Long time, no see, huh? Time has been moving along — spring keeps teasing, but winter hangs on here. But that’ll shortly change for me, at least for a week. I’m going to be heading back to Tucson for spring break. I’ll mostly be taking care of some business, catching up with family & friends and hopefully networking with old coworkers. Gotta start that job hunting for after JET… Anyways, I’ll be in town from late afternoon March 21st to very early morning March 29th. Get in touch if you’re interested in getting together or such while I’m in town. Cya!

I got back home a little after 11 PM last night. I decided to try to do the 16 hour trip from Tokyo to Hiroshima (well, actually it was Kawasaki to Mukaihara) in one marathon journey. Started 7:06 AM and arrived home at 11:18 PM. Almost all of that was either on trains or transfering between trains, I only had one layover of 44 minutes. In total, 11 transfers and about 920 km. The fare would normally been around $100, but using the Seishun 18 Kippu it was only about $20. There were a couple times I had to stand for a short while, but it wasn’t so bad overall. I did have the forethought to bring some drinks and snacks, though.

I’ve got one more day on my ticket to use before September 10th, so I’ll have to think about a day-trip somewhere close.

Today I slept in and piddled around the house a bit. School starts again tomorrow, but I’m hoping there won’t be too much to do on the first day of classes…

I’m taking about a week and a half of vacation, heading up to Hokkaido using the Seishun 18 Kippu. I’m planning on stopping at a few places along the way, including a day in Tokyo. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a few pics along the way.

I had plans today to go to Miyajima to see the Tama-no-tori festival. Weather was pretty clear and looked good, so I headed off and arrived at the island a little before 11:30am. The event was supposed to start at 12:00pm according to the link above, so I figured I was doing good. Noon rolled around, still nothing going on at the site (I could see the set-up, there just wasn’t anyone around it). I wandered around a bit and eventually ran across a poster advertising the event — it indicated that things were to start at 11am… Doh! Apparently it was over pretty quickly, there were no obvious clues when I arrived that everything was already over. Too bad, I hadn’t been able to see it the previous years because it was on weekdays. Not that big of a loss I guess, but probably would have been fun. Gonna have to check the times more closely on these “last chance” events…

I wandered around and took yet more pictures of the island. Here’s one of a future samurai, or maybe fisherman, not quite sure:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I decided that since this is my last year, I should attend the memorial ceremonies in the morning. My first year, I’d just gotten here and hadn’t even visited Hiroshima yet — I think I watched the event on TV. Last year was the big 60th anniversary. It was obviously going to be a bit too big an event for my taste, so I decided to do the night-time lantern ceremony (where candle lanterns with messages written on them are floated down the river). It was quite pretty and moving. But I hadn’t attended the main memorial in the morning yet, so I got up early this morning to catch the 6:48 train into the city.

Even getting up that early was cutting things a bit close. The ceremony was to start at 8:00, I arrived at Peace Park at 8:15, just as the bell was tolling the time of the bomb blast. Most people stopped to observe a minute of silence, so I stood there reflecting on it, within sight of the A-Bomb Dome. I then made my way over to the area that the ceremony was taking place. As expected, it was very crowded but I managed to find a spot in the back with a good view (at least via 10x zoom). I’d missed the laying of the wreaths, but had arrived in time to catch Prime Minister Koizumi’s speech. One of the other speeches was delivered for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who obviously couldn’t attend because he is currently busy trying to make peace. Anyways, I think this is the first time I’ve seen a world leader type person like this.

Read the rest of this entry »