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Published: November 6th 2008
Geibi-Kei
In the car on the wayWhile we still had a few days off work and Renee was here on holidays we decided to hire a car and head down to Hiraizumi about 1 ½ hours drive from Morioka. It’s a pretty small town with a population of around 9,000 people. One thing that you should know is in Japan it's almost cheaper to get a train to wherever you're going then to drive. We paid around $50 just in tolls driving on the highway! No wonder people opt to catch the trains it's just way too expensive, not to mention the price of petrol as well. Anyway, we’d herd about a place called
Geibi-kei where you could hire boats that take you around natural gorges with 100-m high cliffs and singing boatmen. When we arrived I have to say I felt like I was back in Australia again. The scenery was just that, it was beautiful. We jumped into a boat which took us to a small alcove I guess you could say, where we hoped off ready to explore. There were folk tales of the rocks along the way one which resembled a horse and many told stories. We walked across a bridge to where
there was an image of a fox. You could buy stones which all have different meanings like: long life, happiness, love etc and you could have a go at throwing them into the foxes eye. (Which was a hole in the cliff). If you were lucky enough to get your stone in there then your wish would come true. I unfortunately never got any of mine in! On the way back the man who was steering our boat with a long stick in the water started singing and it was really beautiful. I almost feel asleep to the sound of his voice. After we got back to shore we did some gift shopping then out to lunch in this small town, where apart from Geibi-kei I didn’t see any other people around! The trip home seemed to go for ages - luckily our driver stayed awake as we all got to sleep.
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