Yoron Island by MoMo

I just got back from Yoron Island four days ago. On the 28th we woke up around 4:00 because the bus left at 6:30(a picture of me getting ready to go to Yoron). We took a boat to the island. On the first day it rained. We had to carry bamboo stocks through it to make a raft. Then we tied it together. At least all the hard work payed off (a picture of our raft the next day). We raced our rafts in the ocean on the third day. We won! The second day we went and made sugar cane juice. First we would stick a sugar cane stem through a hole then it would come out the the other end then a group would turn it around then it squeezed all the juice out (as seen in this video). On the last day we went out and took some pictures on the beach. On the second day we also raced canoes, swam in the ocean, and had lunch on the beach. On the third day, we explored a cave. We slept in buildings called misikus (which means true spirit). There is a main lounge, a dining room, several boy's rooms, several girl's rooms, and some rooms for the leaders. There was also a boy's bath and a girls bath. We took took traditional Japanese baths where you shower off and then bathe in a huge tub the size of our kitchen. There was only one American toilet in our bathroom, all the rest were funny potties. The kids were not all American. There were kids from mainland Japan too. In fact, there were more Japanese kids than American kids. We slept on tatami mats with just a pillow and a blanket.We had to take off our shoes at every building we went to. We only ate Japanese food. We ate it as a group in our misiku. We sat at low tables on tiny stools. For breakfast we usually had hard boiled eggs, bread, rice, milk, and salad. At other meals we usually had fish (sashimi), rice, tea, and vegetables. And on the last day we went to the shrine. We rang the bell and made a wish. The pictures with the blocks of wood that have writing on them are Japanese wishing cards at the shrine. We also had a goodbye ceremony. We danced and my group won the dancing contest.