On
the four-day trip to Portland, I had a lot of experiences. Portland has many
natural, good places, and history. I was really impressed by these things. The three
most impressed things for me were Japanese-American Memorial, some Falls, and
Powell’s City of Books.
First, I was really impressed by the Japanese-American Memorial. This place had many stones engraved with short poems and names of internment camps which emphasized the history of Japanese-Americans. From these stones, I saw many poems, and I found one poem which is the most impressed for me. This poem said, “Going home, Feeling cheated. Gripping my daughter’s hand. I tell her we’re leaving Without emotion.” When I saw this poem I was really impressed by this poem and it made me think deeply. From this phrase “Going home” means, maybe “I want to go back home”. During this semester, all Extension students read ‘Weedflower’ which is a novel based on Japanese-Americans’ history, so from this place I could understand about Japanese-Americans’ history more deeply.
First, I was really impressed by the Japanese-American Memorial. This place had many stones engraved with short poems and names of internment camps which emphasized the history of Japanese-Americans. From these stones, I saw many poems, and I found one poem which is the most impressed for me. This poem said, “Going home, Feeling cheated. Gripping my daughter’s hand. I tell her we’re leaving Without emotion.” When I saw this poem I was really impressed by this poem and it made me think deeply. From this phrase “Going home” means, maybe “I want to go back home”. During this semester, all Extension students read ‘Weedflower’ which is a novel based on Japanese-Americans’ history, so from this place I could understand about Japanese-Americans’ history more deeply.
Second,
I visited many natural places such as Willamette Falls and Multnomah Falls.
Until this time, I had never seen a real waterfall like these. Also, I had
never seen a very long waterfall. Multnomah Falls is the second tallest
year-round waterfall in the United States after Yosemite Falls. Also, the total
height of the waterfall is 189m. When I saw this waterfall, I thought huge and
I felt good-hearted. I was really impressed by this waterfall.
Finally,
I went to Powell’s City of Books on the third day. This place is the best place
for me. Also, this place is the largest independent new and used bookstore in
the world. From when I knew this information, I was really looking forward to
visiting this bookstore. When I visited there, I was really surprised in the
number of books and how large this bookstore was. This bookstore has 9 colored
rooms such as purple, rose, green, blue, gold, coffee, orange, red and pearl.
Each room has each section of books. For example, if you want to find books about
Child Care, bookstores’ map show “Rose room”, so you can find this sections’
book in the “Rose room”. This bookstore has many books from many countries not
only Germany, France, Spain but also Japan. I had really good time and I spent
a lot of money around $100. I was really surprised about it, but it’s ok,
because I was really happy and really excited.
In
conclusion, during this trip I had really good time and I could learn many
things about the history of Japanese-American, Portland’s nature, and Powell’s
bookstore. These experiences are very important for me, and good things to
understand about Portland.