Ono Matsuri 小野まつり

We have the internet at home! Yaaayyyy!!!!
So I have many photos to post, from Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka, Ono, Miki, daily life, the list goes on. For now I will start with some photos from the Ono Matsuri (festival) in mid-August. We spent the day in Osaka, but came back to Ono to see the fireworks and attend the festival. We walked from the train station through downtown and over to the area with the community center and department store. There were many lanterns and banners proclaiming the festival, and tons of traffic, foot, bike, and car.






















The festival area was really crowded with people from all over the area, below is a photo of the many food and game vendors. There was also a concert stage.

















The main attraction of the festival was the fireworks. I have never seen so many fireworks in my life! The display of explosives was on par with the 4th of July in Chicago, pretty amazing for a town of 50,000 people. My personal favorites were the fireworks that looked like animated characters, as in Hello Kitty fireworks!!! I wasn't fast enough to get photos of those, but you get the idea of what the display was like from the two photos below.











































After about a half hour of fireworks, we headed back to the vendor area to sample some takoyaki. This is octopus inside of balls of dough with barbeque sauce and seaweed on top. It's a very popular festival food, and something that one has to try (if only once) while in Japan.


















Above and below are photos of the takoyaki stall.


















I think Joe's face says it all.... at least we can say we tried them!

Himeji 姫路

On Sunday of our second weekend in Ono one of the teachers from Joe's school took us along with his family on a day trip to Himeji Castle.


















The castle was built in the early 1600s, but a fortification existed on the site for a few hundred years prior to the building of the structure.

Our hosts, age 5 and 8.


































Looking out from within...



















Looking up at the structure from below. The overhangs could be used to pour hot oil or water on potential intruders, or for ridding the castle of waste during a seige.























A sampling of the many rooftiles that grace the structure.





















The view towards Himeji Station and the sea from the top of the castle.


















Joe makes a new friend.








































Headed back down. The stairs on the top two floors were very steep, it was hard to fit through the stairwells.

















In the courtyard after touring the interior.























The stone foundation.






















Out in front of the castle.


















After a brief lunch break we visited the Hyogo Prefectural History Museum, a new and very up-to-date museum with lots of interesting interactive exhibitions.

Tokyo Orientation

On July 26th Joe and I flew out of O'Hare with four checked bags and two carry-ons, headed for Tokyo and on to Ono. We will spend the next year in Japan teaching English to high school students and exploring our surroundings.

Waiting for our 13 hour flight...


















Arrival in Tokyo the next day!


















We were quite tired on our first night, so we stayed in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, near our hotel and had some sushi for dinner at a revolving (conveyer belt) sushi place.


















Yum!


















We had two days of orientation meetings at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. At breakfast we had a great view of the Tokyo Government Building.













































More views of Tokyo...







































The view from our hotel room.























On Tuesday evening we headed out to see some of the city. We first went to Asakusa and Sensoji (temple). Sensoji is dedicated to Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Mercy. Legend says that there has been a temple on this site for over 1,400 years, but the current structure dates to the 1950s.


































































































Joe got his fortune at the temple, it was good!


















The fountain outside the main building where people can clense before entering the temple.





















Ceiling paintings...



































The Shinto shrine that is part of the complex.


















The temple was destroyed during WWII, but the tree in the foreground survived the bombing of the area. When the temple was rebuilt in the 1950s the tree remained as a symbol of peace for the future.



















We moved on to Akihabara, the electronics district of Tokyo. This area has the largest concentration of electronics shops in the world.

We explored some of the toy stores...

















And shops that sold electronic parts of all kinds...





























































On Wednesday we headed out of Tokyo on the Shinkansen (bullet train) for our new home in Ono, about 3 hours away. We watched the countryside go by, including tea fields and rice fields while relaxing and eating a bento lunch.