iyadaniji

Check out the sky in these pictures at the beach -- so beautiful.
Classes were cancelled on Thursday for the annual Gem School Easter picnic -- however, the weather was so bad that morning that the picnic was cancelled too...so that afternoon when the sun came out...

Above is a pic of my good friend Jonas...and Amberlyn yawning...

And here are pics of Iyadaniji -- a temple that Jonas took us to (insert jokes about someone taking me to the temple here:______________) Jonas has been in this part of Japan for longer than any of the rest of us...three years maybe? and knows all the cool local locales. I do my best to butter him up in hopes he'll let me tag along with him...I must be doing a good job, cuz Thursday he showed up at my apartment, map in hand and here's where we ended up:

The fourth prefecture

Hello, and welcome to another week's adventure on the lovely and often overlooked island of Shikoku. On Monday the usual crowd (Amberlyn, Kira, Jessica) and I drove out to Tokushima Prefecture: we have now officially been to all four prefectures in Shikoku!
First stop: temple #1 of the 88 temple pilgrimage. Henro (pilgrims) begin their clockwise walk around the island here -- they often refer to Tokushima Prefecture as Hosshin-n0-dojo -- the place to determine to achieve enlightenment.
Next on the list is Naruto Park -- natural whirlpools occur in the currents where the ocean meets the sea -- which is really cool (You can't see it very well in the picture, but under the bridge there are boats near the whirlpools)

This is a picture of the koi flags hanging over Nishi Iya. I'm not sure exactly why they're there, but they're cool, and I took a picture.
This is Biwa-no-taki, a 50-m high waterfall less than a minute's walk away from Kazurabashi -- one of the last three vine bridges in Japan. Warring clans built the bridges to span Nishi Iya and other gorges like it in the canyon so they could cut them down later to prevent attacks, etc.
Here I am on the bridge -- it was pretty wobbly -- but is reinforced with cables. Pretty awesome.

Miscellaneous!

Yay! More pictures! This week, my friend Haruka (a girl I met in my branch) offered to teach a small caligraphy class to a few of the gaijin here -- which was really cool and generous of her. She laughed at our first few attempts at kanji -- I think for the most part, my sheets are at about a first-grader's level, but I think I got a little better. This my version of the kanji for 'princess.'

And a few of our practice sheets...we were trying to write eternal families on these ones, but ran out of room and ended up writing 'eternal house.'

Here I am with Kira, Mao and Caroline, just after our camping trip at a park where everyone was playing with huge bouncy balls that are just free and available for anyone to play with!

And, of course, karaoke. This is actually my third time singing karaoke, and I have plans to go again next week with Haruka -- here's Amberlyn and Tada, and me and Kenji, supposedly on a "date," although, it wasn't what I would really consider a date...

I have been so lucky, though, to meet so many cool Japanese people. Japan definitely gets my vote.

PS. In other exciting news, I have been

accepted to three (3) grad schools and counting (!!!) (Lucky!)

Camping Trip

Home, home on the range...

This weekend I went camping with my fellow ESL teachers and a Gem School franchise owner, Toshi, her daughter, Mao, and friends, Mina and Caroline.
A couple ESL teachers mentioned to Toshi one day that it would be fun to go camping around here -- there are a lot of beautiful mountains and most of us haven't been out to renew our transcendental nature-loving sides for a while -- so Toshi immediately hooked us up with a camping trip -- Japan style: which means we drove about 40 minutes to Mannao Park and stayed in a beautiful cabin. It's actually nicer than my apartment. We hiked around the park and then Toshi taught us how to make our own sushi -- the picture above is my very own tuna wrap. It was seriously good. Happy Sumo pales in comparison...
The next day we went to a huge park, where we snapped this pic in front of the waterfall, which was a memorial for a city, I think. Some things are definitely lost in translation.
I tried to post more pics, but the computer said no. I will try again soon, and as per Dem's request, promise to post more often.
Peace out.

Kochi and something that rhymes with Kochi

Alright, alright, I went to Kochi Prefecture -- the south, Pacific side of Shikoku -- the great and fun adventure saga continues with more pictures to prove my coolness is now in the upper echelons of er, coolnessdom...
We thought the mannequins were real people at first. That's all I'll say.



These are the Ryugado Caves, a kilometer treck's worth of cave/tunnels where prehistoric people supposedly lived -- and, if I was a prehistoric person, this is DEFinitely where I would hang my hat. The rock formations are continuously shaped by the water almost everywhere.





The beach.
The castle.










Wish you were here.

And now: What Kristen Does in Japan, episode 10ish

Hi hi hi! I'm still alive. A couple teachers who lived in the Takamatsu area went back to the grand old U.S., and my average daily commute has since jumped from 1-ish hour per day to an overwhelming 3.5 ish hours per day... Despite the long hours, I'm still getting around to see the local attractions. This week's adventure: Unpenji.




Unpenji is located at the top of a mountain -- to get there this time of year, you have to take a -whatsitcalled, uh tram/ski lift type thing up the side of the mountain. At the top, to the left is a snowboarding area complete with man made snow, and to your left is one of the 88 temple areas of Shikoku.
I don't know much about the temples and will read up on it (if I can get google.jp to come in English...) but, what I thought made this particular area interesting were all of the stone sculptures -- there are hundreds of life-size men surrounding the main area, some of them holding weapons, I assume to protect the shrine.







And, as always, the food commentary section of the blog:
This week I went to lunch with Chitomi, a franchise owner of a Gem School in Takamatsu -- here we are eating something that she ordered, which included rice, pickles, cabbage, fried oyster and mushrooms and miso soup. Ahhhh miso soup. How I am growing to love you.

Lest you think that every day here in Japan is a culinary feast such as the above, here is a picture of my roomie, Amberlyn, at home. I came out of my room one evening to find her here, sitting in front of the microwave with our hiragana/katakana dictionary. What cracks me up is that she dragged a chair over....
The one time we figured out the microwave, it heated up some rice very nicely and then sang a little theme song. I'm sure we could get it to roast turkeys, clean the apartment and rent movies from the local geo if we could figure out what all the buttons do...