Church in the Temple's Annex

 

 It makes our toes wiggle to live within walking distance of a temple again!!  The Tokyo LDS Temple is tall and beautiful, and lacks the vast landscaped grounds that accompanies every other temple that we've ever seen.  Dedicated in 1980, it is actually built on the spot of the old mission home.  The church tore it down in order to be able to build the temple.  We go to church in the annex.  It's a very different experience!  The chapel has dark woodwork and cream colored walls.  It's a very beautiful chapel, but so small and narrow.  We were told that our ward will fill that room up so there are two overflows in the nursery rooms where sacrament meeting is streamed in.  Guess we had better try to get to church early!
During the week, the annex serves as a "hotel" for members who are coming to attend the temple.  Since some members have to travel a great distance to get to the temple, they can rent a room with a shower for about 1500 yen.  The "rooms" make up some of the annex, and some of the missionaries' apartments make up the rest of the annex.  It serves as a church on Sundays and when available during the week.  The kids think it is so crazy to have vending machines in the hallways of the church!  This is a very different situation than we have ever had regarding our church building, and will take some getting used to.
There are two English speaking wards in Tokyo.  We have a few military families, but most of our ward is made up of CFOs to major corporations, such as Nike, Deutsche Bank, and others.

 Across the street from the temple and annex is a beautiful park!  We walked around after church.

From this park, we had beautiful views of the temple!

 It may be what the Japanese consider winter here, but there are still some trees with leaves, including this beautiful one with red leaves.

 There was a pond with ducks, bridges, rock stairs, waterfalls, winding paths, and a lot of greenery and shrubbery.

 We all enjoyed walking around so much, we decided that we will come here after church every Sunday.  There are several cherry and plum trees here, so when they bloom in the spring, this will be a lovely place!

Even without waiting for spring, there were still a few flowers around to enjoy.

This park also has a playground area and a library, so I think we will make good use of this park while we are here!