Oh, my. This is one of the things I have dreaded when I came back from my trip. It is going to take me quit a while to write this so if you are not really interested, I won't be offended if you don't read it.

August 6th: I got at about 7:00 in the morning, stumbled around in the dark so as not to wake Mia. (Note: If she doesn't start picking up her things instead of laying them Right in the middle of the walkway, I'm going to have to kill her.) Then, after getting showered and dressed and all ready, I woke up Mia and we were soon on our way. At the airport however, she had to leave because neither of us had thought to bring any money for parking and I had already paid to fill up her gas tank and wasn't feeling much more charitable than that. I sad there for about an hour and then I got on the plane.
On the plane, I was SUPPOSED to have a window seat but some bum took it, made me sit in the middle and then promptly fell asleep against said window. I haven't flown very many times in my life and I wanted to see all the little cars and people and stuff. Hrmph.
It was about an hour and 15 minutes to the Los Angeles airport where I switched planes. Then came the really fun part. A ten hour plane ride over the Pacific is NOT the best way to spend your day. And the worst part was, I have NEVER seen the ocean so I was really looking forward to seeing it from the plane. Unfortunately, it was really cloudy and I only got a glimpse of the beach before we were above the clouds. We watched all sorts of really bad movies like Heartbrakers, Driven, and another one I can't remember. It was a full ten hours of mind numbing boredom
The Nagoya airport was quite something different. I thought I was going to scream! That airport was so confusing! it was an absolute MESS! Not to mention that I had to go through customs, passport check, imigration, and all that fun stuff. I went up to many people and not one of them spoke good enough English to be able to understand what I was trying to say. Finally, though, I found a man who had very good English and he was able to point me in the right direction. I got on the plane and was in Fukuoka, Japan within an hour and a half. Tomoko, the friend I was visiting, and her mother met me at the gate and they took me home, driving down the wrong sid of the road with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. (I NEVER got used to that).
After that I had a bit of dinner and then I went to bed.
(because of time zone changes, this day was acutally the 6th and the 7th. It was really weird)

August 8th: Well, my internal clock was All messed up because of the time changes. At 5:30 in the morning I was wide awake and ready to start the day. No one else was up, however, so I just sat and watched the sunrise from the window of the room I had been provided. It was beautiful! The house behind us had the most wonderful garden and the mountains were small compared to the Rockies but they were unbelievabley GREEN!
That day was kind of my recuperation(sp) day and we pretty much just sat around the house watching baseball and Japanese soap operas, which are REALLY funny if you have no idea what they are saying. We did walk up to the shrine that is near Tomoko's house. It was about 150 years old and really beautful. I got lots of pictures. Not much else happened that day.

August 9th: Tomoko and I got up at 7:00 and caught the train a little after 8:00. There were no seats and it was really crowded. I felt like a sardine in there. Then we got to Fukuoka station and caught a bullet train to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. There we met with Tomoko's friend Kanaka. We stored our lugage and then went SIGHT SEEING! We saw a big temple in the middle of Kyoto called Higashi-Honganji. It was HUGE, kind of dirty and there were pigeons everywhere, but it was still really cool. After that we went to the most beautiful Temple. It is called King-gaku(although I'm not sure of the spelling on that). It was a gold temple surounded on three sides by a little moat-like lake. It had been raining earlier that day and there was a kind of mist in the air. I am NOT used to humidity and I absolutely hated it the rest of the time, but that mist made it almost worth it.
After that we went to Kanaka's apartment. It was a studio apartment and amazingly small but we managed. Kanaka didn't speak any English but she understood some and she was really nice. We ordered pizza, ate, and went to bed.

August 10th: I have no idea what happened this day because I fell asleep that night and never wrote in my journal. I remember that we visited a ton of temples and shrines and had a blast but I don't know what any of them were called or anything like that.

August 11th: I don't know much about this day either. We went sightseeing most of the day and then Kanaka took us back to Kyoto station and we said goodbye, possibly forever. I really like her and will miss her.
Our train to Hiroshima was late so we had to sit on the cement floor for over an hour. Both of us were exhausted and slept the entire train ride.
We got to Tomoko's sister's apartment at about midight or one o'clock and had some dinner. Then I immediatly went to bed while Tomoko and Yoko talked and watched tv.

August 12th: As many of you probably know, I am a memeber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (more commonly known as Mormons). I had asked Tomoko if she could find an LDS church for me to go to, so Tomoko, Yoko, and I all headed off to church in Hiroshima. There were some sister missionaries from Utah there so I actually got to speak a little more complicated English! It was wonderful. Tomoko has very good English but it is kind of hard for her to speak it, so I hadn't said ten words in the last week. It was really nice to be able to say something and be understood. The missionaries translated the meetings for me and it was really nice to talk to people who believe the same things I do.
After church we took the trains into Hiroshima, to the Peace Park. The Park was beautiful and it was only a few days after the memorial services. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. Every year thousands upon thousands of papar cranes are place all over the peace park in memory of a young girl who survived the actual bombinb but got very sick soon after. In Japan, there is a legend that if you make one thousand oragami cranes, you will get any wish your heart desires. This little girl believed that if she could make enough cranes she would get well. But even though she made over 1300 cranes, she died a very painful, horrible death. Now hundreds of school children all over Japan make strings of paper cranes and leave them in from of a memorial dedicated to the memory of this little girl.
Then we went into the A-bomb memorial museum. There is no way to express my feelings as I walked through this building. I have been to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. I have been to the Korean War memorial, as well as the Vietnam memorial. They were all very stirring and heart wrenching in thier own ways, but none of them compared to this small museum on the other side of the world. The Holocaust museum was very dark to show try to show what kind of atmosphere these people lived in. The museum in Hiroshima however, was full of light and was very clean and cool. The focus of the A-bomb museum was there to show that, even though terrible things can happen to good people, we must strive to never let them happen again and to try to make the world just a little bit better in our own way. There were many grim tales and horrifying statues of children with their clothing in shreds and thier skind melted off and dripping from thier fingers. But it was only so that people would see the horror and understand a bit better what all those people when through. Not once, in a single display did I see any blame focused on the United States. These people, who had abundant reason to hate us, only said that they were sorry that something like that had to happen to end the war. I have more respect for the Japanese for that one aspect than for anyother reason on earth.

August 13th: We got up early the next morning and took a quick trip to the Hiroshima museum of art. I love art so it was wonderful for me. I was suprised at how many original Degas, Monets, Manets, Renoirs, Picassos, and many other famous artists they had there. It was great.
Then we went to Miyajima where there is a floating temple. Well, it doesn't really float but at high tide it looks like it is floating. Unfortunatly we were there at low tide so I didn't get to see that, but it was still really beautiful. Then we got on the train and headed back to Fukuoka.

August 14th: This day Tomoko's family celebrated Bon festival. We went to Tomoko's great grandmother's house and had dinner with all of her aunts and uncles on her father's side. They were all really nice, though only one of her uncles spoke any English. Tomoko's great grandmother was the cutest old lady I have ever seen! She is 96 years old and very tiny. She is fairly lucid but she sometimes gets a little confused. They had to explain to her three of four times what an American was doing in her house. And she kept forgetting that I didn't speak Japanese, so she would try to talk to me. I had no idea what she was saying so I just smiled and nodded. It was really funny.

August 15th: Tomoko, her parents, and I all headed of to Karatsu castle. The castle was beautiful! It was set on a high hill overlooking the ocean. You could go inside it but it had basically been gutted and made into a museum so the outside was the really cool part! The walk up to it was a doozy though. There were a LOT of stairs.
After the castle, we went into Karatsu city and had Lunch at the coolest resturaunt I have ever seen! We didn't get our own table but out own room! There was a television and a refrigerator and everything. It was so cool! The only bad part was when I tried the uncooked crab. That is truly disgusting. And no, uncooked crab is NOT like on Cast Away. It looked pretty much like raw fish but it tasted like the inside of my boot, not that I have any experience tasting my boots. There was cooked crab too, though and many other foods, so lunch wasn't a total loss.
After lunch we went to the beach!!! I say the ocean for the first time in my life! It was so beautiful. We picked up sea shells and let our feet sink into the sand up to our ankles and had a great time. I loved it! There was a lot of trash though.

August 16th: On this day I met some of Tomoko's classmates: Sayaka and Tomomo. Sayaka spoke English well but Tomomo didn't know any at all. They were both really nice though. All four of us went to the Budhhist temple in Fukuoka. The grounds were absolutely beautiful but, of course, it was on top of a huge hill again. What do the Japanese have against building on the ground, where it's easy to get to.
We left there and went to Tenjin(downtown Fukuoka) and went shopping for a couple of hours. Shopping is not one of my favorite past times so I was really tired by the time we were done. At 5:30 Tomomo left us and we went to meet some of Sayaka's friends. They took us to a Vietnamese resturaunt. The food was actually really good and I didn't see any dog on the menu. Oh, well. Maybe next time. ;-)

August 17th: We didn't do much today, just sat around Tomoko's house and watched more soap operas. It was actually really fun. I got to make up what they were saying. I'm sure Tomoko thought I was crazy when I started breaking up laughing at the suposedly really sad parts.

August 18th: The morning of the 18th was really bad. I wasn't feeling really well and Tomoko's dad started teaching me how to do Japanese painting. I am horrible at any kind of art form and it was terribly embarrasing. I am also not used to sitting on the ground for hours on end. I felt horrible after a few hours.
The evening, however, was probably the best one I had the entire time I was in Japan. It was the Bon Festival Dance. It wasn't a dance like we have here in the states. It was traditional Japanese dancing. All the dancers would stand in a circle and walk slowly around as they moved in the dance. I got to learn a few of them and many of the people told Tomoko that I was a very good dancer. Most importantly though, I GOT TO WEAR A KIMONO! I have ALWAYS wanted to wear a real kimono! Tomoko's grandmother had to help me put it on but and it was kind of hot and uncomfortable, but it was worth it! It was so much fun! I even got a boyfriend there, or at least one of the yound men suddenly declared that I was his girlfriend. He was incredibly drunk, so I don't think he was very sincere, but still.

August 19th: I went to church again today. Tomoko and her cousin came with me. It was nice to talk to some English speaking people again but I was pretty much over the need to speak English now. The missionaries translated for me again and everyone there was very nice.
After church we said goodbye to Tomoko's cousin and Tomoko and I went on to the Fukuoka LDS temple. It was beautiful! It is really small compared to the Salt Lake Temple but just as beautiful in its own way. All in all it was a very good day for me.

August 20th: This was my last day in Japan. I got packed the night before and finished up that morning. Then I said goodbye to Tomoko's family and Tomoko and her mother took me to the airport. We ate lunch there and then they saw me off on the airplane. I was really sad to say goodbye to Tomoko and even more sad to say goodbye to Fukuoka. I had come to love that city very much and have promised that someday I will go back, but I'm going to try to learn the language first.
The flight to Nagoya was uneventful and now that I knew a little more about the Nagoya airport, I got through there with very little trouble. The flight to Los Angeles was even just as bad as the flight there, only this time they showed even dumber movies on the airplane. The Los Angeles airport was a nightmare! I only had one hour to catch my next plane and I had to go through imigration, passport check, then I had to find my luggage, go through customs with it, check it back on, and run to catch my flight. It was terrible, especially since my plane ended up being delayed and I went through tons of anxiety for nothing. I finally got on the plane to Salt Lake and peevishly kept to myself.
My parents met me at the airport and we had lunch. They took me home and I showd them all the cool stuff I bought. I was really jet lagged though and couldn't get to sleep until after midnight. I slept till noon the next day and hated myself for it. This morning I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Finally I got up and read on the couch for about an hour and then went back to bed. Again I woke up at noon. I Hate jet lag.
Well, that is all of my trip. If you were able to survive till the end of it I congratulate you. It's not to interesting but I promise it was even harder for me. I hope you like it!

Sar*Konichiwa*ya