Today we took part in four exciting events.  The first activity was visiting the Izume Hachiman Shrine.  At the shrine, we were taught how to properly give offerings to the god of victory.  The offerings were pine branches with special pieces of origami tied to them.  The ritual was fun to learn, even though I messed up the process!  After some apprentices of the shrine performed a very complicated looking dance.  After the dance, we were invited to try on the traditional priest/priestess outfit...

Throughout the trip so far I have had a fantastic and eye opening experience learning about a new culture and lifestyle.  Today, July 27th was probably the greatest experience yet.  I am usually a very grumpy morning person, so fresh-water clam harvesting at 9:30am sounded like a cold, dirty and painful experience.  I felt that way until I began clamming the Shijimi (fresh-water clams) at Lake Jusan Bridge Park.  I was immediately shocked at how much fun I was having.  At first, I only thought c...

We started the day by harvesting melons, one of the main agricultural products of Tsugaru City.  The process was easy, but the payoff was sweet - literally!  We were told that on a scale from 0-18 of sweetness, the melons were 16.  After the harvest, we went to the packing facility for the melons.  They were sorted by size and sweetness.  After the packing facility and lunch, we went to Kizukuri High School.  There, we participated in kendo, Japanese fencing, and kyudo, Japanese archery.  Th...

Hello All! My name is Nick Rayder, and I am currently on the Bath-Tsugaru Sister City Exchange.  I am 18 years old and live in Falmouth, Maine.  Going to Japan has always been a dream of mine since I started studying the language in November of 2010.  My standard of Japan has always been high, and every day we have been in Aomori, I have not been disappointed.  Today, July 25th, was no different.      We, the Bath Group, started the day off by visiting the Governor of Aomori.  After about an h...

On day two of our stay in Tsugaru, Japan we gathered at the Fureai Kaikan Community Center in Shariki village to catch the bus at 9am.  Our first stop was at the Yoshinji Buddhist Temple, where we participated in Zazen Buddhist Meditation with a monk.  We spent the morning there, learning about the religion, and followed the monk in prayer for the lives lost years ago in the wreck of the Bath ship, the "Cheseborough".  When the morning ended, we went to a local market known as "Flat".  There, we...

On July 23, we went to meet the Tsugaru City Mayor, Hiroyoshi Fukushima. We were able to give the mayor small gifts of our own, which is always fun. Next, we visited the Inagaki Middle School, one of the local middle schools, where we got to hang out and get to know some students and learn about their school. We also made mouth-watering banana cream pies with the students. I think we all made new friends, I know I did. After that we went to the Shayokan, which is the house of a famous Japanese a...

For a long time, I've realy wanted to go to Japan, and now that I'm here, I realize nothing could have really prepared me for it.  It would be like showing someone a photograph and expecting them to fully appreciate the beauty of the scene.  Most people would expect the most shocking cultural aspects to be big things like language.  However, I have found that the small things (hand gestures, license plate format, the tastes of foods that also exist in America, etc) are what make Japan truly amaz...