Tuesday, August 7th

Well, we're back.

Saturday we didn't go to the Buddha, we tried to find our way to Hanshin Stadium, home of the Hanshin Tigers.

We finally had a map in English, but many of their signs are only in Japanese. So the map only gives us rough clues as to where to go. My plan was to go south and follow one of the three train lines to the stadium. In reality, we hit the second and not the third train line, so we went a little out of our way. I think we followed route 2 all the way to the Mukogawa River. Fortunately, along the river is a bike trail/park. So we turned south and followed the river to the via-duct. This is a raised freeway that follows much of the waterfront. It is very similar to the Alaska Way Viaduct in Seattle, only much newer. The original one was probably destroyed in the 95 earthquake. Any way we rode our bikes under the freeway to the stadium.

At the stadium, Chrissy wanted to turn right immediately, but I remembered that the shopping mall was on the right of the stadium as we passed it. Chrissy was right. We should have turned at the intersection she wanted to turn at. The Mall was only a couple of a hundred yards from that intersection. But I took her all the way around the stadium where we found a Buddhist Shrine dedicated to the Hanshin Tigers.

On Sunday, we left at 8:30. We had been up for several hours, but we still weren't ready when Sakurai came to get us. She took us downtown to meet the bus.

When we left the bus station, the bus was nearly full, but we had to stop and pick up some more students in North Nishinomiya. North Nishinomiya is nearly an hour away and located on the other side of the ridge. It is possible that I could get a school up there. If I do, it will be at least an hour on the bus to get there. It might be fun.

Beyond Northern Nishinomiya we drove for another hour or more to our camp in Santo. Santo is more like a large dormitory without any beds, only tatami mats and thin futons you roll out of the closet. I only saw one room that had chairs, Chrissy ended up helping the teacher in that room. In my class, all of the students, and I sat on the floor around table tops on the floor. It was fun.

The students ability to speak and understand English is really limited. Even some of the teachers, do not speak well. All of them need practice. But the kids and teachers all have excellent attitudes and senses of humor, so working with them is not too difficult.



We had homeroom sections. The teachers ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with their homeroom. Of course, I am partial to my homeroom. We had three boys and eight girls. The boys always sit the the front row, if there are rows, and the girls sit in back. The boys, probably had exaggerated boy behavior as well as the girls in class. The boys would be assertive in answering questions, while the girls bordered on being extremely shy. One on one though, the girls would approach me to talk more frequently than the boys.

In the cafeteria, the girls were fascinated by what I would eat. They would almost shreak when they would see me put soy sauce on my rice. The first meal we had spoons and chopsticks, but every meal afterward we only had chopsticks. I didn't go hungry. My chopstick skills are good and improving.

I won't waste all of your time right now. I will put more in a later e-mail.

I need a shower and to do the dishes. We had spaghetti tonight. After Rice for breakfast lunch and
dinner for three days we wanted a little break. Yes, I have found several bakeries in our area. Soon I will learn how to butter my bread with chopsticks.

Goodnight and good morning!

Rex