Private Tour Date: October 23 , 2013

 Today, we enjoyed hiking with a Canadian couple. They are both excellent Japanese speakers and eager birdwatchers.

This tour include two additional missions.

Find the four places by photos of the guest's grandfather when he visited Mt. Takao 70 years ago. And enjoy watching wild birds of Japan that are not seen in Canada.

Compare the stone lantern with the old photo to confirm that this is the first place.

Actually, tour leader HIDE-san had already searched the places beforehand.

We looked around the religious facilities of Yakuoin.

On this day we often saw some Black Kites,”tobi” in Japanese.

In the Yuuki-en, they flew close to us many times and we were able to observe them clearly.

The 4th and final object to back to 70 years ago was this “komainu” , guardian dog. Mission Complete!    

The sculpture of the Eight Chinese Immortals on GONGEN-do Hall protected by komainu , has a unique episode.

We made it around 12:30

We were lucky enough to see snow-capped

 Mt. Fuji.

We took lunch at a soba restaurant in Momiji-dai.

Even in Canada, they call it "soba noodles" not buckwheat noodle, and eat zaru-soba in the summer.

After lunch we took trail # 4.

While hiking, we observed lots of Japanese wild birds like, Great Tit, Varied Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Brown-eared Bulbul, Jays, etc. Also, they enjoyed listening to the chirping and comparing it with a bird-watching app on their smartphones.

They said that they use podcasts to study Japanese on a daily basis, and they were very pro-Japan ese people who mentioned the Japan names of birds and read some signboard in Japanese.

I’m sure they will enjoy watching-birds across Japan.

We would be very happy this detective tour at Mt. Takao will remain in their memories.

Thank you for joining our tour!

 

Written by Keita