Hello again friends!

Alcon,
I hope that everyone had a wonderful week this past week in the US and other parts of the world. Japan has been really fun. Needless to say, its also been really cold. I guess the weather decided to take a turn for the worse. The strange thing about Japan's weather is that it is super sunny and blue-skyish all the time but the wind and the coldness take away any hope of enjoying the clear sky. The one upside to the weather is that the smog that cloud our view from Mt. Fuji is essentially gone. This morning as I was running, I kept thinking to myself 'how cool is this? I'm running the streets of Tokyo-to within sight of Mt. Fuji as the Sun goes up?' Cant imagine a cooler sight.
Well for my week... Last Monday was pretty uneventful, after emailing and getting groceries we went to the USAF Base and had dinner with one of the members. It was really really good. I am going to miss the good old American-style food when I get transferred! After dinner we went and passed out fliers for our English class at the Fussa train station. We usually do this when it gets dark at night. No one wants to be approached by two big white guys in the dark asking to talk for a quick second. Its not the most effective method of spreading the gospel.
President Wada has this thing where as a Mission we have to get at least 70 meaningful conversations with people throughout the week. Elder Merrill and I had gotten close but never had managed to surpass. Its a lot harder to get people to stop and talk for a bit that you would think. But since Elder Ford and I are youngish missionaries we figured we were going to have a lot of trouble getting 70 people to stop and talk with us. We decided that it was necessary that we work hard to get these meaningful contacts in. It was cool to see that despite the fact that our Japanese isn't the best, we were able to meet and surpass the standard that our mission president had established for us as a unit.
This week finally ended the festivities for the new year celebrations. Everyone has officially gone back to work, the children are going back to school and the businesses are all open again! On Saturday the Church held a mochistuki. A giant gathering where everyone makes mochi as a part of the new years tradition. Mochi is sweet rice that is pounded down to make a dough and then filled and rolled and mixed with all sorts of different things. It was a lot of fun and a lot of non-members came that we were able to talk to.
Nothing super exciting besides that happened this week. It was a lot of hitting the dirt and getting down and dirty to find the prepared. We pray that the fruits of our labors will be seen in the coming weeks!
Love,
Elder Farr