Welcome to Onomichi!

So after a 1 hour flight to Toronto, then running across the airport to catch our connecting flight, only to spend 2 hours sitting on a tarmac waiting for the storm to pass, and when it finally did I spent 15 hours in a plane, never to see darkness, just following the sun to the east. We did fly over Alaska, which from the plane was breathtaking! Miles and miles of mountains and space completely untouched. It was beautiful.




Tokyo was interesting, I was incredibly jet lagged and didn't really get too much time to see the city, but from what I saw, it wasn't anything spectacular. Just another concrete jungle. I did get the chance to see the Karaoke place where "Lost in Translation" was filmed, and that was pretty incredible!



Eating out was an experience on its own, lots of pointing, smiling and having no idea what I'm eating. Luckily we had a guy in our group from Montreal who knew what he was doing and gave us a little more direction and courage. I was really looking forward to getting to my home city, I just felt that I had spent too much time traveling and too much time in a hotel, I was ready to get to my apartment. After 3 days in Tokyo, there were 3 of us headed to the same city and a bunch others coming to the same prefecture, so we all took a 1 hour flight to Hiroshima City. When we got to the airport our supervisor and 2 current ALTs were there to greet us upon our arrival. After a 45 minute car ride through the rolling mountains, a whirlwind of introductions are the office and buckets of sweat later, we were finally dropped off at our apartments. It's been pretty non-stop since. Lots to do during the day, things to buy and such. Almost every night there is something going on somewhere. Yesterday after a couple errands with the other new ALTs from the office, I crashed at home and watched Felicity on my laptop in front of a fan full force. There isn't much to do at the office right now, which is nice because it gives us a bit of time to acclimatize to our new environments.

Please send me some emails of happenings back home, they keep me going!

Oh, and here are a couple shots of Onomichi.

This is a shot from the top of a mountain in the city:



There are tons of cranes around the port, and on weekends they light them up:



This is the beautiful view I get to wake up to each morning!