Hiroshima-ken

Last month, my friend Masato had a business trip to Japan, and was able to squeeze out some time for me! Yay! He was a JET in Hiroshima-ken (Prefecture) a few years ago. I'm in Yamaguchi-ken which is right next to Hiroshima-ken, so he was able to visit all his old buddies, and see me. One stone, you see? :D

Masato stayed here in Yamaguchi for a few days, and then we went up to Hiroshima for a few days. The picture above is dinner in Hiroshima city, with lots of new friends, and lots of Japanese language..... I can almost hold my own over a long dinner nowadays. I'm sure I talk worse than a small child, but at least I can get my points across. I think.

The "Izakaya" (umm...translation, translation,.... beer house with lots of food, but mostly business-men go there to get drunk?) that we ate at was pretty interesting. Each of us got to "Junkan" (Rock, Paper, Scissors) with the server. If the server won, then nothing happened, but if we won, we got a FREE beer. I was not drinking though, and they wouldn't Junkan for a free Grapefruit juice...no fair.

Also, we got as many Edamame as we could grab with one hand at one time. You can see that I take my edamame seriously. All the little games were fun, and it gave the Izakaya a lot of character.

Above: Submarines!! Real live submarines! This is a picture from Kure city, in Hiroshima-Ken. Kure was such a beautiful beautiful city. It reminded me a lot of San Clemente, CA.

Happy June, people. See ya!