If you follow my Japanese adventures on there, you’d know I recently (well since April) enrolled back in school to my greatest surprise. Enrolling in school has a few effects you can see sooner or later: first your life revolves around homeworks, second you actually do improve in your subject of choice and last you get access to the wonderful world of school trips.
Every year, twice a year, my school gets all their new students and takes them on a bus trip to Kamakura. I had been there two times already and has another trip there scheduled for next month so I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go but then I figured it had been 10 years since my last school trip so I thought why not and signed up.
On the morning of the school trip I woke up before 6 to be on time to school and not be killed by my teachers for being late. Thankfully I wasn’t late and discovered we were enough to warrant 10 full buses. I was also surprised we had a tour guide in the bus. She didn’t do anything on site, we were too many for one guide anyway, but she was quite good at describing everything we saw on the road. You’re not usually seeing Tokyo from the overhead express roads so for people who’re not used to it it was nice. And I didn’t have to do it for my neighbors. On that topic the day of the school trip still wasn’t a day where I could see the Rainbow Bridge actually wearing its rainbow colors, you’d think they’d do it a bit more often, it’s boring when it’s white.
We went to Kamakura, saw Tsurugaoka Hachimangu (for the second time for me), saw the Kamakura Daibutsu (for the second time), and then to the beach. Unfortunately you should know a school trip has rules. First is no alcohol (I ate nihonshu ice cream, my teacher supported the choice), second is no swimming. You’d think that any school who actually takes their students to the beach wants them to swim but there is no such thing in my school. I felt like I was living a beach episode without the beach. It was sad. But I am not going to complain too much because I’ll be back a bit further from said beach and do funnier things than “just” swimming, but that might be a tale for another time.
After that we were strongly encouraged to eat in the bus while we made our way to Enoshima. I had actually never gone there so I was quite curious. It’s a very different atmosphere from Kamakura but quite entertaining. It’s more natural and while you can clearly see human influence it’s still quite refreshing after Kamakura. The day finished quite fast after that and, tagging along with our teacher, we were late for departure.