Sightseeing

The day Emma was born, my mother arrived from the States. She came primarily to help out with the baby, but when you visit a foreign country for the first time, some sightseeing must be done. After I got out of the hospital, we made our plans. (By the way, hospital policies in Japan require that mother's stay for 5 days for a normal birth; 7 if a C-section was required. Given how long I was in labor, and the way they count days, we ended up staying for 6, but more about that later.)


The first place we went was Ritsurin Gardens in Takamatsu. Its a park that had been established by a feudal lord in the 1600s. There are many winding paths, ponds, a tea house, and a folk museum. The fish and turtles love people and will come up to the edge of the ponds to beg for bread. To our surprise, there were a couple of soft shelled turtles in the mix too. I hope you can see him in this picture, his head is more yellow-green and oval shaped then the other turtles.

One soft shell among a bunch of hardbacks.

Marugame Castle is not very far from our church building, so after church ended, we stopped by. The castle is at the top of a very steep hill. At the bottom of the hill is a moat, two large gates, and a courtyard. On the way up the hill are stone walls. At the top are a couple of open courtyards and the castle. Its not very large, but it has a great view. From the top you can see the harbor, the surrounding city, and the mountains. Its a great outpost for spotting incoming raiders.

Mark, Emma, and I in front of the castle.

The last place we went was Shikoku-Mura, an architectural open air museum. Many historic buildings were transferred to Shikoku-Mura for preservation. There are old houses, bridges, storage facilities, lighthouses, boats and more. They also have gardens and an indoor museum (essential to visit because of the air-conditioning, if nothing else).

Because of things like this, we were unable to take our stroller.

We only traveled on days that Mark had off or had a late shift; but, because the Japanese don't think a new mother should do anything for a month after her baby is born, we believe that Emma is the most widely traveled two-week-old on the island.

What we've been doing

The Internet is alive and well again in our apartment, so I thought I would take a moment and tell you all what we've been for the past few weeks.

We had our first doctor's appointment and we have an English speaking doctor (yeah!). None of the nurses speak English, but with a lot of gestures, we can figure out what they mean. Besides, they do pretty much the same thing that the nurses in the US did. They take my blood pressure, weigh me, and have me pee in a cup, then tell me to wait for the doctor.

The hospital is pretty nice. Everything and everyone is in white though. It makes it think it must be hard to keep clean. In the room with the ultrasound machine, there is a big, flat-screen TV hanging from ceiling for mothers to watch the scan and see their baby's vitals. Its much nicer then the little 4"x4" screen that our doctor in Texas had.

We've also been traveling and seeing some of the sights. In Kan'onji there is a giant coin made out of sand. We don't know why its there, but it seems to be the town symbol. Every year the community gets together to clean it up. They weed it and shovel and rake the sand back into nice sharp lines. We found when they were doing it and went and helped.





There are shrines and temples everywhere. The island we live on, Shikoku, is famous for the 88 temple pilgrimage. There was a Buddhist monk named Kūkai who founded them and if you visit all of them in a year something good is suppose to happen to you. So far, we have visited one, Zentsu-ji; but, it has sand imported from all the other temples, so if you visit it, you can say you have visited all of them. Its also Kūkai's birthplace and there are statues of all 500 of his reincarnations surrounding the grounds.





We've seen a couple of other Shinto shrines in parks too. They don't have big stories surrounding them though. Shrines get built in places where something is considered holy, or invokes awe. There seems to be a lot of them on the mountains.


I love the little carvings and ornaments on the shrines.




And finally, I've finished knitting a baby blanket for Emma.