At the end of May, I found out I was placed in Shimanto-cho, Kochi-ken (Shimanto Town, Kochi Prefecture) and my first reaction was, "Where the heck is that???" I did a little research and found on out it is located on Japan's smallest and least populated island, Shikoku. Kochi Prefecture is the least populated prefecture (around 796,000 people) of Shikoku and this made me a little nervous. However after doing some research on Kochi, I found out there is a lot to do in the area and the people in the area are really friendly. On top of that, Kochi is absolutely GORGEOUS (as you can see in the pics below)!!! I'm super excited about my living situation! Here are a couple of links to learn more about Kochi and Shimanto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dchi_Prefecture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimanto,_K%C5%8Dchi_(town)
http://www.pref.kochi.lg.jp/english/
http://www.japanvisitor.com/index.php?cID=357&pID=1733
