Trip to Yoro

Today, we went to the town of Yoro, at the foot of the Yoro mountains, right next to Mount Yoro, and saw the Yoro Waterfall. In Japanese, the consonants "r" and "l" are combined, so I amused myself by internally substituting "YOLO" for all of these instances.

The trip to Yoro is about 45 minutes in good traffic, or just over 80 minutes by train. There are tradeoffs both ways. In the car we can be loud and go at our own pace. On the train, I can look around at the scenery instead of paying attention to the road. We took the train this time, but we may go back by car at some point. It was good for the soul to get out of the city.



Before boarding the train, we bought some pastries at Nagoya Station. "Food to go" isn't really a thing here, and I'm especially glad we packed something ahead of time because it appears to be even less of a thing in rural Japan. I won't bore you with the details, but about two and a half hours of train rides, snacks, and walking later, we had arrived at the park.

A playground in Yoro, Japan

There are apparently two seperate playground areas, but we just hung out at one for a while. The girls ran around and played, and Anna and I rested a bit.

Leah walking at the park.

Leah's "sand castle". The one on the top right is "for Leah" and the one on the bottom left is "for Daddy". Don't worry if you have trouble discerning their structure. I had a difficult time of it myself.

Leah's second castle (or third, depending on how you view it).

Unfortunately, Leah's castle masterpiece had to be demolished to return the steps to service. She was quite willing to do so herself, however.

After the park, we began trudging up the mountain to try to make it to the waterfall. It was a pretty steep road, and we were all tired by the end.

Lovely trees on the way.

Anna, my brave long-suffering pregnant wife, taking a short break from pushing the stroller uphill.

You can find lots of pictures of Yoro waterfall that other people have taken. The last part of the ascent was stairs, and no one but me (carrying Teddy) made it to the waterfall proper. On the way back down we stopped for some ice-cream and strawberries. We also bought a gourd, which are associated with a local story.

The shop where we bought a gourd.

So many pretty gourds!

The river-bed was entirely paved with stones and concrete. Very cool hardscaping.

The girls took the stairs down to walk next to the river bed. I pushed the stroller along the road nearby.

Anna and Charlette walking back down-hill next to the riverbed. You can see an artificial waterfall on the right, of which there were many.

EDIT: I finally finished the "music video" I made of this trip. Pretty terrible singing, but the lyrics are good. I'd say it turned out as well as a single-take of everything could be expected to go.