On Shikoku there are trains which are decorated with characters from the cartoon `Anpanman`. By chance, I caught a couple of these trains while I was in Shikoku last week. When the trains leave the station, the chime played in the train is the Anpanman theme tune - pretty funny. Also, you can see on the train ticket (above) that the train conductor`s blue stamp is a special Anpanman one - cool, isn`t it?
I bought an Anpanman train book for Owen as a souvenir (omiyage). He loves Anpanman, & is crazy about trains, so of course he loves this book. He also loves pressing the buttons in it which make various train sounds.
Actually, that`s become pretty annoying.
I hope the batteries die soon.
![2010 Shikoku Henro Pictures]()
Of course I took a lot of photos during my Henro trip. Here are some of them. I`m sure you have a lot of questions to ask about them. In fact, I can guess what they are - let`s try!
Q: Is that blue bike yours? It looks like a little girl`s bicycle!
A: Hey, the important thing is it`s fast & easy to fold-up & carry on trains, buses etc. and it has 6 gears, which is enough for getting up & down most mountains.
Q: Who is the guy with the oranges?
A: Just a guy we stopped to ask for directions.
Q: Did you buy his oranges?
A: I wanted to, but of course we wanted to keep our luggage light, so no.
Q: Poor guy. You should have bought his oranges.
A: Hey - that`s not a question!
Q: How about that other guy? Who`s he? And what`s that on the ground in front of him?
A: A dog...?
Q: No! The other stuff.
A: Oh, that`s ginger. I stopped to take a photo of the workers harvesting it, & my father-in-law started talking to this guy, so of course then he gave us some.
Q: Ginger? It`s huge. But didn`t you want to keep your luggage light?
A: Yes. I told my F-in-L "Please don`t talk to any more farmers!"
Q: Did you see the statue of Ryouma Sakamoto?
A: Yeh - it was near temple # 33. I wanted to see it.
Q: What`s that thing in the bottom left photo?
A: That`s a small passenger ferry, near temple #33. We couldn`t cross the nearby big bridge on our bicycles.
Q: Can I click on the above picture to make it bigger?
A: You sure can.
My father-in-law & I returned to Ichinomiya from Shikoku on Friday. We managed to (= tried + could) visit temples number 28 to 40 of the Henro tour. We mostly rode our bicycles, but we also used the bus & train.
This is a map showing our 2008 & 2010 courses.
2 years ago my father-in-law & I began the famous `Henro` pilgrimage (religious tour) of 88 temples in Shikoku. We did it by bicycle. We started at number 1 & reached number 27 (the picture above), then we returned to Ichinomiya.
Tomorrow we`ll go back to Shikoku to continue the pilgrimage, starting at temple number 28. I`m looking forward to it. I hope the weather is good, like last time.
Thanks to all the kids at Ichinomiya school who coloured a picture for our halloween coloring contest - it was so difficult to pick winners. There were so many good - and funny, and creative - pictures.
We awarded prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Cutest, and Scariest picture.
Congratulations winners, and well done everybody!
Is your child a student at our school? Can you see his/her picture here?
These 2 pictures are for anyone who has no idea what my halloween costume was supposed to be.
I hope this helps!
Here is a collage of pictures taken at our kids (day) & adults (evening) Halloween parties on Sunday. There were so many cool costumes this year - well done everybody!
Also, thanks to volunteers & Hawaiian hula dancers - you did a great job.
Oh - and thanks to everyone who voted for me for `Best Teacher`s Costume`! Yay - I won! Take that, Cat in the Hat!
Thanks everyone who came to our halloween parties on Sunday. I hope you had fun. I really enjoyed myself, even though I was busy helping kids do my big puzzle, and also controlling my pet cormorant, who wanted to bite everybody (I could open & close his mouth using a string in my hand. Hehe.)
My costume was an `ushou`, a Japanese cormorant trainer/handler/master. Cormorant fishing is a 1300-year-old tradition in Gifu, and nowadays is a famous tourist attraction. Have you ever been to seen cormorant fishing in Gifu?
For those of you who didn`t see my halloween costume last year, here are some pictures. I was a (Japanese-style) grave-stone.
It was useful for hiding when my boss was looking for me. But it was difficult to pick things up from the ground if I dropped them...
My costume this year is a secret. If you come to our Teragoya Halloween Party on Sunday you can see it, and afterwards I`ll post photos here on my blog. I haven`t quite finished making it, but I think it`ll be pretty good, and pretty funny, like last year.
Thanks Naoaki for reminding me about the Kakamigahara airshow on Sunday.
I went there with my son, Owen. We arrived just in time for the Blackhawk helicopter display, but Owen seemed more impressed by the big cargo planes. He also got excited about the `Blue Impulse` formation flying display and wasn`t scared by the noise, which I thought he might be.
Afterwards we looked at the stalls (yatai) and I bought him a set of small Blue Impulse jet-shaped magnets. I wanted to buy more geeky (otaku-poi) stuff to make my wife roll her eyes and sigh (tameiki o tsuku) but it started to rain, so we headed home.
It`s an annual (every year) event, so next year I recommend you go – it`s easy to get to by train and free to enter.
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yukio 
PSPINC JP 
田仲なお美 
mokomoko 
KUMA 
エメラルド 
bokushi 
birdy 
TERAGOYA おとな 
内倉憲一