DAY 2 (March 12, 2013)
So I really am in Japan already...
Breakfast was at the hotel’s Beltempo restaurant, and wow, it was the first time I’ve experienced such a line for a buffet breakfast. There were a lot of guests considering it was a Tuesday, and spring break hasn’t even started yet. And so I thought, “So this is how busy a hotel in Tokyo’s business district could get even just on a weekday.”
We checked-out after breakfast and walked to the lecture venue with our carry-ons for our morning lecture with Mr. Tatsuya Nogami from Meiji University about “The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Post-Disaster Situations and Recovery Progress”.
There, damage reports and disaster recovery procedures of the affected areas, and facts regarding the Fukushima Nuclear Plants incident have been discussed. Even just through photos, you could definitely observe how big the progress was since they began the post-disaster recovery.
And now, we headed to Tokyo Station by bus. We went in through the Nihonbashi entrance and got our photos taken.
Inside, the station is big, wide, as well as very confusing if you are new to the place with that lot of tracks. And I believe most of shinkansen tracks connecting the prefectures from Tokyo start there? It definitely is a busy station, comparable to an airport, if I should say. And most likely, millions of passengers goes on and off that station every day, but as we got to the platform, passengers are properly lined-up for their train, which is a sight I never saw in any LRT/MRT stations in the Philippines.
It was everyone’s first time riding a bullet train so we were all excited. Our departure was at 12:56pm and we rode Hayate 27 (shinkansen/bullet train).
This was our lunch.
From Tokyo, we passed 3 stations (Ohmiya, Sendai, Morioka) before finally arriving to Iwatenuma-kunai Station in Iwate Prefecture. It was about a 2-hour and 45-minutes ride. If you would ask me on how I felt in riding the bullet train, it was like boarding a plane minus the “still-feeling” in midair. You may also compare it to riding the fastest sports car in the world, I think even faster, because it really was fast if you look outside the window but could barely feel it on the inside.
It certainly was after Sendai Station that I took a nap, and when I woke up and looked outside, snow-covered fields astounded me. It was my first-time seeing such scenery and suddenly felt like a child at the sight of snow.
While on our way to Tokyo Station, we were told that we must be able to get off the bullet train in about a minute since it would just be a brief stop in Iwatenuma-kunai Station. As we approach the station, I really found it amusing when everyone’s faces seemed to be nervous, and when the train stopped, everyone’s in a hurry to get off the train, afraid of getting left behind though laughing at the same time. Of course, who would want to get left behind?
As I got off the train, I was expecting it to be colder, but it felt warm to me. It was such a peaceful sight to see anyway, not as busy and packed as Tokyo’s.
Outside the station, there were 3 buses waiting that would take us to Hiraniwa Cottage Village in Kuji City which was around 2 hours-drive from the station. I don’t know, but it just felt like a ghost-town to me as we passed by the houses because you could barely see people walking down the streets, the complete opposite of Tokyo. Most of the houses I saw were old-traditional but beautiful and well-preserved houses.
As we get higher and deeper into the mountains, you could see the untouched beauty of nature, acres of land with trees, snow-covered mountains and fields. With snow everywhere, the sun’s reflection made it sparkle like diamonds. It really was a beautiful site to see.
Along the way, I don’t know how they call it, but there were some posts or structures with nets that looked like it was there to act as a shield to protect the roads from any rock slides or landslides. Seeing those, I thought, I wish the Philippines could’ve thought of something like that since the country’s prone to landslides whenever there are storms or typhoons.
Well anyway, if I remembered correctly, Iwate Prefecture is the 2nd largest prefecture in Japan next to Hokkaido, and Kuji City’s population was around 39,200.
We arrived at Hiraniwa, and now it was colder since we were in the mountains. We took our big luggage from the main building and brought it to our cottages. The cottages were pretty far from the main building and you have to go down from a slope before getting there. The snow seemed to not have fallen for days that day since it was very slippery which made it harder for us to go down.
We took a short tour around our cottage which was our home for almost 7 days and prepared our futons despite having no idea on how to prepare it.
This was our view from the balcony.
We're the 2nd to the last cottage so we're one of the farthest, and we have the most difficulty in going home because we have yet to cross another small slope just to get to our porch.
On our table, we had these lists of dos and don'ts, 2 garbage bags were also provided for recyclables and for the other rubbish. Good thing they were all translated in English, as well as the instruction on how to operate the heater. And I'd like to commend them for making the effort in order for us to understand it better.
We went back to the main building for dinner and program orientation with the representatives from the Kuji City government who will be taking care of us during the length of our stay. Like the previous orientation, things about the Kuji City and the schedule of activities have been discussed, followed by the introduction of the representatives from Kuji City.
Then, onto the explanation of facilities, and we were taught on how to make the futon.
Gladly, we only missed one part on where we were supposed to put the top cloth.
As part of the explanation of facilities, we were given the reminders if we were going to use the communal bath (onsen/hot spring): no clothes, even underwear, are to be worn if we’re going to use the communal bath, etc.; proper segregation of the cans and bottles from other rubbish; and if we made contact on a Stinky Bug, we are to use the packaging tape to the area where the bug was to get rid of the stinky smell.
The first hour of a Documentation DVD about the disaster was shown to us, but we were given a choice if we’d like to watch it or not as some might find some scenes disturbing. Everyone stayed. The videos were taken in Miyagi Prefecture. It was my first time watching most of the videos included in the DVD.
Afterwards, we were given time to practice for the cultural presentation. Then we went home to our cottage so as to prepare ourselves for the homestay on the following day after getting information of the families where we will be staying at.
Prologue
Day 0 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Breakfast was at the hotel’s Beltempo restaurant, and wow, it was the first time I’ve experienced such a line for a buffet breakfast. There were a lot of guests considering it was a Tuesday, and spring break hasn’t even started yet. And so I thought, “So this is how busy a hotel in Tokyo’s business district could get even just on a weekday.”
We checked-out after breakfast and walked to the lecture venue with our carry-ons for our morning lecture with Mr. Tatsuya Nogami from Meiji University about “The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Post-Disaster Situations and Recovery Progress”.
There, damage reports and disaster recovery procedures of the affected areas, and facts regarding the Fukushima Nuclear Plants incident have been discussed. Even just through photos, you could definitely observe how big the progress was since they began the post-disaster recovery.
And now, we headed to Tokyo Station by bus. We went in through the Nihonbashi entrance and got our photos taken.
Inside, the station is big, wide, as well as very confusing if you are new to the place with that lot of tracks. And I believe most of shinkansen tracks connecting the prefectures from Tokyo start there? It definitely is a busy station, comparable to an airport, if I should say. And most likely, millions of passengers goes on and off that station every day, but as we got to the platform, passengers are properly lined-up for their train, which is a sight I never saw in any LRT/MRT stations in the Philippines.
It was everyone’s first time riding a bullet train so we were all excited. Our departure was at 12:56pm and we rode Hayate 27 (shinkansen/bullet train).
This was our lunch.
From Tokyo, we passed 3 stations (Ohmiya, Sendai, Morioka) before finally arriving to Iwatenuma-kunai Station in Iwate Prefecture. It was about a 2-hour and 45-minutes ride. If you would ask me on how I felt in riding the bullet train, it was like boarding a plane minus the “still-feeling” in midair. You may also compare it to riding the fastest sports car in the world, I think even faster, because it really was fast if you look outside the window but could barely feel it on the inside.
It certainly was after Sendai Station that I took a nap, and when I woke up and looked outside, snow-covered fields astounded me. It was my first-time seeing such scenery and suddenly felt like a child at the sight of snow.
While on our way to Tokyo Station, we were told that we must be able to get off the bullet train in about a minute since it would just be a brief stop in Iwatenuma-kunai Station. As we approach the station, I really found it amusing when everyone’s faces seemed to be nervous, and when the train stopped, everyone’s in a hurry to get off the train, afraid of getting left behind though laughing at the same time. Of course, who would want to get left behind?
As I got off the train, I was expecting it to be colder, but it felt warm to me. It was such a peaceful sight to see anyway, not as busy and packed as Tokyo’s.
Outside the station, there were 3 buses waiting that would take us to Hiraniwa Cottage Village in Kuji City which was around 2 hours-drive from the station. I don’t know, but it just felt like a ghost-town to me as we passed by the houses because you could barely see people walking down the streets, the complete opposite of Tokyo. Most of the houses I saw were old-traditional but beautiful and well-preserved houses.
As we get higher and deeper into the mountains, you could see the untouched beauty of nature, acres of land with trees, snow-covered mountains and fields. With snow everywhere, the sun’s reflection made it sparkle like diamonds. It really was a beautiful site to see.
Along the way, I don’t know how they call it, but there were some posts or structures with nets that looked like it was there to act as a shield to protect the roads from any rock slides or landslides. Seeing those, I thought, I wish the Philippines could’ve thought of something like that since the country’s prone to landslides whenever there are storms or typhoons.
Well anyway, if I remembered correctly, Iwate Prefecture is the 2nd largest prefecture in Japan next to Hokkaido, and Kuji City’s population was around 39,200.
We arrived at Hiraniwa, and now it was colder since we were in the mountains. We took our big luggage from the main building and brought it to our cottages. The cottages were pretty far from the main building and you have to go down from a slope before getting there. The snow seemed to not have fallen for days that day since it was very slippery which made it harder for us to go down.
We took a short tour around our cottage which was our home for almost 7 days and prepared our futons despite having no idea on how to prepare it.
This was our view from the balcony.
We're the 2nd to the last cottage so we're one of the farthest, and we have the most difficulty in going home because we have yet to cross another small slope just to get to our porch.
On our table, we had these lists of dos and don'ts, 2 garbage bags were also provided for recyclables and for the other rubbish. Good thing they were all translated in English, as well as the instruction on how to operate the heater. And I'd like to commend them for making the effort in order for us to understand it better.
We went back to the main building for dinner and program orientation with the representatives from the Kuji City government who will be taking care of us during the length of our stay. Like the previous orientation, things about the Kuji City and the schedule of activities have been discussed, followed by the introduction of the representatives from Kuji City.
Then, onto the explanation of facilities, and we were taught on how to make the futon.
Gladly, we only missed one part on where we were supposed to put the top cloth.
As part of the explanation of facilities, we were given the reminders if we were going to use the communal bath (onsen/hot spring): no clothes, even underwear, are to be worn if we’re going to use the communal bath, etc.; proper segregation of the cans and bottles from other rubbish; and if we made contact on a Stinky Bug, we are to use the packaging tape to the area where the bug was to get rid of the stinky smell.
The first hour of a Documentation DVD about the disaster was shown to us, but we were given a choice if we’d like to watch it or not as some might find some scenes disturbing. Everyone stayed. The videos were taken in Miyagi Prefecture. It was my first time watching most of the videos included in the DVD.
Afterwards, we were given time to practice for the cultural presentation. Then we went home to our cottage so as to prepare ourselves for the homestay on the following day after getting information of the families where we will be staying at.
Prologue
Day 0 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10