First Day in Shimane!

Wow. What a long day this has been.

So yesterday I finished packing (which made me realize how much stuff I have accumulated so far and how I'm going to need another suitcase on the way home) and went out to dinner with host family. It was sad to say goodbye, even though I will only be gone for a month. After dinner I headed to Tokyo station (where we were departing from). It took some time to find the meeting place since Tokyo station is pretty big (which resulted in me having to carry my huge and heavy suitcase up some stairs...), but lucky I was on time (one of our members barely made it on the train...lol).

The train itself was pretty awesome. We all had our own mini room. And when I say mini I mean it. We had to leave our large suitcases in the lounge area. Each room had a little bed with a little pillow and blanket, a sleeping robe, as well as some small storage space. Anyone tall (or claustorphobic) would have a tough time staying in those rooms (the hallway was super small too). After getting settled, we all hung out in the lounge are for a bit, eating snacks and watching some of Thor. There was this one really funny moment when our train got really close to another train so we started waving at the people. Most ignored us or just started, but we got two people to wave back! haha.



At 11 it became bed time, so we all had to go back to our rooms. I ended up hanging out with my friend Jhanus in his room for a bit and we watched the beautiful night scenery pass us by as we talked about what we were excited for in Shimane. At around 12 I went back to my own room and tried to fall asleep, but wasn't ever really able to. It was more like resting with my eyes closed in a half awake state. At about 7 o'clock I opened my window screen to try and see the sunrise. Jhanus also knocked on my door to wake me up (we had decided to try and watch the sunrise together) and we ate breakfast and saw some pretty clouds, and an orangeish area, but never saw the sunrise.



After that I tried to nap for a bit (got in about an hour) and would wake up every so often to take pictures of the beautiful scenery (and the snow storm we passed through). At about 10am we got off the train and put our luggage in our hotel. After that we took a bus to the Izumo Shrine, which has some pretty cool history. It was snowing a lot then, but it was so pretty. The weather was pretty weird. One minute it would be almost hailing, the next it would be sunny, then back to snow. Sadly there was construction going on at the main shrine area, so we weren't able to see that :(
After the shrine we had lunch at this delicious soba place then walked to a nearby museum about the ancient history of Izumo. There this awesome little old guy decided to give me and my friend Tori a personal tour of most of the museum. This guy was just a volunteer, but new so much. I learned a lot! (too tired to write about it now haha).












After the museum we took the bus back and checked into our rooms. There I took a shower, napped, and put on pants (I had been wearing a skirt and warm leggings before...it's what I wore on the train...lol). At 6 a couple of us met to go out to eat. We walked to a nearby kaiten-zushi place (it's amazing how much snow gathers on you in like 5 minutes). Then three of us went to a nearby drug store (that looked exactly like CVS on the inside), went back to the hotel and looked at the speech I have to give tomorrow, and then went to the big shared bath and sat on a massage chair there. So tired now and sad because some how along the day I lost one of my most precious rings (one I got from my mom with a sapphire in it). Going to bed soon. Still a bit sick. But so excited for tomorrow. Get to move in with my host family!~