Momma Always Told Me That Life Is Like A Bento Box...You Never Know What You're Going To Get

Well, life is never dull in the cities of Japan. What an amazing couple days I've had! I originally thought I would only write today's post about my 24 hour adventure in Kyoto, but there were too many incredible things that happened on Friday! The day started with a seminar on Peace Education. I really wasn't sure what to expect from this lecture, but it was truly and amazing experience...

Later this year, you (8th graders) will read the The Diary of Anne Frank in your English class and have the opportunity to hear from men who fought in World War II. Japan was allied with Germany in WWII and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, they forced the United States to enter the war. In retaliation for that attack, the United States used the first nuclear weapon during a time of war and dropped it on a city in Japan called Hiroshima. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Hiroshima as a result, and many people are still suffering from the aftermath today. On Friday, we had an opportunity to meet with a man who survived the bombing of Hiroshima and a second generation survivor, the daughter of another man who survived the attack. It was amazing and emotional to hear their stories and to have the opportunity to talk with them about what we can do as teachers to make sure human beings do not use nuclear weapons again.

After that moving and emotional presentation, I took a walk in the garden of the hotel. I had heard it was beautiful, but I really had no idea just how beautiful it is! There is a pond with koi fish and a waterfall, a zen rock garden, and beautiful paths to guide you through. It used to be the garden of a castle and when the hotel bought the land they decided to preserve the garden. There was even a bride and groom in the garden getting their pictures taken....a whole month before their wedding! I guess in Japan it is not considered bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before their wedding day. I asked the bride if I could take a picture because her dress was SO beautiful...it is made out of kimono. According to another woman in the park, this is NOT a typical Japanese wedding dress.

After lunch we had a couple more lectures and presentation and then I left right away for Kyoto with five other teachers. Kyoto is about a three hour train ride from Tokyo, so we wanted to make sure we got on a train as soon as possible. Since we hadn't eaten dinner, we were very hungry. Our plan was to get a bento box in the train station, but our train pulled up to the platform before we had a chance. We decided to eat when we got to Kyoto instead.

We started our sightseeing in Kyoto bright and early this morning. There were so many temples and shrines that we wanted to see, but we knew we wouldn't be able to see them all. We decided to start with the one that was farthest away and then make our way back towards the train station.

The first site we went to was the Golden Pavilion. This is a temple building from the early 13th century that is actually covered in gold leaf. You can't go into the pavilion any more, but you can walk through the gardens around the outside. Next, we took the bus to the Ryogen Temple, which has a famous Rock Garden. It was amazing how peaceful it was on the grounds of this temple!

The best part of the day came next, when we got lost in the outskirts of Kyoto while looking for the bus to take us to the next shrine. We walked past a little restaurant with a statue outside. One of the members of our group wanted his picture taken with the statue, so we stopped for a minute. The owner of the restaurant came out and started talking to us (in Japanese of course!). At this point we were pretty hungry and the restaurant had sushi, so we decided to stop in for lunch. While we were waiting for our food, we somehow managed to communicate with the owner of the restaurant, a very cute, little , old lady. She runs the restaurant with her oldest son, who is the cook, and her youngest son is a police officer. The lady showed us the origami she makes and gave us each a beautiful paper doll in a kimono. She had a few phrases in English written down in a notebook and one of the people in our group knew a few phrases in Japanese. While we ate our lunch, the woman made us little origami gifts and (because we didn't know what else we could give her) we gave her our meishi (business cards). When she saw we were teachers she was very excited. She wanted to teach us something, so she gave us all a lesson in how to make origami samurai hats! It was such an incredible lunch, and as our hostess said, we now have good memories :)

It was sad to say goodbye to our new friends, but we knew we had a limited amount of time left in Kyoto and there was still so much we wanted to see and do. Unfortunately, our good sense of direction ran out at that point and we got a little bit more lost than we were before. After taking two wrong buses, we finally got back on track and made our way through the busy shops and streets of Kyoto to an area known as Gion, Kyoto's famous Geisha district. I didn't get to see any geisha myself, but it was a really neat area of the city.

Exhausted from all of our walking, we finally got our bento boxes in the train station and boarded the next train back to Tokyo. Since none of us can read Japanese and it's not always easy to tell from the pictures what is in the boxes, nobody's bento box had the kind of food in it they were expecting, but we were all pleasantly surprised at how tasty our meals were. Now it's 1:30 am on Saturday and I still have to pack my suitcase. In a few hours I will be leaving Tokyo for a little over a week and heading to Saga City and Takeo (pronounced Ta-kay-o). On that note, I think it's time I got some rest!