Tajimi

Well, I'm actually sitting down to update this thing. I've been quite remiss about updating this. I'll be better from now.

Last weekend I went to Tajimi city in Gifu prefecture. I had been there once before about 5 years ago, but it was just in passing and I was dead tired since I had walked 12 kilometers there. This time was quite different. For starters I participated in an International Day at a Junior High School. That was a lot of fun. Although it felt like I had stepped into the ending scene of Star Wars as when we walked into the gym we were walking down a line of students much like Luke and Han did. All we needed was a Wookie.

So basically after the opening ceremony we were all divided up amongst the classes and went to their rooms. We played games and talked. I was surprised at how well the students spoke English. They should definitely be proud of themselves. After that we had a closing ceremony and then met our host families.

My host mom was the head of the group who put this together. She was very nice and accomodating. I felt a bit out of sorts and didn't want her to fuss over me. She made an awesome dinner of tenpanyaki. It was awesome. Then she and her husband took me to a hotsprings. It too was great. The dad was so cool. He knew a lot about Japan. He also did the Japanese equivalent of Peace Corps. It was interesting listening to his stories.

On Sunday morning after a great spinach omelette my host mom took me sight seeing. I got to see the Tajimi city ceramics hall (with a great view of the city). We then hit this old Catholic church and then a great temple. The temple has an awesome bridge and a small cliff with several Buddhist images carved on it.

From the temple it was on to lunch. I had a great Taiwan ramen and some fried chicken. Honestly great stuff. Then we got to go to a free classic music concert. It was indeed a perfect weekend.