School Tour

I thought I wouldn't have much to say after yesterday's huge post. But there is more! I went on a huge tour, all day long today. I went to Kobe Steel's giant factory for steel making. It is huge. For Japan, it is enormous. I saw a block of steel the size of a car get pummeled into a 100m sheet. I saw more ore than I would ever care to again. And I saw that SOMEHOW they pulled of thousands of tons of steel made in a day with almost no smell, no visible pollution, and with lush trees between the forklift big enough to car a semi in its jaws and the wire plant. So that was awestriking. This was the legendary "Japanese steel" that I've heard people complaining about breaking American-made steel tools over. I don't know if you could find enough Americans that would get along well enough to cooperate in such a large-scale operation to perfection.

Then we went to Himeji Castle. It is the 7-floor giant in Japan, near Kobe. The thing has a 1000m wall around it with small doors for arrows. The walls are basically unclimbable, and tall. The place is not only beautiful, but also a workout. Maybe 1000 steps to see everything in the place! It was widely fought over, and, dispite US bombing raids in WWII (some probably aimed at the castle) almost everything around it was destroyed...except the castle. (Of course!) It's gorgeous, trust me. Lots of good exhibits inside too, it's half-way a museum. We ate at a nice traditional Japanese restaurant, and that was great except the knee pain (you kneel generally during the meal).

Then we went across Kobeyashi Bridge (longest suspension bridge in the WORLD, all white, big enough for a jumbo jet to fly under comfortably, or a huge cruise ship) 300m tall supports (300 ABOVE the road, let alone the water, I don't know how far that is) And you can see it from space in the day if you know where to look and you aren't too far from Earth. For a reasonable view, use maps.google.com, zoom out, double click on Japan, type "Kobe" and look just the coast to the southwest of where it takes you. It is so tall that the satelite images don't line up the top properly because of a slight difference in angle where the smaller bits of the map meet. 4 kilometers! Then we went to a hot spring where (luckily) I didn't have to go in after the baking and boiling all day. It would have been nice in winter, maybe, but not then. So I hung out with two other foreigners, Maybelle (a philipino girl) Tiang (a vietnamese girl who I will be tutoring in English) both of whom are fellow students at KUIS (or as I am seeing it now occasionally: "KUINS" (spoken: Queens). Maybelle is Catholic and basically a native English speaker, so she probably has more in common with me than anyone other than Gerald Williams, my boss. Tiang (spoken: "Chang") Is a frail-looking, brownish-red eyed quiet girl who is a natural at Japanese but feels insecure about her English. She is very empathetic and it seems most people around her empathize with her very easily and automatically. Me included. Yes, Her eyes are redish. Actually red in the sunlight. Very odd. She doesn't look demonic or anything though, probably because she's about the size of Nicole minus any muscle and with a very slight bone structre. Despite everyone doing stuff for her she is definitely not manipulative and will generally never ask for help with anything even if she needs it. Later Maybelle and I had to help her find her apartment since she couldn't find it! She would have wandered in the dark for quite some time before she found it too, probably. So some interesting characters on this trip! Another character that I will be working with is Kawamura-sensei, a teacher at KUINS who has been to most of the world's countries, many of them over a dozen times, almost all by airplane. He's very intelligent, a great speaker, and apparently not afraid to change in front of students, dispite being 66 years old. He's charismatic enough to make up for the fact that he got most of the way undressed 4 times over the course of the trip that everyone still likes him. The man knows his limits, that is for sure! There were fireworks on display tonight, but we got home too late. Oh well. I think some of the girls wanted to drag me off to see fireworks since they couldn't find any other guys and that would have been awkward for everyone. I've seen fireworks before anyways. Saturday there will be another display, apparently. I guess you don't need to celebrate a holiday ON the holiday. Makes sense. We do it with birthdays in the US sometimes.

I think I got indigestion from that little bit of sushi though. Or maybe the french fries that were the first bad food I've had since I've gotten here!

My new address, apparently, is: Adam Frank, Hyogo, Miki, Midorigaoka-cho Nishi 2 Cho-me 12-22, JAPAN. It's more...official now.

~A~