Hotel New Kajiwara Matsuyama

... and then suddenly an ancient shrine tucked in the midst of it all, a torii gate surrounded by red maples, a tiny landscaped garden beside an entrance, the autumn colors soaring up the mountains, and my throat catches.

In Ozu the first rain of the journey gave a grey cast to the town, but I walked up to the castle which has been reconstructed using traditional methods rather than the ferro cement currently in vogue, and then across the ...

... up just stopping after a point and heading back. Needless to say it was quite an amazing experience to stand on the sharp jagged edge of such a massive peak and look out over Shikoku. From there you could see the inland see in 2 directions and see several towns lying in around the bays. You could see back to the Joju and the tiny point we climbed the first chains to get to. I am glad Jess lent me her camera, because I unfortunately forgot mine. I will let her handle ...

... other smaller portable shrines down a very high set of stairs, followed by a brawl to collect the pieces.

I am not really sure of the significance of all this, but it was definitely interesting to watch! I will try to find out more about the meaning behind this festival and make another post about it at a later time.

For the first night of the festival Jess and I walked down to the water to watch them parade around. It was really ...

... so that I can regularly update you with some photos and information!

I will try and backlog later, adding in Tokyo photos, and some other events.

For now, just a quick glimpse into life in Hojo!

(More photos to come....more of our apartment (after I finally bought some curtains), my school, etc!)

... when you are somewhere, where rules and manners are so important. So I often feel weird just snapping away. Especially at things like temples and shrines. I'm not even sure if you're allowed??? I'm going to try and find out though, because there are some beautiful Buddhist temples in Hojo, especially the one, it is just gorgeous.

I am also going to upload images for the journey here entry. So you can check that out if you want.

So we saw our first really cultural "touristy" type thing the other day. We were lucky enough to be placed only 25 minutes from one of the THREE places in Japan that still practices the traditional Cormorant fishing. I just want to make clear that this is NOT fishing for Cormorants, but with them. I'd also like to thank Etta ( one of the advisor people for the JET programme ) for putting this together and inviting us.

So there was twelve of us, 11 other ALTs and me and ...

... si ca bouge pas encore dans le bol. Je suis logé dans une auberge de jeunesse ou il y a plein de petits vieux japonais. Tu enlèves tes pompes à l'entrée de l'auberge pour mettre des chaussons et dans ma chambre, j'ai encore d'autres chaussons pour aller dans les toilettes. Il y a plein de trucs à respecter et encore je ne suis pas dans une auberge traditionnelle. Au fait, plutôt que vous envoyer ...

... become a teacher when I get back to the US? Not yet. There's still more in industry that I want to do and see. I haven't yet moved to a management position to see what that's like, I haven't made the cool things that I've always wanted to make. I haven't got enough of corporate lingo, mannerisms and ******** that flowed like wine down the email pipeline. sigh. You'd think that I almost missed it. Nope, not really.

... for trespassing. It turns out he was already boiled, which was why he was pretty and purple and nice and rubbery, instead of a pile of brownish goo on a little styrofoam tray, which, I recently discovered in a local supermarket, is what a raw octopus more closely resembles. On Friday night, Nick and I were invited to a party up at Will and Kristi's, along with all the other English-speakers in the building (ie, Rachel, Brian, and the couple that lives next door to ...

... in Thailand today I'm sure Luke can manage a week on his own. Saturday night went to Imabari with Kate and the other JETs for Veronika's birthday and we all stayed the night at Charlene's house (Beginning to remember names now). It was most of the same people who I had met a couple of weekends ago when I went out with Roz. Met an Irish guy called Neil who arranged for us to go to an Irish theme night in a bar which was very crowded when we arrived and probably wasn't any ...