My Last Day at the Junior High School ☹

Today marks my final day at my second Junior High School. Things were certainly starting to sink in that I was soon going to leave Japan which I was really sad about. I think that my second Junior High School was my favourite one because the kids were so friendly and always used to come up and have chats with me during their lunch breaks and after school. This particular school has a name for being a bit more of a challenging school, but I thought these kids had lots of character and they were so much fun.

This is a picture of me with my most favourite bunch of kids. Every lunch break, I would go out and talk to them about my most recent travelling adventures. They really liked hearing about the Koda Kumi Concert the best of all because they absolutely LOVE Koda Kumi. She is like the Delta Goodrem of Japan!

This is them doing the famous, trendy Japanese phrase that all young kids like to say: “Don Dake!” They always used to say it to me and make me say it too! It doesn’t really mean anything, but they just like to say it!


This is my favourite group of first grade kids Year 7's). I used to go and eat with them in their classroom occasionally and have chats with them about their favourite cartoon characters and they taught me how to do some origami, too!

These are the kids I taught. At this time, they were all writing me goodbye messages, so they were trying to think of what they could write in their cards. Some wrote a message in English and some wrote in Japanese, but it took me a little while longer to figure out what they wrote to me when I read the Japanese ones!

Enya-Kyo

This was such a beautiful spot to see. There was a huge lake and we went at just the right time of day when the sun was just beginning to go down. What a beautiful view, don’t you think?


Just a little bit further down the path, was a big, red bridge that crossed the lake and it looked so cool that we just had to take a photo of it.


This time of year was just when all the Autumn leaves had fallen off the trees, so there were so many dead leaves on the ground. We had fun throwing them up in the air and letting them fall down back to the ground again. It also made for a good photo!

Tsumago

This is another traditional Japanese village that has been here for many years. There are many Japanese restaurants and souvenir shops to look at.


This is the traditional Japanese restaurant that we went into for lunch. I ate some really nice Japanese food there which consisted of forest vegetables and it was so tasty and really healthy too! I also had miso mochi which is sticky rice with a miso flavour on the top. That became my new favourite food that day!


This is the traditional village street in Tsumago. It was lined with all the beautiful and traditional Japanese style houses.


The funniest part of the day was when we stumbled across this sign that said “bus porking”. I’m pretty sure they meant to say “bus parking”, but got it slightly wrong! It was pretty funny to see though!

Magome

This is Magome. I went there with Shinya and we visited the little traditional Japanese village that was in the town. It was so cool walking along the road and seeing all the omiyage shops (souvenir shops). I bought some chopsticks and chopstick holders from there because I really wanted some nice ones.

Magome is in the country-side of Japan and it has a great view of the snow-topped mountains in the distance.


This is the Ona-taki. It means woman waterfall. There are two waterfalls here. One is called Ona-taki (woman waterfall) and the other is called Otoko-taki (man waterfall).
It was really pretty to just walk down and admire the beautiful surroundings.

Nagashima Spaland

I went to visit Nagashima Spaland which is a really popular amusement park in Japan. It has the highest roller-coaster in Japan called the Steel Rider along with many other exciting and scary rides. These are just a few of them:

This is the Top Spin. Christina and I went on this ride and had a ball, but towards the end, I was getting a bit sick of being spun around so much. It was a fun ride, but I wouldn’t go on it again after eating lunch!

The Bob Kart ride was also a good ride that fits two people and the person sitting in the back can control the speed of the bob kart. It was lots of fun riding around the course.


This is the Steel Rider I was telling you about. The Steel Rider was my favourite ride for the day. It went so high in the sky and went really fast on its way down too. I wanted to go on this one again, but when we went back there, it was closed as the weather was too windy for it to be in operation. At least I got to go on it once!

The Cyclone is another ride that looks really impressive. It is a really long roller coaster ride, but it was a bit scary because it was so bumpy and it almost felt like it was going to go off the rails. Thank goodness, the ride ended before any real damage was done! Phew!

So as you can see, there were many cool rides to go on in Nagashima Spaland and I really enjoyed my time there.

Nagoya

Nagoya is a really big city in Japan. It is not far from Himeji, so it is pretty accessible to get there by shinkansen (bullet train). There were lots of things to do in Nagoya city such as taking photos of all the massive buildings:


Going to a Noh production (Noh is traditional Japanese theatre). When I went there, the actors were amateur so it was free to enter. It was a good experience nevertheless, to go and watch a Noh production.


This temple is really special in Nagoya.

It is called the Osu Kannon Temple and it holds hundreds of golden kannon figures standing approximately 50 centimetres tall. There are also statues of Gods amongst them which represent all the different years of birth. I was really excited to go to this temple because I wanted to see all the beautiful kannons.


This is the God that represents my year of birth.


I visited the Atsuta Jinja Shrine which is one of the three most famous and well-known shrines in Japan. Apparently, there is a special hidden sword within the grounds of this shrine and the actual whereabouts of the sword is unknown. I looked, but I couldn’t find it either! While we were in the shrine, we saw a wedding which was pretty interesting. I like watching Japanese traditional weddings because I like their outfits.


Later that night, we were all starving, so we decided to go to a restaurant called “The Outback”, but it was so popular and so busy that we had to wait for two hours just to get a seat! We were pretty agitated by that stage, but when we finally got our meal, we were impressed. I ordered a huge plate of ribs that filled my tummy completely.


After our meal, the staff asked if I was leaving the country soon and it just so happened that I was.

So, they gave us free icecream with yummy chocolate topping and they gave everyone at our table a tambourine and the whole restaurant sang a farewell song to me! It was the most bizarre experience I have ever had in a restaurant, but it was fun, anyway. So all in all, it was worth the wait!

After dinner, we went and saw the Christmas lights at Nagoya Station. They were so pretty and there were so many families and friends there all doing the same thing as us: taking photos of each other! It was a really nice way to end the night.

On the way to school

Everyday on the way to school, I ride down a really narrow road that can barely fit one car through and as I turn the corner, I see a sign that says, “Marie”. I thought it was worth blogging because nobody has a name called Marie in Japan, so it was pretty uncanny to see it. I always wanted to take a photo of it and on my last day at the school, I finally took a photo!