Trip to Tottori, Hiking and Lamination Cost

Hello!

This weekend, I went Tottori prefecture, which is to the north and west of Kobe.

The bus ride there took about 3 hours. I spent the first day in Tottori City, a place which is famous for having a large sand dune park.

If you have been to the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan, Tottori’s sand dunes are similar to that. Although, I think that Tottori's might be slightly more expansive?

While in Tottori City, I spent the night in a small hostel and cafe that had small individual "pod-style" beds. I will include a photo of the space in this week's album.

After exploring Tottori City on Friday, I then took a train that evening over to another town called Yonago. This is one of the larger towns that is closest to Mt Daisen.

Daisen is a large mountain that is listed as one of Japan’s “100 Famous Mountains.” I may have mentioned this in a past update, but this is a a well known hiking book in Japan that contains recommendations for the top hiking mountains.

I have been to a few on the list so far - Mt Miyanoura in Fukushima is one (from last March) and Mt Ibuki near Lake Biwa (in May) is another.

This would be my first hiking trip in a while - August’s weather was too hot to do much outside and then typhoon season hit, bringing a lot of rain to the area.

Early Saturday morning, I took a bus from the train station out to Mt Daisen - it took about an hour from Yonago's main train station to the base of the mountain trail.

Climbing the mountain took 2 to 3 hours. It was very beautiful at the top! Once you get up there, you are mostly above the cloud level. Like some of the other mountains I have climbed, there was a small shop area and places for people to sit down and enjoy the view.

After spending some time at the summit and then descending the mountain, I ate a vegan “burger” that was traditionally made by monks in the area. There is a nice, small village area at the foot of the mountain with several different shops and hiking gear stores.

I put together some of my videos and pictures from the trip into this video on YouTube.

I kept my return plans flexible just in case there was bad weather and I needed to adjust the day on which I hiked. Since I was able to get the hike in on Saturday, I started to look at returning to Kobe on Sunday.

The same bus company that operated the bus that I took on Thursday also operates a bus route between Yonago and Kobe. I was able to buy a ticket for the bus Sunday morning and make my way back home.

The buses are safe and clean. Most seats on the bus have a privacy curtain that you can close that sections off your space from other passengers. I have even seen in videos that some buses offer private room for riders! Here is a video of one such bus with two private rooms aboard it.

When buying my ticket in Kobe, the ticket seller recommended a seat in the last row, which allows you to recline without disturbing anyone behind you. Due to COVID, it also seems that they only let two passengers sit in the last row of four seats (with one person at each end of the row) so that means you will not have anyone sitting next to you.

While taking busses and trains in Japan, it seems like you could mostly buy tickets the same day and still find room. The Japanese all seem to take time off at the same time (Golden Week in May, Obon in August and New Years in December/January) - if you travel outside of those times, public transport is usually not crowded.

Things might change in the coming month, though, as Japan has gone ahead to fully open to tourism. Starting October 11th, Japan will allow regular tourists in without set itineraries, which effectively returns tourism to pre-pandemic practices.

I believe that if you have three vaccine shots, you will be able to freely enter Japan. If you do not meet this requirement, it seems that you will need to take a pre-departure COVID test.

Travel aside, school continues as normal. One aspect of school that I have probably mentioned before is the customer service approach that the school staff and teachers take towards parents and people outside of the school.

Teachers will regularly rush to answer the phone when it rings in the staff room - there is a main school phone number that anyone outside the school can call to get ahold of someone.

I mentioned before how when the assistant principal answers the phone, he always deliberately waits to make sure the other person hangs up before he hangs up his phone. I also saw a document given to teachers that told them about how their body language when talking on the phone can be “felt” by the person on the other side. The text encouraged bowing and smiling while talking on the phone.

Cost consciousness is something else that I again noticed this week - there is a laminator that you can use to laminate sheets of paper in various sizes. I just now noticed that there is a note posted on the laminator that tells you how much it costs the school to laminate the different sizes of paper (seems like laminating a normal sheet of paper costs about 10-20 US cents, or so).

Until next time,

​

---

Photos from this week!

​