The third morning we had to pack and leave our hotel to the next destination, I went on a walk with Dylan and came back with no time to spare, thankfully I didn't leave anything behind. After much travel we arrived at Himeji Castle in Inoshima, I took the tour with a majority of the group, it was amazing! Seeing this relic from the past and hearing about it's strategic elements that helped make it an unsieged castle really made me admire the complexity of this structure. That evening we were dropped off at three different locations to meet our hosts, and my brother joined a group for a baseball game which he greatly enjoyed. The remainder of our group was staying in the upper house of Ark foreign language school with Naromi's mother. There we hung out, and played ping pong. We had a fabulous Yakisoba dinner with a large assortment of side dishes and probably the largest group dinner in the whole trip aside from the youth hostel cafeteria. Our hosts had a surprise in store for us, fireworks at the beach. It was an enjoyable car ride talking with Shannon. Those little cars book around mountain turns. I spent the night at my host Toshiko house, Naromi's sister. We talked a little and ate snacks, both of us practicing our second language. That morning I found out that my host our guides and Matt's family were all Jehovah's Witnesses because of a postcard I saw laying around. It was exciting to know that I was with a group who share the same ideals as me.

I had a hard time placing this day correctly in my memory, but it was the day we went to a really nice park called Bihoku Kyuryo Koen, it had numerous gardens, a traditional folk village, bike trails, and the coolest playground ever! Everyone's inner kid came out, we broke so many rules and bruised ourselves pretty good that day. Nakita's camera broke, I have it here in pieces but can't fix the len's. The most notable feature of this playground was the conveyor roller slides which would shake one's bottom numb, however if one sat on their shoes the ride was much smoother and faster. At our next stop we had takoyaki for lunch, about a tenth of the group ate the whole portion, and more than half didn't even attempt eating it. I felt bad about all of the food being thrown away and tried to eat more than one portion of the acquired taste takoyaki. I actually wasn't the taste that kept me from eating too much, but the gooey chunky texture. Since I was sore I took a cable car to the top of Onomichi Observation platform with Matt's family. We went back to our hosts and had another great meal.

Today was the only rainy day of the trip, our host handed us umbrella's and said goodbye knowing they would probably never see us again. Our bus was taking us to Hiroshima, but not before touring Miyajima island. After the ferry ride most of us just shopped, myself included, and before long we were all back at the ferry station hanging out, because of the rain not many adventured to the sites on this island. Some students decided not to use their umbrellas and by the end of the day were soaked to the bone. That night we would spend our first day at a Youth Retreat, which is like a boarding house for children or something like summer camp... the only problem about youth retreats is the retreat part, which means no city nearby for food and drink, no internet, and half of our group hated the food. Later that night we played in the coolest gym I've ever seen. It had basketball hoops, ropes, tire swings, and climbing courses along the entire wall.