Final Aerobics Showcase

It is so sad that everything is coming to an end here in Japan.

This entry marks the end of our aerobics classes in Himeji, Japan. This night was our last night for Tina and I to take aerobics classes for the local community in Shinzaike. We made the most of it though because I tried my very best in the last one. Everyone else in the class also worked their hardest this time round too. This is everyone who attended the final aerobics class for the year. There were around thirty people who showed up which was pretty impressive. As each week passed, more and more people started coming to the classes and in the end, there were so many and it became really successful!

At the end of the session, the locals at Shinzaike were kind enough to put on a bit of a spread for us so we got to eat cake and chocolate after the class. One of the ladies even made us a special cake with Tina’s and my name on it which we ate that night after dinner and it was DELICIOUS!


This is one of the little girls who used to enjoy coming to the classes. She would participate in the entire class without taking a rest and she absolutely loved it! Her mum even told us that she would always look forward to coming to the classes and she always asked her mum if it was aerobics day that day.

This is another little girl who started coming to classes towards the end and she was also really good at the classes. It was so cute to watch them do all the moves with everyone else in the class too!

After the spread at the community centre, Lauren was nice enough to put on a yummy curry dinner for a few of us regulars. From the back, this is Tina, Steve N., Richard, Thomas, Steve H., me, Lauren, Kyosuke and Makoto. I would just like to say thank you to all the people who supported our classes because without everyone’s support, it wouldn’t have been as successful.

Happy Birthday Shinya!

It was Shinya’s birthday on the weekend. For his birthday, we went to a place called Kasai which is near Himeji City. We went to his grandparents house as they have a traditional Japanese-style home in the countryside with a beautiful Japanese-style garden and many amazing-looking ornaments in their house. I got to eat my favourite biscuit which is made in Hokkaido and contains two biscuit bases with rum and raisen flavoured cream in the centre. I can’t wait to go to Hokkaido in December because I will be eating those biscuits for breakfast, lunch and tea!

After that, Shinya’s uncle took us hiking up this mountain. Shinya’s uncle is so fit because his hobby is hiking up mountains so almost every weekend, he will go hiking. He was our guide for hiking on this particular mountain and he could walk so fast up the hill that it was a bit of a struggle to catch up to him! I hope that one day, I have the opportunity to climb mountains every weekend too. It is so much fun and very rewarding when you actually reach the top. It is also great to be surrounded by nature.

At this time of year, the mountain that we climbed was covered in Autumn maple leaves. It was so beautiful. At some parts, it was pretty steep and I felt my little heart beating really fast, but it was worth all the exercise to get such a beautiful view.

This is me on the way up the mountain just beside the edge of the cliff.


At one stage, we had to cross a bridge.

The bridge was really narrow and wobbly and pretty scary to walk across because it felt like it was going to break any second! Thankfully, we managed to cross it safely! This is a picture of Shinya’s younger cousin, me and Shinya feeling relieved just after we crossed the bridge.

After crossing the bridge, we had to climb a really steep section which had chains in case you needed help pulling yourself up.

It wasn't really so bad though, but it was fun climbing it. This is a picture of Shinya’s cousin and uncle climbing the steep section.

Once we did the hard yards, we got to this pretty section of the mountain that had many red leaves and a beautiful little pond. We sat there and drank a coffee and I got to eat another one of those yummy biscuits from Hokkaido!

This is the silhouette that the momiji made against the sun.


After our hike, we all went to a really beautiful place with a lake and log cabins where you could actually stay for a weekend.

I wish I had enough time here in Japan so that I could go back there and stay for a few days. There are apparently many hiking trails you can go on too which is really nice. We ate lunch there and I had a yummy beef curry and then spent the rest of the time outside taking photos of the scenery.

I was so excited that I was in such a beautiful place that I just had to do a cartwheel!


This is the view that we got while we were eating lunch.

Okayama Countryside

After visiting Tottori, we drove to another place in the Okayama Prefecture which had a famous onsen (hot spring). In most onsens in Japan, the men and women are separated and everyone is expected to be naked. In fact, you actually aren’t allowed to wear any bathers or clothes at all.

Due to this fact, Tina and Lauren feel shy about entering onsens. I actually like them a lot and I don’t mind that you have to be naked because the men and women are separated and it is also quite liberating. In this particular onsen that we visited, the men and women were together, but Shinya assured us that we could wear our bathers in the water, so this didn’t seem as daunting to us. Anyway, we got to the place and found that the onsen was in an open space for everyone to see and the only people that were in there were naked men! There was one woman in there who had a towel wrapped around her, but the rest of them were men! We were so embarrassed that we decided against going in the onsen. Instead, we ended up having a foot spa so the only thing we had to take off were our shoes and socks! That wasn’t so bad!

It was a beautiful area nevertheless, and there was a river flowing through the town encompassed by a huge cliff face covered with momiji trees. I’m glad we got to see such a beautiful place – even though we didn’t end up swimming with the naked men!

The Sand Dunes of Tottori

On one of the days during our long weekend, we visited a place called Tottori which is north of Himeji. Tottori is famous for its sand dunes and I can see why so many people go to look at them. They were just amazing and I have never seen a beach with sand dunes like this before.

This is Steve, Tina, Lauren and I about to face the challenge of going up the sand dunes – they were really, REALLY steep!


Why not take up the opportunity of going parachuting off of the peak of the sand dunes? This is what some of the people were doing while we were here.


This is me, Shinya and Tina about to climb the steepest section of the sand dunes.

It was pretty hard, but worth the challenge! Besides, I needed the exercise!

This is Tottori’s beautiful beach.

Apparently it is a really good place to go swimming in the summer time, but this time of year, it is a little too cold to go swimming. Although, in hindsight, we probably could have gone because it was quite a nice, sunny day and the water wasn’t really that cold.

The best part of the sand dunes, was running down them.

It was like running down a really steep, grassy hill, except the surface was sand so when you ran down it, your feet would sink into the sand with every step you took. Tina and Shinya ran down the hill with no problems, but I was a little more hesitant and worried about my knees. As a result, I ended up running down the hill like a girl, in fact, I was prancing more than running, but it was fun all the same!

Okayama Bike Hike

For the long weekend just been, instead of going away, we thought we would do some day trips to various places we haven’t yet been to, so we hired a car and went to the most amazing places!

The first place we went to was the countryside of Okayama to do a bike hike. There are some bikes that you can hire and there is a special bike path that you can follow which takes you to various temples and shrines. It was perfect weather for a bike hike as the sun was up and the skies were blue. We had a great day riding around and stopped for lunch at a five-story pagoda which was surrounded by momiji (red Autumn leaves). It was just beautiful. We had a little picnic on the grass with our ham sandwiches and Tim Tams and took many photos of the pagoda and the momiji. It was really relaxing.

This is what the countryside looked like while we were riding on our bikes.




This is Lauren and I standing in front of the pagoda.


Shinya and I posing in front of the momiji.


Steve, Tina and I enjoying the momiji.


These are some of the things we rode past on our bike hike:

A cute little cottage house in the countryside.


Gravestones, berries and a beautiful yellow-leaf tree.


This was the entrance to one of the temples we visited.


…and of course, the best thing about Autumn…Momiji!

Thanks Giving Dinner

As an Australian, I have never experienced or celebrated Thanks Giving as it is an American custom.
However this year, at one of our favourite local restaurants called Blue Plate, they organised the BEST Thanksgiving dinner I have ever had! I haven’t eaten roast turkey for an entire year, but this roast turkey was really something! It was so delicious, and all the other food that went along with it was also equally delicious. I ate so much that night that I probably didn’t have to eat anything for a whole week! The food was great, the company was great and it was a really fun night overall. I had been looking forward to this dinner since we had booked it and it was everything I had expected plus more!

My Thanksgiving plate:


Thanksgiving turkey:

日本語 (Nihongo)

In case you were wondering, “Nihongo” means Japanese. This entry marks the end of my Nihongo lessons at the Egret Centre in Himeji City. It is a very sad time for me because every week I would really look forward to going to my lessons and learning a new grammar point or learning new words. I was probably the biggest square out of everyone in the entire class because I studied diligently and with great enthusiasm everyday in my spare time at school and I really loved it when the teacher would ask me a question in class! Tina and Lauren always made fun of me because they thought I was a nerd in the class, but I didn’t care because I loved it! So now I feel a little sad because I won’t be going to these classes anymore which were a huge help to my Japanese study throughout the year. Without these classes, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far as I did. I just wish I were able to continue them.

I took a photo of our Japanese class which consisted of me, Tina, Lauren, Steve H. and Taube. There were a few others which were apart of our class, but we were the most regular students. Also in the photo is our lovely sensei. Her name is Syuto Sensei. She was such a great teacher and always so patient and funny. She always made the lessons fun for us and I will never forget her!