Janel's toenail stays in Japan

Yup. On the way back from watching Cosmo's moon shine over the Tone river Friday night I managed to veer the orange bike a little too close to a brick wall and there I left my fourth right toenail. I had not been separated from any of my toenails before and thought of you, Melissa. It was actually a pretty disgusting affair. When I took my bloody shoe off I heard the birds singing "there's blood in the shoe, the foot is too small, not the right bride at all," but to understand that you would need to have read the freaky version of Cinderella that I read growing up. Upon hobbling to my doorway I saw Ray and Keiko (American neighbor and his nice Japanese wife) returning from a walk and asked for a couple of bandaids, but that wonderful lady fixed the whole thing for me with a lovely arrangement of bandaids coated with Japanese goo, and provided I pick up my feet when I walk I feel nothing from the naked toe. Maebashi inherits one American toenail.

I went to the handbell concert at church Saturday night and was blown away by the nicest Japanese voice I have heard in Japan. The group was from a church in Tokyo and the pastor's son, maybe 15 or 16 years old, sang a song called "I love you," in Japanese and it was beautiful. He sang it again in church this morning. Very nice. Saturday night I went out for dinner with Edgar-the-translator and his friend Mitoko (I think). I'm going to miss Edgar, he has a huge brain and loves God so much! He's a scientist at heart, and I could listen to him talk for hours. Actually I think I did listen to him talk for hours, he likes to talk! Mitoko did not speak very much English, but he plays the tuba, has watched Little House on the Prairie, and seems like a super nice guy. He would like to be a missionary in Thailand and would also like a wife that can speak English. I didn't get that situation completely figured out, hehe, but I hope he finds one. I think it would be best if she could also speak Japanese.

Today after church every member of the church introduced themselves for the benefit of the handbell group, and I was very interested to hear that the pastor did sumo wrestling when he was younger. I guess that's the first pastor I've met who used to be a sumo wrestler. Only in Japan.

I have a million things to do. I don't know how to get all of this data home. It's a matter of getting computers to talk to eachother and with some I have to run back and forth with a tiny little floppy disk, with others I have to email it to people and have them save it to a memory stick, and some of it I think I'll just have to scan. And I have to pack all of my stuff into a magic Mary Poppins suitcase as I bought too many weird things to take home to people. I'm going to Okinawa Thursday - Sunday. Atsuko told me there are poisenous snakes in Okinawa so I may not get off the plane. I'm coming home soon! I don't believe I will be able to leave my Max-boy anymore so we will need to make a spot for him in the lab.

Ahh yes I almost forgot. There was another jishin in the middle of the sermon today. It was only a 5.1 but the center was just 55 miles from here so it felt about as strong as the rest I've felt here. We all rattled back and forth in out seats for a few seconds but the pastor never broke his pace. So the earth moves around and the buildings wobble, big deal!