京都校外学習

Friday I was lucky enough to skip the days classes so I could go on a field trip with the second year students to Kyoto.

The first stop in the morning was the Yatsuhashi factory. Yatsuhashi are a famous Japanese style candy from Kyoto. They're very popular as souviniers, and I enjoy buying them just to eat myself because the baked/roasted ones are covered in cinnamon, and cinnamon flavoured treats are money.

After that we headed to a temple where the students were dropped off. They broke into their pre-determined groups and went off in the city to go about visiting various places. When I think back to field trips I had when I was in 7th/8th grade I couldn't even imagine being allowed to just roam free in a city the size of Kyoto. Everything was so tightly planned and supervised when we took field trips. Granted all the kids had to make it to certain checkpoints, and they all were given a cell phone to use in case something happened, but still, everyone made it back safe and sound, no problems at all. It was really quite impressive actually.

The weather coulda been better though. It rained off and on the entire day, pouring in a couple of instances. I got lucky though because when the heavy stuff came I was under a roof at Yasaka Jinja, the checkpoint I was responsible for, and managed to stay nice and dry. While I was there I also tried my hand at taking what would become my first HDR picture. I'm not even gonna try to explain what it is and how it works, because I don't really understand it myself. I just know the basics about how to make one, and personally, I think they look really cool. Click the link if you want to know more about the technical stuff.

All in all, a very enjoyable trip. Even as a teacher, field trips are fun.






Yasaka Jinja in HDR

At the beginning of every class there is a greeting where I ask the students how they are. No matter how they are actually feeling they answer in unison "I'm fine, thank you. And you?" Yesterday I told them I was very excited. When they asked why I said "because Metal Gear 4 is on sale now." The girls stared blankly while all of the boys in unison let out a big "OOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH!" For the rest of the class they kept talking amongst themselves about Metal Gear which is kinda, bad, but it was the last class of the day on a Friday, so I didn't really mind.

Good Times (Part 2)

Well, on the way back from Tokyo we decided to take the long way home by driving through the southern Japanese Alps which run through Yamanashi and Nagano. It was a long ass 10 hour drive back, but the views in the Alps were pretty crazy. We found a nice waterfall and enjoyed some fresh spring water.









The next day we headed to an abandoned village called Ibarakawa located out in the Suzuka mountains. Driving to get there we quickly realized why it's deserted today. If you drive down the road I take to get to the tiny elementary school you continue for another few kilometers past the end of any of the still settled areas. Then, turning off the main road you have to drive 10 kilometers down one of the crappiest roads I've ever driven on. You can't go more than 20 kilometers down the thing cause it's so chunky so it took us somewhere in the area of 40 minutes to actually reach where the village is, or was. There is a barn type building there that was built and maintained by some students from a university in Nagoya. It looked liked there was a group of them that made annual trips out there. As for the leftovers of the village there were no standing houses left. A couple of collapsed houses and a well were all that was noticeable. There was a shrine that was in good shape, but it was most likely maintained by those university students as well. It was very peaceful out there. For me it was the most I've ever felt separated from modern society while I've been in Japan. The only bad thing about the place was because of the river that runs through the place everyone but the Legend ended up getting tagged by at least 2 leeches. A-bone and J-Mac especially got a couple really good bites on them.











Tuesday was A-Bone's birthday and to celebrate we went to Nagashima Spa Land which is an amusement park and onsen not too far away. When we got there they told us that the Steel Dragon, their main attraction complete with a 300 foot first drop and top speed of over 150 km/h wasn't running that day which was a let down, but about an hour after we got there it was up and running. We rode everything in the park at least once. There were some disappointing rides, but the good ones and the lack of lines on basically everything but the Steel Dragon made it a very worthwhile time.









Thursday we all went to elementary school. The elementary school kids are much more open from the start so it was easy to get them going. Recess is always a great time at elementary school as well.











Our final weekend was spilt between the rural and urban. Friday we climbed Amagoidake, the second highest in the Suzuka Mountain Range at 1238 meters. It was a long hike, but we made a really good pace, and the views were fantastic. We finished the day off with a dinner at Ousho, a chain Chinese style eatery. My local Ousho has a Friday special where you can get an order of dumplings for 120 yen down from 200 yen. Throw in a rice dish with a couple orders of dumplings and you've got a fantastic cheap meal. Actually, we finished off the day with a visit to Mano-san's temple. Aside from being the office worker at my school, he's also head priest of a local temple. It's really new and looks fantastic so we took a little tour of the place at night.











Saturday we headed to Kyoto and visited Sagano onsen. There are no pictures of the onsen, but let me just say it's money. 9 different kinds of hot springs, well one is cold, and a sauna make for a great way to spend a couple of idle hours even if you have to be naked the whole time. At night Mano-san had invited us to a BBQ he was holding at the LSD Consert House. A bunch of his friends were there and they treated us to an impromptu jam session complete with Zepplin, Beatles, The Band, Doobie Brothers and more. We at our fair share of beef and yakisoba as well, and one of Mano-san's female friends really seemed to have a thing for Peter. Too bad she was 50 something...











Now with all this stuff going on it doesn't sound like there was much time for good old-fashion jackassery, but oh you better believe there was. An NHL 08 best of 7 series between A-Bone and Peter which culminated in A-bone taking out the garbage in nothing but a pair of boots, me burning a hole in my jacket with a firework, a surprise beatdown on A-Bone, and the creation of a nickname for Peter "Can't Buy a Break" Hynd were among the highlights of our downtime.