JILL IN JAPAN!!!!

Happy New Year! あけましておめでとうございます！

I hope the year has brought everyone wonderful moments thus far.

My New Year holiday was particularly exciting because JILL came to visit for about two weeks! We had a fantastic time traveling around Japan. It was something I had really looked forward to, mainly because I was going to see my lovely sister, and also because I was excited to see MORE of Japan.

We met in Tokyo and spent a few days there. This is somewhat stating the obvious, but Tokyo is a ridiculously enormous city. We spent all our time there just walking around. Our favorite highlights were the Tsukiji Fish Market, Ameyoko Arcade, the Sumida-gawa (river) Cruise and the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. My good friend Katrina described the fish market perfectly: "Pike Place on steroids." :) Ameyoko Arcade was similar to Tsukiji, only even more crowded--which was hard to believe--and also included other types of shops that weren't food-focused. The Sumida-gawa Cruise was a great way to view the riverbanks of Tokyo at sunset! The Mori Tower, while expensive to simply ride an elevator to the top floor, yielded some amazing nighttime views of the city. It was then that we both really had that "wow, Tokyo is actually really big..." moment. It's a great viewpoint because you get a 360 degree view of the city.

We traveled to Kyoto for New Year's Eve and spent a few days in Kyoto. Kyoto is the place to go for temple and shrine-hopping. We spent New Year's Eve going to a nice little "izakaya" (drinking restaurant, essentially), checking out Yasaka-jinja shrine, stopping at a bar for a drink and then attempting to return to the shrine, only to find that a line had formed for entry into the shrine. It was the largest line (and crowd) and I have ever been in in my life! We spent an hour and a half in line and made it back into the shrine around 1am. Needless to say, we did our "count-down" in line with a funny group of teenage boys. As for the rest of our time in Kyoto, we especially loved the famous gold-plated temple--Kinkaku-ji, as well as traveling to the nearby towns Nara and Uji. In Nara, it was really fascinating to see Todai-ji temple, which contains Daibutsu-den, the largest wooden building in the world which also houses an ENORMOUS Buddha. The deer in Nara were insane! Very confident, almost to the point of aggression. Though I did buy some "deer biscuits," I was a bit more timid than I had expected to be! Uji is famous in Japan for Mattcha--green tea. We bough some delicious green tea snacks!! Possibly the only thing that I'll ever taste that is both lime-green AND delicious... :)

Though our favorite sights in Kyoto and surrounding areas had throngs of tourists, we still appreciated them very much. As Jill and I always say, there is a REASON that these sights are crowded.

After that, we ventured to Hiroshima for a very short two-night trip. Visiting the Peace Park was incredibly moving. Though I learned bits and pieces about the history of the atomic bomb, it didn't REALLY hit me until I realized that "this is where it happened and this is WHAT happened." We spent about three hours going through a very well-done (and very expansive) museum. It was truly chilling. Jill and I both made the observation that Hiroshima was a very clean-looking and quite modern-looking city. It is interesting to think about the reason for this. On our last morning in Hiroshima, we got up very early and went to a cool island--Miyajima Island--which is just 10 minutes away by ferry. There was a special ceremony and dance happening at sunrise at the Miyajima shrine. Because of train times and ferry times, we couldn't get there very early, but we did get there to see the dancers (all men) adorned in exquisite costumes and masks, dancing to traditional Japanese musical instruments being played by another group of men in traditional white attire.

We couldn't stay long at the dance, because we had to get back to Kanonji so I could teach that afternoon! We got back at 12:30 and I had to work at 2:00. Though I had to work during the last few days of our time together, it was still fun. Jill got to meet some of my fun adult conversation students, as well as my quirky boss and his amazingly sweet and kind wife. Seiji, my boss took Jill for a two-hour drive in the surrounding area and out to a cool peninsula which I have been wanting to go to since I got here! I'm a bit jealous...that night, we hung out with Aya and Aki to celebrate Aki's birthday! The next day after my work, we went out to a lovely dinner with my boss and his wife. The last day that Jill was in Kanonji, she got to meet my good friend Sumi at a cute little "welcome party" that Sumi hosted at her house. It was really great to have Jill meet all the people I see regularly here in Kanonji.....

And then Jill had a loooong day of traveling, starting at 5am from my apartment. One 10-minute taxi ride, one 7-hour train ride, and one 11-hour plane flight later...she was back in the States. I figured she would be exhausted for at least a few days, however, when I called her later in the day to check on her, she was comfortably situated in a bar in Portland, so that dispelled all concerns. :)

I miss her!!! But life here is back on the fast track, especially since Aya and I are doing overtime lessons for three Unicharm factory men who will be going abroad for 2 years beginning in March. They each have to have 50 hours of English under their belts before leaving Japan. Can you say crash-course English or what?

I hope all is well with everyone. I would love to hear from all of you, whenever you have a chance.

Oh, and there is a link to the photos from our trip at the right of this post under "Pictures." Jill is a great photographer and snapped the majority (aka, ALL) of these shots!