We started the day out early in order to make a 3 hour drive to Iwate. We piled up in two cars and played car games along the way. With the car games time went by much quicker. We made several pit stops along the way, including here: Camel Mart.
When we finally got to our destination it was Kenji World, an indoor water park. We were blown away by how crowded it was. There was no where to sit or lay out our towels. Aaron and I started out by going in the lazy river. It was so crowded that we couldn't swim. We just stood in place and let the current drift us. If we tried to swim we'd bump into the next person in front of us or kick the person behind us. Because of this it wasn't all that relaxing. But we reunited with Manami, Haruka, and the two junior high girls to wait in with and go down the water slides together.
After several hours, we finally headed back to Ayashi. A lot of us were tired and conked out in the car. Or tried to at least. The day was followed by dinner and shave ice. Aaron and I were really tired and we had a big day ahead of us the next day. We had to leave right away to head south for our summer trip.
The next morning started out really early. At 6am. Way too early for my liking. We all had breakfast: sausages, corn, dinner rolls, yogurt, and Aaron made his scrambled eggs for the church. I don't think the Japanese people like his eggs very much. It was pretty much all cooked, no runniness. But I loved it. And he did too. :) After breakfast, we had church... Unfortunately, we had to leave much earlier than we expected and made our way to the eastern side of Sendai.
There we met up with Scott McDonald and his son Kaz. Scott and his family live in Tochigi, but they're from my home church (Bluewater Mission) in Hawaii. It was our first time meeting them and they happened to be in town that day and heading back to Tochigi. We hopped a ride with them and stayed with them for a day before heading down to Tokyo. It was a lot cheaper than catching the shinkansen!
Not to mention that the McDonalds were really hospitable. They showed us around Sano, introduced us to the famous Sano ramen and imo-fry (basically like a breaded deep-fried potato). It was pretty good. We also checked out their outlet mall, which I have to say is better than the outlet mall in Sendai. It was like stepping into America again for a few hours. We even had California Pizza Kitchen pizza and Cold Stone ice cream.
They were really great. They shared all their stories with us, prayed for us, and we also had a lot of fun playing with Kaz. He's a real cutie. It was so refreshing for us and that's what we really needed after a hectic and busy summer. We felt so blessed by them and we felt really grateful to them. It turned out to be the best part of our summer vacation and that's including Bali! We were really sad when we had to leave, but we're looking forward to seeing them again some day.
