Hotel Okudogo Matsuyama

... to a Meiji Era tea house overlooking the Hijikawa River. I stayed a hostel just below the castle for about $35 which might have seemed expensive for what could have been a huge dorm with futons spread out over the open space, except the I had the spacious second floor to myself with full windows facing the river on one side and the castle (lit at night) on the other. It was wonderful.

On to the big city of Matsuyama, capital of Shikoku.........

... photos.

Anyway, we finally got back to Misen and began our descent down at around 2:00pm. The trip home was much more solemn and much much quicker. We finally arrived back in Joju at around 4:30pm and virtually collapsed from exhaustion. We got back to the bottom of the rope-way at around 5:00pm, just in time to get tickets, share a few laughs and catch the 5:22pm bus back to Saijo, where we just barely caught the last train back to Hojo. We crashed and went to bed.

... a amazing to see all the shrines all lit up at night and clambering out a cacophony of bells and drums all playing different notes at different times. Jess has really become somewhat of a celebrity amongst the young children in Hojo, everywhere we went little kids taking part in the festival were yelling "Jeshka sensei! Jeshka sensei!" It was really cute.

This was all quite exciting until later on that night when the drumming and bell ...

So many things to tell, and so little time!

My first week of teaching in Hojo has been very very busy, and very interesting. I have come home everyday too tired to even check email (so sorry for lack of communication, guys!). That being said, I am hoping to become used to the teaching routine and get my energy ...

When leaving Edmonton, I decided it was finally time to retire my 15 year old norco bush pilot. I left it unlocked in the bike rack at my apartment the day I moved out and hopefully by now someone is getting deteriorated black rubber handle grip all over their hands and cursing at the stuck pedal. Or maybe they have already gotten sick of it and thrown it in the river valley.

Anyway, in Japan everyone rides bikes. Go to any train ...

... we were a group of twelve we got our own boat!

We all met up in the afternoon at the Matsuyama JR ( JR stands for Japan Railways if you hadn't guessed ) Station and caught a train to Ozu, a really old city with many many historic buildings. We plan to return in the day sometime and explore the city a little better.

Once in Ozu, we had to walk, quite a long ways to the meeting place and then again to river where our boat was. We hopped on the boat and we were ...

... emails, je vais mettre à jour le site http://www.travelpod.com/member/surlede p et vous cliquer sur le blog qui n a pas encore de photos. Ca vous évitera mes envois et en plus vous pouvez voir sur la carte du monde dans quel coin je suis perdu. Pour ceux qui n'ont pas accès à internet (oui, y en a et en plus il bosse dans l'informatique), ou que ca gonfle d'aller sur le web n'ont qu'a m'envoyer un mail.

... Chi and Glen, who are also English teachers). Nick and I agreed it would be a good time for him to try making some takoyaki, so he pulled out the little pan (a castiron one, with little inch-diameter cups in it, like a mini aebleskiver pan, for those of you fortunate enough to know aebleskiver!), and gave me the job of chopping up the octopus. You can view the picture that Nick took as I sat and readied myself to undertake this endeavor. :-P In the end, I really had no ...

... than an average sized living room in the UK. Was good laugh though. When we arrived in Imabari train station earlier that night me and Kate met a Japanese lady who offered us a lift into town and when we said we would wait for our friends. She left only to come back 5 minutes later with another Japanese lady who also had a car and explained they would give us all a lift. Although we didn't know how long the others were going to be they gave Kate and Neil their phone ...