Today dawned clear and bright, so after a short breakfast, we decided to climb the nearest of the mountains that are by our apartment building. Myself and a small group of friends started to climb the steep hills up to the actual mountain trail. After passing through a Buddhist shrine, we then cut past a school, before finally making our way on to the trail. The trail was steep and treacherous, with pitfalls and dangerous ledges throughout. There was a small garden or farm up near the top of a mountain ridge, cut directly into the mountain. It looked abandoned, but to lug all of the gear up there must have been horrible. We finally reached the peak and were rewarded with an amazing view of Hiroshima, the harbor, and the surrounding terrain. It was stunning. The descent took a third of the time we took to ascend. After taking a circuitous path back to the apartments, passing a Shinto shrine and some of the largest Japanese houses I have ever seen, we had only been gone 3 hours!
We ate a quick lunch, then headed to Hiroshima's downtown to catch up with everyone else. After walking through the mall areas, heading to both a video arcade and a bookstore, most of the group decided to go to karaoke. However, Ben, Andrew, and myself decided to walk around some more and get some dinner. We explored several of the stores, discovering while imported wine is expensive, imported liquor is supercheap. We went to a small sushi place near Alice Park, a central square in downtown Hiroshima. After having some delicious and gigantic sushi with some really funny Japanese guys, we left to catch up with the rest of the group. As a group, we went to an American style bar, where we had passable American fare with some drinks, darts, and pool. There we saw more gaijin (foriegners) than we had anywhere else in the city. After hanging out there, we finally headed home on the train. At night, people nodded off to sleep and also quickly tried to finish the assigned homework for tomorrow, our first day of class.