I'll summarize my beach trip and post some pix... May 4th I went to Oarai in Ibaraki prefecture with other teachers and a group of the high school students from U.I.C.S. (Utsunomiya International Christian School, where I teach, for anyone who missed that in a previous post). On the map, it's only about 45 miles as the crow flies, but it took about two and a half hours to drive because of the crazy Golden Week traffic. I didn't really mind, though, because it was a beautiful drive through the country in an area I hadn't seen yet. One of the very
interesting things for me to see as we were driving was all the farmers planting rice, which I had never seen before (the farmers planting it, not the rice itself!!!).Our main destination was a small amusement park near the ocean. The park was having some kind of promotion, so it was
free to enter; ther
e was a per ride
charge for amusements, and o
f course the usual fairly expensive "we've got a captive audience" price for food. The park grounds were beautiful and the whole complex was unlike any park I've seen in the US; it was part nature park, part giant picnic ground/sports fields, part amusement park. We walked through the park to the opposite side and then along a road that led down to the ocean. There were a few other people on the beach playing or picnicking, but most of the people there were surfers, which I think you can see in the picture.After walking back up to the park, we looked around a bit and then had lunch, followed by . . . RIDES! As we entered the park, off in the distance I had seen a roller coaster of fairly promising size, which I was very excited to investigate. Because we couldn't stay for the entire day, I had time to go on two rides. Unfortunately, the roller coaster was fairly disappointing; it had a decent size first hill that disappeared into some trees, but the height was completely wasted. The drop on the other side was very small, and went immediately into a long, slow turn. The rest of the ride was basically a large kiddie coaster. BUT, the ride that was very, unexpectedly fun is the next one in the pictures. In case you can't see clearly in the photo, the name of the ride is "Disko". DUH! I should have known that a ride sharing its name with the world's most fun musical genre would be fun! We didn't have time to go on the large ferris wheel in the background of the picture; maybe next time!
Here's a link to one of the videos I took; it's surfers at the beach we visited:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmbIabbUEi0
I'll continue this next time and post more links. I've got to go to bed . . .
