In early September, I decided that I wanted to do a road trip for the Respect for the Age Day weekend. But I didn't know where to go or what to do. Then, while I was working at Kaneyama Junior High School, I was reading the second-year New Horizons textbook and found where I wanted to go. In Chapter 0, the textbook mentions a dinosaur museum and eating Echizen soba in Fukui. In Chapter 7, it mentions about Japan's many UNESCO sites. I decided to visit some of the places that the textbook writes about and experience them myself. So, starting from farthest then reutrning back up, I drove 18 hours from Kaneyama down to my first stop, which was the Tottori Sand Dunes, which is a UNESCO Global Geopark. It was amazing to see Japan's only desert and to see how huge the sand dunes were. It was also really fun because I brought my snowboard and sandboarded down the dunes. My next stop was the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. I did exactly what the short story said. I saw a lot of dinosaurs, and I ate Echizen soba. I also went to Seidai Temple, which was close to the museum. In the temple was a lot of Buddha stautes surrounding enormous Buddha statues. It was breathtaking seeing that many Buddhas next to the huge ones. Then, my last stop for my road trip was visiting Shirakawago in Gifu. It was really cool to see the traditional straw-thatched roofs that made the village a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It felt like I time travelled back to the Edo Period. By visiting Fukui and Gifu, I have officially visited all of Chubu and, with Tottori, have been to 31 out of 47 prefectures! I had a great time, and I was excited when I shared my travel stories with my students. Seeing their reaction of why I went to those places was really funny because they didn't know that I went because of their junior high school textbook.
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