starts out very high and is pushed down as the cabbage cooks. It is finished up with a fried egg and soba or udon noodles.
Not only is it cooked right in front of you, but when they are finished they push it over to you and you top it with a bit of mayonnaise and a sweet meat sauce (bulldog sauce) and then you eat it right on the grill. The advantage is that it never gets cold during the meal. It offers you what would seem to be a cacophony of flavors, but they seem to blend together and create a wonderful dish.
I love discovering new foods!
For New Year's Eve we took a trip back up to Hiroshima and went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. It is described as a "Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims". A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. On August 6, 1945 the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and about 140,000 people were killed or died within months of the bombing. Three days later, about 80,000 died after Nagasaki was bombed.
The center piece of the Peace Memorial Park is the Atomic Bomb Dome. It was a concert hall that was about 150 meters from the center of the bomb blast which occurred about 600 meters above ground level.
All those inside the building and in the immediate area were instantly incinerated with estimated ground temperature of 4000 C. It was very moving to visit this site and see the horrors that war can bring.
This is the Pond of Peace with the Peace Cairn on one end, and the Peace Dome on the other with an eternal flame in the middle.
This year has been a great year for us, punctuated by our call to serve in the Fukuoka Japan mission and to labor in Iwakuni Japan. We have already enjoyed many blessings, the best has been associating with these young Elders and Sisters.
This is our current group, with the Mission President and his wife, We have grown to love and appreciate them all and what they do in their service to the Lord.
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