Friday with Akiyo and family in Himeji

On the last day of our trip to Himeji our friend Akiyo took us around for the day and we had a really great time. First she took us to her pottery teacher's place and we made some plates:

I made one big plate and Ena made a bunch of small ones. Unfortunately it takes about a month to color, fire, dry, etc the plates so we'll have to wait to actually get the finished products. It was a lot of fun.

Then Akiyo took us to Ume no Sekai Koen in Tatsuno, which is a mountain park with loads of plum trees that were in blossom:
The views of the inland sea from the park were fantastic, I couldn't believe that we had lived in Himeji for 4 years but never come by this place:

Akiyo also took us to the Himeji History Museum, which is only about a block or two from our old apartment. We had been there a couple of times before but we had a good time there, we met our friend Kato-san who worked there and she explained a lot of the exhibits to me, which was cool. Akiyo and Ena meanwhile spent there time playing with some toys:
I also got to ride on Reki, the stuffed horse. The museum actually has a special section where they dress visitors up in either samurai armour or kimono. We planned to do that but unfortunately we got there a bit too late so I had to settle for a picture of me on Reki:

In the evening Akiyo and her family and a few old friends from Himeji got together for a kind of "welcome back" party, we had a great time:

Himeji - old sites

Ena and I spent 3 days back in our old city of Himeji last week. We hadn't been back in 4 years and really missed the place, it feels like our hometown. This is Ena on Miyuki Street, the main shopping arcade which we passed through pretty much every day. It hasn't changed much since we left:


This is my first apartment in Himeji, which I lived at from 2001 to 2003. I half expected it to have been torn down by now but it was still standing:
This is me in front of AEON, the school Ena and I worked at for 2 years together (and the place where we first met). We didn't go in to talk to anyone (probably nobody would remember us anyway as everyone we knew is long gone) but we took pictures in the hallway:
On these steps on a cool evening in November of 2002 I proposed to Ena. This is me standing in roughly the same spot as when I proposed (though I was kneeling then). The place hasn't changed much since then:
This is our first apartment that we lived in together for about 2 years. I have a lot of good memories of this place. I was happy to see that the Ivy (you can see a bit of it on the right) which I planted was still growing and surprised to see that an iron lantern which I had abandoned was still there: