On our third day in Hiroshima, we took the Shinkansen, in other words, the Bullet Train, to Kyoto. Kyoto is the town in Japan were you can see a lot of traditional stuff. We saw about 100 people who had dressed up as Geishas. Geishas are people in Japan who are entertainers for men. They don’t ever really actually want to be them. It’s a lot of pain and uncomfortableness for their part. They wear these kimonos that are very fancy! There are  a million different places where people go to where other people dress them up to look like real Geishas.

In Kyoto, I can’t even tell you how many shrines, pagodas, and temples we saw, but I can tell you, it was a lot! Most of the shrines were all orange and were made in 160 something.

Apart from the temples and shrines, we did a lot of other amazing stuff. Every day we walked through the town of Kyoto and ate ice cream. One day we went to a place where there were a bunch of gates you walk through up a mountain. It was so much fun! Another day we we got on a boat and we did a little trip down the river. We went on a few class two and three rapids. It was really fun! After the boat, we walked up to the bamboo forest. It was so cool on the way, we heard a guy playing this instrument called the hand pan.

Yesterday the Stevensons left! I was sooooooo sad to see them go. They were on their way to Tokyo. We then left and walked to our next hotel. We are staying one more night in Kyoto than the Stevensons. Once we got to our hotel we rented bikes and rode along the river for two and a half hours. I am sitting in our room writing this. We are leaving Kyoto to go back to Sapporo this afternoon.

P.S. Most of the pictures I took I used our big camera. Once we get back to Sapporo, I will put those picures in another blog.

We arrived in Hiroshima on a Wednesday. It’s a city on the main island of Japan, Honshu, and it’s where the the Americans dropped the atomic bomb. We got there late at night so we went straight to bed. When we woke up in the morning we put on our hats and shoes and started off. Our first destination was the A-bomb Dome. When the bomb exploded in Hiroshima, the A-bomb Dome was one of the few buildings that survived. The only thing left of it is all the metal in the dome and part of the brick building.

After that we passed the Children’s Peace Memorial. It has a giant statue of Sadako. She is a girl who was two when the bomb was dropped and she died nine years later from Leukemia. Her friend told her while she was in the hospital that if she made a thousand paper cranes, the gods would grant her wish. She made cranes every day, but she only made over 600 before she died. Her classmates made the rest for her once she was dead. They also made a book about her and then she got really famous. Ever since then, people from all over the world have been sending her cranes. We made a lot and gave them to her.

Next was the Peace Museum. It was really cool but also very creepy and sad. There were pictures of people that were deformed from the bomb. Most of them were of people that had been burnt. There was also pictures of people that had blood dots under their skin, whose tongues had grown, etc. They also had stuff telling you about the bomb, a display of things that had survived the bombing and were all burnt, and about the bombs. The glasses were melted, so were the marbles. There was a bicycle that was completely charred and black. It was crazy. One of the coolest things was to see the city before the bombing, and than after. You could really see the devastation.

After all of that we hit the arcade.

On Wednesday night the Stevensons got here. They are our very good friends from Idaho. They got to Japan late so we didn’t get to see them. We saw them the next morning and they went to school with us. They where supposed to get here on Tuesday night but they missed their first flight and were 24 hours late. School was a lot more fun with them. The kids, Lucy and Briggs, are twins so they were both supposed to go to Decker’s class. Since Lucy is my good friend, she got to go to fifth grade for the day. Their parents are Megan and Justin but we call them Mego and Dodo. We showed them around and went to Toriton*.

On Friday we left for Kiroro. We stayed in the Barn!!!!! If you read my earlier blog, you would remember that I have always wanted to go to the barn. Well, not always, just once I found out it existed. We stayed in a house five minutes away from the barn that the same guy owned. He also owned a pizza place! We stayed in that house for 2 nights and we went to Kiroro every day. It was soooooooo awesome!!!! The first two days were complete powder days and then the third day was a sunny bluebird day!!!!!!!! The powder days were awesome!!!!!! We kept finding untracked powder stashes and it was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!! The barn was also soooooo cool!! They had two llamas, four bunnies, one duck, a miniature horse, a pony, three dogs, and even an ostrich!!!!!!! They also had goats. There was one goat that was born a week and two days ago and it was sooo cute!!! And, even though you think it can’t get any better, they had baby goats that we born two hours ago!!!!!!!!!! They had to be kept in a separate place because it was too cold for them. We got to see them for thirty seconds and then we had to close the door. We got to let the week old goat out and she ran around so funny! On the third day we left and drove to Niseko and stayed in the place we stayed in last time. It’s called Alpine. I’m on the couch right now in Alpine writing this. I think we are going skiing today but I’m not sure.

Powder!

Wish bell at Kiroro

Powder in the chip bag!

They have to plow under the chair!!!

Mego

Kiroro!

Due to lack of snow…

P.S. Tap on the photos!

*My next blog is going to be about my favorite restaurants, places to go, onsens, etc…

Konnichi wa

If you didn’t know or I never told you, I go to school every Wednesday and Friday. Just kidding! I go to school on all the weekdays. I go to school in Sapporo at Hokkaido International School. I don’t really enjoy it. They are way behind on what I am working on so I’m bored all of the time. The kids definitely aren’t as kind as they were in Idaho. My teacher’s name is Mr. Kelly and I like him. We do a lot of the same things and a lot of different things from Idaho.

The different things we do are daily PE, IPC, and dance. We just changed our daily PE. It’s where after recess, we go down to the multipurpose room. We used to do skipping, which is their word for jumprope. We just changed to something that doesn’t have a name. It’s where we bring our milk cartons that we decorated down and we do different things with them like running around them and trying to hit them with balls. But that’s all we did because we just started today. For some reason that I do not know, Mr. Kelly calls the milk cartons “skittles”.

I’m pretty sure IPC stands for International Personal Curriculum but I could be wrong (not like that happens very often). We also have Japanese class. I know a little Japanese but not much. I like Japanese, dance, and our Google Docs. It’s where we pick a topic to write about, and I chose Idaho. I’d much rather go skiing than go to school.