Kumano and Gundams!

Before I get started... Sorry about that bad image in the previous post. I was hoping to show what a middle school uniform looked like, but failed bad apparently. I took my camera around today and took some photos though.

Re:Phil. Upon closer inspection, yes, most bikes here have that sort of built in bike handcuff. Mine came with keys though... Some people have their bikes stolen, but at the same time, many people here grow up with having a bike, and always have a bike. It's like, why would you steal one when you already have one, and everyone you know has one. Plus people here like buying new bikes. (not to mention they're quite inexpensive) so you'd be hard pressed to be able to sell a stolen bike.

Last Sunday I went to a town called Kumano to a calligraphy and art museum. I went with My vice Principal's family (from Kure Chuo Middle School). The museum was pretty cool, though I couldn't really take many photos inside, so some of the really great works I wont get to share with you. I think in part I would have appreciated some of the calligraphy works more if I could read more Japanese. I can appreciate the penmanship, but not the meaning behind the kanji. Either way, I've got some photos for you folks :)

I did get to make a calligraphy brush for myself though. It was a very interesting experience, that's for sure!



After visiting the museum and making my paint brush, Mike and I went for a walk and a bit of a shop down the main strip in Kure. We were stopped in at the dollar store picking up a few things when we noticed that, the normally closed, top floor, was now open. And was emitting much noise! I hung onto our bags while mike took a quick peak around. A few moments later he came back with a dumbstruck look on his face. "They have gundams up there. Gundams on sale!! and a little racetrack!! "



We went upstairs to check it out, and they did in fact have a mountain of buildable Gundams in boxes there on sale. We decided to buy one each and build them together. The problem was though, it took a little time for us to find ones we really really liked. The shop keepers (a semi mom and pop shop, that seemingly also looked after the racetrack on the floor) gave us a bag of long green peppers and eggplant with our purchase as well. They were pretty cute. We're hoping to go back next Sunday and thank them properly for it :)







On the topic of Gundams though, Mike and I are thinking of taking a trip to Shizuoka (real close to Tokyo) sometime in the near future. Why do you ask? Because they're celebrating the 30th anniversary of Gundam. The past two years they've built a full size replica of a Gundam model overlooking the outskirts of Tokyo. In case anyone was wondering how big that is, here's a rough photo for you... Pretty awesome. Besides, it'd be fun to give the shinkansen a try. :) (this picture is the one they built last year, this year it's a bit different and has a beam sword!)




I don't think I want to overload this post with photos, so if you'd like, you can head over to my flickr account, where I've made comments on all my pictures that I've uploaded for this day.


Kumano and my Schools~ <----- flickr account!