Going Places : Sanriku Area Part 3

Allrighty..., now we are on the 3rd day..please click on the links if you haven't read day 1 and day 2 yet...

27th May 2009: Ofunato - Kamaishi

Before I started writing this, I wondered myself, why it took me more than one year to put all these experiences and memories in a blog, it's not that I didn't have a blog before. But finally, and anyhow...to say of doing something, or to think of doing something, is wayyyyy much easier than to actually do it. So never mind that, glad that I could write it anyway, let's move on to my story for today....

In the previous post, I left you all in Ofunato, the small harbour town, located on the southeastern side of Iwate prefecture...we did some more learning stuff there before we later moved on to another city, Kamaishi.

the view of Ofunato Bay from my hotel room

So, while we were still in Ofunato, we visited the Ofunato City Hall, we had a lecture there and then together with the resource persons we went to several places to learn about their disaster mitigation systems....

Mr. Sasaki, the officer in charge of our trip in Ofunato

At the fire department's control room, we 'made acquaintance' with some tough cool guys...

These 'tombstones' are actually memorial stones set up as a remembrance of the past tsunamis in this part of the country...

macam batu nisan...

i honestly didn't remember where i took this...

During the trip, I had the chance of enjoying the local sweets...or cookie..er, whichever..called kamome no tamago (seagull's egg) which was of course, not actually seagull's eggs..but made of wheat flour, sugar and butter in the shape of a seagull's egg..it's yummy..

Kamome no tamago

We also went into a forest to look for a treasure...

into the forest..where robin hood n merry men jest..?

The interesting part for us, other than learning and seeing new stuff, was that at some places we had some people from the local newspaper and tv network following us, taking our pictures, and interviewing us for their newspaper and tv news. It was cool, of course. They were covering our stories, about these guys and girls from foreign countries coming to their country to learn about managing disaster. Thanks to our sensei, we get to keep the copies of those newspapers and the recording of the tv news with us.

me being interviewed..with the help of Okada-san in interpretation 
(thank you Titi for the picture..:))

Finally, it was evening and we had to hop on to the next city...Kamaishi...

..there they had more marts and markets..but like the other cities, the place had the laid back atmosphere and peaceful environment..

you don't really need to look up to find your way..

...and tomorrow would be another journey...

to be continued in part 4...