Barely Counts
Trip Start
Jul 22, 2006
1
56
59
Trip End
Aug 15, 2010
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Mount Takao, Tōkyō, Japan
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
To get there, we took the Keio line from Shinjuku Station all the way to the very last stop, Takaosanguchi. It took about an hour. We hadn't hurried that morning, so we ended up starting our climb in the early afternoon. This was both good and bad: good, because it meant that most of the crowds had already gone up; bad, because we chose the hardest trail up, which many people had chosen to follow to get back down the mountain.
There are several different courses you can take to the top. The easy (lazy) option is to take the chairlift up. That there is such an option explains why you'll see women strolling around the viewing area at the summit wearing high heels. No, I'm not kidding. The only place in Japan I'm 100% certain I didn't see any women wearing high heels is on Mt. Fuji. Anyway, Max and I chose the course that would take us by a waterfall and a shrine -- I believe it was course #6 or 7 on the map.
The going up wasn't too demanding for us, but since the trail was quite narrow in places, we had to stand aside to let a steady stream of people going down. It had rained the day before, so there were patches of mud on the ground, and we had to be careful of slippery roots and stones.
The shrine by the waterfall was pretty, as was the surrounding forest, which was mostly pine by the time we made the top. I'd heard that on a good day, Mt. Fuji was visible from there, but of course we were there on a humid day (June to September = humid), so there was no hope of that. Still, the mountains we could see in the distance were lovely, soft and blue in the haze.
To go back down, we took the easiest trail, i.e. the one that's basically a wide, paved road. It goes by Yakuoin Temple, where there are many statues of tengu, and we stopped there to see the temple and have ice cream. Something had gone wrong with the shop's freezer, so our ice cream was partially melted; the vendor let us have it for free, with his deepest apologies, and closed up shop right after, much to the dismay of the girls who had been next in line.
After hiking up the hard trail, the walk back down barely counted as exercise, but I was glad that the sky was partially overcast, so that we didn't roast. By the time we made it to train station, it was too late to visit the trick art museum (which had been recommended to me by a friend), so we just went back to my place.
