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New Years days was super super chill...we went to church and hung out all day and went to bed early.... a well deserved easy day...

So the day after was actually Sunday, so we went back to church and after our church service we traveled to see the second largest Buddha in Japan. It was interesting to see how other people worshiped.... that is to say the least...we have visited many many shrines and it seems to all be the same...its traditions, that are followed almost blindly, because that's what has been done in the past. once again for supper some of the Kaufman friends came over and made us YakiSobu, P.S. the food here is AMAZING!!!! later after supper i made good enough friends with their kid Ise that he gave me 4 of his beloved pokemon cards! i felt super honored!! so later we had several snowball fights and ended up lighting off fireworks before seeing them off for the night.

since this is short, I'm going to do a few more days on here :-) basically each paragraph is a day...

ok so this was one of the coolest things i have ever done...we went snowboarding... on the biggest mountain (that is snowboardable) in the Mid region of Japan... It easily blows away by far anything in the entire Midwest...to be honest, probably the Midwest combined.... it was soooooo awesome!! I hung out with a Japanese kid my age named ryyunoske! he spoke very very little English and i spoke very very little Japanese, but we had a blast despite our language barrier!! towards the end of the day we all headed up to top and sat for a little bit as we watched the starting to set on the snow covered awesomeness... there was a few inches on the branches and the light glistened off of them, there was even a rainbow from where we were sitting..seriously it made the top five nature scenes i have viewed firsthand...absolutely gorgeous... so then we snowboarded to our resort fulfilled and left for home pooped, tired, and worn out.(yes i do realize they all mean the same thing).

the next day we took it pretty easy, by this time a Kaufman Friend Nobuo came and spent the night...and we woke up to him making us breakfast...seriously this is one of the coolest and nicest guys i know!! we went to a giant second hand/thrift shop and did some looking and exchanging of good that were previously boughten there. We went and ran around Toyama and went to an old park the Kaufman kids used to romp around on in their wittle bitty days... they relived some of their child hood memories running around like monkeys on slides and monkey bars. We arrived at home with yet another meal made for us foreigners while the Kaufman family went out for dinner and to be alone as their family... the house was oddly quiet, and I kinda didn't like... for that time, I missed the Kaufman family... We packed all of our stuff and prepared for our insanely busy trip... good night to all