By Anthony Fulkerson トニー フォルカーソン (あきや）

 

My family was very compassionate, and made every effort to make my stay as enjoyable as possible. Unfortunately, the causation of my unforgiving fatigue, accentuated by constant upright bipedal stress, led me to want to sleep, if not recline, with every possible minute.

 

This made me lose the opportunity to practice shoji with my host sister. Still, we had good times. On the first day we had free time, we toured the Kikkoman and Nameless Traditional Doll factories. Both were surprisingly interesting to most participants, and I, for one, reveled in my geekiness. Later, my mother and I went grocery shopping, and with the goods we bought, she made a superb dinner, and I slept.

 

After we had returned to Showa, we visited a shrine with the highest admission charges yet. It was worth it, though; the temple contained multiple national treasures and lots of tasty information. Afterwards, we visited a museum about floods in the region. However, it was all in Japanese. Mostly, I amassed sound bites from the computers and videos playing on display. We returned and had another good meal, but then had to say good-bye.