Halloween Tradition

26th October, 2007

Shirasagi holds a Halloween party every year for the children in our community and it was that time of year. The apartment was decorated with Halloween decorations and many activities were set up for the children to participate in. All the kids came dressed up which was fantastic and participated in 4 activities before watching a pumpkin carving and having a costume contest. They then got to experience trick or treating around the apartment. They LOVED it!! All the kids who came were very well behaved and very cute.
Some kids arriving

The group of kids who attended the Halloween party at Shirasagi

The costume winners

After the kids party we had been invited to go to another party which was held at the Mitsubishi Boys apartment. This was also a Halloween party which was perfect for us since we were already dressed up. We had been looking forward to this party for a while and were excited about going to it. Everyone was dressed up and looked amazing!! Here are some pictures throughout the night for you to check out.
A Cat, Cleopatra and a Witch

The hosts of the party

Marie and I

Marie and Shinya

Caesar, Cleopatra, an Arabian guy and a Cat

Kyosuke, Marie and I

Greg, Peter, Lauren and I

The aussies

Katie, Joe, Jono and I

Yeeehaaaa

Tango anyone?


We had a HEAPS good night. It's always fun hanging out with your mates!!

Carving a Pumpkin!

25th October, 2007

First of all welcome to Himeji Tessa and Dan!! I am sure you will have a great time here.

As we have many Americans in our residence we are having a Halloween party for the local children in our area. We have set up activities for the children to do and decorated our residence with all sorts of things. One of the jobs was to carve some pumpkins. Well I got to do one of them. As we are not American we needed to do a little research to find an awesome design so that our pumpkin would look the BEST. We checked out several different sights and finally decided on a bit of a combination. Here is the process of what we did.......

Dan and I cutting the top off

Tessa, Dan and I taking the seeds out

Marie, Tessa and Dan still taking seeds out

Dan performing the surgery after drawing a picture of what we wanted onto paper and sticking it to the pumpkin

Almost done....

The end product

Check out the end product!!

How scary does it look??

The pumpkin carving committee

Seppico - A Hard Core Climb!!

21st October, 2007

We did it! We managed to climb our way to the top of this mountain! It wasn’t easy I can tell you that much but we soldiered on and made it.


Here is Marie, Harvey, Thomas and I before our climb up.

We caught the bus at 7:40am to begin our 1 hour journey to the bottom of the mountain. The actual climb took us 5 hours in total. The first 20 minutes was killer. I was glad to discover that the whole climb wasn’t as bad as the first 20 minutes. It was very steep and rocky and so chains and ropes were used at times to pull ourselves up or down. As hard as the climb was I really enjoyed the challenge of it and the gorgeous scenery helped to take our minds off the intenseness of this hike.

Check out the steepness of the climb

We managed to get to one of the peaks at a reasonable time so we stopped to have a rest before continuing on to the next peak.

The hike consisted of all different sorts of things: we had to absail down some of the paths, climb rocks, get ourselves through narrow rocks as well as having some nice flat surfaces to walk along. Autumn is coming and you can really see the trees starting to change colour. It is very beautiful. During our hike we also reached a waterfall and were able to see some amazing views from up high.

Here is me using the chain to get up to the next section

Me squeezing through the tiny gap.

The beautiful autumn trees

Here is the second peak we reached. This is where we decided to stop for lunch before hiking our way down.

Some cool trees

A beautiful waterfall that we came to

Marie and I crossing the river

Climbing Mount Seppico was definitely worth having sore legs for and I am really glad that Thomas was able to lead us on this hike. We had a fantastic day on the mountain and if you enjoy hiking I definitely recommend you climb Seppico. It is well worth it.

A Trip with my Uni Students

19th October, 2007

I had another nenkyu today so this time my uni students decided to take me out for the day, They took me to the Kasai Flower Centre. This was another beautiful park with so many pretty flowers to look at. We ate lunch in the restaurant there and then just enjoyed wondering around the park. It was very relaxing especially since it was such a beautiful day.

Me with Shinako, Miyoko, Mayumi and Hideyo

Bonsai Trees - my favourite trees in Japan

The view from the restaurant - how beautiful

Miyoko, Shinako, Hideyo and Mayumi

Shinako, Miyoko, Hideyo and me amongst some flowers

Me, Shinako, Mayumi and Hideyo in front of some beautiful flowers


After the flower centre we went to the 500 Rakan Statues. This was really cool as there were 500 statues which had been carved each with a different face. It was very interesting to explore this area.




Once again I had a really enjoyable, fun day. Thanks ladies for taking me out!!

An Outing with Yoko

16th October, 2007

I had a nenkyu today so Yoko was kind enough to take me on a little adventure. She organised the whole day for us and it was wonderful! Firstly she took me to see fields and fields of flowers. It was like a rice field only instead of rice there were flowers. Very pretty pinks, purples and whites. It was just absolutely gorgeous and they seemed to just go forever and ever and ever. These flowers are the symbol of autumn.




After we had walked around for a while we decided to head to our next destination which was to climb Mount Takamikura. I had already climbed this mountain previously but this time we went from a different way. I really enjoyed climbing up the mountain. We reached the top with ease and then ate a yummy lunch that Yoko had prepared for us while sitting at the top of the mountain with a gorgeous view.

The shrine at the top of the mountain


After we climbed back down we headed to our final destination which was Suma Rikyu Park. The was another beautiful garden where the main feature was a water fountain.

It also had a a little adventure park for children which I made Yoko play on with me. We felt like BIG kids. It was so much fun because it was like an obstacle course where you you had to pull yourself up with ropes, climb over things, walk over bridges, climb through tunnels, go on flying foxes and slide down slippery dips. I was loving it and I think Yoko was too!!




There was also a little Japanese garden inside this park which was also beautiful.


I had a really relaxing and enjoyable day with Yoko - so much fun!!