Hi guys, sorry it has been so long! I have been taking an introduction to Japanese culture class that included trips every weekend. This made it very difficult to find time to blog but now I can tell you about all of the awesome trips we went on.
This post will be about Iwakuni (曰くに). We went to Iwakuni to teach for a few hours at a grade school. It was so much fun. The kids were soooo cute. There was this one little girl who was so tiny and had such a big uniform coat that it almost dragged on the ground. We talked with them about the US and then we played some Japanese games. After that the kids gave us origami gifts and we left. It was a really fun school visit.
The next thing that we did was to go to the Iwakuni Bridge. This is a really cool bridge made up of 5 arches. It has existed in the same location for hundreds of years but they keep having to rebuild it. The typhoons often knock it down. After we crossed the bridge we went up to Iwakuni-jo. This is the castle in Iwakuni. It is on the very top of the mountain and looks really impressive. We climbed up the mountain to the castle and, to our disappointment, discovered that this castle, like most others in Japan, is actually just a really bad concrete reconstruction of the original. Still, it was really cool looking and we went inside where there was a really nice museum of Japanese swords and armor. There was an entire suit of samurai armor and even short swords for seppuku (ritual Japanese suicide also known as hari kiri). Suicide has long been an established tradition in Japan. It is seen as the final way to redeem oneself and to preserve one's family honor. At one time, it was a penalty for several crimes. Today you still hear about it, although it is usually done in front of trains rather than by sword. Today it is viewed as something that is pitiful but could not be helped. The top of the castle featured a great view. We could see all the way out to the ocean, which was pretty cool.
After that we took the cable car back down the mountain. This was a rather difficult situation for poor Sam, who is terrified of heights. He had to sit onthe floor with his head between his knees and we all stood around him so that he could not see out of the windows. He managed to survive and we all drove him in the van with Miss Nakashima, our teacher from the international office. While we were up at the castle, the school had delivered a box of cakes to the van driver to thank us. We ate them on the way home and we made sure that the van driver and Miss Nakashima got cakes too. They were really good!
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