Satani Sensei and family

One of my favourite teachers from Nada Junior High School invited me to go on a tour of Kakogawa and Takasago. He picked me up and showed me how to get to my new school, Hanada Junior High School. Then we went out for lunch to eat Izushi Soba. Izushi soba is a popular dish amongst Japanese people to eat in the summer time because the noodles are cold and it tastes refreshing. I had some with eel in it and it was delicious! After lunch, he took me with his children to see some historical sites in Kakogawa. I saw the oldest building in the Hyogo Prefecture!

This is a photo of me with his children at the historical site in Kakogawa.





This is one of the old buildings in Kakogawa - a three-story pegoda.













We went into a museum and saw some ancient Japanese artefacts. It was very interesting.


















We then moved on to Takasago city where we saw this amazing looking rock which was about as big as your lounge room and it looked like it was floating in the air! It was really cool. Then we climbed up this mountain and got a beautiful lookout of Kobe, Kakogawa and the ocean. It was amazing!














This is a photo of me with Satani Sensei and his children at the beautiful lookout of Kakogawa and Takasago city.














During our sight-seeing expedition, we spotted a huge Japanese fly which Satani Sensei's daughter caught and held up for me to take a photo of it. It is pretty amazing how big they actually are and they make so much noise!















Satani Sensei then took me to his house where I met his wife. She was really friendly. His daughter and son taught me how to do syoji (Japanese calligraphy) and I was pretty bad at it, but it was fun. Then Satani Sensei taught me how to do it because he is really good at it and he was showing me how to do the brush strokes. It was heaps of fun!

His son drew a funny picture of a one-eyed monster and his daughter was practising her syoji summer holiday homework. This is his daughter's shuji work which is pretty good for a sixth grade student!














This is Satani Sensei's son's picture of the one-eyed monster!

















We then ate tea which consisted of sashimi, rice, tempura and okonomiyaki. It was all delicious!

















After tea, his son sang me a Japanese song on his guitar. He was such a good singer and I was so impressed with his singing ability. I wanted him to sing another song for me, but he was too embarrassed! I enjoyed his singing very much!


It was really cool to be able to spend the day with one of my favourite teachers from Nada Junior High School. He is really friendly and his whole family are really nice and welcoming.