（↑The scarecrows at the scarecrow school. Can you tell who is a scarecrow and who is an artist? Everyone’s showing us their bums… (haha))

On November 5, (on an order from KAIR vice-chair Sato) I took our hard-working artists on a little holiday to the Iya Valley. (Yamanaka Camera was busy setting up his exhibition at the sake warehouse so we had to leave him behind…)

We left the Shimobun housing compound at 9am. Our destination was the Kazura-bashi vine bridge and Chiiori, but we weren’t in a hurry. We had a very leisurely trip, letting ourselves get sidetracked along the way.

At the side of the road in Koyadaira, an infestation of scarecrows!

The artists were delighted to discover these very lifelike scarecrows. They played around them like little children.

Once we passed Minokoshi, where the entrance to the Mt. Tsurugi hiking trail is, we drove along the bank of the Iya River and all around us was a sea of autumn leaves. I could feel Cameron in the passenger seat, willing me to stop the car.

We stopped many many times along the way, driving up side roads and the like, and finally arrived at Chiiori at 3pm. It took six hours to get there… (haha)

We were able to learn a lot about Chiiori from Paul Cato, who is caring for the facility. It seems they need a lot of money to fund the restoration of their thatched roof, and this is causing them some worries. “We need money,” he said honestly.

Chiiori was also very lovely to visit for a mountain-dwelling Kamiyaman like myself. The lack of convenience is part of the charm.

(It’s difficult from a transportation perspective, but I think it would be interesting to create a tour route connecting Kamiyama and Chiiori. I’m going to pursue this and see if I can find some way to link us up.

Then it was on to Iya’s famous Kazura-bashi vine bridge. By this time it was already past 4pm.

(The gigantic parking lot nearby seemed to be a turnoff but) everyone was very excited to see the Kazura-bashi.

As we munched on the imo kenpi and Chip Star chips that we bought in Oboke, we made our way back to Kamiyama. It was 7pm by the time we got home. Our long long long day came to an end.

(After they got back, I hear Mr. Sato took them to Rakuon Rakujitsu for some delicious mitten crab. Such a long day!)