Hiking with Waterfalls and going to Tokyo

This past weekend was a busy one. On Saturday we went to a place called Iwaki. In Iwaki, we hiked along waterfalls up a mountain for a few hours. Here and there we stopped to swim in the pools on our way up. It was so beautiful and a ton of fun. At the places where we stopped to swim, we would find places from which to jump into the water.

Here is a beautiful picture of one of the many waterfalls we passed.

You can see how tall this next waterfall is by finding Kendon standing at the top:

Here is Melody Powell, who came to visit her brother Austin on her way back from the Philippines. She is climbing up one of the many ladders we had to climb where it was too dangerous to climb without (with Nicah and Jon Nossaman behind her).
Here I am standing in the freezing cold pool debating whether or not I want to go in farther....
Here's Melody jumping in! She was crazy!!
And me!


After climbing up and down the mountain with the many waterfalls, we got home, got on the train to Mito station and then the bus to Tokyo! We were so tired, but we were very happy when we finally got to our hotel....our feet were very happy.
When we went out to explore Tokyo the next morning we found this "junk market". It was awesome! We love garage sales, so this was like heaven to us to be able to walk around in a bunch of old Japanese junk for sale. Derrick bought a ukulele, so if you have pointers on how to play a ukulele, please let us know.We met up with our good friend Masashi who goes to Oklahoma Christian and is now home for the summer. It was extremely hot that day....because it gets really really hot and humid here in Japan. Hence the waterfall on Masashi's head...We went to the Meiji-jingu shrine in the Shibuya part of the city.

Here is the wash-basin where you are supposed to cleanse yourself before entering the shrine...

Inside the shrine...

Here are many many prayers that people have written in many different languages:

Here we are by the entrance of the shrine:


Hiking the trail along the Iwaki waterfalls and walking around in Tokyo made the weekend very awesome. We have so many more pictures of this weekend adventure, so if you would like to see them, please klick on the link for our pictures and enjoy.