Karasawa Shrine

An amazing day in Japan.
We spent the morning at GSE orientation. Which means we basically learned some of the rules of culture we need to follow (bathing and bidets!) and practiced our presentations. We're all trying to give our presentations in Japanese, which means we need A LOT of practice. I pronounced namae (name) incorrectly and the word I said means gangster - so I need to get it right or I could be carted off to jail ;-)
After orientation we went to have lunch at the Karasawa Shrine. This is a 1000+ year old Shinto Shrine outside of Sano. The lunch was fabulous, Sanosan's wife went to a lot of trouble whipping it up. We had tempura, salad, rice, chicken pot, seaweed soup ... I can't even remember what else - but about 10 different items. I can't imagine the work that went into that meal. The home was very traditional, shoji screens, tatami mats - which by the way - I'm apparently going to have trouble with all the sitting. My feet fell asleep twice during lunch!
After lunch we walked around the shrine. Lots of steps and lots of amazing views. Check out some of my photos. The shrine on top of the hill is torn down and rebuilt every 100 years or so. Part of it is what remains of the original castle built there 1000+ years ago. There's a moat around it for protection and you can see how it would be hard for invaders to attack with all those steep inclines.
Tonight the team is meeting to go over our presentations again. Tomorrow we meet our first host families and get separated for the first time. It's going to be difficult to be parted from the group, but I also can't wait to get to meet the host family!