Flake in order to Sense

So there are 88 temples on the island of Shikoku right? Anyway, I have visited my fair share of them and enjoyed them all. But yesterday we had a day off (miracle of miracles) and our friend, Jonas, took Kristen and I to the Iyadaniji temple. It is a temple near our house up in the mountains. It is sooooo beautiful. It is actually built right into the mountain. It is literally in the jungle and is so peaceful and serene. I could of spent all day there. Then we stopped by the beach on our way home and couldn't have asked for a more beautiful sunset. It was so picturesque. It was a beautiful day.

Here are the rest of the pictures from Tokushima. The other blog wouldn't let me post them. Enjoy.

If you can't tell what the title is refering to, you obviously can't see the picture of the peeing boy. Yes, they actually have a statue here in Japan of a little boy peeing off the side of the mountain. I have no idea why, but I am in Japan. They do some weird things here. This picture was actually taken in Tokushima, the fourth prefecture on Shikoku island. I only have one more to visit and Iam doing that this weekend. In Tokushima they have some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. We got to see a lot of it because we had to drive on windy back roads through the mountains to get to the places we wanted. We saw whirlpools, the first temple on the pilgrimage to the 88 temples here on Shikoku, a vine bridge, and this very infamous statue. We did see our share of other interesting things, like the fake manequin ninja climbing up the wall of a building. I also got to eat my very first REAL fish stick ever (it was an entire fish on a stick that was bar-b-qued. It was delicious). It was a fun trip and well worth it. The flat tire wasn't though and the little boy looks just like we did when we got the flat. It was an interesting day.

Camping Japanese style consists of finding the best cabin available (even better than my apartment), bringing your own Yakinuki table, making sushi, and sleeping on real beds and futonss (no sleeping bags). I went with a GEM School franchise owner, named Toshi, and her daughter Mau, and another one of my students, named Mami, and her mother, and Kristen, Kira, and Jessica. It was really fun, but it seemed like we were staying more at a 4 star hotel than actually camping. We did make s'mores and went to a park the next day with a col water fall, and we did get out into nature and walking around. The cool thing is that nature here also includes bamboo. Its great. It was fun to have a day off and get away from the world. I can at least say I have been "camping" in Japan.

Anyone who knows anyone from my family knows how important holidays are to us. Well, St. Patrick's day is no different. We have a little leprechaun friend named Lem who visits our house every year. His favorite thing to do is to make a MESS. And I don't mean a little one, I mean HUGE one!! Anyway, I was concerned that being all the way here in Japan, Lem might not know where to find me. He must have connections with Santa Clause or something because find me he did and he made a grand mess of things at my house. It was the first time my roommate has experienced Lem and she thought he was great. Lem strikes again!!

So about 2 weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to Kochi, which is another prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It was way beautiful. It is really famous for this samurai guy. I can't rember his name for the life of me. They have a beautiful castle there which is built with black wood. We also got to go to the beach. The water was actually kind of warm and soo beautiful. It was a perfect sea green color. We also went to some caves called Ryugado. If anyone has ever been to the Mt. Timpanogas caves, its kind of like that. There were a few tight squeezes in there, but well worth it. We even saw two bats flying around. I loved the trip although I was extremely tired at the end of the day. It was fun to go to a beach again and I got some cool seashells to prove it. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

These hotties are my little Samurai!! Kira, Jessica, Kristen, Louise and I went to Matsuyama last Monday, and while we were shopping at Dogo Onsen, there were a group of like 20 boys that kept following us and saying "Japanese Samurai" and waving around these wooden samurai swords. So finally I asked to take a picture of them and they took off their jackets to show us pictures of a famous japanese samurai. It was really funny. I also video taped them jumping around and pretending to be samurai. It was really funny. We did get to go to the castle again (since I have already been there once) and see real samurai gear. As well we went to Dogo Onsen (an onsen is a public bath built around natural hot springs. The only problem is that you bathe naked. Luckily it is only men with men and women with women. We didn't go in though)and got to go to this really cool shrine near it (it is orange. My favorite color) and put our feet in the foot bath and watch the cool clock that sings and has dancing figurines on the hour every hour. It was an exhausting trip, but well worth it. I love having friends who are leaving Japan soon. You actually get to get out and see things. It's great!!

We have this microwave oven right. Well, everything on it's control panel is in Japanese, duh!! Well, usually we just stick something in, turn a nob, and press start and the microwave works. The other day I decided I wanted microwave pizza, but when I did the normal routine, it didn't work. So then I just started pressing buttons which made matters worse. So I pulled out the little japanese phrase book and dictionary and tried to figure out what all the little controls meant. Finally, after about an hour, I gave up and stuck the pizza in our little gas oven. Well the gas oven only cooks the top of the pizza, so I got some really burned pizza on one side, and really frozen on the other. My roommate got some great pictures of it.

So, I got to go to one of the coolest temples on Shikoku island. It was up on top of this mountain right here in Kanonji. It is really old, but right in the middle of the woods. They had cool statues, walk ways, seats,buildings, and other cool things there. My favorite chairs were the ones in shapes of hands that cupped your butt when you sat in them. There were also some pretty scary looking man statues, but I think I found the hottest one to be my hunk. This temple also happens to be near a ski resort, so there were cool ski resort animal plastic statue things. It was really beautiful and worth te $20 to ride the car up to it. I love being in a place with so much culture.
On a side note: I keep dowloading pictures to go with these blogs, but for some reason they won't post with the blog. Anyone got suggestions because there are some pretty dang cool pictures.