Instead, this year we took the little blue local train to Amanohashidate and did our walking there!
This may not sound terribly exciting, but this particular school is right up at the far end of the valley, in the foothills of Mt Oe, and as such, many of the younger kids had hardly ever (if ever at all) been to the sea! Many of them had never ridden on a train before either, so it was very exciting for them. I was in charge of "group 2", which consisted of eight children, most good, but two of the boys had a tendency to walk off... yikes! I was responsible for them, so I had to have one eye on the rest of the group and one eye on these two boys the whole time. I only lost one of them ONCE!... but I found him, so everything was ok! haha
First we took the bus from school to Nodagawa Station, and then the train to Amanohashidate. Once at our destination, we walked to the famous Chionji Temple there. This temple dates way back to 808AD. The current structures are from the 15th~18th centuries. There's an iron tub/pot in the garden which was made in the 13th century. It's a very special place, and it was great to be able to walk around with the children and teach them about their heritage.
After the temple, we played some games on the grassy lawn nearby and then set out in our small groups walking across the pine-studded sandbar. It was really fun actually.
These were my kids...well, the ones ahead to the right were a different group. In the time that I was getting out the camera and taking this picture, the two wandering boys wandered off... I managed to get them back before they disappeared though!
As we reached the end of the sand bar, we went over to the water's edge and threw stones into the sea. The kids found it HUGELY fun.
Then onwards we went up the mountain to Kasamatsu Park viewing deck to get an aerial view of the sandbar (Amanohashidate). Most visitors take the chair lift up the mountain, but we walked up the old steps... steep steps... seemingly never-ending steps... it was hard going! haha
The view from the top was wonderful as always, only it seemed so much more well-earned after the long-haul trek up those stairs!! This was incidentally when I lost that boy!
I was so relieved to find him alive!
Then we walked on... and on... and on... until we reached the Tango Ancient History Museum. It was EXTREMELY interesting to see the exhibition of treasures excavated from the ancient burial tombs in the area (dating from about 250~500AD or so). They also had exhibits of Jomon Era (10000~300BC) pottery, artifacts and jewelry discovered in the area. After that we were given a guided tour of the ruins of the great Kokubunji Temple (built well over 1000 years ago, but destroyed in the fires of civil war in the 16th Century), and a tour of an old Edo Period house (170 years ago).
The house was really interesting and was filled with tools and things from the old days.
All in all, it was a great day out (and anything historical is a huge plus for me)... but I won't lie - my muscles were SORE the next day! VERY sore! haha
Oh man, that would be a lot of steps. Don't envy you that one!
ReplyDeleteYup! It sure was! But I was in need of the exercise, so it worked out well:)
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