goodbye, asakusa... :(

wow, i haven`t really updated since sunday. let me fix that! so on sunday, three of us interns were going to try and find a church to attend. thanks to the great lds.org, we were able to find a meetinghouse in the vicinity of our hotel. plus it was an english speaking branch! and best of all, it didn`t start til 1:00! can life get any better? i submit that it cannot!! so we decided that since our church was so late in the afternoon, that we`d take a little side trip on our way to church to a place in harajuku called yoyogi park. it was a lovely park indeed...i bet it`s way better in the spring though. it was pretty, but the trees were a little too skeletal. i`ll have to go back there when it starts getting warmer. so we heard that it`s best to visit yoyogi park on sunday, because that`s when a lot of people go to the park dressed up in crazy outfits, like their favorite anime character!! that sounded pretty neat, so we figured we`d go check it out. however, we didn`t see any particularly odd looking people there. aside from a group of girls that were really quite amazing at frisbee, i didn`t see anything out of the ordinary. well, by japanese standards at least. i did see some of my favorite fancy-pants dogs, all done up for their trip to the park. i bet the boy dogs were impressed. unless they were boy dogs. which wouldn`t surprise me in the slightest.

anydangways, after a lovely, albeit somewhat disappointing walk around the park, we started to try to find our meetinghouse. of course, none of us know our way around tokyo. so we figured that the best way to find it would be to jump in a cab and have them take us directly to the address. and so i had my first trip in a japanese taxi. i sat in the front seat, and tried to ignore the people staring at me from the streets. our little trip didn`t last very long, so we only had to pay about 130￥　each. that was pretty sweet. so he dropped us off at the address, and we had about 3 minutes to go until the meeting was due to start. of course, we couldn`t find anything that looked like the meetinghouses we`re used to. luckily, i managed to spot a picture of the angel moroni on a window. in my excitement, i cried, "look, it`s MORONI!!" to my travel mates. a couple steps later, we saw a beautiful sign that said, "the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints". and there was much rejoicing. until a man came out of the building, and in perfect english asked, "oh, are you guys here for the meeting? they actually combined with another ward today and they`re meeting out by the temple." awww, man! when are they meeting, sir? "well...right now." awwwwwww man!!!! we tried so hard to get to church... :( but we took a picture in front of the sign to show that we tried. very hard. we went back to our hotel after that, and rested up. then we went to celestia`s room and had a wonderful little devotional. we sang out of ashley and celestia`s japanese hymnbooks (which, delightfully, was a lot easier than i anticipated), and had our own little scripture and testimony time. it was really, really nice. i`m with a group of great people. well...i was. until we all separated. anyways, after our little testimony meeting, we were able to enjoy a viewing of the testaments, courtesy celestia`s collection of random dvds. it was lovely indeed! then, as girls do, we chatted for quite a while before retiring for the night.

then we woke up to another lovely day of training! this time, we were joined by newcomers will, olivia, and lisa! the (relatively) exotic foreigners of the group! will is french canadian (don`t worry, he`s a cool one), olivia is from england, and dear lisa is an irish lassie. and they were able to join in the insanity that is assistant language teacher training...with jody. jody rules. when we went over company policies, he made us read them in different accents. it was fun. plus he has a hilarious anecdote for pretty much everything. good times.

after training, celestia and i dragged poor jet-lagged lisa around asakusa looking in shops and things. and i actually don`t think lisa was jet-lagged at the time. we were all having a lot of fun. so don`t worry, no lisas were harmed in the galumphing around asakusa. we went into a bunch of lovely shops. there was this one that my mom would have LOVED. lots and lots of rhinestones and sparkles. i wish they sold brooches, but they didn`t; most of the glitterier pieces were hair accessories, which would go unused by my dear mommy. don`t worry mommy; i`ll get you something else that`s nice. :D we also went into a lot of shoe stores, because celestia needed a new pair of shoes. oh, how i wish my feet were smaller. those stores contained some of the cutest shoes i`ve every seen!! and, of course, some bizarre ones too. i mean, it`s japan. you`ll get quite the odd selection. we also went into a department store that i would have loved to spend more time in. there was this little accessory shop that had the CUTEST things in it. being poor, however, i could only look and admire. a lot of it made me think of my sisters; i wish they had been there to enjoy it with me.

a pair of earrings and very tired feet later...i wound up back in my hotel room, thinking about how i needed to pack up my bags. i was slated for one more day of training, and was going to leave after that. i went to bed though, thinking i`d get a chance after training the next day.

the next day, dear celestia left us for hiroshima. :( i miss her much, but i know she`s doing fab. i mean...she`s celestia. she`s probably queen of that place already. upon meeting the other interns, however, i found that i was going to leave not long after lunch that day. so i`d only receive half a day of training. that bummed me out, because i loved the training sessions, and i was so sad to split up with the other interns. :( we just had so much fun together, and now we`ll all be so far away from each other!! well, brooke, kellan, olivia, and i will be somewhat close to each other...all within an hour of each other. that`s still a ten dollar, 1 hour train journey though...just one way. round trip...ugh. and then celestia will be in hiroshima and lisa will be roundabouts there too, i think...and ashley is in osaka. i probably won`t be seeing them again til the end of the internship. :( i miss them all. i would love to have a skype meeting with them every so often, but oh yeah...computersaurus over here is too old and wheezy to support skype!! and i better not try and download it...i`ll probably break its hip or something. well, actually, i`ll give it a try. you just never know until you try. however, if this computer bursts into flames and sparks when i hit the install button, i will no longer have a dear sweet connection to the rest of the world via the world wide web. it`s a gamble. and i choose life.

anydangways. back to me. so i had to go back upstairs and pack up my veal pen...i mean hotel room (thanks dad. that was hilarious, i tell you). and so began...the journey of doom to the interac office with all my baggage and crap. it`s okay, i didn`t go alone. the superhero internship coordinator was there too. yeah, there were a couple points when he took both of my bags down stairs and onto the trains and things. i wanted to curl up in a corner and die of the humiliation. he was super nice of course to do that, and i was very grateful. very, very grateful. i just found it so terribly embarrassing. you know what i mean? oh, it was awful.

well, after dragging my weight in baggage across the city, i made it to the office in time to receive some very stressful training and break for lunch. after that...i was to head to my new home in noda-shi.

to be continued.