Monday (last day with Yoshie & Nihon Bionics)

So today (Mon) was our last full day in Japan...sad times. We spent most of the day with Yoshie (the pastor's wife). We started out our day getting up and walking to the train station in more CRAZY-HOT weather. Today the weather was predicted to be about 36C which I believe is mid or high 90's so tons of humidity. It was SO uncomfortable. I think today was the hottest I've every felt. Tony and I walked to the train station in this heat and waited for Yoshie and Isaiah to meet us on the train in car five as Yoshie promised to take us all to Tokyo (downtown) for the day and to help me find Nihon Bionics (Advanced Bionics' Japan office, the company I work for). It took a good 45min train ride along with a train switch and also walking a bit but we found it! Check out the pictures, the AB team had printed a welcome sign for me! It was sooo kind of them. I had met a few of them in Valencia last summer when a group of Japanese customers who were brought out to our corporate offices for an Educational Visit about our company.

I got to meet a lot of people I had known the names of but had never met before. Tony, Yoshie and Isaiah came with and we all took time to introduce ourselves along with meeting all of them and finding out what they do. It was really interesting as the team is very diverse since they are one office for the entire country of Japan and also provide additional support to our China, Hong Kong and S. Korea office. It was quite an experience.

Yoshie spoke to one of the girls for ideas of stuff to do nearby so she found out where the nearest Starbucks was, (since we all needed caffeine after being on the train and waking up early) along with a good place for lunch and some nice spots for sightseeing. So we left the office walked to Starbucks which had their air conditioner on at full blast, so it was very refreshing, and we sat for a bit and chatted. Then we headed to a new area of downtown called Ropponingi Hills which is a new international business district in Tokyo. We ended up seeing lots of foreigners here which was really interesting as outside of downtown Tokyo foreigners aren't extremely common. Then we trekked our way over to a new skyscraper called "Mori Tower" I believe. Check out the pictures, as we went up to the 50th floor to the observation floor for really cool Tokyo skyline shots. It was a little smoggy but still really cool.

Then we continued our way through the top of the tower through an aquarium called the "Sky Aquarium" filled with really cool tanks and decked out art looking presentations of fish, sorry not many pictures here as photography was extremely limited. Then to top it off we went even higher in the building (floor 55) to the Sky Deck! It was crazy. We were at the top of the building on the roof! The building security would only allow people up carrying a camera and/or phones, nothing else, as it could be a danger if it was thrown from the roof and hit someone below. Pretty much only the main center of the roof was made available for tourists to walk since the edges and were fenced. Check out the window washers who were working today! All of us decided that there is no amount of money that would get me to wash the windows of this building!

Then after all the building sites we went to a nice Chinese restaurant that was recommended to us by the Nihon Bionics team. It was very good and Yoshie treated! She kept treating for everything all day as she really counted the day special since it was our last day to spend time with her before we leave tomorrow afternoon. Once we finished lunch we walked around a bit then came back to Tachikawa. Where Yoshie expressed interest to taking us out for dessert and coffee as she needed energy to finish the long work night she going to have for a deadline tomorrow. =( She works so hard. On days where she hung out with us or helped at VBS she would run home do one or two things and then work late into the night to catch up on the hours of work she missed. These people work SO hard.

When we finished dessert we walked back out into the station and realized it was pouring RAIN! We had been in HOT weather all day and never thought to bring umbrellas with us and we had a good 10 min walk still to the church and Yoshie a good 20 min walk home a different direction. Yoshie looked at Tony and I (with teary eyes) and said she would miss us and very much enjoyed having us and that this would be the last time we would see her before we leave tomorrow afternoon. She asked that we come again soon, hugged us both and began walking toward home. It was a very sad moment but all joyful as we know God will criss-cross our paths again.

Tony, Isaiah and I then darted our way under awnings, ran across streets, shimmed along brick buildings all in hopes of avoiding the huge rain drops. Half way to church we were so soaked that our shirts and shorts changed colors so we gave up being careful and ran the rest of the way. We got to church, opened the main doors and sat under the air conditioner to cool/dry ourselves. Tony and Isaiah had still wanted be to see this really cool 100 yen ($1 store) a few train stations away so we dried off, headed for the monorail and went to the store where we picked up lots of fun souvenirs and nik-naks for ourselves. Then we headed back to the monorail station, said goodbye to Isaiah, as he will be staying in Japan until the 13th to help out at a camp and continue giving English lessons this week. We'll all meet up in California next week when he returns.

So Tony and I headed back to Tachikawa by Monorail (since the 100 yen store was out of town) and then back to church where we gathered up all of our stray things around the church and headed to Yuki and Mika's house back in Musashi-Sakai where we have stayed the past week. Before we hopped on the train we ran to a pastry level in the mall where we picked up dessert for dinner along with some more gifts. We got back to a warm house where Yuki and Mika had incense burning to keep the mosquitoes away and dinner just about finished for us. Mika had warmed up a traditional Japanese meal which her mom made for us (who lives in Northern Japan) 8-10 hours north by car, and overnighted it yesterday so we could have it today as our last meal! Japan has special refrigerated delivery service that people use to send food and perishables to one another! It's incredible and the food was awesome. We had sesame seed flavored tofu, roasted egg plant with Japanese herb seasoning, marinated pork, a picked root of some sort and Kirin Beer. It was a very refreshing dinner and dessert complimented it nicely (a lemon cake with Swedish berry tea which we had brought from the states).

Talk to you all soon. Thanks again for reading.
Frank
(p.s. pictures are of Tokyo skyline from Ropponingi Hills, observatory, skydeck and aquarium, lunch and dessert. We forgot to get pictures of dinner because we were so hungry! =)