6/10 A Tour of Hiroshima and Traveling to Miyajima

Hey guys! 

So I'm currently writing this in probably the best hotel I've ever stayed at in Miyajima. It's done in a traditional Japanese style, with tatami mats and a low table that you have sit on these small cushions for. I'll post some pictures of it towards the end.

Before getting to Miyajima, we had a tour that began at 9 a.m. of Hiroshima. This tour was really something. We had a volunteer tour guide who took us to a bunch of different memorials throughout this park in the middle of Hiroshima. All of the memorials were beautiful. Here are some shots of them - 

One of the peace memorials at the park. It gives a really pretty view to the main peace memorial, as you can see through the arc. 

This memorial honors the children who died from the A-bomb. On top is Sadako, the girl who tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes to try and be cured from the after effects of the bomb. Around the memorial are displays showing various artwork created from paper cranes.

This is a burial mound. There are over 70,000 cremated remains of victims from the A-bomb.

Here's another shot of the main peace memorial. 

Afterwards we headed to the museum that's right across the peace memorial park. This museum was intense. I lasted about halfway through before having to walk away because it was too much for me. At first you see a huge simulation of the A-bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It showed the radius of everything it destroyed. You then went through an informational hall that explained the U.S. process of creating the bomb to the after effects of it. At first, it was really interesting seeing things from a different perspective. But then we got to the part were the museum shows the burns that the A-bomb made on children. One of the T.V.'s on the wall actually showed a baby being inspected after the bomb, and then later children that lost their hair due to the radiation. That's what got to me. I couldn't concentrate anymore and had to straight up walk away. I managed to get a hold of myself until the next floor down. This floor had artifacts - clothes and trinkets that survived the bomb. The clothes that were on display were clearly torn up and had blood stains on them. I had to walk away again. 

I didn't get many pictures of this museum, mainly because I felt that if I made even the slightest noise then I'm being disrespectful. I did, however, get pictures of the paper cranes that Obama made during his visit to Hiroshima. Side observation - Obama is extremely respected here. In the shopping plaza outside of memorial park, they actually have a gacha machine that openly made fun of Trump and had a mega-man robot superhero with Obama's face on it right next to the machine. 

A paper crane and Obama's letter to Hiroshima. He made four in total, but two were shipped back to the U.S. 

The 2nd paper crane Obama created

Obama's megatron

Finally after this museum, we went out for some okonomiyaki. This made me feel a lot better. The food of course was amazing, and this was one of the few meals that were covered by NAU so the students took full advantage of that. 

This guy was really cool and let me take a picture of him in the middle of him making all the okonomiyaki. They make the food right in front of everyone. 

Finally, we headed for Miyajima. This is probably the most tourist-y place we've been to so far. There were Westerners everywhere! It's touristy for good reason though - the island is beautiful. Me and some friends went out to take pictures after dinner, and here are some of the shots I got. Which, by the way, I've figured out how to use the timer on the camera so I can now take better nighttime shots! (Oh yeah a side note for my dad - I did not forget the mini tripod!! 😁😁)

Courtney using the chabudai that's in our hotel room. 

Here's a group shot of us on the short ferry ride to Miyajima island. The island is only 10 minutes away from Hiroshima! 

So the deer are kind of everywhere and they really don't care about people. Sometimes they'll get uncomfortable if you get a little to upfront towards them, but if they're hungry they'll become super upfront to you. 

And that was basically my day today! A lot of up and down emotions. I have to be up and ready by 8:30 tomorrow morning, so I'll be heading off to sleep now. おやすみ！

6/9 Traveling to Hiroshima

So yesterday was pretty hectic. We had to meet up at the hotel lobby in Kashiwa at 9:00 sharp, then head to the trains to ride to Tokyo for the shinkansen to Hiroshima. The train was super packed, but I managed to sit down for the last two stops. We then got our rail passes for the shinkansen and we're off! 

This is how far we traveled. It took about 4 1/2 hours in total - 3 hours to get to Kobe and 1.5 to get to Hiroshima

Yes, the shinkansen is super fast. The one we went on went up to at least 171 mph (or 275 km/h). Courtney and I shared a bento box that we got from the train station, and the ride went pretty smoothly. 

Finally we arrived in Hiroshima! After almost hitting two people (I'm not used to so much activity going on at once), we got to our hotel and chilled out for a bit before going back out to explore. Our teacher brought us down this huge shopping street to an Italian place where I proceeded to have pizza. 

The pizza wasn't bad. There's better ones in the States, though.

Two of the guys had squid ink spaghetti and that was good. I kind of regret not buying the spaghetti. The pizza was really cheap though, about 399 yen for a personal pizza (which is less than $4.00). 

We then explored around some more. We went to the arcade where Grace and I played a round of DDR. She completely annihilated me! We then walked over to the Hiroshima memorial.

As expected, walking to the memorial was an experience. The memorial we saw was essentially where the atomic bomb first hit. According to Dominik, the reason this particular building was still standing was because the bomb was right above it, the only place for the building to go was a bit more downwards while everything else around it essentially disappeared. 

Some of us started talking about the war, and then about war in general. Both Grace and Courtney are Navajo, and they reflected on the Navajo code talkers that took part in and died in the war. I began to talk to some of the guys about the Japanese-Filipino vs. Japanese-American relations back in the day. While I know how I feel about the atomic bomb, I really don't know what to feel about WWII in general. While America basically dominated Japan, Japan did dominate the Philippines beforehand. Basically my main reaction was "Everyone was a jerk, it's just America were jerks with big bombs." 

I then went back to the hotel and one of the guys, Riley, was nice enough to walk back with me to the memorial so I could take pictures with my actual camera. The shots I got aren't the best, but that's because taking pictures at night is hard. But the memorial is lit up at night and it was a sight to see, so I wanted to at least try. This is what I managed to get - 

I ended up not coming back to the hotel until pretty late, which is why I'm uploading this the next day. Today (6/9) we'll be taking a guided tour of Hiroshima and then moving on to Miyajima. 

まったね！

6/8 Japanese Instruments

こんにちは！

Today was a little bit more of a chill day, which is what I needed. One of the guys forgot his train pass, so two of us stayed behind to wait for him. We ended up showing to the university about 10 minutes late, but our teacher was nice enough to wait outside for us to show us where to go. ありがとうみちこ先生！After a short class that covered a scavenger hunt we had to do yesterday, we went and got lunch with some of the university students. After lunch we had a class on shakuhachi and koto. I wasn't able to get any pictures of the class but here are the instruments I'm talking about - 

Shakuhachi

Koto

The teachers first gave some performances of their own. The music was beautiful and relaxing, and I had a hard time trying not to fall asleep. Admittedly this is probably because I didn't get too much sleep the night before, but I was dozing off a bit during their performances. We then attempted our own hand at the instruments. 

The group was split into two - four people would try the koto and the other four the shakuhachi. To begin with, I was in the shakuhachi group. The shakuhachi brought me back to 3rd grade band class of when I attempted the flute. I could not get a single sound out of that thing and made myself lightheaded trying to do so. Two of the guys from our group tried helping me with it, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. Luckily the teachers had us switch instruments, and I had better luck with the koto. I actually managed to play the simple song called "Sakura" that the teachers gave us. After about 15-20 minutes of practicing, we then had to give a mini class recital. I immediately dived for the koto, and we had about 3 or 4 tries on it. Here's a video of the fourth try - 

Playing the koto was actually pretty fun! I screwed up towards the end, but hey! 

After exploring another nearby department store and getting more Mister Donut and takoyaki for dunner, I went back to my room to chill out for a bit. We're going to Hiroshima tomorrow so I have to pack and get plenty of sleep. So, that'll be it for now :)

おやすみ！

6/7 Kashiwa Temples and Shodou

Hey guys!

So this post is going to play a little catch-up from yesterday and today. After our language class yesterday, we headed to Akebono park - a gorgeous park in Kashiwa that is a short walk away from a buddhist temple. To get to the park itself, you had to walk through this little gift shop that sold snacks and trinkets. Me and some other people got a cone of ice cream, which was very おいしい. I then proceeded to go on a photography rampage of the park. There was a small pool which had koi fish that you could feed, a small playground for kids, and a really pretty field. Here are some pictures from it -

Yes, I'm 19 years old. Yes, I will play in the playground.

There was plenty to see on the way to the temple. There was this field of red flowers that was absolutely stunning. The garden before the temple was also really great. I'm having trouble finding good adjectives to describe this place and not sounds completely cheesy. My pictures don't do it justice. 

And finally -  Tokaiji Temple. This place was amazing. If this is what a temple in a lesser known area is like, I can't even imagine what the temples in Kyoto or Nara will be like. Tokaiji was founded by the order of Emperor Saga , and completed by Lord Honda and 98 Feudal Lords in 1717. The temple itself is painted red with three large ropes hanging in front that is used to bang on these cymbals (I don't actually know the term for these) up above. Apparently you're only supposed to hit them once, but I hit them 3 times. But you're also supposed to hit them loudly and all 3 of my hits were weak, so all together they make one hit. At least, that's my logic right now. The picture from that is from the post I did yesterday. There was also a tall pagoda on the right side of the temple and a little building where people sold good luck charms off on the left. Gravestones and statues of what I think are bodhisattvas were behind. 

Again, I went crazy with taking pictures. Also with having people take pictures of me.

I wasn't really able to get a good picture of the temple itself, but here's a group picture that our sensei had - 

I was dissappointed when we had to leave. Once the group got back to Kashiwa, we all got ramen and I managed to get this really cool shot of the city - 

So I'm finally caught up to today! Today was a little bit more of a chill day. Our morning class was a shodou class, which was both relaxing and nerve wracking. Shodou is a form of calligraphy (our teacher doesn't like us using the word "calligraphy" to describe it, but I don't have a better word for it). There were certain ways that you had to hold the shodou brush, a strict stroke order to the kanji, and different pressures that you had to write the kanji with. The ones that I made and that I like the best were unfortunately smeared with ink from other papers, so here's one that I got a picture of before ruining it - 

This is the kanji for "soil". On the left is my name, pronounced "sa-ma-n-sa"

The teacher would grade our shodou pieces, and unfortunately he would always grade the ones that I feel I did the best in. Nothing about his grading was mean, but he would put orange circles on where he thought that you did good in and fix parts where you need to work on. So the ones I really liked ended up with big orange circles on top of the kanji. Oh well. Here's a group photo of everyone - 

Afterwards we completed our scavenger hunt and met up with some of the students from the university to sing more karaoke. And then we all played Uno. 'Twas a good time. Here's a picture from that - 

And that was all! まったあした！

6/6 Busy Days

Hey guys!

So I won't be able to write much for today. I was out basically the whole day, and when I finally got back to the hotel we all decided to play card games until fairly late. We have to get up early tomorrow, and I want enough time to get ready and such. 

Basically, today we had another Travel Japanese class, went to a beautiful park, and then a nearby temple. The temple was great, and I'm now up to 508 pictures. It's going to be great editing all of them. I also have significantly more video footage when some of the guys decided they were going to start up YouTube channels. 

I'll post more about today tomorrow, but for now here are some of the pictures from the park/temple :)

おやすみなさい！Good night! 

6/5 Yukata

Today was awesome!

We went to Abiko to have our first lesson in Travel Japanese, and then we headed to the nearby shopping mall to try on some yukata. The room was in the upper part of the mall, where the room itself was styled more traditionally Japanese. It's still a bit strange to me to see traditional Japanese rooms inside incredibly modern buildings. The room that held our tea ceremony was also in a large, modern looking glass building.

Anyway, that's a side tangent.

When we got to the room, the guys won to a game of rock paper scissors and they got to try on the yukata first. Men's yukata aren't as colorful as women's yukata, but they're still nice to look at. There were so many steps to putting on a yukata. It took maybe 20 or so minutes for the guys to get theirs on. Here are pictures of them putting it on -

Us girls had and even longer process. The guys had only one sash (called a koshi-himo) while the girls had two small sashes plus the wide obi to worry about. Before coming on the trip, the teacher took all of our pictures so that the kimono sensei can choose yukata that aesthetically fits all of us. I got to try on this beautiful pink kimono with koi fish designs on it. Here are some pictures of the girls putting it on - 

Afterwards we took a ton of group photos. Today was a great photo opportunity. The senseis also gifted us these really pretty fans so we used that to our advantage when taking these photos

... So I'm just realizing this particular blog post is going to be photo overload. Oh well. After folding up our yukata, our group broke off in 2. Grace, Thomas, and Sherman went to the onsen and the rest of us went to a sushi restaurant. The sushi was 10/10, I wanted to keep eating even though I got full pretty fast, but I actually got more sushi from 7/11 for dinner. We then decided to walk back to the park in Abiko and roam the neighborhoods a bit. Here are some pictures from that little excursion -

"Let's go on an adventure!"

The group dubbed this as "Abbey-ko Road"

Ohh look at me all coy. Hardy har har

Right now I'm with 3 other people watching Wolf of Wall Street. We all tried to get crepes earlier but some restaurants here close pretty early. Because of this, we ended up going to 7/11 where I got my sushi mentioned prior along with some other sweets and such. 'Twas a good day :)

またあした！