Visit a local school and learn about school life with a private guide
Your tour will start with seeing the sights in the morning in the area where the school you are visiting is located. We can do a custom itinerary covering the following:
A. Great Statue of Buddha in Seiryuji Temple & Nebuta Museum Warasse
B. Hirosaki Castle in Hirosaki Park & Five-storied Pagoda
C. Rice Paddy Art & Seibien Landscape Garden
The description of each place
A. Great Statue of Buddha in Seiryuji Temple
There is the Great Statue of Buddha, the tallest seated bronze statue of Buddha in Japan in Seiryuji Temple in the suburbs of Aomori City. Its characteristic is that the Buddha wears a crown on his head and makes a Zen meditation hand gesture. There are also a five-storied pagoda and a dry landscape garden on the temple grounds.
A. Nebuta Museum Warasse
Here you can see big 'Nebuta' lantern floats made of paper and wire with lots of light bulbs inside. The pictures often depict the heroes of old Japanese and Chinese historical events. The Nebuta Festival is held from August 2 to 7 and attracts about 3 million visitors from home and abroad.
B. Hirosaki Castle in Hirosaki Park
Hirosaki Castle was the residence of the Lord who governed Hirosaki and its vicinity for about 260 years. This castle was built in 1810 and it is one of the 12 castles in Japan that remain intact without being reconstructed. The castle is in Hirosaki Park. This park is famous for its cherry blossoms. There are about 2,600 cherry trees in the park. More than 2 million tourists from home and abroad come to see the cherry blossoms in spring.
C. Rice Paddy Art
The rice paddy art started about 20 years ago, when Inakadate Village had an event in which local people and tourists had experience in planting rice seedlings. Now they use various kinds of seedlings in different colors. Year by year its artistic value has been increasing. A couple of years ago the emperor and the empress came here all the way from Tokyo to watch the work of 'Gone with the Wind'. The history of rice-planting in this vilage is very long and rice-planting started about 2,000 years ago.
Then we are heading for the school. Since I got engaged in education for a long time, I'm particularly interested in showing you around a Japanese school and giving you chances to try a school lunch with students in the classroom, observe and even participate in the class, have a get-together with the students, and watch the students clean their classroom even after the school day ends. This way you can get to know more about our school and students and see various aspects of school life.
It's usually difficult for foreign tourists to visit a Japanese school. I'm 100% sure we will have a good time with the students.
Area
Duration
Number
Meeting Place
Belongings
The school year starts in April and ends in March in Japan. Most schools have three semesters in a year. The following roughly shows when we have summer, winter and spring vacations. There is no school during these periods. Summer vacation : from July 21 through August 20 Winter vacation : from December 21 through January 14 Spring vacation : from March 27 through April 6
You are expected to take a taxi or a van in your tour, depending on the number of people. Japanese taxis are smaller compared to the ones in Western countries. I recommend you take a van which can accommodate up to eight people besides a driver and a guide. The van charge is 40,000 yen/group.
