Matsuyama Washington Hotel Plaza

... 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.........

... section, one for each hand.

At first everyone was a little reluctant. I expressed my interest in climbing as well as a few others, but no one wanted to go first. Of course, being the brave girl she is, just like when she dived into the piranha infested waters of the amazon before anyone else, Jessica went first. I followed just behind her, Saffiya after me and so on. I would sat a little more than half of the eight of us decided to take the chains up. The ...

This weekend saw quite an impressive ( though sometimes annoying ) Autumn Festival here in Hojo.

The festival basically consists of many many Hojo residence, getting together and building these strange portable shrines and carrying them around town banging on bells and drums as loud as they can all day and all night, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and getting really really drunk. All culminating in a spectacular event of throwing ...

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 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.

... just shared one.

So the first part of the trip, we just journeyed peacefully around the river being either ruddered or poled in the shallow bits, by a older Japanese man wearing traditional Japanese clothing.

Quite a long while of this went on and we didn't realize, that this was the time we should be eating our Bento boxes...oops. So when someone finally decided to ask, he was pretty much "hurry up and eat!!!" Finally it was dark enough that the Cormorant ...

Ashleigh, myself, Rachel and Keiji, and Will and Kristi all went to go watch the fireworks on the beach near the amusement park. Keiji was able to borrow a huge van (I was surprised to see that they had MPV-style vehicles here in Japan) to drive all of us to the beach. Rachel wanted to stop in at an art show she'd heard about and take a look at. I will say that it was.... interesting. I don't have any pictures of ...

... they would be divied up between the class by, you guessed it, janken (if you don't recall, this is the Japanese name for rock-paper-scissors), all in the sweltering heat. Not surprisingly, we weren't very excited to be going. We did survive, however, and in the end, our kids made it almost fun. ;-) (By the way, all of these pictures were taken on my "keitai" (cell phone). I forgot my camera that day. :-P)

One of the foreigners in our apartment building, Will, (who's also Kristi's boyfriend) mentioned that the world cup was happening.. We tried to scrounge a group together to go and see the game at one of the larger bars, Flankey Kobayashi. Oddly enough, I think the sign means to say "Frankie Kobayashi" but whatever, the picture of the guy in their logo looks old, so he's probably dead and it doesn't matter anyways. I'm not a huge soccer fan, or any sport for ...

... stuff. They clean up the kids that have wet themselves, get the kids in their seats, help encourage them to parrot what I've said by repeating things I ask them to say. They also make sure the kids that are running around sit back down in their seat. This is handy since there are about 28 kids per class. There's one kid in the 2s that is a real handful - he gets up EVERYTIME he's put back in his seat, and the other day he flung a block across the room. Didn't hit ...