Mt. Takao Climbing Tour - Discover the Mt. Takao you never knew existed!

Report by KYOPRO Staff

On Saturday, December 9, "Mt. Takao Mountain Climbing Tour: Discover the Mt. Takao you never knew existed" was held outside the Tama Campus at Mt. In this program, participants learned about the nature and culture of Mt. Takao from a specialized lecturer in order to gain new knowledge while experiencing something out of the ordinary. The lecturer was Mr. Koji Ozaki, Chief Curator of Hachioji City's Local History Museum, who has been researching the history of Hachioji and especially the culture of Mt. Takao, and has climbed Mt. Takao 70-80 times a year in the past.

The impetus for the implementation of this program came from the idea of making the Mt. Takao climbing program, which had been conducted consecutively last year and the year before, different from what it had been in the past. In the past programs, the main purpose of the program was to promote interaction among the participants, and there were no professional lecturers accompanying the participants, but only student staff. As a result, the knowledge of Mt. Takao gained from the program was shallow, and the program ended up being like a typical mountain climbing tour. I, who also managed last year's program, saw Mr. Ozaki guiding Mt. Takao in a TV program broadcast last year and thought, "If we can get this person to guide us, we can make the content more cultured and appropriate for KYOPRO's program," and "I want the students of Hou University to learn more about Mt.

In this program, we used materials on the history of Mt. Takao and compared the differences between Mt. Takao in the past and Mt. After that, we used the cable car to travel from the foot to the middle of Mt. Takao. From the time we got off the cable car until we reached the summit, the lecturers showed us many places where tourists do not usually go, even though we followed the standard mountain climbing course. After reaching the summit, we took a break. After a one-hour break, we descended to the foot of Mt. Takao, again along a route that tourists do not usually take, and among these was Anabenten, located behind the main temple of Mt. Takao, which was well received by the participants, many of whom had never been there before.

This program allowed the participants to discover new attractions of Mt. Takao near the Tama Campus, but it also provided an opportunity for people not only from the Tama Campus, but also from other campuses, to take an interest in the mountain. Many participants commented that they were able to learn about Mt. Takao that they had not known before, making this a highly satisfying program.

Report by KYOPRO staff] Naomasa Terada (2nd year, Department of Policy Science on Society, Faculty of Social SciencesFaculty of Social Sciences ), Sakura Fujise (1st year, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences )