寂しくなるな。。。 Getting lonely...

For once I've been actually trying to get onto my blog and actually write stuff. Its cause these past two weeks have been very filled with activities and such. Most were amazingly fun but many were also semi-sad events. But, before getting to all of that, have to talk of that thing called research...Its still going on which is making me very busy throughout the week. Hopefully things will lighten a little once I get more into a routine and figure out how to do things quicker but more than likely things will get more busy as I continue to add new data inputs to my experiment. Oh well, as I said in one of my earlier posts...H-A-V-E T-O L-O-V-E R-E-S-A-R-C-H ❤☆彡♬

That's really all I wanna talk about for my research.

On to the more interesting things! Last week, the 17th, I went on a short vacation to Hiroshima to visit with Lisa. She studied abroad in Hawaii a few years ago and then we also met a few times while I was in Fukuoka last year. (She was meeting a mutual friend and we got to restart our friendship at that time also. ♪)
Anyway, part of the reason for going to visit her was to basically say 'congratulations' to her since she graduated from college and also starts her job from....wow...today (dang, time sure flies). So, being the Hawaii person that I am, I of course had to lei her :) Here is Lisa with her Kimono on wearing the lei I made. It actually came out pretty well considering its my first time making it :) ♬

 

I think that this story will be very long so, if nothing else, enjoy the pictures (because there will be lots). I think its best to have pictures since it tells more than words (sometimes..LOL)

 

So, the first day I got to Hiroshima, I met Lisa at Hiroshima station and from there walked to her apartment. It was maybe a 10/15 minute walk which was nice and relaxing after sitting in a bus and airplane for a few hours. Also, I was surprised at Lisa's apartment. Its a family sized apartment. After dropping off my luggage at her house, we took a 'promenade' on the 'Promenade of Peace (平和の道)'. We walked about 45 minutes or an hour down to ほん道り (hondori) which is a big shopping district in Hiroshima. There, I met up with Eddie who's currently an English teaching assistant at 女学院大学 in 牛田. If you can't understand the kanji, hes working at an all girls university in Ushita (neighboring area of Hiroshima). For my first meal, we went to an Okonomiyaki shop (お好み焼き） and I had Hiroshima style okonomiyaki for the first first time. It was very interesting and also VERY tasty. ❤ I would definitely recommend eating it if you are in Hiroshima. After eating the okonomiyaki, the three of us went to Karaoke where we sang for maybe...4 hours? I think. Also, one of Lisa's friends joined us for part of the time. We then walked all the way back in the nice COLD night. (It was actually snowing earlier when I had first got into Hiroshima.)

 

So, for those of you that are familiar with Hiroshima and some of its history, you will also likely know the pictures above. My second day, we went to the 原爆ドーム (the A-bomb dome) and the surrounding area. The upper picture is a picture of the dome from afar. The picture on the bottom right was taking from inside the  museum like area and its showing what Hiroshima looked after the A-bomb had hit Hiroshima. The red ball is the height at which the bomb was detonated. The picture on the bottom left is actually completely made out of paper cranes and its made in memory of all the children that were affected by the radiation.

Inside of the museum(ish) area, I could have taken many pictures but I feel that its something that I shouldn't share but rather something that everyone should go and experience. Its definitely an eye opening experience. And also, very cheap to get in.

 

Following the visit to the 原爆ドーム, we took a 20 minute walk to Hiroshima castle.  Its a nice little castle that's had to be rebuilt many times. Also, Ume was blooming at the time so got to see some flowers. Not the same as the Sakura, but still very pretty. After going through the entire castle, we again walked all the way back to Lisa's house and cooked curry for dinner in Lisa's new pot. We had a little bit of an accident but it all worked out in the end.

 

The following day was a trip over to the famous 宮島 (miyajima) with its famous red gate that's sometimes in the water and sometimes out of the water. When I saw it in the pictures, I always thought that it'd be really cool to go and see it and walk all the way out to it. I also thought that it was just a normal size gate. Boy was I surprised at the massiveness of it. If you look closely at the bottom right pictures, there's a kayak there. That kind of gives you an idea of how big the gate is! I didn't get to walk all the way out to it but I did get within a SW of it (like, 50 yards or so). LOL.

I was also very surprised that there were many deers in the area. I thought that Nara was really the only place in Japan that was known for deer but Miyajima is also well known for its deers also. Boy, I sure do learn a lot when I go traveling around to different places. ☆彡

Here's a picture of Lisa and me in front of the gate. Also, one of the famous snack foods from Hiroshima is that Manju in the right picture. It was very good and tastes best if hot. (called もみじ)
We then headed back to the mainland of Hiroshima. But, before heading back to Hiroshima station, we stopped at a 駅弁 store and bought some bentos. Its supposedly well known for its good tasting food and it did not disappoint. I don't remember the name of the place, but I can look it up later if anyone wants to eat at it.

After returning to the Lisa's home, I packed some stuff and headed up to Eddie's place for the night. We ended up back at Hondori for dinner at an all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ食べ放題). I haven't had that in soooooo long and it was cheap considering that its shabu-shabu. Needless to say we ate A LOT and got stuffed silly. On the way back, we went to pick up some food to cook the next day. It was really late at night and many things were already sold out. In addition, there were limits put on for how much food could be bought by one person.
That night, we spent many hours playing Wii and just killing time. Did finally get his SC2 started the following day also. It was also a good thing we went to buy food the day before because on the following day, it was raining pretty heavy (might have been snow but we were too lazy to go out into it. LOL). So, we basically spent a lazy Sunday indoors for most of the day.

We did finally venture out to town for dinner with his friends. That was also an experience. LONG STORY...LOL. But, in any case, did get to see the 原爆ドーム at night. Its pretty cool at night. This would also be my last night in Hiroshima so I got back to Lisa's apartment and did some quick packing to be ready to leave the next day.
And that's pretty much my Hiroshima trip.

So, I came back on the 21st, Monday. The next day I was out in the field collecting samples for my experiment and everything. Gosh..no rest >.< LOL. But, there were other things to look forward to in the week.

The 23rd was graduation day for most everyone in my research lab. So, I was kinda busy making lei's for all of them also. Also had to mix-in finishing my own research stuff at the same time. This led to...very tiring days.
Here's pictures that I took with my research lab students and friends.

On Friday, we had our cleaning of the lab area and also got to meet the incoming 4th year students. We had a 飲み会 that night to celebrate everything being done.








Well, that will just about cover everything for this edition. Our 'spring break' is coming to a close soon (although, I haven't really had too much of a break) so hopefully I'll be able to make more friends and go out and to more stuff on the weekends once people are back from vacation.

Hope all is well for you and remember to keep East Japan in your prayers. They still need our help dearly and any support that can be offered would be appreciated!

Mahalo and Aloha~~! ☆彡

分からない。。。 I don't know

Seriously, I don't want to write this but I feel like its something that should be recorded in my blog. But, before I get to the big event, lets talk about what I've been doing recently.

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Okay, done with that! :p NAH, just kidding. I've been doing somethings, just not very much and no pictures to post of it either. My pilot runs of my experiment are going fairly well and other than a few equipment problems, everything is awesome.


The weather was very VERY nice for a few days but now it seems like some sort of cold front came in and it went from being a nice comfortable 21C down to almost single digits here in Okinawa. I just heard from my friend that its even snowing in Hiroshima at the moment. My gosh we're getting weird weather these days. LOL.


Well, enough of that for the moment. Now its on to the main thing that happened last week. Unless you live under a rock, you'll know whats happened to Japan the past few days. The 9.0 (yes, it got upped to a 9.0 now) magnitude earthquake was a big surprise. Its the 5th largest recorded earthquake. But there's been many more earthquakes since then and it was also preceded by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. As of writing this, the quakes seem to have become less frequent but still happen every once in a while. There has now been upwards of 450 quakes of 5 or more magnitude. (earthquakes [will show latest earthquakes of the region])
Along with that amazingly strong earthquake, a equally strong tsunami also came with it. Video of the tsunami (sorry, its in Japanese). Its likely the tsunami that caused the most deaths and widest destruction. Even some all the way over on the west coast of America and Hawai`i. Luckily, it wasn't nearly as bad over there as it could have been. But, up in northern Japan, the tsunami caused massive damage and countless deaths. Hawai'i and other areas of the Pacific should be happy that we have a massive buoy network setup that even us normal people are able to access data from. These buoys were pivotal in the issuance of the tsunami warning and such.
Well, I'm gonna look for a good charity to donate money to. I'm still not sure exactly which one that I wanna donate to but will definitely give money to the cause. I hope you all will too! Its an incredible event and Japan really needs the support of all of us.


Hope all is well with everyone!


Until later~Aloha as always~