Day 3 - Muroran, Lake Toya - June 14

This hotel also has free buffet breakfast, which I wasn’t expecting, and it was really good, although it’s more like lunch or dinner than breakfast. I had rice and miso and nikujaga (like potatoes and carrots) and some French toast. It was a beautiful day so we wanted to take our drive along the coast line again and actually see the scenery from the look outs that we stopped at yesterday. Our first stop on the drive was at the light house. There were gorgeous views of the cliffs and ocean. There was another happiness bell where we had pictures taken, and met a cute young Japanese couple with a little toddler walking around in squeaky shoes. So cute! We then stopped at 3 overlooks. Dave didn’t know what a stop sign looked like, so he ran one and then pulled off on the wrong side of the road at a look out. A cop was sitting there and asked Dave to get out of the car. Fortunately Mike was with us and helped them understand that dad didn’t know any better. They took pity on him and told Mike to be sure and teach dad about the rules of the road, and let him go with a warning. We also stopped at a beach that mike would sometimes go on p-days. The boys didn’t want to walk in the sand in their church clothes and shoes, but I was wearing sandals and a skirt so I left them behind with my shoes, hitched up my skirt and walked in the water for 10 minutes. It was Sunday, so we went to the church in Muroran in Mike’s first area. Everyone loved seeing Mike again and made many comments on how great his Japanese was. They asked him to speak for a few minutes and he went first. Elder Bateman in the ward tried to translate for us but he is still not as good with Japanese as Mike and couldn’t follow all he was saying, but he gave us the main idea of what Mike was saying. Then Mike sat back down with us and translated the rest of the meeting for us. After the meeting everyone wanted to talk to Mike, so we were in the foyer talking and taking pictures for an hour. Then the counselor in the bishopric asked if we were hungry, and wanted to share his lunch with us. He took us into the bishop’s office and we ate some Japanese rice mixture. It was really good. We headed back to the hotel afterwards and changed our clothes, then went to Mt. Uzusan to take the cable car up the mount. Mt. Uzu is an active volcano and you can see steam all over the mount. We took the cable car to the lookout and then we walked up another 100 or so steps to get to a higher look out. It was very beautiful and the top and we could see the lake and surrounding areas. We wanted ice cream cones near where we parked, and got in line to get some. Just then 30 Chinese people came crowding in for ice cream and pushed us out of line, so we left. On our way back, we stopped in Date for some ramen dinner. It was just a small family owned place and she was so grateful that we came in to eat her ramen. She said she loved watching us white foreigners eating her ramen. It was sweet. Each night over the lake is a firework show. The counselor in the bishopric that shared his lunch with us brought his daughter and met us that evening to watch the firework show.