Conferences and A-bomb Anniversary

What I have been doing

The past month has mainly consisted of me visiting the board of education in Kure, and working on preparations for the school year. I’ve also had another two conferences. The first was one in Hiroshima city organized to include everyone in Hiroshima prefecture on August 12^th -15^th. Another conference was held on August 22^nd-26^th in Saijo, a town north east of Hiroshima for all first year JETs. This conference was primarily a Japanese language course and it helped to refresh some of the Japanese that I had lost. The Hiroshima city conference was interesting and informative as it provided me with scenarios and situations to be an effective teacher. A lot of the workshops also deal with adjusting and living in Japan, which is actually a greater adjustment then living in most other countries in the world. Japan is a country that has been closed off for a long time and has many stringent rules and customs that people follow. Luckily I aware of some of them as I have either learned in school or from Asuka, but there are still many puzzling ones that you won’t even expect exist. Thus, I’ll occasionally post some Japanese random factoids about living in Japan and its interesting customs.
At night we had a good time going to these inkai, or all you can eat and all you can drink places. We had a lot of fun at this restaurant where I defeated Rome in an Ice Cream eating contest, Rome seriously eats ice cream every day, but as some of you know, I can pretty much fit an obscene amount of food down my stomach!, see picture for glorious victory. After that we had a good night singing the night away at Karaoke!

As for the rest of the time, I’ve spent a lot of this month in Kure, usually crashing at my fellow JET Rome’s place. The train back home leaves at 10:40pm, so I’m often sleeping over at Rome or Peter’s place. They are both American, and we have a good time ribbing each other on the deficits of our respective countries. They know I love hockey and maple syrup and I tend to bring up the obesity of Americans and how they are prone to invade countries. It is all good natured and I have been lucky to have made some really good friends here, we share the same humor and have a good time hanging out with each other. There are seventeen JETs in Kure, and everyone gets along pretty well. We have JETs from England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US.

August 6^th - 60^th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb
On the 6^th of August the anniversary of the atomic bomb, Rome and I decided to make our way to Hiroshima city to see some of the remembrance ceremonies there. This was also the first time in Hiroshima city. The day went well, I met up with Aki, Asuka’s best friend who lives in Hiroshima. As expected she was a really nice and we spent the evening touring the A-Bomb dome, which was really surreal. The peace memorial park was a touching tribute for those who lost their lives and seeing the famous paper origami cranes was a highlight. There were a few concerts and I had a sober time touring all the memorials and seeing the eternal flame. I didn’t get a chance to see the museum but I’ll make sure that I come back to see that at a later date. The main attraction of the night was the famous floating of the paper lanterns down the canal at the peace park. It really is a surreal site to behold as you see hundreds of paper lanterns floating down the canal at once. Aki got a paper crane and was nice enough to let Rome and I write a message on it, unfortunately we didn’t have time to float it down ourselves, but we had a nice time watching the other lanterns do so. Overall I was glad I was able to be there for the memorial.