Summer Plans: Hiroshima, Camp, and Shopping of course!

Tomorrow is the school closing ceremony! And then it's natsu yasumi  (Summer vacation) until September 1st! Everyone has a ton of homework over the break but I've been studying super hard lately so I almost have all of my homework finished. The only hard part is reading Japanese. Kanji is super super difficult so it takes me like 10 minutes sometimes just to be able to read the sentence in JAPANESE! Hah! At least I have a helpful host family and friends, huh! I've gotten really quite good at translating from Japanese to English, as long as I have a dictionary, I can get the whole sentence right almost all of the time in my schoolwork.

Let's see...I have a lot of plans over Summer vacation, which is awesome! Before, I was pretty lonely but now I have lots and lots of friends and we can get closer by hanging out more. My school is a business school so EVERYONE is busy studying and going to club after school. Some of them still have club 7 days a week during the break. Like my friend Rika; she's the baseball team manager! Baseball club is really strict. As are handball (our school is the prefectural champion), dance, baton twirling, basketball, etc. At least I'm not in a super strict club :D

It's one of my best exchange friend's birthdays this Friday, so we are probably going to hang out next week when we're both free! Now we are very far away from each other, when we used to be neighbors. But, my train pass gets me to all of the major stations and all of the stations in between for free for a whole month! So we can hopefully meet often. Her name is Ingrid and she's from Sweden. She's probably the most positive person I've ever met. Besides my American mom, of course!

August 4th-7th I have Summer camp! It'll be with some AFS exchangers in the area and a lot of regular Japanese students! It's going to be in Gifu, and it's supposed to rain. I hope it'll be fun. At least I'll have the chance to see my friend Bess from New Zealand! And a lot of other students. My friends are from Norway, Sweden, Thailand, France, Italy, Russia, New Zealand, Argentina, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, etc. and America and Japan for sure! So many!!

August 25th-26th I'm going to Hiroshima!! With AFS though. At least Ingrid will be there, and maybe students from other Nagoya chapters, too! :) I'm really excited because I absolutely LOVE Japanese history and before I left America, I wrote and essay on the atomic bomb drops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how both America and Japan could have acted differently. I know that it will be somewhat sad and a time for reflection, but I've always wanted to visit the city, ever since 4th grade when my favorite elementary school teacher showed us a movie and read us a book about Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor. It's really important to educate young students about such things and give them a passion for world peace!

Here are some pictures of Hiroshima:

(I don't own these!)

The bomb and blast site in 1945:

Well over 200,000 innocent Japanese people were murdered by the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

 

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial:

Commonly called the "Atomic Bomb Dome" or "Genbaku Doumu" in Japanese, this memorial is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and it's also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was the only building left (at least partially) standing near the A-bomb's hypocenter. Now the building's skeleton is all that remains. The park was created around it, and it is left to commemorate the loss of the tens of thousands of lives of the people killed by the bomb.

 The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum:

 

 

I think it will be very interesting and eye-opening to be so close to the destruction.

One another note, the AISHO school trip is to Nagasaki in October, but it's $600. So I can't go! How depressing. They're always planning for it during class so I just study by myself in the library. Oh well, hopefully I can find other things to do. My entire year will not be at school for a few days! But, they've promised to bring me back some omiyage (souvenirs)!

Tomorrow, I think I am going to a an AISHO baseball game at Komaki stadium. No idea where that is, haha. That's just a little scary! I'm pretty confident in my use of the subways and trains now, though. Although it can get really confusing! I've taken a train going to wrong way several times, but I've gotten much much better ;) Hopefully I wont get lost. I think Rika is finding someone to take me! Japanese people are the nicest people you will ever meet, trust me!