Teacher Trip

Last week we didn't have school on Saturday. After school on Friday, we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. It was my first trip via Shinkansen, and it was awesome! While waiting on the platform, Ruthie and I read the information board. It scrolled information in Japanese and English. The English read, "The train is standing around a central location of the platform." Though I looked for the train, I didn't see it standing around anywhere on the platform, let alone the aforementioned central location.

Once in Hiroshima, we sat a long Japanese style table in sei-za (sitting on the floor, on your knees, with your toes directly beneath the body) for a huge dinner. We started with sashimi and some kind of fish liver. This was followed with crab, some kind of prawn, deep fried sardines, deep fried squid, deep fried ham and onion on a stick, a bowl of rice with roasted eel, Kirin, and sake. It was quite a spread. Here's a picture I from Ruthie's blog . . .



The next day we took a bus to Iwami Ginzan, an old silver mine that is now a World Heritage site. Just south of the mine is a little town where the miners used to live. People still live in the buildings, and there were lots of cute little shops - notice the fancy wooden enclosure for the vending machine in the second picture below. I wish we had had more time here. There were lots of trails in the woods leading to shrines and ruins. It would have been fun to do a little more exploring, but I had a great time.