Watery Weekend Adventures

This weekend we spent a lot of time on or avoiding water. Saturday was a miserable, wet day, so we spent most of the day (more than 6 hours!) at Kokko. Catie, Angela, and Maia were wild! They played hide-n-seek, hopscotch, built huge lego buildings, raced around on the slide & jungle gym, and had horse races. Catie could barely keep her eyes open during dinner and passed out before 7:00 PM (win for mom & dad!!!)

The horse races were fast and furious with the 3 girls racing on horses made from milk cartons & felt. Catie had Percy racing with her, but Angela's horse hat gave her the advantage during this round :-)

On Sunday, we headed south down to Geibikei Gorge near Hiraizumi. We’d seen brochures for boat rides through the gorge and thought it sounded fun. Andy figured out that we could take a cheap local train to Hiraizumi (rather than the pricey shinkansen to Ichinoseki) and catch a direct bus to the gorge. It was a fun journey and we made it there with no problems!

The boat tour was nice and very Japanese. It’s hard to explain exactly what that means, but the Japeneseness ranged from the fact that we all took our shoes off on the boat to the traditional songs our guide sang on the way back. About 32 of us sat in a wooden boat with a guide who poled the boat upstream to a small landing area. Everyone got out, used the bathroom and walked upstream 500m or so to a place where you purchased and then tried to throw small round balls of clay (I think) across the river into a hole in the cliff face. Supposedly getting a "rock" into the hole gives you luck. I'm not sure if it works, but a lot of the guys were really into it! There was another place along the river with a small buddist shrine and an open chest that you were supposed to throw coins into also. They also sold small bags of fish/duck food, so the boats were trailed by hordes of carp, trout, and ducks (Catie really liked that part). I’m sure that we would have gotten a lot more out of the tour had we understood more Japanese, but it was entertaining anyway. Plus, the gorge itself was impressive! It will be absolutely breathtaking in a couple of weeks when the leaves turn, but I suspect the crowds will take your breath away then too.

our boat with the big pile of shoes

poling up the gorge

 

Buying undama (luck stones) and throwing them across the river at the hole in the cliff

wider view of the stone throwing hole

Catie enjoying feeding the fish

tired girl on the way back. She slept most of the bus and train rides home!