I returned to the beach today and luckily this time the waves were gentle and the beach was full of surfers. I walked quite far trying to find any good shells that may have washed up on the shore. Today I found so many cool things! I also met a nice group of older men who had been clam digging. They showed me their clams and I showed them my collection of shells. When they left, one man gave me a giant shell, the biggest I've seen yet. So nice! Then on my walk back I saw the most amazing thing! Two baby sea turtles! One was making it's way successfully to the water. The other I found in the hot sun on it's back, flipping it's flippers in the air, exhausting itself. I flipped him over and let him rest a few minutes. Then I took him close to the water and let him do his thing! It was the most amazing thing! They were SO TINY! It was hard to imagine how they could somehow survive not being eaten by predators, crawling through the hot sand, being smashed and shoved by the waves, and somehow, hopefully living their whole lives at sea for possibly 100 years or more. I felt so blessed to be able to see such a precious, early moment for such a mysterious creature. As most of my adventures go, today was full of unexpected surprises I'll always remember! Last week I joined Zac and the other two Americans at Honda for an English class. It was about an hour long and we were split into groups and did activities to help the Japanese practice their English. For the first activity, the Japanese group members wrote our names in Kanji according to the sounds in our name. Mine was easy since "hana" (ハナ) means both flower and nose! For Zac's name... they wrote the Kanji for "sit down and eat." HAHA! Next we had introductions and then came the game! Each group had to build a tower out of 5 marshmallows, 20 dry spaghetti noodles, and tape. Whoever had the tallest tower with a marshmallow on top in eight minutes won. Well, Zac quickly drew out a sketch and we raced to get it done! I panicked and broke a couple noodles. We definitely needed our teamwork! And guess what...WE WON! Our tower was 72 inches tall and the other two groups both came in with 50ish inches. BOOM! It was fun and I'm glad I was able to attend! Is shooting loud fireworks at 6:50 am on a Sunday morning an acceptable "thing" for the harvest festival, or just an acceptable "thing" to get all your sleeping neighbors to hate you? Yesterday Zac and I went back to the very first temple we ever visited in Japan. It has been almost a full year since I have been inside. It is truly a beautiful place and very, very close to our apartment and Lake Sanaru. It is a functioning temple, so sometimes it is off limits due to funerals or other ceremonies. Yesterday I think there was a funeral service going on the the back building, but a monk saw Zac and I and gave us access to the back. They had installed a really nice koi pond since last year full of really pretty, rarely colored koi types. It was a nice little trip and a nice refresher. Sunday night and Monday morning a big typhoon rolled through Hamamatsu and most of Japan. Thankfully Zac didn't have to go into work until around noon. We managed to stay safe and dry, but others weren't so lucky. Today I let Zac hang up the clothes outside. |