三鷹、聞いたか、吉祥寺、二子玉川 and Shibata

The theme of today's speech is one-day bus trips .

I am a student at the Senior Citizens' College run by the community center.

We have classes once a month.

In October, we went on an observation training trip .

We left the Lifelong Learning Center at 9am.

About 10 people did not join us, so there were 24 participants, two chaperones, and we traveled in two buses.

We drove for an hour and a half on public roads to the metal industrial park in Sanjo City.

So, we took a factory tour of Nozaki Seisakusho and experienced manufacturing.

It is a small press processing factory with around 15 employees.

It is an old company, and the next president, who will be in the fifth generation, gave us a tour.

There is a small press machine of about 40 tones, a mold warehouse with automatic transport, and products are shipped in returnable boxes.

It is all done by hand, and I wondered whether it would be possible with such low level of skill.

We had lunch in Kamo city.

As most of the group was women, we refrained from drinking beer.

After the meal, we strolled through Kamoyama Park .

We visited Aomi Shrine, which is where the name Kamo comes from.

In the afternoon, we were shown the manufacturing site of Kamo paulownia chests at Shigeno Tansu Shop in Tagami-machi.

Three craftsmen were at work.

It was fascinating to see the process of remaking old chests into rice chests.

Recently, the company has been exporting chests.

Japan and China are the only countries that use paulownia as a wood.

Finally, we did some shopping at Tagami Roadside Station.

We arrived in Shibata at 4:45, about 30 minutes later than planned.

The cost was 3,000 yen.

It was a cloudy day, but not cold and the bus trip was comfortable.

By the way, women are quite talkative.