Rotary District Conference and "Flower City"

The rest of October after my school trip was very slow. We started getting back into school, all suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation, and other normal routine activities. I don’t remember much of what else happened in October; it was one of those good kinds of blur moments when I look back. Nothing too exciting happened, nothing extremely drastic happened, it was just a time of relaxing and calm and every exchange student needs that.

I do, however, remember two special weekends in October after the school trip. The first one happened right after the school trip, literally. As soon as I got home from my epic adventures in southern Japan, my host parents tell me I have to wake up early (again) and go to this mysterious Rotary event. I didn’t really understand what it was and when I talked to Karly, the other girl from our district, about it she said we exchange students were going to a museum for the day. Well, that turned out to be only half true. My host dad, another member from my host club, and I drove to Fukushima City, the capital of Fukushima-ken (“-ken” means prefecture), and low and behold it was their Rotary District Conference. All of us exchange students were completely shocked and had no idea this was going on that weekend. Oh the life of an exchange student. Haha.

Despite the slight confusion at the beginning of the conference, we ended up having a lot of fun. I think if you stuck us five girls anywhere we would make most of the situation and have the best times of our lives. I really love those girls. It was my first time seeing three of them since the Summer Orientation, Karly and I got together between then, so we all had a lot of catching up to do. After the opening ceremonies of the conference (it was a two day event and we went on the second day), some Rotarians ushered us out of the auditorium and we got on a bus and did indeed go to a museum. I don’t remember much of the museum; we mostly wandered around aimlessly just chatting for the most part. Don’t worry, I didn’t miss out on some important Japanese cultural museum, the museum we went to was an Egyptian museum…yeah… Anyways, our next stop was at a little ice cream shop where they had very bizarre flavors including things like pumpkin and soba flavored ice cream. (Soba is a type a buckwheat noodle.) I think all of us just went with peach in the end. Before we headed back to the conference, we stopped at another museum/cultural arts type building where we watched people make and form glass and glass objects like bowls and cups as well as people making traditional Japanese wooden dolls which are called Kokeshi.


I was kinda dumb and forgot my camera so these are my friend's photos. This is at the opening ceremony.

Us exchange students and some Rotarians outside the museum! From left to right: Ena (USA), Me (Canada, Karly (Canada - she left her blazer in the bus), Oceanne (France), Brendha (Mexico).


These are all hand made and hand painted Kokeshi.

The rest of the conference was actually quite dull for us exchange students. We were able to introduce ourselves to the crowd by standing up and bowing when they called our names but nothing else too exciting happened. I’m sure if we were able to understand the speakers we would have enjoyed them a bit more. But at the end of the day, I was glad I was able to go and be a part of their District Conference as well as see my exchange friends.



Either the weekend after the conference of the weekend after that (I can’t remember) my host grandparents took me to a small town called Hanawa to see some of its amazing Dahlia gardens. (Hanawa translates to Flower City/Town I believe.) I was a bit confused and not really expecting much from this town’s flower attractions because really, it was late October and you would think flowers would be dead now. Was I ever wrong.

Let me take a moment for a second to explain what the weather has been like here in Japan. When it’s not raining, the temperature is usually between 10-15 degrees Celsius with a slight, refreshing autumn wind. It also wasn’t until the last week of October to the first week of November that the leaves on the trees began to turn color and fall. They just finished their rice harvesting season but many of the family gardens I see are still growing and blooming. Just two weeks ago I saw people PLANTING flowers in their garden. What is this insanity? Haha. I really love it though, me not being a snow kind of person. Who knows when we will get our first snow here?



These two pictures were taken in the first week of November. Crazy eh??

Anyways, back t o Hanawa! We first stopped at this farmers’ market type place where obaa-san (my host grandma) bough a bunch of different types of vegetables and flowers. She also bought me Dahlia flavored ice cream that is made from real Dahlia flowers! It was one of the most amazing tasting ice cream cones I have ever eaten. Afterwards, we drove to the biggest Dahlia garden in Hanawa and I was simply blown away. For one, the sizes of some of those flowers were unbelievable! Their “heads” would be drooping because they were too heavy for the stems to support. And the array of colors! The garden seemed to go and on and on like a sea of bright colors.













I apologize for the massive amounts of these flower pictures. Haha.

We then took a drive through the mountains, sounds pleasant right? Haha. Haha. No. I thought for sure I was going to lose my lunch. My obaa-san is probably the world’s craziest driver. For starters, the mountain road was very narrow, hardly any room to hold two cars going in opposite direction. Secondly, being a mountain road, it had many twists and turns all the way up. And lastly, obaa-san decided to take the speed limit signs as just “suggested speeds”. That part of my day was very….memorable.

When we arrived near the end of mountain road takes you, we pulled over and walked a bit to this temple in the middle of the forest. The view was spectacular and across from the temple, you could see this shrine built right into the mountain. Obaa-san told me that if I wanted to climb up the mountain and see the shrine closer up I could and that she would wait in the car. It’s so hard to describe how beautiful it was and how awe-struck I was by it.


The view of the shrine from the temple.

When I was making my way to the stairs it felt like I was walking in a middle of this giant rainforest, which it probably was. From a distance, the shrine didn’t look like it was so high up but it was only until I was halfway up the stairs until I realized how crazy high this thing was. Man, I was so sore the next day. The shrine was built into this cave in the side of the mountain but I’m not sure if the cave itself was man-made or not. There was the main shrine, some smaller shrines and statues, as well as this “prayer tablet wall” where you write down your prayers and wishes. It’s so different for me to see other cultures’ religions up close and personal because I have been raised in a Christian home. Once I was finished looking around, I realized my now daunting task to walk back down all of those stone, slippery stairs. Thankfully, I made it back in one piece.


Look at how green everything is!

At the bottom of the stairs, looking up to the shrine.

The main shrine in the cave.

The prayer card board.

I’m really glad that my host grandparents enjoy taking me out to places on the weekends; it’s just so nice to spend time with them. I’m defiantly going to miss them when I have to move host families, which by the way is pretty quick here. (December 4th.)

I was going to try and fit in my birthday adventures, but this entry is getting really long already and it’s also getting late. So, I will try and have the next entry up as soon as possible! Thanks for being so patient everyone!

~Stephanie

The Rest of My School Trip

On day two of the trip, we made our way to Osaka, the third largest city in Japan. In the morning we went to Osaka Castle and got there fairly early, before most of the tourist rush got there. The castle was just, wow; it was in such great condition and looked spectacular. We even got to go inside of the castle and tour its many levels. Each level was full of different parts of history and had replicas and original artifacts on display. My favorite level was the top where we were able to go outside and look down at everyone on the ground. It also had an amazing view of the city. It was simply breath taking.





At the top of the castle.

View of Osaka from the top of the castle.

The rest of our day was spent at the famous Universal Studios Japan! (USJ for short.) It was defiantly a lot of fun, but not one of my favorite parts of the trips. I really wanted to go on a lot of rides, however the group of girls I with mostly wanted to do shopping so we ended up only going on two rides. I was pretty sore by the end of that day from all that walking.







That evening, we got back onto our buses and made a quick hour’s drive to Kyoto and checked into our “ryokan”. What’s a ryokan, you may be asking? A ryokan is a Japanese styled hotel where the rooms are very spacious and have “tatami” floors, which you can’t wear your shoes or slippers onto. There are also no beds in ryokan rooms. In the closest are folded up futons that you lay out yourself before going to bed. Now, many people may say that futons are the most uncomfortable things to sleep on, but I beg to differ; especially since the bed I sleep on currently is pretty much like sleepy on the floor. Also at ryokans, they don’t have private shower rooms. There are two separate public baths in the hotel, one for men and the other for women. Public baths are a major part of the Japanese culture, but it was very frightening for me at first, having not experienced anything like it before.



This was our incredibly messy room at the ryokan.

I kind of wished we were able to tour the city of Osaka a bit more, it being the third largest city in Japan and all. Hopefully in the future of my exchange I will get the chance to go back there sometime.

Day number three was what every student was looking forward to the most about the trip. The teachers were letting us loose to roam the city of Kyoto on our own (in groups of course) and I couldn’t have had a better time. Our group consisted of: Misato, Ikumi, Sayaka, Natsumi, Shouko, “Ikimen”, “Banban”, and myself. Because our group was one of the larger ones, we were able to split up for parts of the day so Ikumi, Misato, and I stuck together for the day. We did however meet up with the rest of the groups at different places to take pictures together and such.

In those four days of the trip I experienced many firsts for me and on the Kyoto day, I got to ride on my first subway and local trains as well as experience how Japanese train stations work. It was very confusing, and I am so glad I had my friends there so they could help me get the correct ticket for the train or subway I wanted to ride on.

Some of the places we visited that day included: Nijo-jō, Kinkaku-ji, (ji means temple), Ryoan-ji, Tou-ji, and this park area (I forget what the park area was called) where there were all sorts of different temples and shrines inside. Everything was just so beautiful! I’m having a really hard time describing how happy and excited I felt, that I still feel, when I saw these amazing places. There is so much history here, it’s simply incredible.


Our group at the entreance of Nijo-jō.

Nijo-jō.

Kinkaku-ji.


The famous rock garden at Ryoan-ji.

One of the temples at that park, it was huge.

Tao-ji.


We also did our fair share of shopping in Kyoto as well. We went to Kyoto Station which is a train station but it is also their shopping mall! How crazy is that? I bought all sorts of souvenirs for myself, friends, family, and my host family. Kyoto has so many specialty sweets that you can only get in Kyoto, and they are so delicious! My favorite are called “yatsuhashi” and basically they are triangles shaped sweets made out of this special, amazing dough filled with “anko” (sweet bean paste). My favorites were cinnamon, strawberry, and chocolate. Oh my gosh, I want to hop on the Shinkansen this instant and go to Kyoto for some. Haha! I think I ended up buying four boxes of yatsuhashi. We took a break from our shopping at a little café inside of the station where we ordered these extravagant parfaits. I think Japan should be renamed as the “sweet capital of the world”! But I think I was able to walk and sweat off all the sweets I ate during the trip. (Did I mention how hot it was? It was like 30 degrees for the whole time! In October! Crazy eh?!)



Misato and Ikumi had Matcha flavored parfaits (the green one) and I had a strawberry one. Looks delicioius eh?

Everyone was so exhausted after that day; the morning of last day of our trip came way too quickly. Despite being slightly cranky in the morning from the lack of sleep my body was suffering from, my morning brightened up very quickly when we went to a special little shop in Kyoto where we were taught how to make yatsuhashi! (I love those things so much. Haha.)


Yatsuhashi!!!

So with a bit of sugar in me, I was ready for our last stop in our school trip; Kiyomizu-dera. (Dera also means temple, but specifically referring to a Buddhist temple.) It was defiantly a great way to end the trip. We went to the temple first and were lead around by a tour guide then the teachers told us we were allowed to tour around by ourselves until lunch. Misato, Ikumi, “Udon”, and I looked around together and then went down to the “little” marketplace that was below the temple grounds. The amount of tourists that were there was shocking, I’m surprised we didn’t lose each other in the crowds.




Looking down.

A view of Kyoto from the temple.




I took this as we were walking through the marketplace.

The train ride back home seemed very long, mostly because I was completely exhausted. Was I ever grateful that we had the next day off. It defiantly took me awhile to catch up on all the sleep I lost that week. But was it ever worth it! And if you couldn't tell from the amount of pictures I have included in these school trip posts, I took WAY too many pictures. Haha! I think I almost took 500 pictures during those four days.

Yay! I can’t believe I was able to finish writing about my school trip, let alone fit three days in one post. Again, my sincere apologies about not keeping my blog update, I really owe it to you all to keep I updated. Thank you for your patience and hopefully I can get a post up about my birthday, some stuff I have done with Rotary here and my trip to Tokyo pretty quickly.

じゃあまたね!

~Stephanie