Golden Week Vacation

Hi Everyone!

Time for a belated report on our trip to Hiroshima and Okayama with Leigh and Chris during our Golden Week vacation. Golden Week is a string of National Holidays that all sort of happen one after another early in May, some companies decide to take the whole week or so off instead of having staff come in for one day then be off for another all week long, ECC is one of them - hooray! So, we had about eight days off for Golden Week and we decided to go to Okayama and Hiroshima. In Okayama, we headed to Shiraishi Island, a relatively unknown (to both Japanese and foreigners) small island on Japan's inland sea. We found out about Shiraishi's International villa through our friend Chris. The International villa is thisv amazing accomodation overlooking the ocean with awesome views and awesome facilities at a dirt cheap price of $25 AUS per night - absolute craziness! The deal is that Okayama prefecture decided about fifty years ago that it wanted to attract international guests to the prefecture to see all the gorgeous natural sights, but people weren't coming cos Okayama is little known and not really top on visitors' lists so they built five international villas where they only charge to cover the costs of running the venue and only international guests (or Japanese accompanying an international guest) can stay. Pretty dodgy in anywhere but Japan, but we were happy to go along with it! So we took a bus and a train and a ferry and made our way to the very stunning Shiraishi Island where we spent two days frolicking in the sun, kayaking to neighbouring islands which were so small they just had little shrines on them, collecting shells, swimming (if you're Ross and crazy) and talking to wrinkly old deaf Japanese men who simply want to talk very quickly to you in Japanese and are so deaf that listening isn't high on their priorities. We cooked our own meals, played a lot of cards, relaxed and read and slept in. It was awesome. From Okayama we headed to Hiroshima where we stayed in a cute business hotel with yummy free Japanese breakfast. I have since been trying to research how to make the amazing rice balls we had for breakfast but so far, no luck. We stayed in Hiroshima for two nights and took in Miyajima, the vary famous island near Hiroshima and also meandered through the Peace Memorial Park and Museum - a challenging and confronting experience but worth it, very worth it. Miyajima is an island famous for its big red torii gates and the Itsukushima Shrine which at high tide appear to float on the water. We were there at low tide and let me tell you, there were no illusions of floating shrines as we traipsed in the mud and sand to get the customary photos with the torii gates! We did a little hiking (some more than others!), Ross drank water flowing from a beautiful natural spring (which we then used to tease him later and get him nice and worried about Japanese encephalitis) and we ate these amazing little puffy cream filled sponge cake things (heaven in a maple leaf pastry shape) called Momiji Manju. Awesome. We also travelled by cable car to the top of the island's forest mountain range to check out the scary and crazy and very cute monkeys that live there. Very cool! We headed home on a night bus which was very exciting. We were on the bottom level of a two floor bus and Allie got in trouble with the bus driver three times. Once for wandering around the bus 'exploring'. once for nearly missing the bus at a truckstop, and once for just smiling, I think. Grumpy bus driver.

So, there's the whirlwind synopsis of our trip! School is great, getting better and better and this last one has been our best week yet. We're getting so much more comfortable with how everything runs and are starting to really love our classes. Much love to everyone and more news soon!