Spring Excursion!

Walking Course - 6.5km

It rained the day Yawata Primary School was supposed to have their Spring Excursion so it got moved to Wednesday which, lucky for me, happened to be the day I go to the school for English! We had an early 8:30am departure from the school not by bus but by foot! It was my first time to go on a school walking excursion and we had 6.5km to walk by 3pm! The weather was cloudy for the first half of the morning and looked like it was going to rain but we were lucky. The Primary school has about 40 children in total from Years 1 through to the Year 6s. We walked in a straight line along the old main road passing the local Junior High School which due to the lack of children in the area has been closed for the time being.

The start of our 6.5km adventure

The closed Yawata Junior High School

We passed many rice paddy's which are being prepared for the rice growing season. We then turned towards the mountains and walked up a pretty steep mountain road for a couple kms where we stopped for some morning tea before have a local volunteer talk to the students about the nature in the area. We learnt that there were around 270 different types of cherry trees in Japan and counted the petals on three types, one having 70 or so petals!

A talk about cherry trees

A surprise for the students

The guide showed us a lookout and we enjoyed the view of the Kawadori area.

View of the Kawadori area with a dozen rice paddy's

After taking some photos and saying goodbye to the guide we continued down hill before arriving at our lunch destination, Yawata Temple. The temple has quite a grand entrance with the path up to the temple surrounded by countless Japanese Cedar trees which are over 1000 years old and some of the tallest trees I have seen in Japan.

Entrance to Yawata Temple



The huge Japanese Cedar trees

The school bento 'lunchbox' arrived and we sat in little groups and ate lunch. Afterwards the Buddhist Priest talked to the kids about the history of Yawata and the temple on the steps of the main hall.

A word about the history of Yawata

The kids were also lucky enough to receive some little snacks and juice from the priest as we departed the temple for the final leg back to the school. It was a great day and I was a little tired from walking but glad to have been able to learn about the beautiful area that the children live in.