Ready for work! In the background you can see temporary houses.

Part of the area we cleaned today. There used to be a house here before the tsunami came..

Getting rid of weed and sunflowers..

Statues that were found in the area after the tsunami

The work progressing slowly..

What we in Norway would call "bonde-brun"..!

Along with the weed there were also a lot of sunflowers growing on the lot.

Finished for the day.!

 We managed to clean up most of the area, but there is still a lot of work left to be done on the lot, so we'll go back tomorrow to finish the job! The first day is over, and I'm already exhausted. Haha.. But at the same time it was an awarding day, and I feel that the work we did really was appreciated by the locals too. 明日も頑張りましょう！

• All blogposts about volunteering
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• Ready for Volunteer Work in Minami-Sanriku (南三陸)!
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: United Earth
• Volunteer Report from Minami-Sanriku: Day 1
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku and Kesenuma: An Introduction
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: The Seaweed Factory
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: Forestry
• Minami-Sanriku: The Story of a Hero
• Youtube: Minami-Sanriku's United Earth
• Blog Post for UE: 譬え、小さなアリでも成し遂げられること
• 8 Months After the Tohoku Earthquake: Trip to Ishinomaki
• Last update from Minami Sanriku: The Voice of a Survivor

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I left Kyoto this Friday heading for Tokyo, and after spending the weekend there with Yuma I continued my travels towards Minami-sanriku (南三陸) where I'll be spending a couple of weeks working as a volunteer. This is my second trip to Tohoku; I went to Ishinomaki-shi in the beginning of November last year, but this time I wanted to stay longer and be able to do more volunteer work in addition to gathering information I can use for my thesis.
After a long night in the night-bus from Shinjuku to Sendai I took a local bus going to Minami-sanriku's Hotel Kaiyo, and there I got picked up by the leader of the volunteer group United Earth, which I will be working for until the 10th of August. After a short stop at the group's headquarters we went to the harbor where I spent the afternoon helping some local fishermen with their work.

In addition to me there were also 9 other new volunteers who joined our group today. In the evening we therefore had a meeting explaining the work of the group, rules etc.

Information meeting at United Earth's HQ.

Tomorrow I guess the real work will begin, so today I'm keeping my post short and I'll go to bed early.. Oyasumi!

• All blogposts about volunteering
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• Ready for Volunteer Work in Minami-Sanriku (南三陸)!
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: United Earth
• Volunteer Report from Minami-Sanriku: Day 1
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku and Kesenuma: An Introduction
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: The Seaweed Factory
• Volunteering in Minami Sanriku: Forestry
• Minami Sanriku: The Voice of a Survivor
• Minami-Sanriku: The Story of a Hero
• Youtube: Minami-Sanriku's United Earth
• Blog Post for UE: 譬え、小さなアリでも成し遂げられること
• 8 Months After the Tohoku Earthquake: Trip to Ishinomaki

• All blogposts from Japan 

After almost two years in Kyoto my time there as a student was finally coming to an end. As expected there was quite a lot that had to be done the last week; In addition to cleaning up all my stuff I had to go a couple of trips to Osaka to get the visa for Korea, end the Japanese health insurance and fix the rest of the payment for my contract with Softbank.

Kayo-san and Apple explaining the menu

Takeshi playing the スイカ割り-game

The スイカ割り-audience :p

Picture from the party taken from my friend Tomoya^^

As a Fukumusume I got the chance to participate in the Children's Ebisu Festival in the Imamiya-Ebiu shrine this weekend. The "Kodomo Ebisu" is Imamiya Ebisu shrine's summer festival, and it is held annually around the last weekend of July. A lot of children come to visit with their parents to play and have fun, so the shrine is filled with a pleasant atmosphere. It is quite interesting how different the shrine looked compared to the Tōka Ebisu festival in January, one could almost mistakenly think that they were two different places..
My role on the first day was helping out by the fishing dam. The kids all got a rod which they used to fish paper fishes (and animals) with, and the kids could get candy if they were lucky and got a fish with the note 当たり on it.

Kids trying to catch the paper fishes!

In addition to the fishing dam there were also a whole load of other activities for the kids as well. On the stage they were having dancing and balloon shows, and the kids looked like they were having a lot of fun. On the second day of the festival me and three of the other Fuku Musume-girls got the honor of opening the snow slide, and the rest of the day we helped out with one of the ballgames.

The snow slide at the Kodomo Ebisu Matsuri seen from the top!

                                       

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Place	Imamiya Ebisu Shrine (今宮戎神社)
Map
Festival	The Children's Ebisu Festival (子供戎祭り) held annually during the last weekend of July
Access	A couple of minutes walk from the Imamiyaebisu station (今宮戎) or around 5 minutes from Daikokucho (大国町) station

Osaka Marriott Miyako Hotel

Superhotel Lohas Honmachi

Khaosan World Namba

The St. Regis Osaka Hotel

• All blogposts from Osaka
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• 第６０回福娘発表会 The Daihyou Fuku Musume-Election
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• The Fuku Musume TV-Show 2012 福娘2012年
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• Working as a Fukumusume (福娘): The Tōka Ebisu Festival (十日戎) 2013
• Fukumusume (福娘): Working at the Tōka Ebisu Festival (十日戎) 2015
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• 商売繁盛で笹持ってこい！Behind the scene of the Toka Ebisu Festival 2016

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I got this from my friends from the GCP-program at school today!
Thank you so much 皆！I hope to see you all again in the future:)
嬉しい＼(^o^)／

Yesterday I had my last photo shoot with Lycée before I move to Korea, and they gave me a CD with photos from my previous photo shoot with them in Osaka a while back. I think that of the four photo shoots I've done for them this far, this is the one with the definitively weirdest photos. Haha.. Anyway, here are some of the (not too weird) shots^^:

The Japanese ryokan Amagiso

My boyfriend Yuma and I had been planning to go for a trip together from the 14-16th of July, as he had gotten the Monday off from work. He suggested that we could travel to the ryokan (Japanese style hotel) Amagisou (天城荘), which also features the famous Oodaru Onsen hot spring. This hotel is situated in Izu (Shizuoka prefecture), and as Yuma had been there once before with his family he thought it would be nice to go there again with me.
On Saturday morning I left Kyoto with the Shinkansen, which even with a student 割引 costs 9700 yen. When you buy tickets for the Shinkansen you can choose between reserved and non-reserved tickets, and as I didn't really want to pay anymore I went for the non-reserved one.
But as the hard-working Japanese obviously wanted to use the opportunity this extra day off from work provided, the Shinkansen was stuffed with people. (Japan: the only country in the world where you pay 9700 yen for a train-ticket and you don't even get a seat >.<..)
Anyway, arriving in Atami ('logically' spelled 熱海...) I met up with Yuma, and we continued from there with the Itō-line (伊東線) to Kawadzu Station (河津). Our ryokan had a free pick-up service, so from the station we traveled with their mini-bus all the way to the Amagisō ryokan.

"Welcome, Yamamoto-sama!" ^^

Our hotel room

View from our room

Having fun checking out the nearby waterfalls

Beautiful Japanese nature

Japanese dinner! It looks almost like art^^

Dinner-time!

 For our second day we had decided to go hiking in the nearby area, as Yuma had done some research in advance and found that there were some pretty good courses we could take. The course we had picked was supposed to take about 4 1/2 hours, and would among other things lead us to the famous Old Amagi Tunnel (旧天城トンネル) and a big lake up in the mountains. The only minor problem was that this course was situated a bit far from our hotel, and it was only accessible highway, so we had to take a bus to get there. In addition to having quite few buses running, the last bus leaves really early, so that meant we had to be careful so that we would make it in time for the last buss going back to our hotel as well. Each of us had to pay 550 yen one way, so it wasn't exactly cheap to be honest.
Although we had been a bit worried about how the weather was going to turn out, we were quite lucky; it was only slightly cloudy. In other words, perfect weather for a mountain trip!

The Old Amagi tunnel has been recognized as a cultural property of Japan

Entrance to the Old Amagi Tunnel

The Amagi Tunnel from the inside

As we say in Norway: "Ut på tur, aldri sur!"

We saw some pretty big bugs while walking through the forest

Although it didn't rain during our trip it was quite foggy at times..

We had a great day walking through the forest, and both of us agreed that it had been a good warm-up for our trip to Mount Fuji in August. I'm so happy that I've got a super-sporty boyfriend! Haha^^

View from the onsen! Nice..

Back at the hotel we spent the rest of the day (and the next day as well^^) relaxing in the onsen. Like I mentioned previously, the Oodaru-waterfall (which actually is spelled 大滝, because waterfalls are known as "taru" by the locals). As the outdoor onsen here is situated right next to the waterfall you can enjoy the nice view while soaking in the water. Not to mention that the outdoor area is usable by both men and women as long as you have your swimwear on. This is actually quite unusual for Japan as one usually doesn't wear anything while in the onsen, and that the onsen thus are separated by sexes. I figure Amagisō thus is quite ideal not only for those of you who are looking for a romantic holiday, but also for those who are interested in a fun onsen-trip with friends. In addition to the outdoor onsen, Amagisō also had a couple of onsen-caves, and an outdoor-pool. I guess the tourist season hasn't really started yet, because in the afternoon we had the place all to ourselves most of the time (probably because the families with children all had early dinners).. Lucky! ^^

ラブラブ♡

Testing the swimming pool!

Pretty pretty でしょ！

A statue in one of the caves... Hmm..

Amagisō also has some indoor onsen, which are separated by gender.

Having spent such a great weekend in Amagisō I almost wanted to drop going back to Kyoto and rather spend my last weeks in Japan at the ryokan. However, on Monday it was unfortunately time to pack our things and leave Shizuoka for this time. This is definitely a place I would like to come back to in the future though, everything from the food, our room, the onsen and the surroundings was great. It was a really romantic and funny holiday at the same time. And would I recommend it to any of you looking for a weekend trip while in Japan? Well, the answer is obviously yes. :)

Check room availability at Amagisou here