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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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