Staff Retreat

English school staff retreat was held in Hiroshima: at a sport center in a village very close from Hiroshima San-iku High School. Our teacher Lionel joined from the first day, which was Nov. 21 if I remember right. We Japanese staff joined the program only on Sabbath.



We were late for Sabbath School, and it seemed they had good discussion on our mission.



Lionel was playing the piano beautifully as usual.









After lunch we moved to San-iku High School main chapel to join the music program for the youth conference held there at the same time as our staff retreat. This was the second time for us to visit there.

High School choir, English teachers and some other groups sang or played music.

Nanae told me that at the end of the program some young boys played weird music with an electric guitar or something like that. Fortunately I was not there, since Makoto was bored and I had to take him out for a walk.

Anyway, we spent a good time there. It is good to visit other churches every once in a while.


Nanae was very happy to find her friend Aika Inada there. Makoto was sad because he couldn't find his friend Yu Yoshimura. Both of them are kids of our former pastors. The difference is that Aika is a senior high school student and a member of the choir while Yu is a junior high school student and doesn't belong to the choir yet. So he was somewhere on campus but was not involved in the music program.

Just before leaving we had a chance to talk to Katee who is working as an English teacher there. She is from Colorado! We promised to see each other again either in Tokuyama or Hiroshima before she goes back to the U.S.

Campus

From a college parking lot. Autumn color is deepening.

Autumn fishing

Fishing season for trout ended at the end of August. We got a special permission for fishing gogi (charr). This is the spawning season of gogi and fishing was expected difficult. But we went anyway.

Water was low and very clear. We didn't see many fish.

So, the fishing was extremely difficult as we expected.

Finally she got a little one. But it was not a gogi but an amago salmon. Amago is a subspecies of yamame, or masu salmon.

In this particular stretch of the stream both amago and gogi inhabit. It seems that amago is dominant over gogi, so when amago are active gogi keep silent. Anyway it was good to be able to see a fish. Of course we released it immediately after taking a picture since it was not the species which we were given a permission for.

In the last pool I saw a pair of big amao, which were preparing for spawing. Usually amago salmon precede gogi charr in spawning. We wanted to see spawning of gogi, but we may have to wait for another week or so.

Fuyo or confederate rose

One of my favorite flowers. It's scientific name, they say, is Hibiscus mutabilis. No wonder they look like hibiscus flowers. Usually they bloom in summer time, but they are still blooming although it's November already. Is that because of the global warming? I don't know. But it is blessing that we can enjoy this beauty for such a long time.