A Couple of Firsts

So I've been in Onomichi for just over 2 weeks so far and have been crazy busy! At work there isn't too much to do, so besides writing emails, facebooking and seeing how many times I can spin around in my chair without throwing up, I've been studying Japanese. This streak of boredom should come to some kind of stop once school starts. I'll be in a different school everyday, circulating between 7 schools, 4 elementary and 3 junior high. In contrast to my 'busy busy' work days, I've been doing tons of stuff on weekends and after work. Mostly on weekdays we go for dinner and maybe a drink or buy some bentos (usually really tasty premade meals) and sit on the large patch of grass in front of the waterfront, we call the Grassy Knoll (or GK for short). Sometimes we go run some errands at the shops near by, like the Japanese version of Home Depot which is called UFO.


Grocery shopping has proven to be extremely expensive. Carrots are about 1$ each and watermelon can go up to 30$....Oh how I miss cheap fruits and veggies! For the most part though, fruits look like they are steroids and apples are the size of a baby's head.


On weekends so far we've gone to walk around Fukuyama, which is a big city only 15 minutes by train away. When we were there this past weekend, we decided to go to the Castle near by. It's huge! As the pamphlet explains, it was built in 3 years and is 6 stories tall, but it was destroyed in 'a' war. Ha! I think we all know what war that is! They've since restored/rebuilt it to look like the original and have converted the inside to a museum. It only costs 200 Yen (1.90$ Canadian) to go in. It was so hot in there though! Unbearable. The downside was that all the explanations were in Japanese so none of us knew what we were looking at. So we wandered up the 6 flights, sweating like dirty gaijin. The top was beautiful though. Looking out on the city was gorgeous. Or maybe I was just happy to have a breeze cool my sweat glands....

That weekend we also went to this Dance Festival in Mihara, which is only a 10 minute train ride away. It was loads of fun and really high energy. I'm also really looking forward to the pirate festival in Innoshima at the end of the month! Here are a couple pictures I took of the festival .


These past couple days were a blast as well. We were paid to go to this conference in Hiroshima City. Ohh! I fell in love with the city! It's just so beautiful and charming. It was really easy to navigate around the city, especially compared to Tokyo and considering the fact that the entire city was rebuilt after WWII, it has amazing charm and heritage. Of course we went to the Peace Park, the A-bomb Dome Memorial and the Peace Museum all of which were incredibly powerful and daunting. The entire experience is difficult to describe in words so I'll just post a few photos.



These are paper cranes. After the A-Bomb attack, there was a little girl who was only 2 years old at the time who thought that if she hand-folded a thousand paper cranes, which are a national symbol of health and peace for Japan, that she would get better. Unfortunately her cancer won the battle, but now 1000 hand made paper cranes are the ultimate symbol of peace and health. Hence, they are scattered all over shrines in Hiroshima City especially.