GW Part II: Stawberry Picking, "A Glimpse of Hell", and Riding Festival

 May 14, 2013

---Strawberry Picking---

This past Friday I got to go strawberry picking for work! The guys who make the city newsletter were doing an article on a strawberry patch in Shirahama, so I got to join them for a little cultural exchange with the kids who were going picking. It was the last day of the strawberry season, so the greenhouse owners were allowing kindergarten and elementary school kids to come pick the remaining strawberries for half an hour for free. If you're curious, it seems that they take the strawberries left at the end and turn them into jam later.

They were totally nice enough to allow me to join them! There were about five different types of strawberries, so of course I tried them all out. I even found some super giant ones that were like the size of my hand!

This giant strawberry was the perfect excuse to take a picture of a foreigner :P

---Golden Week---

A friend and I standing on the edge.

Stone Buddha

The final weekend of Golden Week, a friend of mine from Asahi came down to visit for a few days, and as I was free on Saturday, we went to do some sightseeing. First, we went to the beach in Chikura and had a light lunch. After that, we headed to Kyonan for Nokogiriyama. Nokogiriyama is awesome because not only does it have a giant stone Buddha statue, but it also has jigoku nozoki or, “a glimpse of hell,” an outcropping of rock that branches out sideways from the peak of the mountain. Every time I drive to Chiba city, I see the peak from the road, and I've always wanted to climb it. Since my friend came down especially for sightseeing, I figured it was the perfect chance to go! Since we went in the afternoon, we decided to climb the mountain as fast as possible to get there around sunset. We climbed it in
under a half hour! It was steep and exhausting, but totally worth it.

View from the highest point of Nokogiriyama

"A Glimpse of Hell" at sunset

The next day was the jyoubasai riding festival that we had instead of our regular monthly show. My friend who was visiting came along and took some photos and video for me! I rode Fururu in the 90cm class. We didn't have any knock downs, but my time was too slow, so I didn't place. I'm going to work on my pace from now on. (btw I passed the A test for riding school!)