Reunion!

I had a reunion on July 14th.
There were lots of my old friends and we all went to same junior high school!
(Some of them and I went to same elementary school.)
I was so excited to see them because I haven't seen them for a long time :)

We had the reunion at a restaurant which is close to our school.
It started at 7:00 pm but I had to go to a different party first.

When I went to the restaurant, all of my friends made lots of noise!!
It was really easy to find them there.

We kept eating and drinking!! We all were in high spirit!!

and.......

I WAS DRUNK!!

We all had really good time :)
I forgot to charge a battery of my camera so I couldn't take lots of picture... :(

Hee, me, Tsube, Kon-chan.

I went to same elementary school

and juniour school with Hee.

Tsube and Kon-chan
Tsube pretended to kiss Kon-chan.

When I showed my friends this picture,

they thought Tsube is a girl!!

Me and Che-kun

I pretended to kiss her but she tried to run away!!

The beautiful island Miyajima

We went to the beautiful island Miyajima on May 2nd.
It was the last day to spend time in Hiroshima.
We had to leave there and go to Kyoto.


When we went to Miyajima, we saw a guy who is from America in a train.
His name is Ryan and he also wanted to go to Miyajima.
So we went there togeter.


We had to cross the sea by ferry. It was awesome!
When we found the HUGE torii, we all were so excited and took a lot of picutres!
It was beautiful.


We finally arrived at Miyajima and there are lots of building which is so beautiful.

We wanted to go to close to torii and Anna and Tammy, Julie rolled up their pants and went to close to torii.
I wanted to do but my pants were too skinny to roll up...
Julie carried me on her back then!! She is so kind!!

Anna and Julie, me.

Julie carried me on her back!

There are LOTS of deers!

And they ate my map!!

It is my favorite picture!

They are so cute, aren't they?

We were going to the top of the island!

We saw a cool guy Pete and his wife.

He is really really funny and his wife is so cute.

Pete wrote "I'm Pete from Austria. Kiss" on the back of my hand.

We took a picture with Pete's wife.

Think about PEACE!

We went to Peace Park and Peace Memorial Museum,
Atomic Bomb Dome on May 1st.
I have been there on school trip when I was 14 years old.
I was sure I would feel differently.
And I was also sure my Canadian friends (Anna, Tammy, Julie)
and I would feel differently because A-bomb was dropped in "JAPAN".

I felt like this before.
I watched a movie "Letters from Iwo jima" with my ex-boyfriend
who is from America. This movie is about World War ll.
I was thinking about our grand parents when we watched this movie.
My grand parents and his grand parents must have been enemies.
And they should have killed each other.
After 62 years, their grand children (my ex-boyfriend and me) were dating.
When I was a little girl, my grand mom kept talking about World War ll.
She didn't hate America, she just talked about her experience to me a lot.
I felt something weird when we watched this movie with my ex-boyfriend.
I cannot exprain well but if I have watched this movie with "JAPANESE" friend,
I would not feel like that.
It was importand to watch this movie with my ex-boyfriend who is from
the country which used to be our enemy.

Anna, Maki, Julie

At Peace Memorial Museum

These pictures are from Peace Memorial Museum.

A lot of people lost their family.

Before


Now (The name is A-bomb Dome.)

A-bomb broke everithing...

A-bomb killed lots of people...

Deformed glass bottle.

A-bomb Dome in the night.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Himeji castle

I went to Himeji castle with Anna and Julie, Tammy on April 30th!
I was so excited to go on a trip with them :)

We left Osaka in the morning and went to Himeji by a train.

Anna and me at a station!

Julie touched the bullet train.

We took this train!!

We arrived at Himeji and went to the Himeji castle.
It was first time to ge there.
I really like Japanese culture and old building like this castle!!
So I was really really excited to go into the castle.

It was so beautiful and HUGE!!

I have Himeji castle!!

We were clibming the wall!!

Cherry blossom was dead!

Culture difference

I went to an airport to pick a my friend Julie up with Anna and Tammy on April 29th.
When I waited for her, I saw a little boy who speaks English.
His name is Silas who is 4 years old.
(He wears yellow shirt in this picture.)
He was waiting for his dad with a Japanese girl.

When I spoke to him, he asked me my name.
He said "Nice to meet you!" and he tried to shake hands.
And he also said "I only speak English, can you speak English?"
He is really cute, isn't he?
In Japan, 4 years old kids don't introduce themselves well and they don't ask if I speak Japanese.

It seems I saw different cultures.
I think Silas knows people speak a lot of kinds language.
Maybe people speak to him in many language in his country.
It is really rare people speak to kids in different languages in Japan.
Maybe Japanese kids doesn't know there are a lot of kinds of language in the world.

Welcome to Japan, Tammy!

We had a welcome party for Tammy!
We went to our favorite restaurant Dream Heart.

Eat, drink, eat, drink, eat, drink....

Tiffany, Maki, Lincoln, Mark, Tammy

(Anna was taking this picture.)

It was first time to see Tammy.

She is really nice and friendly!!

We will go on a trip with Anna and Julie!!

Julie will come to Japan tomorrow :)

I can't wait to see her :D

SAKURA

"Sakura" means cherry blossoms in Japanese.

We love sakura very much.
In spring, we can get a lot of things which is made from sakura.

Sakura tea, sakura ice cream, sakura chocolate, sakura rice, sakura sweets,
sakura potato chips, sakura jelly, sakura wine, sakura jam....and more.

I wanna introduce some of them.

Sakura ice cream

Sakura jam

Sakura KitKat

Sakura tea

Sakura bread

Sakura cake

Do you wanna try them?

The Doll's Festival

I'm sure that this post will be the most difficult one that ever I wrote.

We have The Doll's Festival for little girls on March 3rd in Japan.

The family who has a little girl decorates these dolls to hope she will grow up well.

We call this all dolls "Hina ningyo".

The festival originated more than 1,000 years ago.

A long time ago, Japanese people purify to use a doll on March 3rd.

In their purification, they leave to have their sin to the doll,

and they rub the doll against their skin, they blow their breath to the doll.

After all, they float the doll in a river.

(The doll is different from Hina ningyo.)

There were two kinds of dolls in Japan.

The first one was used to purify.

The second one was used to play dolls.

Hina ningyo came when the first one and the second one were mixed.

A long time a go, it was very difficult that all kids grew up well.

There were a lot of very bad illness.

So all familys used the Hina ningyo as a wish.

But it looked different from Hina ningyo we can buy today.

In the Edo era, its appearance was changed.

The dolls looked like the people who lived in the court lived in Heian era.