Takaosan

So a few sundays ago I went hiking on Takaosan as a sort of "get prepared for Mt. Fuji" kind of trip.

Takaosan is a 370 yen ride from shinjuku station, a fairly short ride and an easy place to find. I met some friends (Andrew, Yukari, Tyisha, John, and Dampierre) at Shinjuku and then we hopped on the train, which took about 40 minutes. We got there around noon which made me wish we had gotten there sooner because I feel like we didn't have enough time to see everything, but it was a beautiful and great trip anyway.

You get to the foot of the mountain and there are som souvinier shops and a couple of sweet shops but not really much to eat. We wandered around for awhile trying to find a conbini so we could get food to take up on the mountain. Next time I'll know to just bring food.

After that we caught a 500 yen ride on the chairlift, which is the usualy way to get about halfway up the mountain. It's a nice ride, though a bit expensive if you want to go both ways so we just caught the way up.

Once you get off the chairlift there's a place selling corn dogs (american dogs) and franks on sticks. We got a couple, ate and then moved on. There are several directions to go but more than anything (and I'm not sure why) I wanted to see this one bridge. So I lead the way! Not a good idea....

On the way to the bridge we passed the monkey park, which costs another 500 yen to enter (we didn't go in) and this really cool tree. It's really large but the neat thing is that its got this hollow root. If you put your ear next to it you hear nothing. It's really intense this sound of nothingness, like a vacuum or something. I was entertained by this tree.

We finally found our way to the bridge, which was less exciting in person. Then we hiked the rest of the way up the mountain to the top which has a few restaurants and a really spectacular view. A large group asked John to take their picture for them so he did, then they wanted us all in the picture so we did that, and then they started getting John's autograph or something...that's what it looked like. Nice people who we ran into a couple of times on the way down.




When we headed down we were trying to find one of the water falls but once again I had been put in the lead. I ended up putting us on the longest path down between which there is almost nothing except a small inari shrine. Still, it was nice just hiking and talking and singing on our way off the mountain.


Also, as we were reaching the bottom we heard Hula music! at the foot a hawaiian band had been preforming! It was pretty neat. There was a smaller waterfall at the foot so we all took pictures in front of that.




All in all a wonderful little trip. I had forgotten how much I loved hiking! Now I guess I'm ready for the 6 hour climb up mount fuji, which I plan to do in the middle of June. There are more pictures in the album "Takaosan" in my photobucket...enjoy!

Also, coming soon are updates about:
Measles, Matsuri, The power Suit, and more Kyudo stuff...

Much Love!