Day 10 - Travel to Matsuyama

This morning I was feeling a little sad at the thought of leaving Kyoto. The last few days have been amazing here. The only good thing about leaving  today is that we are heading to Matsuyama to spend time on the island of Shikoku where Sarah lived the last 8 months of her mission.  I had Bruce snap a few pictures of the home we have been staying in this week on our way out the door this morning.  We were in a rush as always to get to the train station on time. We are taking the Shinkansen from Kyoto to Okayama and then a JR train down to Matsuyama - total travel time about six hours today.

This is the dining room where we hung out most
 of the time while we were home.  We left our umbrellas
here for future guests during their stay.  They are
too big for us to fit in our suitcases, and I'm hoping
someone else will benefit from them.

These are the crazy stairs up to the second story where we slept at night.
We went up and down very carefully!

This is the kitchen with a small sitting room towards the back.
  Stove on the left, fridge in the front left corner of the photo.
We had a three burner stove which was pretty awesome!  

This is the main street we walked up and down to get
to our home in Kyoto. I never saw one street sign here nor
on any of the smaller streets going off of this one!  

We caught the bullet train on time and we are off to Matsuyama!

View of the Seto Inland Sea as we leave Okayama and head to the island of Shikoku. We crossed several bridges as we left one island and headed for another. The scenery was beautiful - lots of small islands sticking up out of the sparkling water reflecting the late afternoon sun. We arrive in Matsuyama about 4:15pm and Sumida kaicho (the branch president) and his wife are there to pick us up along with another ward member, Akiko shimai, as we needed two cars to carry us and our luggage!

We were in for a treat tonight. Sumida shimai and Akiko shimai prepared sukiyaki for dinner! Let me just say this not only smells amazing but it tasted amazing! Sumida shimai below is using a portable stove to cook the food on the table. To make sukiyaki you braise the meat and vegetables together along with udon and/or rice noodles. To eat it you pull out some meat and vegetables and noodles with your chop sticks dip them in raw egg and enjoy! Oishii!!

Akiko shimai cooking at the second table

Sumida kaicho watching Sarah break open the eggs

We were so excited to have the sister missionaries join us for dinner!  Sarah had a wonderful reunion with her last companion Bowman shimai!  We had great conversation in Japanese and English. Lots of translating and laughter and some great missionary stories!

Sarah opening a birthday gift from Akiko shimai. She made Sarah a photo album filled with lots of photos of Sarah and her companions in Matsuyama. Sarah and her companion would go to Akiko's house once a week to teach Akiko shimai's mother a gospel discussion. Her mother is 86 years old and doesn't remember much of what is taught, but she loves the missionaries and Akiko would always feed the sisters dinner after their lesson! 

Here we are with the sister missionaries, the Sumidas and Akiko. Ichi, Ni, San - Hai!

After dinner we drove over to Dogo Onsen to look at the Christmas light display. One side of the building was decorated with lanterns flashing in different light colors and patterns.

Dogo Onsen - one of the oldest bath houses in Japan. It's design was used for the bath house in the movie "Spirited Away" by Hayao Miyazaki

I know this photo is kind of hard to figure out - but this is the clock near Dogo onsen.  Every half hour the clock opens up and has these moving figures from the bath house running around - it was pretty entertaining watching these little figures move back and forth.