Skip to main content

ただいま！ I'm back!


It's been a long two years, but I have once again returned to Himeji via Phoenix Sister Cities! Please pardon the dust as I redesign the blog and catch up from some missing posts!

Tentative to do list:

  • Summarize trip to Ogasawara Islands! It's been two years, but my memories are still crystal clear, and the photos are stunning. 
  • Add some Mt. Shosha photos from 9/9/2017. It was great to go back!
  • Add some photos from Kakashi-no-sato (Scarecrow City, roughly). Although I didn't really photograph any of the scarecrows this time, I still had a wonderful time today (9/10) there!

I have approximately 750 photos from the last two days to sort through, so this will take some time. I've also got to dig up all my photos from Ogasawara (I probably took a couple thousand during my stay there...) and write a cohesive narrative for that multi-day trip. 

In the meantime, I'll just briefly talk about my return to Himeji. I'm still settling in, but it's been so fantastic to once again see all the wonderful people I had left behind. This time, I am teaching at Himeji High School. The campus is lovely, and I recognize some of my former middle school students (although they don't seem to recognize me with my much-shorter hair!). I just finished my first week of lessons, so I am still getting the hangs of things there. Sports Day is coming up, however, and I can't wait to see it! 

I've taken a few morning walks around the castle grounds, and the castle cats are as active as ever! I just bought a new phone and I'm still learning how to use the camera on it, but it seems to take some pretty decent photos! I use it to take quick shots of the cats on my walk while I play Pokemon Go (there is an insane amount of Pokemon in Himeji, as well as Pokemon Go players. It's truly a blast!). 

The weather seems to be cooling off now, which is great, as it felt as if I've spent most of my time here melting. Phoenix may be hotter than Himeji, but this humidity is not something I can ever seem to get used to. I also seem to be single-handedly sustaining the mosquito population in Himeji with each day bringing at least 3 - 4 new mosquito bites in bizarre corners of my body. 

Anyway, I'll write more as I settle in and figure out my routines. Right now, I'm spending most of my time working or hanging out with old friends before collapsing into bed. Here's a few photos from my phone that I've taken in the past three weeks:

I had a brief (~5 minutes) stop at Nagoyama Temple shortly after I landed (~8/21). It seemed fitting that this would be the first place I should visit!

Spotted this fellow resting on a bench early in the morning outside the Himeji Zoo. 

This kitten knows how to pose!

Couldn't think of a better place to take a cat nap!

Himeji Castle in all of its unboxed glory! I can't wait until the weather cools off and I can photograph it properly! 

Comments

  1. HallyNLOctober 27, 2024 at 2:31 PM

    Did you happen to trade a Tropius with me at RAMEN Koba & More in Himeji in November 2018?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Autumn Leaves and Castle Cats

Here's a bunch of long overdue photos from the last two weeks! The autumn leaves have been absolutely stunning! The mountainsides are turning all sorts of colors, which makes them even more stunning than usual. I did my best to photograph the one that you can see from Shirasagi's garden, which is right outside of my apartment. The leaves are finally starting to fall from most of the trees these days, but the colors were beautiful while they lasted! Below are a bunch of photos of the bike paths next to the Himeji Castle Moat, which were surrounded by trees in stunning shades of red and gold. This is definitely the scenic route to get to downtown in Himeji! Unfortunately, I'm still not quite sure of all of the twists and turns through neighborhoods that it involves to get to the back entrance of this pathway, but once I'm on it I can orient myself via the castle.  This area is always full of joggers, bikers, and... cats. Stray cats, for t...
5 comments
Read more

Scarecrows and Swordsmen Make for an Exciting Weekend!

This weekend I had two consecutive day trips! On Saturday, November 9th, I went to Aioi to watch a swordsmith make a katana and viewed the Scarecrow Festival; I also went on a bit of a hike, and visited an art museum! Aioi was about an hour away from Shirasagi by car. It was at a higher altitude, so it was a bit chilly in the morning. Once the sun came out, though, it got much more comfortable! The autumn leaves were absolutely stunning; there's nothing quite like seeing mountainsides dotted with colorful trees! The entrance to a main area of Aioi.  The view from the window of the smithy.  The swordsmith at work! He was a junior apprentice, which meant he had to do all the work himself, using this machine to pound the steel. Apparently the grand masters are allowed to have apprentices pound the steel manually for them.  A pond outside the smithy! A watermill fed into it.  An ivy-covered house!  Starting a hike to view a shrine in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SPring-8 and Warm Weather!

I was able to tour the synchotron radiation facility, SPring-8 , and it was pretty neat! It was also very very crowded--they only open the facility to visitors for a very short window, and on the day I went they were expecting crowds of over 5,000 people! The facility was gigantic, especially the ring which launches electrons to (almost) the speed of light; as far as appearance goes, though, it was mostly just lots of heavy machinery, and really didn't look that much different from laboratories in the US. The facility itself was pretty neat though, and despite my limited knowledge of applied physics I was able to get the gist of how most of the machines worked in this particular lab. It's reminiscent of an electron collider (like the ones that lead to the discovery of the Higgs Boson recently), except that they don't smash the atoms, they only speed them up to extreme speeds. The electrons move on a curved circuit--aka, a ring--and the curves are important as this a...
1 comment
Read more