Mayajima Island: Part 2

 After the Aquaruim, we meandered back to the ferry.  It was a mostly delightful walk.  Rylee had a minor meltdown because I refused to buy her all sorts of toys at the little shops. She did great for all the walking though and I was pleased with that.

I asked if she would sit on that tree limb for the picture, but she wouldn't.

A shrine. 

Ooooh, it's me at the shrine! 

Rylee was grumpy that I wouldn't stop for food, but she also couldn't find anything she would eat.  Until we saw this!  She chose a bubblegum flavored icee. 

This 5 storied pagoda is an attraction here.  We did not hike up to it.  I took selfies with it while Rylee finished slupring her icee. 

Me and my girl, enjoying our day together. 

We did stop to pet all the deer and Rylee posed with most of them for me! 

I thought this was fun. Probably a touristy event, but it looks cool. 

Petting more deer. 

The little ones with spots are adorable.   

Selfie with the deer! 

 Selfie with the Torii in the background. We walked all the way past that in our trek to the Aquarium.

Selfie with Rylee and the beautiful background. 

This was too funny.  The lady shouted at the deer, who stole her sushi and was trying to grab her beer.  However, this couple didn't move or even try to shoo the deer away.  They just sat there and philosophically let the deer finish off their lunch.

This deer fished out a snack from the red back pack there.  They are aggressive in the search for food! 

Ice cream here is amazing.  So delicious!  And later, when I asked Rylee what her favorite part of the day was, she told me it was the cookie spoon they give you to eat your ice cream with.  

(It WAS a tasty cookie.) 

This big guy was one of the few deer that looked male.  Most of the deer looked like the one in front of him.

Mayajima Island, Part 1

 Rylee's Yochien had a field trip on Friday to Mayajima Island.  Super fun!  I wanted to go!  Fortunately, parents are required to go, that worked out well for me.  The preschool field trips are quite a bit different than in the US.  We met at the school, got on separate busses, rode the ferry together, then walked to the Aquarium.  Once at the Aquarium, we dispersed and were on our own till 2pm, when we were to all meet back at the busses.  It was kind of nice to do it that way so we could all spend time doing what we wanted.

So, Mayajima Island is about an hours bus ride plus a 5 minute ferry ride from Iwakuni. It has several attractions: a large shrine, some hiking, the Aquarium, and the deer that freely roam and are really just like untrained dogs.  There are lots of little touristy shops and eateries. I was not brave enough to drop Y800 on something I couldn't identify, so we snacked on the food I brought and limited ourselves to ice cream.

On the ferry.

Gathering on the island for the 30 minute trek to the Aquarium. 

Walking in lines with their buddies.  Rylee is with one of the 3 other American students in her class.

(Don't they totally remind you of "Madeline"?!) 

Someone wants in the shop! 

It was so fun to see the deer everywhere!  I wanted to go pet them, but we had to wait. 

This mom went to say hi to the deer.  The deer put its nose in her son's face and the kid freaked out.  I love how the mom is laughing.  (It was pretty funny!) 

There are 4 or 5 different classes.  This is Ryee's class.  They were trying to get a class shot with the parents. (Rylee is in front in the middle.)

They did another class shot once we reached the Aquarium. You can see it was a stinking hot day and all the kids ditched the jackets.  Now you can see who wore the appropriate white shirt underneath!  (Not Rylee!) 

Finally at the Aqurarium and on our own! 

The tide pool where you could touch stuff. 

There were some beautiful starfish in there.  You can't tell but the one was a really pretty purple. 

These little eels were the creepiest things ever!  They just poked out from the ground like snakes and swayed around. 

Such pretty fish! 

Thank goodness for a traditional toilet, and check out all the fun extras you can use!  

This section was neat.  They had an aquarium with the fish in it, then a display with the dishes made with that fish, and then an info card that told you (in Japanese) about it.  It was fascinating. 

And icky. These eels are cooked, but look at those teeth! 

Back at the tide pool 

And on to the penguin display. 

Rylee even got to pet the penguin. Adorable! 

Aaaand back to the tide pool.  You can see what the favorite place was!  This was a 4 legged star fish. 

And my girl was brave enough to pick this up! 

A Sea Cucumber!  She said it was squishy.

Ancestor Project

Delaney had an ancestor project last week.  She was suppose to write a report about an ancestor and make a paper doll wearing the traditional dress of the country that ancestor was from.  We chose my Great Grandmother, because I thought I knew a little about her.  I discovered I knew even less than I thought!  Fortunately, I have awesome relatives to help us out. A few emails later and we were set.

Delaney was able to write her report and we had a really good time creating the traditional Swiss "Tracht" for her.  I thought it came out very well, and Delaney was pleased as punch about it.

Taking Rylee to Yochien

 Things in Japan are a little different. You get so use to punching an address into your GPS and getting (usually!) clear directions to your destination.  Here... not so much.  Address are very different. In an attempt to look for how to get somewhere, I put the address into Google maps and Mapquest. Both sent me nowhere near the area I knew the destination was in.  Same with my iPhone.  (Granted, the problem could be me and not the map system, but this is how it was for me!) The way you do it here is you put the phone number into your map app or GPS and that gives you the coordinates.  If you have friends, they can also message you a "pin" to follow.  I have successfully done that, but I have not managed to figure out how to pin something when I am there.

My friend drove me out to her kid's Yochien (Japanese preschool), and showed me around.  She also put the pin for it into my phone.  I signed Rylee up for the Yochien, and paid exorbitant amounts for Rylee to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Then I had to find my way back there.  I had to find my way from a different direction as well!  I pulled out my phone, found my pinned address and let it take me there.

This is the big road.  I have no idea what it is called.

The intersection with signs I can't really read. 

Lots of bridges over water around here and you can see it is low tide right now. 

It is kind of pretty and the mountains make it less citified. 

Gulp!  Down the narrow road that I had trouble with last time.  (I made it unscathed this time.) 

 They totally look like alleys, but are real roads.  I think they look pretty cool, but less so when I'm driving them.  

Then you have to find the little parking lot, which is set back from the road.  Once you successfully park in the appropriate area, you look around, and there is no school to be seen.  You also did not see one while driving by.  How does one find a school where there is none to be found?!! A GPS is no help here.

 To get to the Yochien, you zig zag through several of thee alleys, which are actually walkway alleys between houses. The houses have no frontage to the road at all.  You access the parking lot and road through these little walkways.

And eventually you will see a fun playground and there is the school.  Rylee was too cute in her adorable uniform!  She says the days are too long to be away from me, but she seems to be doing well. It is full on Japanese immersion- no English at all.  And there are only 15 or so American kids in the whole school.  (I think there are 75-80 kids there.)

Beach Day, Part 2: Climbing

So after the beach, we meandered through the woods and up and down an awful lot of stairs, and ended up at a neat climbing structure.  The kids declared it to be the Ninja Training Camp and dashed off. They zipped through most of it with intermittent shrieks of delight and terror.  The terror was mainly due to the vast quantity of large spiders in their prolific webs.  Large banana spiders were everywhere.  And where they weren't, their webs were still there to entrap the unwary.  So that kinda put a damper on things.  There is a great picture of Rylee down there somewhere where she looks uncertain and hesitant.  She isn't sure she wants to crawl up the net when she can see spiders.  That about sums up the experience!  Super fun-looking, scary and covered with spiders!

We spent less time there than I thought we would, but who wants to crawl around with so many webs to accidently stick your hand or face in?  Eeewwww. So the kids dashed through it and headed for less spidery places.  They meandered back out to the  beach- a slightly different beach than we had been earlier.  It was smaller, but also quite lovely.  But we were done and ready to head home.   I'm pretty sure we will go back again, probably once the weather is cool enough the spiders will be hiding somewhere else.