Amanohashidate

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This weekend, I took a two-day trip up to northern Kyoto to see the sand bar in Amanohashidate!

Midterms finally wrapped up, and for the weekend right before spring break, some friends and I went up to the amusement park and sand bar in Amanohashidate.  It was a long bus ride on the way there, and we had to get up really early, but once we got there we had plenty of time to look around the city and get something to eat before we headed to the amusement park!

It’s just a little park, with a couple of rides, but it’s at the top of a steep slope, giving you a great view of the sand bar!  We took a chair lift up to the top – which was fun and scary.  I was so scared I was going to fall off!  They were playing this soft lullabye music though, so by the time I reached the top I was nearly falling asleep.

The park itself was very cute, with a bunch of small, old rides.  The rides were pay-as-you-go, and we only rode the ferris wheel – or “kanransha” as it is in Japanese.

Kanransha!

The real selling point of the park, though, is the view is provides of the sand bar.  They say if you stand on the benches in the park and flip to look at the sand bar between your legs, it looks like a dragon flying up towards you.

They say it looks like a dragon, but I don’t quite see it.

After the park, we went back down and walked across the sand bar.  Most of it isn’t actually sand – there’s just a little bit on the far edge that you can see.  A lot of the land bridge is just rock and dirt, but it was nice to walk among the trees.  There was a shrine on the land bridge that we stopped at, too.

Very classic.

It got dark soon after that, so we headed back to our guesthouse.  We ate dinner there with some of the other guests, and headed back home to Hirakata the next day.  Amanohashidate was a lot of fun, even if it was a little far away!  It might have been difficult to get to, but I’m glad I got to experience it before going home!