Last weekend, we had a few extra days of for Health and Sports day so the immersion teachers decided to go away to our schools cabin at Shichigahama. Some of you might remember that I was supposed to go there the first weekend of April but the Tsunami made that impossible. This town was badly damaged, however the cabin was left in good condition because its up on a hill. The first thing you notice going into the town is that its nowhere near what it used to be. There are empty lots everywhere with remnants of houses, a lot of buildings on the way that still existed had markings of how high the water came up, roads were damaged and or changed, and random trash everywher. If you live in Japan long enough, you notice that you almost never see a single scrap of paper on the ground anywhere.
The cabin felt like a place that you could plop out of the dunes of Lake Michigan. It was modest on the outside and cozy and Americanly spacious. Ok now I'm starting to sound like a guy on house hunters... We get to the cabin and everybody just kind of relaxes and plays games. We grilled steak for dinner and sat out at the campfire at night. For two days, you could kind of forget that we were even in Japan.
On Sunday, we went out to the fish market bright and early. The people there were so friendly. Also, I probably had the best sashimi I've ever had. I ate tuna, whale, fish eggs, octopus and oysters and all of them were pretty delicious. That afternoon, a few of us took a walk to the beach. This was my first chance to go into the Pacific Ocean since I've been here. The beach itself looked like it would have been beautiful prior to the earthquake. Now, it kind of sat in upside down boats, garbage and foam pieces. We made the most of it. We even played catch and threw the football through a washed up tire.
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| The Main Cabin |
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| Beautiful view of the sunset |
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| I wanted to try on the diving helmet. It was super heavy. |
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| The bathtub |
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| yum, fish eyes |
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| Buy the fish get its eggs for free. Btw this fish feels more like a snake than a fish. |
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| Touching the Pacific Ocean |
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| Outside view of the cabin |
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| The cabin the guys stayed in. |
All in all it was much needed relaxing weekend with my American Friends. It definitely puts life in perspective seeing all the damage and knowing that where I stepped was covered in water and chaos a few months ago. I definitely feel blessed to come full circle with the earthquake and make it out there and realize how lucky I am to be right here. (I'll upload tsunami pictures later).
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