11/12/10 - Home
I had a lie in today. Yay! However, I was woken up by the sound of a lawnmower. I kid you not. I live on the tenth floor, in the middle of the city, not a square inch of mowable grass within about a 10km radius, and I could swear I heard a lawn mower. New Zealand summer is coming to haunt me!!
Also downstairs or upstairs, I'm not sure which, someone is doing construction. At 9am. On a Saturday. It's quite loud.
The birds are also REALLY strange. Nothing like NZ birds at all. We were walking to the elementary school with Ms Ukida the other day, and heard this weird squawking noise, so asked her what it was. She told us that the birds were singing. No joke.
Peace Park
Today, Masumi and Ji-chan took me to the へいわこうえん、or the Peace Park. It was both amazing and really scary. (My blood sugars went low while I was there, and I wasn't actually sure if it was the exhibits making me feel all shaky, or my sugars. I always get more emotional when I'm low. Hence the crying during a Hannah Montana episode. 'Nuff said?)
Anyway, NUCLEAR WEAPONS SUCK. I kind of already knew how bad it was, but seeing all the 'material witnesses', like the clothes and photos of people with radiation burns, and hearing some of the stories (I had an audio guide) almost brought me to tears. I have NEVER heard a museum so quiet. At the beginning of the exhibit, people were still talking, and acting normal,. Everyone walking out was a hell of a lot quiter and paler. Really, there's no words to explain everything that was there. You'll have to go to Hiroshima to understand it - the atmosphere in the room makes all the difference.
Afterwards
So, after the museum, Ji-chan took me and Masumi to an Okonomiyaki restaurant. It was yummy, but probably not my favourite food so far. For dinner (after I successfully figured out how to upload photos) we had sashimi. Definitely not my favourite food so far =P I don't mind raw fish on/in sushi, but it seemed kinda weird to be shoveling whole pieces of it into my mouth... I think I'll grow to like it though =)
13/12/10
Yesterday morning, we got up nice and early to see Kagura, which is the tradtional Shinto dancing. Lots of oni (evil spirits) and samurai (I think) and singing that I couldn't understand... but it was really interesting! The one thing I couldn't really fathom out was how the performers changed their masks so fast!
And the toilets at the theatre... After the third act (we skipped the fourth and went home) I lined up, as you do, and then whaddaya know, they're all traditional Japanese toilets. I left in rather a hurry... they scare me just a little bit!! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it.)
But anyways, when we got home, I had a mass upload of photos to Facebook, yay! I have a feeling I'll be taking more than 8GB of photos and video, though. I deleted the 124 photos from the Mazda museum today though. I took most of them for Mark, and they're on FB now, so my work is DONE.
The Mazda Museum was really interesting though! The hydrogen cars were really cool =) I thought the blue one was quite funny. It looks really futuristic on the outside, all bubble-like, then on the inside it has really old school 90's bus-style patterned seats. It made me laugh, just a little =P
Right, ttfn, more to come!!
Anna x
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