ensoku

i love hiking. but for some reason, when i heard we were hiking as part of our yearly ensoku (field trip), i was not very excited. it seemed more like a pain than anything. hiking with 130 9th graders. oh joy, i thought.

i got up before 6am, got all my stuff together and made it to the meeting spot right on time. i was still unsure of the whole thing. we all loaded up on the charter buses and headed for ibaraki prefecture. two quiet (yay for calm, well-behaved kids) hours later we arrived at the base of Mount Tsukuba. we took class photos and headed up.

it was then that i got excited. i remembered i love being outside, i love the challenge of a mountain in front of me, i love the anticipation of reaching the summit, i love the adventure.

the first 20 minutes were probably the hardest part of the whole hike. it was fairly steep with no tree cover. after that, there were flat sections, with lots of tree cover and shade. also, we weren't the only school group there; it was a traffic jam with probably another 150 middle schoolers and 100 elementary schoolers. while it was unfortunate to be so crowded, it meant that we could only go as fast as the whole group was moving, giving us lots of rest time, and play time!!

i took up the rear with another teacher, Mr. Disney, who also loves taking photos. at one point, we "competed" to see who could get the better photo. he's got an awesome SLR camera, but my camera beat him in the macro division. some of the photos:





at the top there were LOTS of kids everywhere and a row of little tacky tourist trap shops.
i found a little spot under some trees behind the shops and ate my lunch. pretty soon it was time to head down. instead of walking back the way we came, we headed over to the ropeway which was a gondola that took us right back to the base where we started.



from there we split up into the buses with two buses going to the Tsukuba Space Center(english) and two going to the Tsukuba Expo Center(japanese). i was assigned to the space center, with about 40 boys and my two "favorite" teachers. :/

it was alright. in the beginning, they seemed so anal about the NUMBER of people that were coming in; we had to put sticker badges on our shirts, and they always had a clicker counting us as we entered or left the room. i guess it's just because it's a working research center for NASA.

they took us to 3 different buildings, each with modules and the actual cameras or satellites that were in space, astronaut space suits, research and training facilities the astronauts use, and examples of space food. the tour guice did a good job explaining things, but i would have liked to have some free time to walk around the small museum-like rooms they took us too and read the explanations too, but oh well.

the other two buses came to the space center, and we all got back on our original buses. those calm and well-behaved kids must have gotten a second wind because they wanted to sing karaoke on the bus. it could have been worse, and i knew a few of the songs, so it was alright. but i would have liked to have taken a nap. ha.

we arrived back in town and sent all the kids on their way. the rest of the middle school teachers were already back from their class field trips so we met up with them for a typical nomikai. part way through i suddenly felt so tired and just not into being there. but i also couldn't bring myself to leave. i could feel tears of exhuastion in the back of my eyes and managed to make it to the last 15 minutes when Mr. Gold and i were talking and he was asking, "don't you get stressed working in a foreign country, in japanese? i'm impressed. i couldn't go to the US and do what you do. " and i couldn't hold them back anymore.

finally the party was over. we all gathered outside the restaurant, the vice princpal and i had a funny conversation and then i headed home, drug myself into the shower and crashed.