The Journey Home

Eddie and Yoko took us to the airport.  Everyone else left much earlier than necessary on the bus.  Yoko and Eddie wanted to take us to Costco and have us not get up so early.  I did my usual final day run into a canyon.  I follow a pathway that leads me to a power plant.  When I get to the turn around, I look out at the valley, enjoy the beauty of the view, then ponder over whether this will be the final time for me to enjoy this view.

We enjoyed another great breakfast, then went off to Nagoya.  There is a Costco in Nagoya that they took us to.  It has a lot of similarities with the American Costcos, but there are some products that would not be found in America.  I noticed the pizza with prawns on it.  That sounded pretty good, but I doubt I'll ever find one in the US.

We made it to the airport in plenty of time.  There, we found our host.  I always enjoyed visiting with and getting help with translation from Mihoko.  She is always so friendly and helpful.  We waved to Eddie and Yoko until we were completely out of sight.  That made us both teary and grateful at the same time.  They were so good to us the entire trip.

 

The flight home was uneventful for travel, but was a wonderful part of the trip.  We didn't have video screens in the back of the seats and didn't realize until the end that we could have used our own devices to watch movies.  So, we rested some and talked a lot.  It was so enjoyable to learn more about Rebecca.  We got to know and appreciate each other much more than before on this trip and the flight home was great for learning more about who we are.

Now that we are home, it seems like the trip was just too short.  It's time to get back to real life instead of the dreamy trip we just had.  We are so lucky that we get to experience these trips!  As much as I enjoy real life, it was an incredible few days in Japan that will not be forgotten.

Host Family Day

Host Family Day

Breakfast: Could a day start better than having a strawberry milkshake and a donut with ice cream and maple syrup?  We also had some toast and a hard-boiled egg.  Rebecca took a risk and chose as her drink a milky mixed juice with ice which tasted delicious and made her feel just fine eating a donut with ice cream and maple syrup.

Breakfast strawberry milkshake and smoothie

Breakfast donut with ice cream and maple syrup

Lunch: We couldn’t believe there was a place that exists like where we ate lunch.  It is called the Sweet Palace in English.  It’s owned by a company that makes desserts and sweets.  We walked through the gates of this enormous white castle with our mouths open, wondering if this was for real.  If Eddie hadn’t shown me the night before the website I would have thought that Eddie was playing a joke on us.  A few groups of girls dressed in beautiful gowns posed for pictures with the fountains and stairs as backdrops.  We both looked at each other with questions in our eyes and a funny smile on our mouths.  Really?  Is this for real?  The pictures speak for themselves.  It is Yoko and Eddie’s 27^th anniversary this week but because they took work off for us they both are scheduled to work and Yoko has the night shift so we took their picture by the magic pumpkin carriage.  I got Eddie to laugh by saying “ooh la la”, our joke.   First we only saw girls dressed up and then saw a few couples.  You can rent the clothes and take pictures.  Iain is going to put the link to the YouTube here so you can get a “taste” of what it felt like.  The same song looped the whole time.  Iain said it was like “It’s a small world”.  Yoko and Eddie didn’t know how to translate it but I wondered how people could stand it!  I supposed with the buffet nothing else matters at the present.  How many bowls of ice cream can you eat?  And my new favorite is Saltines on the side for that sweet salty goodness.  I also giggled and oohed and ahhed over these tiny crackers that looked like oyster crackers. Eddie and Yoko laughed, saying “Baby crackers”.  I guess it was like eating Gerber baby crackers and they thought it funny.  Coffee, either iced or hot, hot cocoa (yay!), coke zero, melon soda (yuck), Calpis soda, Calpis drink, orange soda, green tea ice cream, VERY chocolate ice cream, strawberry ice cream, crepes, and tiny slices of cakes. 

The Sweet Palace buffet for lunch (Desserts only)

We went back a lot for more

The Sweet Palace mascot

The cake at the Sweet Palace

Dinner: We had the usual banquet for the last night.  The food was a little different this year, but still very good.  I was proud of Rebecca again for trying everything.  We had oysters and shrimp.  A lot of our group struggled with the lack of desire to try the oysters, but they were good and in a white cheese sauce that had good flavor.  It was entertaining to see everyone getting up the nerve to eat the oysters.  There were many courses of food.  Rebecca liked the vegetable soup best.  It was kind of like Campbell’s.  I liked the shrimp and beef best.  The one thing Rebecca refused to try was the fake potatoes.  She is a true Idahoan.  The pudding had some kind of alcoholic topping.  We realized as soon as we tasted it and left the rest hoping we wouldn’t get a hangover.  They mayor gave us one more present before we left.  It included a course banner, a towel with mythical creatures from a river printed on it, some origami spinning tops, and some pins.

Inuyama Castle:  There were many steps at the castle.  At least one of us was quite a bit sore from the race, but handled it very well.  The castle had been in a family for 500 years.  Now, it is being passed on to the government as a national treasure.  The scenery around it was beautiful.  We had some good laughs with Yoko and Eddie as we walked around.  Eddie would laugh at our nervousness of walking around the top of the castle looking at the view.  He would tease Rebecca about going up and down the stairs.

Eddie offering to carry Rebecca up the steps

She did so well getting up and down with sore legs

The slow roller coaster.  We thought the basket at the bottom is what we were going to ride up in.  We chose to walk.

Inuyama Castle

Inuyama City: We looked around and old traditional city, which had modern shops in it.  Eddie and Yoko bought us some rice balls and takoyaki (ours had beef instead of octopus in it).  We looked in a kimono shop and walked by a radio station that was playing “Shake It Off”.  The DJ was at the window visible to everyone.  We danced outside his window which made him very happy.

Two special shrines:  Eddie told us they wanted to take us to a very special shrine.  Immediately we put on our reverent faces and prepared ourselves for the experience.  Unlike some of the others this one we pulled into the parking lot and there it was.  We didn't have to walk up hills or stairs to reach it.   At the well where the small stone dragon spit out water we followed Yoko's example and poured water on our hands, put some in our mouths, spit it in the gutter, and bowed.  This shrine was just as ornate as the others so I took a picture before stepping up closer.  When Yoko saw me take the picture, she said, "It's okay, but no pictures inside" which made me feel more nervous about doing something wrong.  Eddie told me to come closer and when I did, he said, "look left".  I looked left, not knowing what to expect.  Then "look right".  Again I did and suddenly it dawned on me what I was looking at.  He laughed and laughed at me when the shock of it hit me.  Website of the shrine

The shrine isn't a joke.  It even has a festival on mom and dad's anniversary.  As Nov is the time to bring 3 and 7 year old girls and 3 and 5 year old boys to any shrine to ask and pray for them to have protection and health, we saw a little girl and boy both dressed in Kimonos there at this special shrine.  Oh, we giggled and giggled about the special shrine.  But Eddie and innocent Yoko had another one for us to see.

After enjoying this location, Eddie took us off to the next site.  We asked where we were going next, but he never really responded.  We made it to the other side of the city and walked up to another "special shrine".  This one was a rock in the middle of the shrine.  The rock represented the female version of the previous shrine.  For the rest of the trip, we kept asking Eddie if we were on the way to another "special shrine".

Jyakoim: There were 300 stairs to climb to see the top of this Buddist.  There was an option to take a little trolley up to the top, but it looked very scary (see the photo below).  It would wobble side-to-side as it went.  So we sang as we walked and walked and walked.  Coming down was a little harder for one of us than the other.  At the top, we got to ring a very large bell.  We would go up to it, ring it loudly (see video below) say a prayer, bow, and leave.

I love this van

The whole delegation at the final banquet

My Japanese fan!  She remembered me from last year and hopes I'll come again next time.

The runners and their companions

Rebecca eating an oyster

Mayor Soyami giving Rebecca a gift 

The boys on the way to school

Eddie and Yoko at the farewell banquet.  He finally smiled in a photo.  He didn't know we were taking it.

Race Day!

I'm so proud of Rebecca!  She made it through.  When Lisa Mitchell (with our group) asked her how she did, she said, "I PRed!"  Now, all the Rogers siblings have completed the Ibigawa half marathon.  I'll have her write about her experience when she gets out of the shower.  Before the race, the organizers lead everyone in a warm up.  It's so much fun to watch.  I think next year, I will go down and do it with them (assuming I get to come again).

Iain's Race
Race Details: I had a goal written on my locker door that has been there since 1 January 2014 that says, "PR in Ibigawa half marathon".  A second goal was to go faster than 1:10:00.  I looked at the race printout from last time I ran and decided to start at about 5:15 to 5:20 for the first couple of miles.  I hit the first mile in 5:15.0 and thought, "This is going to be a good day".  I kept good pace going and didn't worry about where other runners were.  I wanted to get to 10k at 33:30 to 33:40 and got 33:30.  There were four runners ahead of me at that time.  We got to the turn around spot in the canyon and I felt just like I should (tired, but not too tired).  It rained for most of the race and was a great temperature.  The top 4 kept shifting positions and testing each other.  I just kept going the pace I planned and waited to see if any of them would fade back.  One of them dropped off before the canyon ended.  Then, we have a 2 mile run to the finish on flat ground.  A couple more faded and came back to me. I had a good strong finish, but I couldn't quite catch up to the leader.  He won by 6 seconds.  It's more fun to win than be second, but I'm very happy with the day.  I got my goal time at 1:09:55.

Fun and Feelings: It was so much fun with all the elementary school kids that line the course.  They get so excited to hold out their hands and have us slap them.  Most up front do not do that, but I felt like I was energized by their enthusiasm.  Whenever I looked up after slapping their hands, I was a little closer to whomever was ahead of me at the time.

There are a lot of people outside their homes watching the race and cheering us on.  They usually say, "Gambatte kudasai!" which means "Good luck!".

The announcer made a big deal of me being there for the fourth time and told everyone my name when we were introduced prior to the race.  After the turnaround, a lot of the runners coming up the hill called out "Hunter!".  Everyone is so excited to have us here.  It makes the trip so much fun with how the people here treat us.

Prizes:  There are no cash prizes in public races in Japan, so my main prize was 10kg of rice and a few kilos of potatoes, onions, and something else that nobody knew how to translate.  I got two medals (one from the Ibigawa Marathon and one from the sponsoring newspaper).  There are two nice certificates, a plaque.

Ready to run!

Lots of signs like this are on the course to encourage us

Rebecca's Race
I had to take advice from everyone, seeing as though I haven't run since Jonas was a baby, and I did that solely to help keep pounds off.  I began the asking by inquiring the ladies if they wore underwear or not.  It was a resounding no.  I had already asked Iain that morning, but he sweetly assured me he didn't know anything about the matter.  My new friends were great.  When Catharine said "shoot, I forgot my gel" I panicked and wondered where the gel was supposed to go because maybe girls need gel lathered in a certain spot or two.  She then said, "does Iain use gels?"  And then I realized the gel she was worried about is just that gel you eat.  Oh good, I didn't need gel.

Eddie and Yoko were dolls.  Their sweetness and calming confidence that they knew what they were doing made me forget that I was about to do something absolutely crazy.  They doted on us and as grateful as we were for their attention I think they were just as grateful to have us to dote upon.  It rained the whole morning but the weather warmed up.  Every time we had to walk outside Eddie held the umbrella for us.  At the starting line we had to wait for almost 30 minutes and Eddie held the umbrella.  I squeezed his bicep and told him he was very strong.  He laughed.  I had my warm clothes on and Matt asked me what I was going to do with them when it was time to start and I said, "Yoko and Eddie!"  Now everyone wants Eddie and Yoko to be their host family.  I called him Coach Eddie the whole morning because he had told me how fast I should go (3 minutes per K!) and made sure we were where we were supposed to be.   But even now as I write I feel emotional when he looked me in my eyes a minute before start time and said, "just have fun".

Before the race, Iain had me looking like his team member, dressed in red USA jackets and blue BYU warm up pants.   I knew I looked like a contender for first, and I loved it.  Watch out, here I come.

I really liked seeing all the children dressed in their uniforms and matching rain jackets lining up and down the race path  We gave them all fives, as many as we could, anyways.  Everyone cheered us on.  We had to embrace the rain, which we did, and it actually felt good.  The course couldn't have been more beautiful.  So many people running and so many people standing in the rain watching.

When I finished the race, Eddie welcomed me with concern and question on his face.  I couldn't smile yet, and he was all business, taking care of my needs, even taking off the tracking chip from my shoe. I hadn't realized my foot had been bleeding until he asked me about it as he loosened the chip from my laces.  It didn't hurt at all.   He became serious and led me along the walk way, across the street, and spotted Iain before I did.  Yoko and her son met us closer to the library.  She reminds me so much of Adrienne.  I love it.  She's so hardworking and giving.  She sat in the back seat on the way to the race so her son could sit up front and Iain and I had the two bucket seats in the middle.  She gave me an umbrella.

I felt so sad about my time and couldn't feel joy until later, dressed in dry clothes, chatting up in the library with my most fabulous host family.  Iain had to sprint on over to the women's awards to take pictures. Everyone congratulated me on a fabulous finish and I felt so much joy in their success.  I've grown to really like those others!

We will go visit a palace tomorrow.  Eddie showed me on the computer.  It has four stories with very steep steps.  Then he laughed and asked if I would be able to do stairs!  What a funny guy.  Of course not, he'll have to carry me.

Eddie is always taking care of us so well.

The two of us finishing the race.  I was so excited that Rebecca did so well.  She might not think she did well, but I know the truth.

After the Race
On the way home, a runner that did the marathon was on the ground in pain with muscle cramps all by himself.  Rebecca was already getting out of the car before we had stopped to help him.  We worked on helping him stretch while Rebecca massaged his calves.  It took us a long time to get him relieved.  His right leg quickly relaxed with stretching, but his left was a big problem.  He kept saying "Arigato Gozaimasu" and letting us know if was getting a little better.  Finally, he was able to get up to stretch, then got to his car.  He had nobody with him, so we were worried about him, but he got to his car.

Now, we are home, showered and about to eat hot curry made by Yoko.  I've been looking forward to this dinner for a while.  Yoko is a great cook.

We'll be glad to rest tonight and enjoy the day tomorrow.

We love the banana twinkie things.

Rebecca massaging our new friend who had leg cramps

The awards ceremony.  They make it a really big deal.  We all did short speeches about how the race went.

Lots of people dress up for the race.

The 60kg rice bags for the overall winners.

Tour of the Course

That was the best night's sleep I've ever had in Japan.  I only woke up once in the night and slept from 9:15 to 6:00.  When we went out for our morning training session, I considered trying the marathon again, but in the end decided this year is better for the half.  Maybe next year will be the marathon if I make it here.

When we finished our training, we spoke to home for a while outside, then I went in to shower.  A lady with a cart of orange tree branches came up to Rebecca and handed a branch with about 6 oranges on it to her.  Rebecca didn't know if she should take them, but the lady passed them to her again saying "Doozo".  They are really good.  They are kind of like cuties, but much bigger.

Typical breakfast at the Iwama's.

We've had fun thinking about how things will go tomorrow.  I keep giving Aaron "tips" of how he can do well.  The last one I gave him was to make sure he turns right at the bridge instead of going straight.  We're both in the half marathon and the full marathon is right at the bridge.  I've let him know of what he should eat and how he should pace it.  I'm hoping he takes my advice since I should finish about an hour or more before him if he does.

Rebecca is trying not to think about the race too much.  At dinner, she was asking me what I would want to eat since I would be racing.  Then, she realized that she will be racing too.

We stopped at the usual spots along the course except the footbridge with the bell at the other end.  You are supposed to ring it when you get engaged.  Eddie took us there after the lunch at the ski lodge.

The lunch was good.  Rebecca was surprised by the gifts we received.  They treat us so well here.

Rebecca is having a great time talking to the students and seeing how cute babies are.  It's so much fun to watch her interacting with everyone.  She's a natural at visiting with people.  One of the highlights of the trip was meeting the cyclists in the picture below.  Rebecca was right at home talking to them.  One of them is the owner of a new wheel company called Gokiso.  The wheels are $9000 a pair.  I don't know who would pay that much for wheels.  We had fun visiting with them though.

The students going to St George introduced themselves today.  This one told us his favorite movie is Spiderman and showed us how to shoot out a web.

After the lunch and bridge, we went to the 100 yen store and food court for dinner.  We had pizza that was really good.  We're so tired.  It's nearly 8:30 and we're off to bed now.  We will leave for the race at 7:00 am tomorrow.  I'm excited for the race and Rebecca doing it, but I'm nervous about what her experience will be.  I hope she's glad she did it once it's over.

At the footbridge

The Japanese students that will be going to St George.

Eddie and Rebecca trying to scare each other by making the bridge swing and bounce

The gift exchange between cities

Meeting the cyclists on the course.  The one next to Rebecca started a company called Gokiso that makes carbon fiber wheels.  We looked them up.  They sell for about $9000 a pair.

At my favourite bridge

A proud grandpa with an aggressive sister-in-law.  The baby was kind of scared.

We are in a bus touring the course and came across this truck.  Somehow we made it past each other very slowly.