May 13, 2014 - Yakumo

After a long night of people being sick we finally got to bed and woke up nice and early to get on the road again. This time we are headed to Yakumo. Last night both Kendra and Chelsee were sick. I’m just hoping no one else gets the wonderful privilege of getting sick. The train ride was extremely crazy and there was no air conditioning this time around. We arrived at a hotel this time, but when we got there we found out that there wasn't a check in till three se we went out and explored until we got to go to our rooms. We went to the bank and exchanged money. Then we ate lunch at McDonald's. I usually hate McDonald's, but it was so delicious. The food was slightly different at this McDonald's compared to the ones in the states. Then we just went shopping at the mall for a bit. After that we went back and got settled in our room. There were only two people per room so Amber and I were able to room together. This was the best hotel so far because it was actually a hotel. It was pretty nice inside. We all had our own showers and rooms. They even provided robes for us. We went over to the Matsue castle. We met up with some girls from the Jr. College here. They were very excited to meet us and visit. We rode some nice little boats around the castle while talking to the girls. There professor told us that we had to talk to the girls as much as possible because it would give them a good opportunity to use their English. They spoke English very well. They told us good places to eat and pretty places to see. They told us what they were studying in school, what grade they were in and if they’d ever been to the states. I was very surprised about how many of them had actually been to the states.

The girls told us that most of them live pretty close around to Matsue, but many of them live quite far. One of the girls told us that she lived all alone in an apartment. This was surprising because what it sounded like was that they don’t have roommates like we do in the states. They either live with their families or alone. Even though it was sometimes hard to know what they were saying they tried to make sure we understood them.

After the boat ride we went and ate Soba. Soba is like cold spaghetti with soy sauce. It was good, but I think I would've enjoyed it more if it was warm. Then we went to watch the sunset over the lake. The lake was half salt, half fresh water. A large variety of fish can be found in this lake. One interesting thing I found was around here people either have hobbies or they don’t do much with their lives. I feel like they don’t try very many new things. At the lake we took a lot of pictures. The best part about the lake was that a Japanese man asked to take our picture on his camera. He was just enjoying it so much. He even got a good picture of everyone jumping and took it while lying down on his back to get a good angle.