Mouth of the Mountain

We had some fun making our superhero alter-egos at http://www.cpbintegrated.com/theherofactory/

Anyway, fun fact: Yama = "Mountain" and Guchi = "Mouth" so Yamaguchi is the mouth of the mountain. Fact of the day, eat it up!

Our first night we ended up falling asleep at 6:30pm (local) for a 90-minute nap, but didn't set the alarm on our little ipod dock thingy correctly and woke up at 12:30am... shoot. We were hoping to be awake when Joe and Liz arrived back from their weekend trip to see volcanoes and such. We went back to bed since we figured they were already in bed.

Woke up again at 4am feeling completely rested. I woke up and walked/jogged around the neighborhood. It was mostly walking though since it was still pitch black, but I noticed a really nice crescent moon and star, went back inside to grab my camera and headed back outside to shoot some photos of it. The 'best' shot:


By the time I was done a little after 5am, the sun was coming up and I was feeling very awake. Mia had done the smart thing and stayed in bed, getting the extra sleep she would need to last through the coming day. I took the opportunity to make some major progress on "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin, highly recommended!

When we all finally got going later on in the morning, we headed out to grab lunch with Takako and two of the other teachers at the English language school (America Eikaiwa Gakuin). We had Indian food, of all things, for the second straight meal as it turned out (since Joe and Liz had left us some food for our arrival that included fried dough with curry veggies in the middle and two curry noodle ramen-type cups).

After lunch we headed out to the 5-story wooden pagoda that is one of the major sight-seeing places in Yamaguchi. With the cherry blossoms opening, the sun shining, and a slight breeze, it was an extremely nice experience.

Pictures of the trip to the 5-story wooden pagoda