Omg so this is day #15 and #16, post #23 and I know I'm slacking but I'm trying! Estella said she would remind me to blog and I'll remind her to journal cause if someone doesn't keep me accountable then I'll just keep pushing this back haha. I'm gonna go in reverse and talk about day #16 first because CATS! Wow, it's been a crazy few days :)
So Ishinomaki has a few islands and one of them is Tashirojima Island which is known to be a cat island. At some point cats were brought to the island and over time they become undomesticated and now roam the island freely. The ferry ride to the island was amazing and the water here was so beautiful!
Right when we arrived we began seeing cats! It wasn't a crazy amount of cats but it was still a pretty cool experience. What was sad was some of them seem to have wounds on there ears from something and was very small and tiny but other than that they seemed very content and roamed freely~ But fr, THEY ARE SO PHOTOGENIC, like honestly every time we saw a cat they would pose for a picture and it was so cute. On the island there was a place called Manga Island and was famous for having manga artists come visit the island and relax/draw in the "cabin". Side note: Ishinomori is a very famous manga artist from Ishinomaki (conveniently names haha) and he created a lot of iconic heroes during the time so take a look! There's also a cat shrine which is pictured in the background of the picture at the top right.
Also I thought this would be funny to share but theres a gift shop on the island (where I dropped more money then I wanted to but that's not the point of the story lol) and they had a small stand that just sold all things related to cat balls :| LITERALLY a whole book on it and they had cat ball key chains (pictured in the back) xD
Then here are just a few more group pictures :) Not everyone came but it was still a fun time
More pictures~ but yea after this we had a Map-Making Exercise where we created and put together a map of our Ishinomaki. We found a place that reminded us of "home" and it was a very intersting exercise that I could go into more detail another time~ But on day #15 we visited the Ishinomaki Info Center and learned more about what happened in 2011 and more about the healthcare system during the incident- which I can also talk more about in the future to those of you interested in that ;)
We did this one exercise in the middle of a 7-11 parking lot but it was basically exploring how the community used the public space that is the 7-11 parking lot lol. Some only came and parked and slept in their cars, others walked, other was on their phones. We observed a lot and it was interesting but I'm too tired to try to explain right now but yea if yalls interested just ask! I'm sorry I'm not going into much detail about these but it's just a lot and I'm still trying to catch up :( I promise I'll be better abou tthis!
OH and after cat island I also tried the taiyaki at this one local place and omg ITS SO GOOD. The couple that runs the shop is also, from what I've heard, the CUTEST SHIT EVER!! But yea I'm gonna leave it there and try to catch up on the next two days haha.