Are we there yet? Why yes in fact we are!

I know you will be sad to hear this, but this is the final post about my trip. Just think of all the other exciting things I've done that you haven't heard anything about yet! Next morning was another Japanese style breakfast and then we departed to go to Takaoka. If you remember from other posts Takaoka is the city at the end of the Himi Line. So I had been to the city before but it didn't matter because two of our three activities for the day were places that I hadn’t been before.

This is the room I shared with the other girls.

First stop was Zuiryuji Temple. It was very big and interesting particularly because, unlike many other temples I have been to, we were able to walk into the area where the monks lived hundreds of years ago. I think my favorite part was the kitchen. Also, it was interesting to take the English tour and learn fun facts. For example, the roof of one of the buildings was made from lead so that if there was ever a war the it could be melted down for bullets.

The buildings are arranged so that it's kind of shaped like a body.

This is where they would store rice. It was huge and the lid was really heavy.

This was pretty cool. As we were leaving I looked outside and saw a monk (or whatever they call them) blessing this car.

Next we went to Shinminato Kankosen to ride a boat around the bay. I always love riding on boats so this was pretty fun and relaxing. After the boat ride the area we were in was near a park so naturally we went and played around for a little while. There was also a small local festival so we explored and got some food. I was very happy because several students from a Himi JHS (one of Alex’s schools) recognized me from the English Speech Contest and came up and spoke English (and Japanese) to us for a while.

This is not the boat we road on unfortunately.

Our last stop was Aeon Mall. I’ve been to this mall several times and we didn’t have a lot of time to really shop so we decided to go do purikura. Purikura are photo booths were you get to choose the backgrounds and decorations for the pictures you take. There is a time limit to everything so if you don’t know what you are doing you can end up with some weird looking photos. I think ours came out pretty well.

Aeon Mall

Finally we made our ways home. I got dropped off at the Takaoka train station to catch the train to Himi. Overall, I had an awesome trip and got to see a lot of the stuff in the prefecture that I wanted to see…and it was free!!! I hope you have enjoyed hearing about the exciting adventures available to you in Toyama Prefecture.

One last note, the week of classes after the vacation I had both students and coworkers come and say they saw me on TV. I’ve been in Japan for about two and a half months and I’ve already been on TV twice (that I know of) and in the paper several times as well. I’m practically a Himi celebrity :D Ohohohoho