熊本

I had a great week! Well, a great weekend anyway. I talked about SDC last post and the rest of my work week was pretty boring. The students had tests all day, so there were no classes for me to help in. Friday I went with my teachers to 若松中学校 (Wakamatsu Chugako, Wakamatsu Junior High School) in the afternoon. All the Junior High School English teachers and ALTs in the Wakamatsu and Tobata wards came to observe the lesson along with many people from the Board of Education. Everyone gathered in the library after and discussed what we liked about the lesson and what we'd change. The ALTs left a bit earlier than the Japanese teachers, but it was a good discussion. I didn't do much with the rest of my Friday, but it was nice to relax.

Saturday we had a small game day in Kitakyushu. I cleaned my apartment in the morning and Dan and Juha came over around noon. Marc joined us soon after and we played some new games Juha had gotten in Tokyo. Tanya and Megan came over in the evening and we had a great time playing games with the five of us! Once it got late everyone but Megan left. Megan and I stayed up a bit later drinking tea, talking, and watching movies before finally going to bed. We went to bed earlier than last week because we knew we had to get up early the next day.

Sunday Megan and I woke up at 8:30 to have some breakfast and meet Marc and Tanya at Kokura Station at 10:00. We met up right outside the monorail gate and went to get our round trip shinkansen tickets to Kumamoto! We grabbed some more breakfast snacks the hour long ride before catching a 10:26 train. We drank our coffee and before we knew it we were getting off at Kumamoto Station!

None of us had been to Kumamoto before, but thankfully a very nice woman working at the station gave me some maps and directions about where to go and how to get there. We started by catching a cable car to the city center and stopped at Starbucks to have a coffee and plan out our day. We walked over the the castle and it was amazing! The grounds were huge! The people working at the castle telling people where to go were all dress up as ninjas and there must have been an event going on because there were at least fifty people cosplaying characters from different anime. They all looked professional and many had professional photographers with them. It was so much fun to watch! I even got pictures with Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, and Sasuke! It was really amazing and fun to see them all walking around, we couldn't have picked a better day to visit! We walked the entire grounds of the castle before going inside. Inside the castle was a museum of the castle's history. There were diagrams, models, and items from different eras. We even went up to the top for a beautiful view of the castle grounds and Kumamoto city! We did a bit of おみやげ (omiyage, souvenir) shopping before leaving the grounds.

We'd been walking for a while, so we found a park close by and stopped there for about half an hour. The weather was beautiful and resting it the shade was nice. When we felt a bit rested we started off again in search of the science museum. It was only about fifteen minutes away, but it turned out to be closed. Thankfully, right across the way was a tea house and garden for us to explore. The garden was full of Japanese maple trees that had just finished turning beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow. We wandered around the garden until the sun started to show signs of setting. We found a way to the shopping area of the city near where we had started the day and walked back. It took about half an hour and we were very hungry by the time we made it. (It only dawned on us then that we'd been so busy walking through the castle we'd skipped lunch.) We found a nice しゃぶしゃぶ (shyabu shyabu) restaurant and before long we'd stuffed ourselves. We shopped around for about an hour before heading back to the cable car to go back to the station. Marc, Tanya, and Megan bought some last minute souvenirs from the station before we got back on the shinkansen and headed for home. We parted ways once we got back to Kokura and I feel asleep right after getting home. It was an amazing trip and I can't believe we had so much fun in just one day!

Monday I enjoyed sleeping in. I hadn't done much shopping in Kumamoto, but needed some new winter clothes. Megan and I had talked the day before and we decided to meet up at the Gap to finish up the shopping we had left. Gap was having a lucky coupon sale and I ended up getting the highest coupon available, 50% off everything! I didn't find any jackets I liked, but I got two nice scarves, some basic sweaters for work, and some nice warm socks. We went to Aru Aru City next for some anime shopping and I got three Japanese books before heading over to Cha Cha Town where I found a great jacket! Megan also found a great jacket, which completed our shopping! Cha Cha Town was packed because the character Jibanyan from the games/TV show Yokai Watch was performing on stage. We decided to get lunch before the show finished and I'm glad we did! The restaurant filled up very quickly fifteen minutes after we sat down. We had a great lunch at a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) place. We both went home after lunch and I did a lot of cleaned before Kikumi came over. We went to Costco together for me to get some final things for Thanksgiving.

Now I'm just getting everything ready for Thanksgiving. A lot of people are coming over on Thursday and I'm so excited, even if now I'm running around crazy making sure everything is ready.