LET’S GO CAMPING!!
This time the whole family went camping. Lyana spent a lot of time planning a two-night campout with just our family. That’s right, no other kids to keep ours entertained, so it was up to us to keep everyone happy.
Thank goodness for Terzo—that’s the turtle shell storage on top of our van. There is no way that we could have fit all of our stuff (best name for it) in our van without Terzo. As it was, the children barely fit.
The first stop was Hirazumi. It’s a small town about 3 1/2 hours south of Misawa. The drive went fairly smoothly, until we got to the town. Then we couldn’t find the campground. We stopped at the visitor’s center and they told us how to get there. So off we go to find it, driving up steep hills, around sharp bends and we find a block of dilapidated lean-to cabins with a crumbling chain-link fence around it. This can’t be it, so we drive around some more, and stop somewhere else and they tell us to go back the way we came, so we do and again all we find is the lot of broken cabins. There’s no place to set up a tent and the place looks abandoned anyway, so we ask the lady in the shop next door (I took a picture of Lyana singing and dancing charades to the Japanese lady as tried to communicate with her, but apparently that photo no longer exists), and she points to the broken camp. She even goes to get the caretaker from her house next door. In the end, we decide to take our chances elsewhere, so we thank them and drive off (crossing our fingers and toes that we’ll find a place before dark).
So by now everyone is getting hungry and we drive around forever until we find a quiet place for a picnic. For a small town, this place is really crowded. There’s a famous temple here and tourists swarm here like bees to my shirt (tell you about in another post). After lunch we go by another information and I drop off Lyana while I find a place to park. While I’m in the car with the kids, suddenly the van starts shaking violently from side to side. At first I thought it was the kids horsing around, but then I notice the cars across the street are wobbling back and forth too. The windows in the restaurant next door are visibly rattling and all the patrons run out into the parking lot. We didn’t know how big this earthquake was, but it was just a bit scary (we found out later it was a 6.3 off the coast straight east of us about 50 miles, but it read as a 3 or 4.0 where we were). Immediately after the shaking stopped, the owner of the restaurant walked over to me and said, “Parking. Please stop now.” And walked away. Yes, I was parked in a customers only lot. And I felt bad . . . sort of.
Soon Lyana’s back and she has directions to Geibeki Gorge (one of the main reasons we’re here) and we get back on the road. We start following the directions and we stop at the railroad tracks and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. Turns out the earthquake stopped all the trains and all the crossing signals are down in the whole town and no one knows how long it will take. So we turn around and eventually find a bridge over the tracks and we are (we think) on our way. Now it’s getting late and we have to make a choice – go one way to another campsite or go the other way and try to find the gorge. We want to go the gorge, but the signs are confusing and we don’t want to risk getting lost. Stubbornly I keep driving and just when I decide (read: my wife “convinced me”) to turn around, we find a sign for Geibeki Gorge. Hooray!! Because we’ve been turning around all day, and I was tired of getting lost (sadly, this wasn’t the last of it).
Here’s the entrance to the gorge. The building in the center, way in the back, is the little shop next to all the boats.
The water here is only a couple feet deep at the most. Each of these boats can carry 60-70 passengers (Japanese, not Americans). When you get on, you take off your shoes and place them on the shelf, then find a spot to sit on the tatami mats. The boatman then takes you on a 1 1/2 hour journey up and back down the river, winding through breathtaking cliffs.
Smiling kids. Goal #1.
Lyana and Mark were smiling inside.
Be sure to purchase several bags of fish food for 5o yen a piece. The entire trip, schools of huge fish trailed us. The kids had a blast feeding and even touching them. No fingers were lost.
Our boatman. He even sang on the trip back.
The boat takes you up the gorge a ways, then stops where you can get off and explore on foot. We asked a guy to take a picture of us, and after 5 or 6 tries, we finally got it—and everyone is looking at the camera!!
At the end of the trail you can buy a handful of small stones, each with a marking on them which represents something you might like to have more of. 100 yen for 5, I think.
This guy sells the rocks.
Then to get good luck in whatever is written on the rock, you have to toss it across the river and into that opening in the cliff on the other side. We watched everyone else do it, and only one guy got one in.
I decided to save the money and the kids just picked up their own rocks off the ground to throw into the water. Then after we finished the boat tour, I bought everyone ice cream!! (much better than a pile of rocks)
One of the ladies that works there speaks English and she takes pictures of all foreign guests and posts them on her blog.
Well, it was time to find the campsite, so we asked that same lady how to get there. Well, she ended up recommending a entirely different campsite in the opposite direction. And to top it off, one of the boatmen, who was just getting off shift, volunteered to take us there! (that’s him driving in front of us)
We followed him for over 45 minutes! He even made a couple of wrong turns, but eventually we found it. Surprisingly (well, not really surprising because it’s Japan, after all) he expected nothing in return. No tip or anything. And he didn’t even live nearby! We felt grateful and guilty at the same time. Grateful because most of the signs looked like the one in the picture below. Guilty because we made him drive so far out of his way. Katya wrote him a thank you letter which we dropped off to him on the way past the gorge the next day.
Here’s the campsite. Completely embedded in the forest. The wooden platforms were the only places you could pitch a tent. Turns out I prefer having my tent on a wooden stage. No rocks, branches or pine cones. Not to mention the floor is level.
Humidity + firewood = itty bitty campfire. Not even the “lighter fluid” from the crazy American in the cabin across the street (ask me later) didn’t work. Eventually there was just enough fire to melt the marshmallows. And then we went to bed.
It was a very, very long day, and between U-turns and cranky kids (and Tatos), we weren’t sure how this camping trip was going to turn out. But in the end, everything worked out just fine.
Rob
Coming up: day 2 of the Watson family campout.
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